Introduction -- Stout's proto-new-realism -- Situating G.F. Stout -- Stout's doctrine of primary and secondary qualities -- Stout and the Brentano School -- Representative function of presentations -- Sensible space and real space -- Cook Wilson's geometrical counter-example -- Stout's central question -- Ideal constructions -- Ideal constructions in psychology and epistemology -- British new realism : the language of madness -- Stout's criticisms of Alexander -- Alexander's response -- The nature of sensations, images, and other presentations -- What is (...) the metaphysical problem? -- "How can the interpretation which is supplied by the mind be a constituent of the [physical] object?" -- Some general remarks -- British new realism : the language of common-sense -- T.P. Nunn and the new realism -- Nunn and things -- Nunn's postulate -- Russell and Stout on sensible objects -- Russell, sense-data and sensibilia -- The methods of construction -- Russell's constructions and Nunn's postulate -- Constructions, psychology, and the essence of philosophy -- The methods of logical construction -- A mathematical development -- The principle of abstraction. (shrink)

In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and (...) theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics. (shrink)

La filosofía de la historia de Kant se fundamenta en el concepto de una intención de la naturaleza [ Naturabsicht ]. En este ensayo, presento los diferentes conceptos que Kant tiene de naturaleza para explicar el modo específico en que el individuo participa del desarrollo histórico del género humano. En este sentido intento probar, acudiendo a los opúsculos jurídico políticos de Kant, que el cumplimiento plenode la intención de la naturaleza es posible gracias a los conceptos de antagonismo e Ilustración (...) [ Aufklärung ], y también a la distinción que propongo entre el caráctery la extensiónde esta última. (shrink)

Desde el enfoque del pensamiento ambiental estético-complejo, el artículo presenta un esbozo de lo que podría llamarse una ontología de la agricultura. Su objetivo es aportar con algunas reflexiones para la construcción de una epistemología de los estudios agroecológicos.

Con base en la teoría valorativa de las emociones, desarrollada por Frijda y sus colegas, se argumenta que los sentimientos pueden entenderse como parcialmente isomorfos a las emociones, cuyo rasgo fundamental radica en las disposiciones de un individuo a creer en sus experiencias emocionales y actu..

In this book Omar Dahbour examines all of the arguments that have been given for national self-determination, whether by international lawyers, moral philosophers, democratic theorists, or political communitarians.

How do groups—be they religious or ethnic—achieve sovereignty in a postnationalist world? In Self-Determination without Nationalism, noted philosopher Omar Dahbour insists that the existing ethics of international relations, dominated by the rival notions of liberal nationalism and political cosmopolitanism, no longer suffice. Dahbour notes that political communities are an ethically desirable and historically inevitable feature of collective life. The ethical principles that govern them, however—especially self-determination and sovereignty—require reformulation in light of globalization and the economic and environmental challenges of (...) the twenty-first century. Arguing that nation-states violate the principle of self-determination, Dahbour then develops a detailed new theory of self-determination that he calls "ecosovereignty.” Ecosovereignty defines political community in a way that can protect and further the rights of indigenous peoples as well as the needs of ecological regions for a sustainable form of development and security from environmental destruction. In the series Global Ethics and Politics, edited by Carol Gould. (shrink)

A distinctive focus of 19th- and 20th-century Latin American philosophy is the convergence of identity formation and political liberation in ethnically and racially diverse postcolonial contexts. From this perspective, Omar Rivera interprets how a "we" is articulated and deployed in central political texts of this robust philosophical tradition. In particular, by turning to the work of Peruvian political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui among others, Rivera critiques philosophies of liberation that are invested in the redemption of oppressed identities as conditions (...) for bringing about radical social and political change, foregrounding Latin America's complex histories and socialities to illustrate the power and shortcomings of these projects. Building on this critical approach, Rivera studies interrelated epistemological, transcultural, and aesthetic delimitations of Latin American philosophy in order to explore the possibility of social and political liberation "beyond redemption.". (shrink)

