La antropología filosófica de L. Wittgenstein está siendo discutida intensamente desde diferentes puntos de vista. El libro reflexiona alrededor de la propuesta de P. M. S. Hacker de su trabajo ‘El enfoque antropológico y etnológico de Wittgenstein’. El autor se interroga si cuando adoptamos una visión antropológica ubicamos nuestra posición externamente, para ver las cosas objetivamente. Para ello, se analiza el problema vinculado a la gramática y su constitución conceptual. Plantea hasta que punto compartimos los conceptos que usamos en nuestro (...) enfoque antropológico. V. Sanfélix entiende que L. Wittgenstein ha ido desarrollando un historicismo sin historia y una etnología sin etnografía e indica que la utilidad de esta “etnología fantástica” ayuda a ganar una visión sinóptica de la gramática de nuestros conceptos. A. Tomasini Bassols reflexiona alrededor la plataforma sobre la que elabora la antropología filosófica y si se puede sostenerse que la obra de Wittgenstein contiene una antropología filosófica. L. Hertzberg examina el modo como Hacker analiza los conceptos. Repasa la distinción “analítico/sintético” y el “historicismo sin historia”. M. Holguín razona acerca de la “historia natural”. Desde su punto de vista, Hacker justifica los calificativos de aproximación “antropológica” o “etnológica” con el fin de describir una nueva perspectiva que le permite abordar los problemas conceptuales. W. Jacorzynski reconsidera el enfoque etnológico de Wittgenstein y se para a considerar el análisis conductual, la regularidad/uniformidad, la historicidad (“sin historia”), la autonomía y la arbitrariedad de la gramática. J. Sádaba profundiza acerca del esquema general desde donde se interpreta nuestra actividad existencial sin que por ello se proponga describir historiográficamente los recorridos de la humanidad. J. Padilla Gálvez ubica el programa antropológico en una fenomenología epistemológica que se caracteriza por el estudio del análisis del lenguaje usado y conjetura que el proyecto fenomenológico quedaría corto si analiza exclusivamente la gramática ya que esta carece de perspicuidad. Por esta razón, el programa requiere de un análisis amplio cuyo proyecto se complemente con la “representación perspicua”. (shrink)

A central debate of Agroecology is the incorporation of socioeconomic and political-cultural criteria in the evaluation of agri-food sustainability. However, the way to define and evaluate these criteria remains an unexplored terrain. In this paper, we aim to systematise how these dimensions are being defined and evaluated through the analysis of 8 initiatives of Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) considered to be part of the agroecological movement in Spain. This analysis identifies those criteria that are commonplace, widely recognised and evaluated by (...) the PGS sample. An in-depth, qualitative analysis of the difficulties that PGS are encountering in defining and evaluating these criteria provides an insight into the complexity of the task. The analysis reveals the hurdles to overcome to better define Agroecology at a supralocal level in order to promote its scaling up and out. (shrink)

Some of the most relevant problems today both in Science and practical problems involves Coupled Socio-ecological Systems, which are some of the best examples of Complex Systems. In this work we discuss groundwater-management as an example of these Coupled Socio-ecological System, also known as Coupled Human and Natural Systems. We argue that it is possible and even necessary to construct a contextual statistical theory of groundwater management. Contextuality implies some very different statistical features as entanglement and complementarity. We discuss some (...) interpretation about statistical entanglement and statistical complementarity in terms of groundwater flow theory and extraction equation. To this end, we propose a non-Kolmogorobian approach following the Växjö school of thought. One of the most straightforward conclusions is that in this way, a statistical-contextual treatment of groundwater management may not only give place to new flow equations, but it could have a profound impact in resource management. Then the new basic unity of analysis should be the indivisible pair. We should not talk any more about aquifer dynamics or resource management plans by themselves. Physical and social systems are coupled in a statistical-contextual fundamental way, and a socio-hydrogeological theory should be developed. (shrink)

El libro que reseñamos estudia la naturaleza humana desde una perspectiva muy amplia al abordar el “potencial moral”. Efectivamente, la expresión inglesa “moral powers” es compleja de trasladar al castellano ya que hace referencia a la fuerza moral, aludiendo pues al rendimiento o la potestad moral; así como, la potencia humana y su capacidad moral. Nos encontramos ante un hito que estudia el valor en la vida y el pensamiento humano, escrito por uno de los pensadores contemporáneos más activos e (...) importantes del momento. Estamos pues ante una investigación filosófica sobre las potencialidades y sensibilidades morales de los seres humanos, del significado de la vida humana y el lugar que ocupa la muerte en la vida. Se nos presentan unas reflexiones sobre antropología filosófica, es decir el estudio del marco conceptual mediante el cual pensamos, hablamos e investigamos acerca del ser humano, entendido en su horizonte social y cultural. El volumen examina la diversidad de valores en la vida humana y el lugar del valor moral dentro de las variedades de estos valores. El asunto crucial gira alrededor de la naturaleza del bien y el mal y la propensión humana a la virtud y al vicio. Examina las concepciones tradicionales sobre el valor ético y repasa críticamente los conceptos erróneos que se han ido introduciendo en la filosofía, la psicología o la neurociencia cognitiva. (shrink)

