Nomadism as a spatial concept denoting uncharted movements has opened up non-static ways of theorizing the subject in feminist theory and beyond. But it seems that the nomads of the real world and their torturing wanderings today have irrevocably challenged the romance of unregulated movement and force us to radically rethink the very concept of nomadism itself. In this paper I address the aporias that women's entanglement in current mobility assemblages has raised in the ways we understand and imagine the (...) subject of feminism. In doing so, I experiment with the concept of the non-nomad as an emergent figuration that retains the radicalism of nomadic theories, while pointing to their margins, shadows and exclusions. (shrink)

RESUMO:A hipótese desenvolvida nos leva a confrontar três textos do corpusrousseauísta: o Segundo Discurso, Júlia ou A Nova Heloísa e o extrato do Primeiro Diálogo, em que há a ficção do mundo ideal, textos que, apesar do seu estatuto genérico diferente, estão em coerência e convergência teórica. Desejamos evidenciar um aspecto da unidade problemática do pensamento de Rousseau concernente à abordagem crítica da sociedade de seus contemporâneos e sua concepção do papel das Letras e dos Espetáculos. A preocupação do filósofo (...) é de refundar a natureza humana, a fim de lançar as bases de uma nova organização social. Nessa empreitada, a ficção desempenha um papel crucial, o prefácio do Segundo Discurso o comprova: para bem conhecer o homem atual, deve-se supor o que ele não é mais. O homem do estado de natureza, ser de ficção, cujas paixões são retas e naturais, é o modelo teórico que reativa a sociedade dos seres ideais de Júlia. Dessa forma, a ficção é chamada a desempenhar um papel referencial fundamental para o pensamento social e político de Rousseau, aparecendo como um poderoso meio de ação sobre o público. O romance pode reeducar os povos corrompidos, pois, assim como o teatro, como denuncia a Carta a d’Alembert, possui os meios para perverter uma sociedade tida como virtuosa. ABSTRACT:The hypothesis that we will develop leads us to confront three texts of Rousseau’s corpus: the Second Discourse, Julie, and the extract of the First Dialogue that speaks of the pedagogical fiction of the ideal world. These three texts, despite their different types, are theoretically coherent and convergent. We intend to highlight an aspect of the problematic unity of Rousseau’s thought, an aspect which concerns his contemporaries’ critical approach to society and Rousseau’s conception of the role of letters and spectacles. Rousseau’s concern is to refound human nature in order to lay the basis of a new social organization. In this effort, fiction plays a decisive role, as the preface to the Second Discourse affirms: in order to know modern man, we must consider a hypothesis about what he no longer is. Man in the state of nature, a fictional being whose passions are right and natural, is the theoretical model that reactivates the society of ideal beings in Julie. For Rousseau, fiction is called upon to play a fundamental referential role for social and political thought, and it appears as a powerful means of action on the public. The novel can reeducate depraved peoples, because, like the theater, it also has the means to pervert a so-called virtuous society. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to argue that creativity is given in all forms of consciousness and that could open new perspectives in the research of the processes of formation of subjects. The most important result is that all the forms of consciousness have an enormous diversity of referents of the different modes of appropriation of the real, they are provided of imagination and critical capacity and only in the artistic consciousness creativity is condition for its existence. El objetivo (...) de este trabajo es argumentar que la creatividad se da en todas las formas de conciencia y que esto puede abrir nuevas perspectivas en la investigación de los procesos de formación de sujetos. El resultado más importante es que todas las formas de conciencia disponen de una enorme cantidad de referentes de diferentes modos de apropiación de lo real, están dotadas de imaginación y capacidad crítica y sólo en la conciencia artística la creatividad es condición para su existencia. (shrink)

In 1930, in Anfänge der bürgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie, Horkheimer analyzes utopia in bourgeois philosophy of history and identifies two aspects: the criticism of what is, and the representation of what should be. Utopia therefore plays a revolutionary role in history. In 1937, in Traditionelle und kritische Theorie, Horkheimer changes opinion. Utopia is criticized as misleading, acquiescent to reality. In later writings, in a pessimistic view, the Director of the Frankfurt School describes contemporary society as a dystopia.

