La física durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX experimentó una silenciosa pero profunda revisión de sus fundamentos. A pesar de su importancia para los desarrollos posteriores de la física, los estudios históricos y filosóficos sobre dicho periodo son escasos comparados con aquellos de principios del siglo XX. Este trabajo reconstruye algunos aspectos de la física de este periodo usando dos herramientas conceptuales: espacios controversiales de Oscar Nudler y estilo de razonamiento científico de Ian Hacking. El objetivo es mostrar (...) los elementos que produjeron el desbloqueo conceptual de la controversia sobre el determinismo durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. (shrink)

En este artículo presento una reconstrucción de la controversia sobre el determinismo en la física a principios del siglo xx. Usaré el modelo de espacios controversiales de Oscar Nudler, pues permite analizar controversias haciendo énfasis en el cambio conceptual. Esto servirá para respaldar la hipótesis de partida: la aceptación del indeterminismo en la física estuvo estrechamente ligado al uso de los métodos estadísticos. La conclusión es que la probabilidad pasó por tres estadios de asimilación: primero, fue una herramienta de (...) cálculo; luego, se convirtió en un elemento indispensable para la interpretación de algunos fenómenos y, finalmente, pasó a concebirse como un elemento constitutivo de la naturaleza. (shrink)

This is an entry into a collective journal of the twenty-first century years of plague. It introduces the notion of ‘lawfare’ by way of the contemporary case concerning Lula da Silva and Brazil’s fall from grace. The latter is presented as an instance of violence in the international context, the managerial attitude to global disasters and, indeed, a plague. It chronicles the social struggles around the case and on that basis builds a somewhat playful manifesto for a new relationship between (...) legal scholarship, the law school and the imaginary of permanent catastrophe and plague. (shrink)

The contribution of this research lies in its dual approach to the question of physical activity (PA) among adolescents, combining objective measurement of PA by teenagers and a comparison of psychological satisfaction through physical activities involving differing degrees of autonomy (i.e., organized or unstructured). Using the conceptual framework of Self-Determination Theory, the analysis also examines the relationship between levels of PA among adolescents and physical self-concept and satisfaction of basic psychological needs during exercise. The study surveyed 129 first-year higher secondary (...) education students from schools in the city of A Coruña. Satisfaction of basic psychological needs during organized and unstructured physical activities was measured using the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale. PA levels were assessed based on step count per day for a week as measured by an accelerometer. The results show that the daily step average recorded by students (7,400) is below the minimum recommended levels of PA for this age group, that students are more active on weekdays than at the weekend, and that there is no significant difference in PA levels between male and female subjects ( T = 0.23, p d = 0.04). Findings from the comparative analysis of the three basic psychological needs show greater satisfaction of the need for autonomy during unstructured activities ( T = 6.15, p d = 0.68), and greater satisfaction of the need for competence during organized activities ( T = −2.50, p d = 0.27). No variation in terms of sex was found in relation to satisfaction of the need for autonomy or relatedness from unstructured activities; however, girls showed notably lower satisfaction than boys in relation to the need for competence ( T = −2.62, p d = 0.49). Self-esteem was found to play an important mediating role and observed to be strongly related to sex ( T = −5.16, p d = 0.90). Organized PA was found to provide greater need satisfaction among boys than girls across all categories. The study showed no relationship between psychological variables and objectively measured PA (Pillai’s trace: F = 0.86, p > 0.05, η 2 = 0.08, observed power = 0.66). Basic psychological needs show significant positive interrelation between them and a significant positive relationship between them and physical self-concept, as expected based on previous literature. (shrink)

Este trabajo intenta analizar las tensiones e interrelaciones entre el paradigma del reconocimiento y el paradigma de la redistribución. En concreto se analiza críticamente la obra de Nancy Frazer. En este sentido, se propone el paradigma de la inclusión, para un tercer ámbito, el de la política. Este paradigma se basaría en el ideal de la igual dignidad y la tricotomía inclusión/exclusión/participación. También se plantean reservas a la noción de paridad participativa, que según Fraser, hace conmensurables todas las demandas de (...) justicia. La conclusión es que redistribución y reconocimiento son irreductibles, están interrelacionados y en tensión. Para los casos de soluciones contrapuestas, se propone la noción de inconmensurabilidad que sostienen los defensores del pluralismo de valores -Berlin,Gray-. En casos de conflicto, redistribución y reconocimiento abocarían a una respuesta similar a cómo se debería resolver un dilema. (shrink)

