Summary The recovery of the prejudice as well as of the authority and tradition that Gadamer accomplishes is made with the following goal: to point out the function of the dialogue, which has a main role in the legitimation and acceptance of the tradition. The philosopher introduces the dialogue conditions between tradition and the present time, all together with their prejudices and the mutual influences of the several horizons. Also, he includes the privileged condition granted by the distance of time. (...) Gadamer wants to make possible to each and everyone to have what he calls Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein, especially those who investigate history. We cannot consider history as an object that accepts submissively a complete investigation as well as a definitive analysis. Gadamer try to alert us for the danger that is inserted on the lack of our dialogue capability, which will maintain veiled precisely the kind of knowledge that we most want and need to know. The faith and the search for an objective and absolute knowledge or an absolutely objective knowledge is a mistake and an ingenuousness. This systematic failure cost us the lack of a closer understanding of the historical truth and it disables us of reaching the authentic Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein. (shrink)

Psychological approaches to fostering sustainability are heavily focused on individual behaviors and often insufficiently address the physical and social contexts individuals are embedded in. This limits the ability to create meaningful, long-lasting change, as many of day-to-day behaviors are social practices embedded in broader cultural norms and systems. This is particularly true in the work context, where organizational cultures heavily condition both the actions of individual employees and the collective actions of organizations. Thus, we argue cultures, not behaviors, must become (...) the focus of sustainability change efforts. In this paper, we present a theory of change aimed at fostering strong organizational cultures of sustainability (COS) within a high-performance multi-tenant office building. Our theory takes a systems perspective that incorporates the social and physical aspects of the work environment, and views culture change as a co-creative exercise involving engagement of multiple stakeholders. The paper concludes with implications for practice and research. (shrink)

This introductory chapter integrates two different steps: a global consideration of the problems which the “signifier” limits is able to include and a detailed mapping of the reflective path which the following thirteen chapters effectively pursue.

Quatro painéis de muito boa pintura, representando aspectos da vida e martírios dos Santos Mártires de Lisboa, Veríssimo, Máxima e Júlia, estão patentes no Museu Carlos Machado, em Ponta Delgada, nos Açores.Obras nunca estudadas antes de 2001, embora referenciadas documentalmente já no século XIX, permaneceram em colecções particulares até aos anos sessenta do século XX, quando foram doadas ao museu açoriano, onde se encontram em bom estado de conservação. Nunca dali saíram, a não ser um dos painéis para a XVII (...) Exposição Europeia de Arte, Cultura e Ciência (núcleo da Casa dos Bicos) e outro painel, em 1992, para uma exposição em Génova. As obras, de relativamente pequenas dimensões, são muito ricas em aspectos iconográficos e de caracterização de ambientes. Datáveis da década de 30 do século XVI, têm sido atribuídas ao pintor Garcia Fernandes e, mais recentemente, a Cristóvão de Utreque, um dos mestres que foi referenciado como eventual colaborador dos chamados Mestres de Ferreirim: Cristóvão de Figueiredo, Gregório Lopes e Garcia Fernandes.Muito interessante, no entanto, é a iconografia das paisagens urbanas de duas das pinturas, mas a vida e os martírios dos santos não acompanham o que se conhecia da literatura do tempo. (shrink)

More than a simple expository history, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, and F lix Guattari, while also engaging the critical new understanding of material processes derived from the sciences of dynamics.Following in the wake of his groundbreaking War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Manuel De Landa presents a radical synthesis of historical development over the last one thousand years. More (...) than a simple expository history, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, and F lix Guattari, while also engaging the critical new understanding of material processes derived from the sciences of dynamics. Working against prevailing attitudes that see history as an arena of texts, discourses, ideologies, and metaphors, De Landa traces the concrete movements and interplays of matter and energy through human populations in the last millennium. De Landa attacks three domains that have given shape to human societies: economics, biology, and linguistics. In every case, what one sees is the self-directed processes of matter and energy interacting with the whim and will of human history itself to form a panoramic vision of the West free of rigid teleology and naive notions of progress, and even more important, free of any deterministic source of its urban, institutional, and technological forms. Rather, the source of all concrete forms in the West's history are shown to derive from internal morphogenetic capabilities that lie within the flow of matter-energy itself. (shrink)

Um discípulo indisciplinado: Diderot leitor de Shaftesbury.