This paper analyzes in the use of virtual reality when used to induce full-body ownership in violent offenders in order to elicit empathetic feelings by allowing them to embody the virtual body of a victim of domestic abuse. The authors explore potentially harmful effects to individuals participating in this kind of therapy and question whether consent is fully informed. The paper concludes with guidelines for ethical research and rehabilitation using this innovative technology.

Against the modern theory of representation, whiou makes the world opaque, Polo Suggests reviviting the classical theory of ilumination. Intentionality of knowledge, according to Polo, makes possibe the "deveiling" of reality, and shows its radical dependence from God.

In this engrossing book, Maria Dzielska searches behind the legend to bring us the real story of Hypatia's life and death, and new insight into her colorful ...

Is musical practice 'real' - and how is it connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that making music changes as soon as its meaning is not sought in a purpose-oriented production of results, but in performing music as an activity - indeed, as play. Musical practice, Eva-Maria Houben contends, should be understood as open and never finished. Such an emphasis on repetition can free us from perfection, productivity, and purpose, allowing meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, (...) and relationships. Thus understood, musical practice can become a form of life and a reality in its own right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Towards a Design-Based Analysis of Emotional Episodes”Cristiano Castelfranchi (bio) and Maria Miceli (bio)Keywordsgrief, suffering, attachment, agent architectureThis paper is significant in many respects: its approach (the design-based analysis); its proposed architecture; its description of grief; and its self-control/perturbance theory. We would offer some remarks on each of these aspects.AI: Back to the FutureAfter some years of crisis, AI seems now to have recovered its original challenging (...) attitude and its identity. In particular all the original ambitions of AI have been renewed under the label of “autonomous agents” (see, for example, Russell and Norvig 1995; Wooldridge and Jennings 1995). This paper and its authors are good representatives of this challenging attitude. Of course, the AI appearing at century’s end is different from, say, the AI of the 1980s. AI systems and models are now conceived for reasoning and acting in open unpredictable worlds, with limited and uncertain knowledge, in real time, with bounded (both cognitive and material) resources, with hybrid architectures, interfering—either co-operatively or competitively—with other systems. The new password for the AI of the 1990s is interaction (Bobrow 1991): interaction with an evolving environment; among several, distributed and heterogeneous artificial systems in a network; with human users; and among humans through computers.This renewed AI, however different though it is in some ways, can be understood as returning to its original aim of modeling “intelligence”: not only static and isolated sub-functions of intelligence but the integrated and pragmatic functioning of autonomous agent architectures as against algorithms. Our renewed AI, based on architectures, can again have important exchanges with other (psychological and social) sciences. This paper is a good example of the fruitful cross-fertilization of ideas which may result from such exchanges. It was indeed just this which originally gave rise to cognitive science.The ArchitectureThe proposed architecture, although quite speculative, and—as the authors themselves emphasize—very much a first sketch, is directly relevant to this new AI. In fact, recent research efforts in the agent-architecture domain are focused exactly on the problem of “goal dynamics” [End Page 129] or “motive processing,” which is the core of this architecture, and on the problem of integrating reactivity and deliberation. Compared with current AI architectures (for example, BDI systems) it is important to note that this “motive-processing” architecture is not yet formalized or implemented to the same extent. On the other hand, it is more interesting from a psychological point of view, and is already able to give us some important insights into human emotions, in particular those emotions (like grief) that involve all or total loss of control of management processes.The Report-Based Analysis of GriefThe report-based description of grief provides a persuasive and rich basis for both modeling and discussing the model. The relevant features of this emotion are well characterized with reference to the self-control problem and motive-processing (though, as we shall see, to use grief as an example of those emotions that involve all or total loss of control of thought processes may provide a partially distorted view of grief itself). In particular, we would stress the relevance of the “intrusive” character of grief-related contents; the rejection of certain beliefs due to the psychic pain they cause; the coping strategies people describe; and the second order motivations related to the control of the emotional state. We believe that psychological models especially of these aspects are usually less specific and explanatory.Let us now try to synthesize some criticisms one could advance of this analysis. We will first address two core notions of the model—perturbance and self-control—and then consider more specifically the treatment of grief.PerturbanceThis notion is potentially very interesting, unless it is reduced to an information processing perspective (e.g., perturbance of attentive processes). An information processing perspective is much more limited than a motive-processing one—at least in the limitative sense of the term, as it is generally used in the psychology of cognitive processes—and is in our view insufficient for understanding human emotions and their role. This limiting interpretation of perturbance fails... (shrink)