This paper proposes a dynamic theory of embodiment that aims to get beyond the absent moving body in embodied social theory. The first somatic revolution, inspired by Merleau Ponty, provided theories based on the feeling and experience of the body. The theory of dynamic embodiment focuses instead on the doing itself as embodied social action, in which the embodied person is fore-grounded as a complex resource for meaning making. This represents a theoretical enrichment of the earlier turn to the body (...) in social theory, which tended to separate the semiotic, as necessarily representational and/or linguistic, from the somatic as a wide range of corporeal processes and practices assumed to be separated from mind, language and/or conscious thought. We argue that overcoming this persistent Cartesianism requires a New Realist approach to the proper location of human agency as a causal power, one that promotes a bio-psycho-social concept of personhood. Part one of the paper presents a general framework for this perspective, while part two applies this paradigm ethnographically to illustrate how bringing semiosis and somatics together requires a robust conception of multi-sensory modalities. (shrink)

El artículo busca trazar una articulación entre la lógica del capital como sujeto de lo social y la formación histórica de la subjetividad. Para ello, proponemos una composición entre la relectura categorial respecto de Karl Marx que desarrolla el intelectual canadiense Moishe Postone y la interpretación filosófica sobre Sigmund Freud que elabora el pensador argentino León Rozitchner. En función de eso emprenderemos tres tareas. Primero, dilucidaremos el aparato conceptual de Postone partiendo del libro Tiempo, trabajo y dominación social. Luego, examinaremos (...) la noción de subjetividad en Rozitchner centrándonos en los textos Freud y los límites del individualismo burgués y Freud y el problema del poder. Y por último, exploraremos las posibles contribuciones al pensamiento contemporáneo. (shrink)

La hipótesis de este texto es que la forma-sujeto históricamente específica de la modernidad capitalista es derivable lógicamente, en tanto forma simple y abstracta de constitución del individuo social, de la forma-mercancía. La forma-sujeto funciona como el límite impersonal en inmanencia al cual se organiza la experiencia concreta y compleja de los actores particulares y agentes colectivos en las relaciones sociales capitalistas. En el marco de los lineamientos metodológicos que atraviesan el programa derivacionista del Estado compilado en el libro Estado (...) y capital preparado por Adrián Piva y Alberto Bonnet, delimitaremos algunas notas que oficien como contribución para una derivación dialéctica de la forma-sujeto capitalista. (shrink)

Biblical ethics -- The insights of history.

Los grandes medios de comunicación implican nuevos paradigmas artísticos y formas distintas de percepción de la realidad. Frente a una época en la que el cine se convirtió en el lenguaje artístico dominante, a partir de los años sesenta es la televisión, el vídeo y las comunicaciones por ordenador las que han construido un nuevo canon estético, que en cierto modo podemos calificar de teatral, basado en la apariencia de inmediatez, el ritmo performativo y fragmentario y la presencia cada vez (...) más determinante del receptor. Este artículo revisa las reacciones de la escena ante los nuevos comportamientos estéticos, analizando las reacciones entre el cuerpo del actor y la imagen mediatizada -el cuerpo ausente-. La escena moderna se revela como un apasionante laboratorio de análisis de los modos de percepción y, por tanto, de construcción de la nueva realidad mediática.…. (shrink)

En Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009), Christine Korsgaard defiende la conclusión de que el imperativo categórico rige la acción humana porque es el único principio que permite alcanzar la unidad psíquica plena, la cual, según Korsgaard, es un prerrequisito esencial para la acción efectiva. Para los agentes humanos, alcanzar esa unidad -que consiste en hacer coherentes distintos impulsos hacia la acción- es una actividad constante, denominada "autoconstitución". De acuerdo con Korsgaard, ésta es la fuente originaria de la normatividad y (...) de las identidades prácticas e incluso de la identidad personal. Después de exponer las ideas centrales del libro, presento dos objeciones: primero, critico la equiparación del imperativo categórico con la autoconstitución exitosa, pues no toda falla de auto-constitución es una falla moral. Segundo, argumento que la tesis de que la identidad personal es producto de la autoconstitución es problemática y que, al defenderla, Korsgaard confunde identidad práctica con identidad personal. In Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009), Christine Korsgaard argues that the categorical imperative rules human action because it is the sole principle that allows us to reach the complete psychic unity that, Korsgaard thinks, is an essential prerequisite for effective action. Reaching this unity -which consists in making cohere diverging impulses for action- is for human agents a constant activity called "self-constitution." According to Korsgaard, this activity is the source of normativity, of human practical identities and even of personal identity. After explaining the main ideas of the book, I present two objections. First, I criticize the linkage of the categorical imperative to successful self-constitution, for not every failure of the latter counts as a moral failure. Second, I argue that the thesis that personal identity is a product of self-constitution is problematic and that it betrays a confusion between practical identity and personal identity. (shrink)