This paper analyzes the contestation of Dühring’s ideas made by Nietzsche in paragraph 11 of the second part of the book On the Genealogy of Morals, in order to relate the philosopher's arguments to the legal positivist theory of the time. Through the examination of the views and arguments articulated in the Nietzschean reasoning, it is sought to show that Nietzsche's positions not only welcome important premises of legal positivism but are also compatible with some developments of positivist legal theory (...) of the 19th century. (shrink)

In our dealings with animals at least most of us see them as conscious beings. On the other hand the employment of human categories to animals seems to be problematic. Reflecting on the details of human beliefs, for example, casts serious doubt on whether the cat is able to believe anything at all. These theses try to reflect on methodological issues when investigating animal minds. Developing a theory of animal mentality seems to be a test case of the interdisciplinary research (...) programme in cognitive science. From the philosopher`s perspective the most pressing problem is how to talk about animal minds. Can we just employ the vocabulary of human psychology? If not, exploring animal minds contains the non-trivial task of introducing a terminology that allows to see the distinctness of animal minds and to see its connection to the human case. The treatment of some topic in cognitive science has to reach a reflective equilibrium between our intuitions, a phenomenological approach, philosophical conceptual analysis, various empirical approaches and model building. Reflective equilibrium means in this context that we have to reach a coherent model which incorporates as much of our intuitions concerning animal consciousness and integrates at the same time the findings of the different co-operating sciences. There can be various trade-offs in case of conflict between, say, philosophical definitions of mental terms as to be applied to animals, neurophysiology, our reflected intuitions and ethological model building based on a computational theory of animal minds. The paper gives an example of reflective equilibrium in discussing the case for awareness in vertebrates. It considers the role of evolutionary reasoning. The main focus lays on two examples of comparing our human notions with corresponding abilities in animals, and how an appropriate conceptual apparatus dealing with the abilities of animals could be introduced. (shrink)

After the great enthusiasm about the moral potentialities of empathy of the last thirty years, this phenomenon has been recently called into question, if not openly criticized, by both philosophers and psychologists among whom we find Jesse Prinz or Paul Bloom. This paper aims to show why empathy should not too easily be regarded as useless or even deleterious for morality and to propose a special role for it. In order to reach this goal, I will briefly sketch what I (...) mean with the term empathy and how is this psychological mechanism different from other akin phenomena like compassion. I will then turn my attention to some criticisms that can be made about the role of empathy for morality which show that empathy seems not a necessary element of the three main dimensions of morality, that is moral judgment, moral development and moral conduct. After that, I will try to defend empathy thanks to the identification of some important roles it can play both at a moral and at an epistemological level, in the attempt to demonstrate that empathy is in fact part of the fundamental features of a moral person. (shrink)

Primitivos relatos cosmogónicos de diferentes culturas en que el agua desempeña un papel fundamental en la creación del mundo. Análisis de los valores fundamentales del agua que se manifiestan en dichos relatos. El culto al agua desde la antigüedad hasta el final de la Edad Media. Relación del agua con la magia.

El f in de este a r tículo es demostrar que las ficciones cartesianas no son necesarias en el ámbito del conocimiento, en pa r ticular del conocimiento económico, el cual se de r iv a del análisis de la red de intereses y decisiones de los sujetos, decisiones que son f r uto del pensamiento común que determina el pensamiento de cada in d i viduo. La secuencia ca r tesiana "pensarse para pensar", en realidad se realiza de modo (...) i n v e r so: "pensar para pensarse", que da lu g ar a un nu e v o concepto de racionalid a d , reflejo de la razón de los ot r os. Esto tiene trascendentes consecuencias: la primera es la r uptura con la idea de e xistencia de un "pensamiento oculto", con el principio de que cada in d i viduo posee unos pensamientos que no pueden ser conocidos por los ot r os ; la s e gunda es también de n e gación del pensamiento estratégico, afín con la competencia económica, pero i r realiza b le dentro del pensamiento común. F inalmente y como f r uto de la incertidumbre dete r minante de las decisiones se ll e ga a la conclusión de que no e xiste tampoco una racionalidad de los ot r os, sino que actúan i r racionalmente con la "i r razón" que promu e v e el futuro incierto. (shrink)

This book philosophically explores changing conceptions of race and equality in Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause since the enactment of the 14th Amendment. It traces these changing conceptions alongside the gradual elimination of the social equality of racialized persons from the Supreme Court’s list of priorities.

This volume critically discusses the relationship between democracy and constitutionalism. It does so with a view to respond to objections raised by legal and political philosophers who are sceptical of judicial review based on the assumption that judicial review is an undemocratic institution. The book builds on earlier literature on the moral justification of the authority of constitutional courts, and on the current attempts to develop a system on "weak judicial review". Although different in their approach, the chapters all focus (...) on devising institutions, procedures and, in a more abstract way, normative conceptions to democratize constitutional law. These democratizing strategies may vary from a radical objection to the institution of judicial review, to a more modest proposal to justify the authority of constitutional courts in their "deliberative performance" or to create constitutional juries that may be more aware of a community's constitutional morality than constitutional courts are. The book connects abstract theoretical discussions about the moral justification of constitutionalism with concrete problems, such as the relation between constitutional adjudication and deliberative democracy, the legitimacy of judicial review in international institutions, the need to create new institutions to democratize constitutionalism, the connections between philosophical conceptions and constitutional practices, the judicial review of constitutional amendments, and the criticism on strong judicial review. (shrink)

Resenha do livro Introdução à Antropologia da Religião.