Psychological research on emotion perception anchors heavily on an object perception analogy. We present static “cues,” such as facial expressions, as objects for perceivers to categorize. Yet in the real world, emotions play out as dynamic multidimensional events. Current theoretical approaches and research methods are limited in their ability to capture this complexity. We draw on insights from a predictive coding account of neural activity and a grounded cognition account of concept representation to conceive of emotion perception as a stream (...) of synchronized conceptualizations between two individuals, which is supported and shaped by language. We articulate how this framework can illuminate the fundamental need to study culture, as well as other sources of conceptual variation, in unpacking conceptual synchrony in emotion. We close by suggesting that the conceptual system provides the necessary flexibility to overcome gaps in emotional synchrony. (shrink)

A constituição de um esquema organizativo que permita, ao mesmo tempo, respeitar a hierarquia teórica de saberes e a arrumação prática dos livros que os contêm tem sido, ao longo de séculos, uma das questões mais importantes da história das bibliotecas. Por um lado, a teoria classificativa sobretudo a partir do século XVIII, apresenta estruturas elaboradas para as grandes classes do Saber em que sobressai o princípio da hierarquia que ordena as diferentes áreas do conhecimento, da mais geral para a (...) mais particular. Por outro lado, o espaço disponível para a arrumação dos livros condiciona a correta ordenação ora porque é limitado e não permite o crescimento da coleção, ora porque o número de obras em cada classe ou subclasse é variável, ora porque os formatos dos livros nem sempre se ajustam entre si, obrigando a soluções de arrumação que alteram o natural encontro entre a matéria e o livro que se procura. Ao ser chamado a desempenhar as funções de bibliotecário mor da Real Biblioteca Pública da Corte (RBPC), António Ribeiro dos Santos estava absolutamente ciente destas grandes questões. Conhecia os sistemas classificativos que se divulgaram pela Europa, sobretudo através das múltiplas edições de manuais destinados à boa formação de uma biblioteca. Conhecia os esquemas das grandes bibliotecas “enciclopédicas” em que o colecionador, individual ou coletivo, procurava criar e ampliar uma coleção tão completa quanto possível dos mais importantes testemunhos escritos (e não só…) ao longo dos tempos e tinha, para além de sólida formação intelectual, também a experiência de bibliófilo e de bibliotecário da Universidade de Coimbra. Tendo em conta que a RBPC contava com um acervo apreciável de livros, ou seja, não foi constituída de raiz, a missão de António Ribeiro dos Santos no que à arrumação dos saberes diz respeito, consistiu na criação de um corpus bibliográfico, o mais coeso possível, distribuído metodicamente pelo conjunto das salas de que dispunha nas instalações do Terreiro do Paço. A aquisição de novas espécies e a receção de doações acompanhou a arrumação das obras já existentes e exigiu a elaboração de um esquema teórico e prático onde sobressai uma visão estratégica para o acervo da RBPC que a colocava, abertamente, entre os mais modernos estabelecimentos literários da época. O objetivo deste artigo consiste em apresentar a proposta de Ribeiro dos Santos para classificar e arrumar os saberes da Biblioteca, contextualizando-a nos modelos que então se utilizavam na Europa, mas acompanhando nas matérias expostas, a perceção da orientação “enciclopédica” que pretendia para a grande biblioteca pública que, então, nascia. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a man of extraordinary intellectual creativity who lived an exceptionally rich and varied intellectual life in troubled times. More than anything else, he was a man who wanted to improve the life of his fellow human beings through the advancement of all the sciences and the establishment of a stable and just political order. In this Very Short Introduction Maria Rosa Antognazza outlines the central features of Leibniz's philosophy in the context of his overarching intellectual (...) vision and aspirations. Against the backdrop of Leibniz's encompassing scientific ambitions, she introduces the fundamental principles of Leibniz's thought, as well as his theory of truth and theory of knowledge. Exploring Leibniz's contributions to logic, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, she considers how his theories sat alongside his concerns with politics, diplomacy, and a broad range of practical reforms: juridical, economic, administrative, technological, medical, and ecclesiastical. Discussing Leinbniz's theories of possible worlds, she concludes by looking at what is ultimately real in this actual world that we experience, the good and evil there is in it, and Leibniz's response to the problem of evil through his theodicy. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