Oscar Masotta (Buenos Aires, 1930- Barcelona, 1979) is all but forgotten now, except perhapsin the field of Lacanian studies. This is because in the 1970s,Masotta would challenge the master psychoanalyst on hisown turf, creating his own post-Lacanian school of psychoanalysisin Barcelona. But in 1965, aged just 27, Masottataught at the University of Buenos Aires, lectured at theDi Tella, and edited a book series on communication andmedia. A product of the newly open post-Perón era." Page 91.. This is the first (...) exhibition organized with materials from the archive Juan Acha, and includes reactivations of non-object-based art and artistic documentation. (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

Esta conversación tuvo lugar durante una visita de varios días de Pablo Posada Varela a la casa de Marc Richir en Haut-Vaucluse en junio de 2012. He aquí tres extractos (de extensión variable) de una conversación del 8 de junio, y algunos otros fechados el 10 de junio.

This paper responds to the issues raised by D. Chalmers by offering a research direction which is quite radical because of the way in which methodological principles are linked to scientific studies of consciousness. Neuro-phenomenology is the name I use here to designate a quest to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience, thereby placing myself in the lineage of the continental tradition of Phenomenology. My claim is that the so-called hard problem that animates these Special (...) Issues can only be addressed productively by gathering a research community armed with new pragmatic tools for the development of a science of consciousness. I will claim that no piecemeal empirical correlates, nor purely theoretical principles, will really help us at this stage. We need to turn to a systematic exploration of the only link between mind and consciousness that seems both obvious and natural: the structure of human experience itself. In what follows I motivate my choice by briefly examining the current debate about consciousness at the light of Chalmer’s hard problem. Next, I outline the phenomenological strategy. Finally I conclude by discussing some of the main difficulties and consequences of this strategy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 35-53 [Access article in PDF] "Truth Is What Works": Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism—A Conversation Francisco J. Varela Bernhard Poerksen Institut für Journalistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Universität Hamburg Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a (...) dissertation on the insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35]Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001.In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why?Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it... (shrink)

How can science be brought to connect with experience? This book addresses two of the most challenging problems facing contemporary neurobiology and cognitive science. Firstly, understanding how we unconsciously execute habitual actions as a result of neurological and cognitive processes that are not formal actions of conscious judgment but part of a habitual nexus of systematic self-organization. Secondly, attempting to create an ethics adequate to our present awareness that there is no such thing as a transcendental self, a stable subject (...) or soul. The author combines researches in cognitive science and phenomenology with two representatives of what he calls the 'wisdom traditions': Confucianism and Buddhist epistemology. (shrink)

En este trabajo realizo un examen crítico del reciente libro de Silvana Gabriela Di Camillo sobre la crítica de Aristóteles a la teoría platónica de las Ideas. El libro de Di Camillo es un trabajo muy serio cuya lectura recomiendo ampliamente. Sin embargo, considero que cuatro de las principales tesis que la autora defiende tienen varias dificultades y mi objetivo aquí es presentar argumentos detallados en contra de ellas: la interpretación de la distinción entre argumentos más y menos rigurosos del (...) tratado Sobre las Ideas; la tesis de que la separación es el blanco esencial de las críticas aristotélicas a las Ideas; la interpretación de las opciones que Platón tiene para responder al argumento del tercer hombre, y la tesis de que la separación de las Ideas debe entenderse como homonimia. In this paper I examine Silvana Gabriela Di Camillo's recent book on Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's theory of Ideas. Di Camillo's book is a very serious work that I highly recommend. Nevertheless, I consider that four of the main theses that the author defends face several difficulties and my aim here is to offer detailed arguments against them: the interpretation of the distinction between more and less accurate arguments of the treatise On Ideas; the thesis that separation is the essential target of Aristotle's criticisms against Plato's Ideas; the interpretation of the options available to Plato to reply to the third man argument; and the thesis that the separation of Ideas should be understood as homonymy. (shrink)