Examinamos aquí el pensamiento filosófico político de Richard Rorty tomando como punto de partida su artículo <>, así como su libro Contingencia, ironía y solidaridad. Mostramos, en primer lugar, que la pretensión de Rorty de justificar la prioridad de la democracia sobre la filosofía basándose en la tradición liberal que va de Jefferson a Rawls, es, al mismo tiempo, la reivindicación de los supuestos antropológicos (hobbesianos) de esa tradición. A través de esos supuestos (...) se evidencia- en un plano más general-la estrecha conexión que existe entre filosofía y política, especialmente si se considera la crisis del concepto de hombre que recorre a ambas disciplinas. En segundo lugar, planteamos que así como Rorty realiza una lectura postmoderna de la tradición política liberal, también es posible ensayar una lectura liberal (incluso hobbesiana) de la pretensión postmoderna de Rorty. Con ello es posible mostrar que precisamente la fuerza y la persistencia de la imagen del hombre moderno hace inútil plantearse la relación entre democracia y filosofía en términos de prioridad.We discuss the philosophical and political thought of Richard Rorty considering his article <>, and his book Contingency, irony and solidarity. We show that Rorty's pretension to justify the priority of democracy above philosophy based on the liberal tradition that comes from Jefferson to Rawls, is at the same time, the acknowledge of the anthropological (hobbesian) statements of this tradition. Throughout these statements we can point out the close connection between politics and philosophy considering the crisis of man's concept that is common to both disciplines. Secondly, we state that as Rorty does a postmodern lecture of the political liberal tradition, it is also possible a liberal (hobbesian) lecture of the postmodern Rortys ' position. In this way it is possible to show that the strength and persistence of the man's modern image make impossible the relationship between democracy and philosophy in terms of priority. (shrink)

Notions of probability and uncertainty have been increasingly prominant in modern economics. This book considers the philosophical and practical difficulties inherent in integrating these concepts into realistic economic situations. It outlines and evaluates the major developments, indicating where further work is needed. This book addresses: * probability, utility and rationality within current economic thought and practice * concepts of ignorance and indeterminancy * experimental economics * econometrics, with particular reference inference and estimation.

Para la investigación que conllevó al presente artículo se utilizó el método hermenéutico analógico. Con base en los pasos primordiales de análisis e interpretación se acudió al lenguaje narrativo literario y a su relación inmediata con otros tipos de lenguaje: visual, audiovisual, de imagen, televisivo y mixto. Se estudiaron textos escritos, hablados y actuados. Se efectuó un recorrido narrativo, textual, argumentativo siendo fiel a los planteamientos del autor, al medio y al lector, y se acudió a los textos que presentan (...) un mensaje polisémico. Los interrogantes apuntaron a ¿qué quiere decir el autor con el texto referido a la piel? Y, en particular, ¿qué le significa o resignifica el texto analizado a la temática del proyecto? Así, la estructura clásica discursiva se enmarca desde un preludio con un horizonte epistemológico del mito y su relación con la piel hasta un posludio haciendo eco a la virtus hermenéutica que plantea e implementa Beucheot y que implica una interpretación “adecuada” y ceñida a la “verdad” del texto: la piel, el órgano más grande y complejo del ser humano supone una trascendencia biológica y anatómica determinante, la cual debe ser entendida, analizada e interpretada desde diversos contextos estéticos, éticos y narrativos. (shrink)