The scientist Richard Lovell Edgeworth, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, was a Member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, where he exchanged ideas with other scientists, including James Watt, and was known for his significant mechanical inventions. However, Edgeworth's real interest was education: in this 1788 two-volume work, written with his daughter, the poet Maria Edgeworth, he draws on his own experience of raising twenty children, from which the work derives its authority and innovative character. The work (...) was very influential, and led to his Essays on Professional Education. The two volumes discuss the theories of philosophers and educationalists, while in general arguing for the importance and formative character of early childhood experiences. Volume 1 deals with different areas of childhood education, including play, learning, and obedience and good behaviour. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the life of every inhabitant of the planet. During 2020 and 2021 a significant amount of work on how the pandemic is being conceptualized and communicated has been done. Most work has focused on the role of metaphor in the construal of specific cognitive frames. In this paper, we turn to a similar but different conceptualization mechanism, i.e. simile. Drawing from recent socio-cognitive and discursive empirical approaches to similes, this paper focuses (...) on “target is like source” constructions in English and Spanish containing (corona)virus either as target or source of the simile. The analysis is based on 200 examples found in the digital media during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. First, the constructions, conceptualizations and mappings are analyzed. Second, the relevant discourse features (genre type, relation to subjectivity, text location and structuring properties) are described. Finally, the cross-linguistic English-Spanish analysis shows that, despite the many coincidences in both datasets, there are different tendencies as for the use of culture-specific mappings and the genres where the similes occur in. The study aims at testing to what extent the general features characterizing similes also hold in the case of (corona)virus, both as source and as target. The corpus analysis contributes, in addition, to the emerging line of research on the use of figuration in the communication of the pandemic, as well as to the study of the discursive dimensions of similes in real settings. (shrink)

Monetary policy is a modern idea of which David Hume is generally considered a precursor. Moreover, thanks to Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas, he is often presented as one of the first and most illustrious endorser of monetarism. This paper argues against this view, and in agreement with Joseph Schumpeter, that Hume's contribution to economics, while not insignificant, cannot claim any real novelties. It offers an interpretation of Hume as a descendant of a pre-modern understanding of money rather than a (...) forerunner of modern monetary ideas, and as a scholar exposing common ideas of his time rather than a prophet of economic theories developed centuries later, and argues that there is little in Hume that resembles today's monetary policy prescriptions. (shrink)

The natural communication system of chimpanzees has some unique characteristics rooted in two possible ways of producing call variants in primates. The chimpanzee call repertoire contains variants available to all group members. The transfer presupposes voluntary control and learnability. Chimpanzee vocalization (or its homologue in the common ancestor of chimpanzee and man) seems to represent a real precursor of human language.

The Saga of Dharmapuri by O.V. Vijayan is a dystopian fantasy set in the imaginary country of Dharmapuri, which could be a depiction of India or any other newly independent country in the post-colonial era. Mikhail Bakhtin in his treatise Rabelais and his World justifies the use of Grotesque Realism, a literary trope that allows the author to move away from the conventions of propriety and decency to convey messages that are real and powerful nevertheless. Usually exaggeration and hyperbole are (...) key elements of this style. Through the centuries, literature has often been a medium through which contemporary concerns have been transmitted. This paper argues that O.V. Vijayan uses Grotesque Realism in his novel to depict the political, social and economic condition of India of the 1970s- specifically a country that was under emergency. Like all dystopian fables, The Saga of Dharmapuri has been prophetic in anticipating some of the social issues that we face even today. The paper aims at examining how Vijayan uses explicit language and scatological and sexual imagery so as to achieve this sense of realism within his novel. (shrink)