Pedro Alvares Cabral's ships left Portugal on 9 March 1500 en route for the territory that he first named Terra de Vera Cruz and that later came to be known as Brazil. On the 22 March they called at the island of São Nicolau [Caminha, 1500], one of the northernmost islands of the Cape Verde group; this was about forty years after the discovery of the archipelago in 1460-62 [Albuquerque, 1991]. It is known that Vasco da Gama had stopped at (...) the island of Santiago in 1498 on his voyage to India, and also in 1499 on the return journey. Straight after the discovery of Brazil Cabral sailed for India and on the way back also dropped anchor at Santiago. Indeed, our archipelago, which is situated off Cape Verde in Senegal (the place from which it appears to take its name), was to become an important stopover point for maritime traffic between Europe, Asia and the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both to allow crews to rest and to take on water, wood and some food supplies. It also became important as a holding point for slaves (a large number of whom came from around thirty Guinean ethnic groups and subgroups). They were dispatched from Santiago, known then as Cape Verde island, to territories such as Brazil from the early sixteenth century onwards, since these territories, which had only recently been discovered and were little known, needed people to work and populate them. (shrink)

ABSTRACTColin Hay's constructivist institutionalism and Vivien A. Schmidt's discursive institutionalism are two recent attempts to theorize ideas as potential explanations of institutional change. This new attention to the causal role of ideas is welcome, but Hay and Schmidt do not take into consideration the constitutive and structural aspects of ideas. Instead they reduce ideas to properties of individual conscious minds, scanting the respects in which ideas are intersubjectively baked into the practices shared by individuals. This aspect of ideas—arguably, the institutional (...) side of ideas—is developed in post-structuralist thought, which therefore demands a place in ideational research. (shrink)

Aristóteles parece negar el estatuto ontológico de los artefactos que no serían sustancias. Se analizan los textos básicos al respecto y sus principales interpretaciones. Se discute la opinión de R. Katayama, para mostrar que acierta en remarcar la importancia de la separabilidad de los compuestos, pero se equivoca en la noción de separación. Se sostiene que las formas no son separables de sus compuestos tanto naturales como artefactos, pero los primeros poseen un tipo de separación de otras formas o especies (...) que no poseen los segundos y, por ello, son substancias. Aristotle seems to deny the ontological status of artifacts which are not substances. In this paper I discuss the basic regarding this topic and its main intepretations. I discuss R. Katayama's opinion to show that he is right to underline the importance of the trait of separation, but he is wrong regarding the the notion of separation. My thesis is that neither the forms of natural things nor those of artifacts are separable from the composites, but the former possess a different kind of separation from other forms or species, which the latter do not possess. Hence, the former are substances. (shrink)

In spite of the considerable literature nowadays existing on the issue of the moral exclusion of nonhuman animals, there is still work to be done concerning the characterization of the conceptual framework with which this question can be appraised. This paper intends to tackle this task. It starts by defining speciesism as the unjustified disadvantageous consideration or treatment of those who are not classified as belonging to a certain species. It then clarifies some common misunderstandings concerning what this means. Next, (...) it rejects the idea that there are different kinds of speciesism. Such an idea may result from confusion because there are (1) different ways in which speciesism can be defended; and (2) different speciesist positions, that is, different positions that assume speciesism among their premises. Depending on whether or not these views assume other criteria for moral consideration apart from speciesism, they can be combined or simple speciesist positions. But speciesism remains in all cases the same idea. Finally, the paper examines the concept of anthropocentrism, the disadvantageous treatment or consideration of those who are not members of the human species. This notion must be conceptually distinguished from speciesism and from misothery (aversion to nonhuman animals). Anthropocentrism is shown to be refuted because it either commits a petitio principia fallacy or it falls prey to two arguments: the argument from species overlap (widely but misleadingly known as “argument from marginal cases”) and the argument from relevance. This rebuttal identifies anthropocentrism as a speciesist view. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Crispin Wright's modal anti-realism as based on the availability of a certain attitude of Caution towards judgements of necessity. I think that Wright's account should be attractive in several ways for modal theorists with an anti-realist bend. However, the attitude of Caution to which it appeals has attracted some controversy. Wright himself has later come to doubt whether Caution is ultimately coherent. Here I first address Wright's worries concerning the coherence of Caution and show that (...) they are unfounded. But then I argue that although the attitude of Caution is coherent, it cannot provide a suitable basis for a non-eliminativist account of necessity. I offer two different objections against Caution. I argue that Wright's appeal to Caution, if successful, would show not only that modal judgement is non-objective but also that it is dispensable. Thus, I claim that appeal to Caution would seem to serve more as a threat against a non-eliminativist account of necessity, rather than as a potential adequate basis for it. However, I argue that Wright's appeal to Caution is unsuccessful, for there is no genuine Caution: Caution is a mere verbal attitude. (shrink)