This paper aims to balance the conceptual reception of Bourdieu's sociology in the United States through a conceptual re-examination of the concept of Habitus. I retrace the intellectual lineage of the Habitus idea, showing it to have roots in Claude Levi-Strauss structural anthropology and in the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, especially the latter's generalization of the idea of operations from mathematics to the study of practical, bodily-mediated cognition. One important payoff of this exercise is that the common misinterpretation of (...) the Habitus as an objectivist and reductionist element in Bourdieu's thought is dispelled. The Habitus is shown to be instead a useful and flexible way to concep-tualize agency and the ability to transform social structure. Thus ultimately one of Bourdieu's major contributions to social theory consists of his development of a new radical form of cognitive sociology, along with an innovative variety of multilevel sociological explanation in which the interplay of different structural orders is highlighted. In keeping with the usual view, the goal of sociology is to uncover the most deeply buried structures of the different social worlds that make up the social universe, as well as the "mechanisms" that tend to ensure their reproduction or transformation. Merging with psychology, though with a kind of psychology undoubtedly quite different from the most widely accepted image of this science, such an exploration of the cognitive structures that agents bring to bear in their practical knowledge of the social worlds thus structured. Indeed there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective divisions of the social world . . . and the principles of vision and division that agents apply to them. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine Stephen Turner's critique of practice theory in light of recent neurophysiological discoveries regarding the “mirror neuron system” in the pre-frontal mo-tor cortex of humans and other primates. I argue that two of Turner's strongest objections against the sociological version of the practice-theoretical account, the problem of transmission and the problem of sameness, are substantially undermined when examined from the perspective of re-cently systematized accounts of embodied learning and intersubjective action understanding in-spired by these developments. (...) In addition, I show that the practice-theoretical framework out-lined by Pierre Bourdieu in the Logic of Practice and other works is, in contrast to Turner's por-trayal of a confused hodgepodge of logical errors and empirical impossibilities, largely consistent with the latest neurophysiological evidence and as such fundamentally foreshadowed more recent understandings of the neurocognitive foundations of the perception, understanding and structure of the motor schemes productive of action in the world. Also in line with these newer neurosci-entific developments, the practice-theoretical focus on the body as the central matrix generative of tacit understandings and analogical operations responsible for “higher order” systems of classi-fication emerges as the key to solving some of the thorniest problems in the theory of action: eliminating to need to resort to unwarranted “collective object” explanations for the origins of shared presuppositional frameworks. (shrink)

Muslim physicians and Islamic jurists analyze the moral dimensions of biomedicine using different tools and processes. While the deliberations of these two classes of experts involve judgments about the deliverables of the other's respective fields, Islamic jurists and Muslim physicians rarely engage in discussions about the constructs and epistemic frameworks that motivate their analyses. The lack of dialogue creates gaps in knowledge and leads to imprecise guidance. In order to address these discursive and conceptual gaps we describe the sources of (...) knowledge and reasoning employed by Islamic jurists and clinicians to resolve the question of when a patient must seek healthcare. As we examine both the scriptural evidence and legal reasoning of jurists and the types of medical evidence used by clinicians to address the same question, we draw attention to the epistemic frameworks and constructs at play and identify how constructs from one field may sharpen the deliberative exercises of the other. Hence our work advances discourses at the intersection of Islam and medicine and offers building blocks for a comprehensive Islamic framework that fully integrates the deliverables of medical science within the deliberations of Islamic jurists. (shrink)

On one classical conception of God, God has no parts, not even metaphysical parts. God is not composed of form and matter, act and potency, and he is not composed of existence and essence. God is absolutely simple. This is the doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity. It is claimed that ADS implies a modal collapse, i.e. that God’s creation is absolutely necessary. I argue that a proper way of understanding the modal collapse argument naturally leads the proponent of ADS to (...) reject a particular premise of the argument: namely, “the same identical cause brings about the same effect.” However, I argue that the rejection of that premise leads to a deeper problem for ADS. It leads to an explanatory gap: how can we explain the relevant type of indeterminism in an absolutely simple God? (shrink)

The authors of the target article articulate the complicated, often conflicting demands of U.S. Food and Drug Administration roles as justification for the FDA’s delay in releasing guidelines...