Experimental situations in which we observe quantum effects that deviate from the intuitive expectations of the classical world call for an interdisciplinary discussion, and one fundamental issue to be considered is the compatibility between the description of phenomena and the assumption of an objective reality. This paper discusses the ontological interpretation of Bohmian quantum mechanics, focusing on the use of the term “trajectory” and the difficulties associated with its connection to a “real” (objective) trajectory. My conclusion is that the intended (...) realistic interpretation of Bohmian trajectories is highly questionable.Los contextos experimentales que permiten la observación de efectos cuánticos contrarios a los esperables según la intuición clásica son especialmente adecuados para una discusión multidisciplinar, en particular sobre la compatibilidad entre la descripción fenomenológica y una pretendida realidad subyacente. Este artículo discute la interpretación ontológica de la mecánica cuántica en la interpretación de Bohm, centrándose principalmente en su uso del término “trayectoria” y las dificultades inherentes a su conexión con un concepto “real” (objetivo) de la misma. La conclusión es que la pretendida interpretación realista de las trayectorias bohmianas es muy cuestionable. (shrink)

Leibniz's metaphysics appears to go a long way towards monism: it supports a strong dependence of limited things on the absolute or God and understands this dependence not only as causal dependence but also as a pervasive ontological dependence which involves the communality of nature between absolute and limited. Yet, Leibniz stops short of affirming monism. Why? This paper takes a fresh look at Leibniz's reasons for opposing monism through the lens of a virtually unknown text of 1698 on the (...) metaphysical foundations of the infinite. Against the backdrop of the present-day monistic proposals of Jonathan Schaffer and Michael Della Rocca, the paper identifies and evaluates four different types of monism: 1. Whole-Part Monism; 2. World-Animal Monism; 3. God-Nature Monism and 4. Eleatic Monism. It argues that Leibniz's opposition to Whole-Part Monism, World-Animal Monism, and God-Nature Monism, is due to his conceptions of the infinite and of what it is to be “an absolutely absolute Being”. Furthermore, it argues that the only type of monism which could preserve Leibniz's demanding notions of real infinite and absolute is Eleatic Monism. The latter, however, is also rejected by Leibniz due to our first-hand experience of what it is to be a substance. (shrink)

The scientist Richard Lovell Edgeworth, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, was a Member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, where he exchanged ideas with other scientists, including James Watt, and was known for his significant mechanical inventions. However, Edgeworth's real interest was education: in this 1788 two-volume work, written with his daughter, the poet Maria Edgeworth, he draws on his own experience of raising twenty children, from which the work derives its authority and innovative character. The work (...) was very influential, and led to his Essays on Professional Education. The two volumes discuss the theories of philosophers and educationalists, while in general arguing for the importance and formative character of early childhood experiences. Volume 1 deals with different areas of childhood education, including play, learning, and obedience and good behaviour. (shrink)

The scientist Richard Lovell Edgeworth, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, was a Member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, where he exchanged ideas with other scientists, including James Watt, and was known for his significant mechanical inventions. However, Edgeworth's real interest was education: in this 1788 two-volume work, written with his daughter, the poet Maria Edgeworth, he draws on his own experience of raising twenty children, from which the work derives its authority and innovative character. The work (...) was very influential, and led to his Essays on Professional Education. The two volumes discuss the theories of philosophers and educationalists, while in general arguing for the importance and formative character of early childhood experiences. Volume 2 discusses schooling, the idea of creativity and imagination, and the relationship between public and private education. (shrink)