Gödel, Kurt: Ensayos inéditos. . Barcelona: Mondadori, 1994, 240pp. + 8 Fotos.Gödel, Kurt: Unpublished Philosophical Essays. and Foreword by W. V. Quine). Basel; Boston; Berlin: Birkhäuser, 1995, 235pp. + 8 Fotos.Cirera Duocastella Ramón, Carnap i el Cercle de Viena. Empirisme i sintaxis lógica. Barcelona: Anthropos 1990, p. 406.Cirera Ramón, Carnap and the Vienna Circle . Rodopi: Amsterdam, 1994, p. 398 + xvi.Cirera, Ramón, / Ibarra, Andoni / Mormann, Thomas: El programa de Carnap. Ciencia, lenguaje, filosofía. Barcelona: Textos del bronce, 1996.

Inleidend overzicht van de wijsgerige ethiek.

Studies in the psychology of visual expertise have tended to focus on a limited set of expert domains, such as radiology and athletics. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that experts use parafoveal vision to process images holistically. In this study, we examined a novel, as-of-yet-unstudied class of visual experts—architects—expecting similar results. However, the results indicate that architects, though visual experts, may not employ the holistic processing strategy observed in their previously studied counterparts. Participants (n = 48, 24 architects, 24 (...) naïve) were asked to find targets in chest radiographs and perspective images. All images were presented in both gaze-contingent and normal viewing conditions. Consistent with a holistic processing model, we expected two results: (1) architects would display a greater difference in saccadic amplitude between the gaze- contingent and normal conditions, and (2) architects would spend less time per search than an undergraduate control group. We found that the architects were more accurate in the perspectival task, but they took more time and displayed a lower difference in saccadic amplitude than the controls. Our research indicates a disjunctive conclusion. Either architects are simply different kinds of visual experts than those previously studied, or we have generated a task that employs visual expertise without holistic processing. Our data suggest a healthy skepticism for across-the-board inferences collected from a single domain of expertise to the nature of visual expertise generally. More work is needed to determine whether holism is a feature of all visual expertise. (shrink)

We read with interest the recent article on criteria for patient selection of cardiac xenotransplantation by Kögel et al.1 The authors recognise the benefits and concerns of first developing xenotransplantation trials in children (or at least concurrent development). They conclude that, based on (1) the vulnerable nature of children and (2) the observation that ‘the benefits of cardiac xenotransplantation have never been systematically proven in humans,’ that the ‘very first clinical trials should be conducted with adult patients.’ This is a (...) long-standing contention in xenotransplantation that, to our knowledge, finds its origins in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ 1996 report on xenotransplantation, which states: ‘It would be difficult to justify the involvement of children in major and risky xenotransplantation trials before some of the uncertainties have been eliminated in trials involving adults.’2 However, given the cardiac allotransplant waitlist mortality borne by some paediatric patients, as well as other factors that raise unique candidacy considerations in children compared with adults—and arguably make some children better candidates than adults—we do not believe …. (shrink)

An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

Using covariant derivatives and the operator definitions of quantum mechanics, gauge invariant Proca and Lehnert equations are derived and the Lorenz condition is eliminated in U(1) invariant electrodynamics. It is shown that the structure of the gauge invariant Lehnert equation is the same in an O(3) invariant theory of electrodynamics.

Note by the Editor of Voprosy filosofii: The presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences has decided to hold, in Moscow in December 1980, the Third USSR Conference on Philosophical Problems of Contemporary Natural Science, dedicated to the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin, and has established an organizing committee headed by P. N. Fedoseev, vice-president of the Academy, to prepare and conduct the conference.

Both the physiological and the pathological morphogenetic processes that we can meet in embryogenesis, neogenesis and degenerative dysgenesis present common features: they are ruled by three different kinds of mechanisms, one related to cell migration, the second to cell differentiation and the third to cell proliferation. We deal here with an application to the cambial growth which essentially involves the third type of mechanism.Woody plants produce secondary tissue (secondary xylem and phloem) from a meristematic tissue called vascular cambium, responsible for (...) the radial growth of a tree. This paper focuses on the formation of secondary xylem, considered in two dimensions in a cross-section framework. A new discrete modelling approach is used, based on the cellular scale, in order to attain a more accurate understanding of how the elementary microscopic behaviour of each cell takes part in the macroscopic morphogenesis. The mathematical model essentially uses an occurrence method simulating the main features of radial growth with simple geometric rules, such as Thom's division rule (Thom,1972)to account for the cell proliferation. The study applies to concrete instances in which the changes made in the geometrical cellular patterns of the vascular cambium clearly affect the shape of the tree, as in Pinus radiata (D. Don.). (shrink)