El objetivo de esta presentación es establecer una relación entre el ciclo de la labor, conceptualizado por Arendt en La condición humana, y el campo de concentración. Se parte de la clara alusión de Arendt, en donde argumenta que lo que se busca en el campo de concentración, es la construcción de un animal que sólo tenga la “libertad” de “reproducir su especie”. Dichas características están insertas en el animal laborans que también pareciera ser la cifra del homo sacer de (...) Giorgio Agamben. Esa institución del derecho romano arcaico, según los desarrollos de Agamben, permite entender al interno del campo de concentración. El animal laborans se puede encontrar en las prácticas que se desarrollan en el campo. La labor y el consumo forman parte fundamental de una estrategia de supervivencia y modulan, en forma definitiva, la diferencia entre el futuro sobreviviente y el musulmán. Vida y muerte son moduladas por lalabor y por el consumo. El ciclo de la labor crea sujetos, crea posibilidades. Esas estrategias, a través de la labor y del consumo, permiten visualizar que la supervivencia puede ser leída con la grilla de inteligibilidad del homo oeconomicus, es decir, un sujeto de interés empresario de sí mismo, que se gobierna a sí mismo como una posesión, y que, por ende, puede ser entendido como un sujeto gobernable. El sobreviviente hace un trabajo sobre sí mismo para poder sobrevivir, educarse para subsisitir y no caer en la selección. El homo oeconomicus del neoliberalismo puede permitirnos entender la vida dentro del campo y, por ende, puede ser la cifra del homo sacer a través de su condición del animal laborans. (shrink)

One striking point of similarity is this: there is a sense in which we feel we do not know what we are talking about. By this we mean that our remarks to follow do not constitute a theory. And as evidence for this contention we cite the fact that we have no logically valid arguments to support what we say. To be sure, we believe ourselves to be in very good company in this respect, at least as far as the (...) behavioral sciences and systems of synthetic philosophy are concerned--we do not believe others know what they are talking about either. Whitehead, for example, gives us very few arguments in favor of his metaphysics--he just tells us how the world looks to him. In this paper we will be presumptuous enough to try to tell you how the world looks to us. At worst the picture we want to draw will be misleading; at best it may suggest some experimental or formal problems of interest. (shrink)

Of course it has always been recognized, in philosophical circles at least, that such deductions are at best plausible inferences, rather than a species of logically valid inferences, and we will not pretend otherwise. Still, it seems interesting to consider the question: why do people have puzzles, games of chance, games of strategy, and aesthetic objects, universally in human societies?

Informed by Gloria Anzaldúa's and José Carlos Mariátegui's work, as well as by Andean cosmology, Omar Rivera turns to Inka stonework and architecture as an example of a "Cosmological Aesthetics." He articulates ways of sensing, feeling and remembering that are attuned to an aesthetic of water, earth and light. On this basis, Rivera brings forth a corporeal orientation that can be inhabited by the oppressed, one that withdraws from predominant modern/Western conceptions of the human. By providing an aesthetic analysis (...) of cosmological sensing, Rivera sets the stage for exploring physical dimensions of anti-colonial resistance, and furthers the Latinx and Latin American tradition of anti-colonial and liberatory philosophy. Seeingaesthetic involvements with the cosmos as a source for embodied modes of resistance, Rivera turns to the work of María Lugones and Enrique Dussel in order to make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of their work. Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance creates a new dialogue between art historians, artists, and philosophers working on Latin American thought, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. It weaves together a Latin American philosophy that connects pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers. Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling current understandings of decolonial theory and opening the tradition in transformative ways. (shrink)

I this paper, I draw on recent research on the radically embodied and perceptual bases of conceptualization in linguistics and cognitive science to develop a new way of reading and evaluating abstract concepts in social theory. I call this approach Sociological Idea Analysis. I argue that, in contrast to the traditional view of abstract concepts, which conceives them as amodal “presuppositions” removed from experience, abstract concepts are irreducibly grounded in experience and partake of non-negotiable perceptual-symbolic features from which a non-propositional (...) “logic” naturally follows. This implies that uncovering the imagistic bases of allegedly abstract notions should be a key part of theoretical evaluation of concepts in social theory. I provide a case study of the general category of “structure” in the social and human sciences to demonstrate the analytic utility of the approach. (shrink)