The article deals with the images of Lithuania found in Czesław Milosz’s poetry. The novels and essays have only been used to confirm the conclusions drawn from the interpretation of selected poems. Despite the frequently-declared unwillingness of the author of Dolina Issy [The Valley of the Issa] to accept and use any autobiographical elements in literature, the land of his childhood has always been present in all the poet’s works. The explanation of this fascination with nostalgia seems to be unsatisfactory. (...) The author of the article perceives the poetic images of Lithuania created by the uprooted immigrant as a symbol of his inner, not purely geographical, settlement. The subject of the discussion is the ever-changing perception of the Eastem-Borderland, which corresponds to particular stages of the protagonist’s journey through life. The starting point is the experience of eviction. It modifies the originally idealized vision of the „little homeland” and makes the hero’s attempt to reject or „amputate” it. The poems from the volume Światło dzienne [Daylight] surprise the reader by a hostile attitude towards the poet’s youth spent in Lithuania and the perception of these early memories as some destructive forces threatening the artist. It is only after a many-years’ quest that the borderland heritage is appreciated and conquered again. Now, however, it acquires a different, more symbolic form. The cycle Miasto bez imienia [A Town without a Name] and the poem Gdzie wschodzi słońce i kędy zapada [Where the Sun Rises and Sets] are evidence of a gradual transformation. The faithful recreation in the poet’s memory of particular places and people changes into the construction of some outside religious space, built from the traces of the real world. Lithuania changes into a perfect reality, a Super-Land, capable of retaining the past and combining it with the present. It is a prop freeing the poet from the waste land of Urizen. (shrink)

El concepto ontológico de «deseo» ha sido elaborado por el dualismo falogocéntrico a partir de las ideas de falta, privación, materia, caída, prohibición o culpa, con la intención de erradicar del cuerpo viviente la energía activa y creadora de lo real, y remitirla a la trascendencia inaccesible del espíritu puro. Habida cuenta del modo en que la diferencia sexual femenina ha sido inscripta por el falogocentrismo hegemónico del lado de la falta, la pasividad, la materia y el mal, el vaciamiento (...) del deseo coincide estrictamente con la eliminación del cuerpo materno y la dominación patriarcal. En tal contexto, el presente artículo se propone restituir el deseo a su potencia de creación en mediación materno-material. (shrink)

Últimamente, se están reforzando los planteamientos que venían buscando una enseñanza en la cual, a través de la resolución de casos prácticos, el alumnado se convierte en agente activo del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Son múltiples las opciones metodológicas con las que este puede alcanzarse y, también, es posible integrarlas en una propuesta donde el estudiantado protagonice la construcción de sus conocimientos, atendiendo a situaciones reales con una dimensión social, conocida como Aprendizaje y Servicio. Para desarrollar esta premisa, nos hemos centrado (...) en el binomio patrimonio y educación como necesidad social, eligiendo la ciudad romana de Clunia como referente del servicio. (shrink)

Oncological treatments are responsible for many of the physical changes associated with cancer. Because of this, cancer patients are at high risk of developing mental health problems. The aim of this study is to propose an innovative Virtual Reality training that uses a somatic technique to create a bridge with the bodily dimension of cancer. After undergoing a psycho-educational procedure, a combination of exposure, out-of-body experience, and body swapping will gradually train the patient to cope with cancer-related difficulties, increasing stress (...) tolerance, and patient empowerment. The most engaging step of this advanced form of Stress Inoculation Training is the body swapping experience, which will guide the patient in embodying a resilient cancer patient who is facing similar difficulties. Through the VR ability to simulate the human brain functioning, and the potential of embodiment to hook to the somatic dimension of illness, we expect that once the concepts endured through the patient’s experience of resilience are triggered, the patient will be more prone to implement functional coping strategies in real life, reaching empowerment and adjusting to the post-treatment difficulties. When the scenarios are built and the training tested, our intervention could be used to support patients with different oncological diseases and who are treated in different cancer hospitals, as well as patients with other non-oncological problems. Future research should focus on using our paradigm for other clinical populations, and supporting cancer patients in coping with different distressing situations. (shrink)

In the philosophical works of Roman Ingarden ethical questions appear in different contexts and are differently approached, namely: 1) strictly ethical questions considering the nature of moral values, qualities of moral act, etc.: 2) ethical questions implied by the general theory of value, i.e. the mode of existence of moral values, their formal structure, etc.; 3) ontological foundations of ethics, i.e. determinism vs. indeterminism in the realm of real world, etc.; 4) investigations in philosophical anthropology connected with ethical questions, i.e. (...) the structure of person, the problem of responsibility, etc. (shrink)