Nesta investigação, propomo-nos demonstrar que Jesus foi um verdadeiro contador de histórias. A narrativa lucana conhecida tradicionalmente por parábola do Filho pródigo não é propriamente uma parábola, pois assume os contornos formais de um conto, podendo-se nela encontrar as caraterística centrais do género literário “o conto”. Nela encontramos propriedades configuradoras da sua individualização como género: a conclusão moralizante de uma história fechada, com princípio, meio e fim; a concentração de espaço, tempo e reduzido número de personagens; a curta extensão sintagmática, (...) mas sempre extensa comparada com a das parábolas. Em suma, concluímos que estamos perante um verdadeiro e extraordinário conto. Há, no entanto, outras narrativas evangélicas que pelas suas características se assemelham à do Filho pródigo. Podemos assim identificar a do Administrador infiel, a narrativa dos Vinhateiros homicidas, a das Moedas de ouro e respetivos paralelos de Mt, que se revestem de característica muito semelhantes às do Filho pródigo, apesar de muito menos desenvolvidas e que, no fundo, as consideramos como sendo embriões de contos. (shrink)

This paper consists in an analysis of two explanatory models of human behaviour which play a prominent role in the contemporary literature on human action. The first model - the causalist - aims at explaining action in terms of causes and general laws. The second model - the intentionalist - explains human action in terms of intentions and practical syllogism. The difficulties of both models are presented and in the last part of the essay we propose one alternative model, based (...) on the notion of retroduction.O trabalho consiste numa análise de dois modelos explicativos do comportamento humano considerados fundamentais na literatura contemporânea sobre teoria da ação. O primeiro modelo, o causalista, tenta explicar as ações em termos de causas e leis gerais. O segundo explica a ação em termos de intenções e silogismos práticos. As dificuldades e problemas de ambos modelos são apresentadas e na última parte do ensaio propomos um modelo alternativo baseado na noção de retrodução. (shrink)

In this work we provide a new topological representation for implication algebras in such a way that its one-point compactification is the topological space given in [1]. Some applications are given thereof.

In seiner Dissertano de arte combinatoria entwickelt G. W. Leibniz eine Methode, um Prädikate von einem Subjekt und Subjekte zu einem Prädikat zu finden, und er stellt eine Formel auf, um deren Anzahl zu berechnen. Ich möchte im Folgenden erläutern, wie diese Methode funktioniert und warum sie sowohl einen Teil der, wie Leibniz es nennt, logica inventiva als auch eine direkte Folge seiner Variationslehre bildet, die den zentralen Teil seiner Dissertano ausmacht. Im letzten Abschnitt dieses Beitrages werde ich auf einige (...) theoretische und historische Zusammenhänge zwischen der logica inventiva und der aristotelischen Logik eingehen. Insbesondere werde ich erläutern, in welcher Weise Leibniz' Methode mit einigen traditionellen Versuchen in Verbindung steht, die tota minora eines gegebenen Terms zu bestimmen, und ob die aristotelische Theorie der kategorischen Propositionen in der Lage war, Leibniz' Methode zum Auffinden von Subjekten und Prädikaten innerhalb der logica inventiva zu begründen. (shrink)

La prisión, que hasta finales del siglo XVIII no pasó de ser una medida aseguradora de la presencia del reo en el proceso, fue experimentando a partir de entonces un rápido y progresivo avance como pena en los ordenamientos jurídicos no sólo por considerarse más humana y eficaz que las penas a las que fue sustituyendo -penas de muerte, corporales e infamantes-, sino sobre todo por su adaptabilidad a la gravedad del delito. Además, con la organización de la ejecución de (...) la pena de prisión de acuerdo con diferentes sistemas penitenciarios se va a pretender conseguir con ella algo más que la simple separación del condenado de la sociedad. Se va a intentar reintegrarlo a la sociedad para que en adelante sea capaz de vivir en paz con los demás. (shrink)

Quand nous utilisons le langage, nous nous appuyons sur le fait que les expressions linguistiques ont une signification. Comment cela fonctionne-t-il? La signification se reduit-elle a l'information? Y a-t-il un intermediaire entre le langage et le monde? Les significations sont-elles dans la tete? Ces questions sont abordees en partant des conceptions heritees de Frege et de Russell jusqu'a la semantique bidimensionnelle de Chalmers, en passant par les debats sur la reference des noms propres et des termes d'espece naturelle. Le livre (...) presente egalement la demarche de la semantique formelle, depuis les travaux precurseurs de Montague jusqu'a la semantique des situations de Barwise et Perry, tout en interrogeant sa pertinence pour une analyse philosophique de la signification. (shrink)