While previous literature provides evidence of the positive relationship between ethical climate and job satisfaction, the possible mechanisms of this relationship are still underexplored. This study aims to enhance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the ethical climate–job satisfaction relationship by identifying and testing two of the possible mechanisms. More specifically, this study fills an existing research gap by examining social and interpersonal mechanisms, referred to in this study as workplace isolation of colleagues and salesperson’s teamwork, of the ethical climate–job satisfaction (...) relationship. This is vital for the selling profession because job satisfaction is known to drive higher levels of salespeople’s performance. The arguments for such mechanisms are built on the foundations of social/psychological contract theory and ethical climate literature. Empirical testing using a large sample of salespeople shows higher levels of ethical climate to decrease workplace isolation and increase teamwork. Findings support hypothesized model where ethical climate positively relates to job satisfaction as partially mediated by workplace isolation and teamwork. Ethical climate is negatively related to workplace isolation and positively to teamwork. Further, findings indicate negative effect of workplace isolation on teamwork and sales performance. Job satisfaction is found to be key factor in driving performance of salespeople. (shrink)

El recorrido intelectual de Francisco Valsecchi en la historia de las ideas económicas católicas muestra las inflexiones teóricas de una axiología derivada de la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia. Sin embargo, las condiciones históricas del desarrollo de una economía católica en la Argentina y las transformaciones sociales, económicas y políticas del periodo 1930-1970 incidieron sobre las tendencias conceptuales de aquella axiología en apariencia perenne. Para explicar los cambios operados en el pensamiento económico se sigue la trayectoria de Valsecchi. Se muestran (...) las fases principales de sus posiciones, destacando tres momentos fundamentales coincidentes con los tres momentos de la economía católica en la Argentina. Al mismo tiempo se muestra la curva teórica de los economistas católicos que los aleja de una propuesta propiamente católica de una economía política para concentrar su punto de vista en la dimensión ética de las prácticas empresariales. La reconstrucción del recorrido intelectual de Valsecchi sostiene que el pensamiento económico católico revela el pasaje de una visión crítica de la economía predominante en 1930 a una funcionalidad con la propuesta en clave antipopulista por las clases propietarias en 1970.The intellectual trajectory of Francisco Valsecchi in the history of Catholic economic ideas shows the theoretical turns of an axiology derived from the Social Doctrine of the Church. Both the historical circumstances of a Catholic economic thought in Argentina and the social, economic, and political changes of the 1930-1970 period had an impact on the conceptual trends of this apparently perennial axiology. To explain the changes in the economic perspectives the main stages of his theoretical positions are studied, emphasizing the three key moments of Catholic economy. At the same time the article shows the theoretical path followed by Catholic economists from their original proposal of a political economy towards a view orientated to the construction of an axiology of business practices. Valsecchi's intellectual trajectory reveals the passage from a critical perspective of economy prevailing in the 1930's to an antipopulist point of view strongly related to the proprietor class in the 1970's. (shrink)

The justiciability of reproductive rights in childbirth care is a critical approach that has generated controversies due to the fact that international scene, it has been called in various forms, several definitions have been proposed, it uses different criteria and it has promoted criminal sanctions as a means of guaranteeing this right in some countries. In Mexico the debate focuses on each of these topics from the object of the various participants in maternal care, health professionals, women, civil organizations, academics (...) and the state. The objective of the essay is to analyze these topics to try to establish which of them has a closer approach to the needs of recognition and justiciability of reproductive rights at birth in a framework of equity that allows the confluence of the different actors involved in this debate. (shrink)

The step between identifying the Research Object that we want to observe and the development of a reference frame to guide the investigation, in our opinion, has not received adequate attention as we help train researchers. Our bibliographical searches give us suggestions as to which aspects are mor..

The central concern given to the object of study in the research process, instead of paradigmatic a priori, has taken us to an epistemology that gives support this complementary view of methodological trends. However, this epistemological standpoint requires thinking about the nature of social reali..