The scientist Richard Lovell Edgeworth, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, was a Member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, where he exchanged ideas with other scientists, including James Watt, and was known for his significant mechanical inventions. However, Edgeworth's real interest was education: in this 1788 two-volume work, written with his daughter, the poet Maria Edgeworth, he draws on his own experience of raising twenty children, from which the work derives its authority and innovative character. The work (...) was very influential, and led to his Essays on Professional Education. The two volumes discuss the theories of philosophers and educationalists, while in general arguing for the importance and formative character of early childhood experiences. Volume 1 deals with areas such as play, obedience and behaviour, and Volume 2, with creativity, and public and private education. (shrink)

The social and cultural changes of the last century have transformed death from an everyday fact to something hidden from view. Shifting between the practical and the theoretical, the professional and the intimate, the real and the fictitious, this collection of essays explores the continued power of death over our lives. It examines the idea and experience of death from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies of changing burial customs throughout Europe; an account of a"dying party" in the Netherlands; examinations of (...) the fascination with violent death in crime fiction and the phenomenon of serial killer art; analyses of death and bereavement in poetry, fiction, and autobiography; and a look at audience reactions to depictions of death on screen. By studying and considering how death is thought about in the contemporary era, we might restore the natural place it has in our lives. (shrink)

The concept of heterotopia challenges political theory, which has often focused on utopic thinking. Foucault describes a heterotopia as a heterogenous space that juxtaposes in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Streets, squares and parks form heterotopias when their utopic purity as public space is juxtaposed with the private spaces created by the cardboard boxes and other temporary shelters of homeless people. Since citizenship has traditionally been thought of as participation in a democratic (...) public sphere, how do heterotopias of homelessness challenge the ideas about citizenship? Based on narrative research with homeless people in Poland, I show how the homeless conceive of their marginality. Their participation or non-participation in democracy is not hidden but, on the contrary, very visible in public spaces where they are included as excluded. (shrink)

Partimos da perspectiva que nos convida a observar que a leitura que Bergson faz sobre Leibniz tanto nos seus cursos, quanto em Possível e o Real e em A Evolução Criadora participam da construção de um modelo de individuação no âmbito filosofia bergsoniana. No curso sobre o opúsculo De rerum natura originatione, Bergson propõe uma avaliação sobre o finalismo metafísico leibniziano a partir da noção do possível e sua relação com o princípio da harmonia pré-estabelecida. Neste artigo, pretende-se mostrar que (...) as implicações decorrentes da leitura de Leibniz são conservadas até as proposições sobre o elã vital e as tendências. (shrink)

Qual é o objeto da lógica? Seria a arte de bem conduzir o discurso? Mas conduzí-lo para onde, com que finalidade? Haveria uma normatividade independente, que definisse o racional independente do real? É Lacan que pergunta e nos responde no sem. XIX: “eu proponho definir o objeto da lógica como aquilo que produz a necessidade de um discurso. E afirmo que o simbólico, o imaginário e o real se afirmam nos impasses da lógica. ” (LACAN, 2011, p. 40). Muitos comentadores (...) encaram os recursos lógicos de Lacan como uma provocação, mas entendo que não, pois são muito coerentes com seus princípios, tanto lógicos, quanto linguísticos, antropológicos e principalmente matemáticos. (shrink)

We give arguments explaining why, when adopting a minimalist approach to constructive mathematics as that formalized in our two-level minimalist foundation, the choice for a pointfree approach to topology is not just a matter of convenience or mathematical elegance, but becomes compulsory. The main reason is that in our foundation real numbers, either as Dedekind cuts or as Cauchy sequences, do not form a set.

This is an edited transcript of a panel discussion from VICTR’s 2020 Speaker Series. Truth is under significant threat. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US Presidential election, we face the very real danger of different perceived ‘realities’ emerging, where there is little common ground. The polarization that threatens to emerge endangers the democratic institutions of the United States, not to mention the lives of its people. The panelists discuss the problem of truth and polarization: what (...) is the problem, exactly how serious is it, and what might we do to try to fix it? (shrink)