‘Plant neurobiology’ has emerged in recent years as a multidisciplinary endeavor carried out mainly by steady collaboration within the plant sciences. The field proposes a particular approach to the study of plant intelligence by putting forward an integrated view of plant signaling and adaptive behavior. Its objective is to account for the way plants perceive and act in a purposeful manner. But it is not only the plant sciences that constitute plant neurobiology. Resources from philosophy and cognitive science are central (...) to such an interdisciplinary project, if plant neurobiology is to maintain its target well-focused. This manifesto outlines a road map for the establishment and development of a new subject—the Philosophy of Plant Neurobiology—, a new field of research emerging at the intersection of the philosophy of cognitive science and plant neurobiology. The discipline is herewith presented, introducing challenges and novel lines of engagement with the empirical investigation, and providing an explanatory framework and guiding principles that will hopefully ease the integration of research on the quest for plant intelligence. (shrink)

Este artículo defiende que según Descartes hay dos clases de percepción sensorial. Una que opera por impulso, confundiendo las propiedades de las cosas físicas con nuestras ideas de ellas; y la otra que procede por deducción y distingue entre aquellas propiedades de las cosas físicas que tienen una representación adecuada en nuestras ideas y las que no la tienen.

An asymmetry between the demands at the computational and algorithmic levels of description furnishes the illusion that the abstract profile at the computational level can be multiply realized, and that something is actually being shared at the algorithmic one. A disembodied rendering of the situation lays the stress upon the different ways in which an algorithm can be implemented. However, from an embodied approach, things look rather different. The relevant pairing, I shall argue, is not between implementation and algorithm, but (...) rather between algorithm and computation. The autonomy of psychology is a result of the failure to appreciate this point. (shrink)

In the present study, we have demonstrated hysteresis phenomena in the excitability of single, enzymatically dissociated guinea pig ventricular myocytes. Membrane potentials were recorded with patch pipettes in the whole-cell current clamp configuration. Repetitive stimulation with depolarizing current pulses of constant cycle length and duration but varying strength led to predictable excitation (1:l) and non-excitation (1:0) patterns depending on current strength. In addition, transition between patterns depended on the direction of current intensity change and stable hysteresis loops were obtained in (...) stimulus:response pattern vs. current intensity plots in 14 cells. Increase of pulse duration and decrease of stimulation rate contributed to a reduction in hysteresis loop areas. Changes in amplitude and shape of the subthreshold responses during the transitions from one stable pattern to the other, suggested that activity led to an increase in membrane resistance, particularly in the voltage domain between resting potential, and threshold. Therefore, we modelled the dynamic behaviour of the single cells as a function of diastolic membrane resistance, using previously published analytical solutions. Numerical iteration of the analytical model equations closely reproduced the experimental hysteresis loops in both qualitative and quantitative ways. In particular, the effect of stimulation frequency on the model was similar to the experimental findings. The overall study suggests that the excitability pattern of guinea pig ventricular myocytes accounts for hysteresis and bistabilities when current intensity is allowed to fluctuate around threshold levels. (shrink)

Introduction The act of caring in nursing requires previous deliberation and decision, however this perception only arises when an ethical problem emerges. Objective: Identify ethical problems of nurses action in the area of beginning of human life Method: Exploratory and descriptive method, with a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data, who were submitted to content analysis. The sample was constituted by 26 nurses. Results 18 categories of problem areas and 56 ethical problems in early human life were (...) identified. The results obtained are very diverse, including areas such as termination of pregnancy, informed consent or maintaining privacy. However, other problem areas also emerge and numerous new subcategories/ethical problems, including: dealing with miscarriage, extreme situations, minors’ pregnancy, serious malformations detected at birth, consent regarding care during childbirth, Non- identification of a ethical problem, nurse social recognition and non-involvement of the person in labour. Conclusion Nurses face different ethical problems that impact their lives. We intend to contribute in helping to make decisions in this field, which the outset is of hope and joy, but which hides, behind this evidence, countless situations of suffering for everyone involved. The identification of ethical problems in this field, it is the first step to reflect about theme and helping decision-making for nurses that are taking care in this area of beginning of human life, when confronted whit the same type of ethical problems. (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists reassess systematicity in the post-connectionist era, offering perspectives from ecological psychology, embodied and distributed cognition, enactivism, and other methodologies.

One can read the history of kitsch and the history of kitsch theories by accentuating either everyday aesthetics (knickknacks) or pseudo art/bad art. The authors have divided their introduction to the topic by accentuating first everyday aesthetics (this part includes a detailed history of kitsch research) and then art—especially the wave of contemporary art that has lately been knocking on the doors of kitsch. Three historical stages of kitsch are discussed. The first stage discusses the topic and gives (e.g., bad, (...) sentimental art and interior design) negative attention only. This phase ends with Clement Greenberg’s essay “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939). The second wave discusses kitsch in a curious manner, mainly around the 1960s. And the contemporary stage of the discussion is often positive (starting from the 1990s). In the part where contemporary art is analyzed, art’s kitschy side is traced historically to the Dutch art market of the seventeenth century. But today’s art world, which is strongly invaded by kitsch, gains the main attention. How did kitsch become so central to contemporary art? What forms has it taken there? (shrink)

According to F. Adams [this journal, vol. 68, 2018] cognition cannot be realized in plants or bacteria. In his view, plants and bacteria respond to the here-and-now in a hardwired, inflexible manner, and are therefore incapable of cognitive activity. This article takes issue with the pursuit of plant cognition from the perspective of an empirically informed philosophy of plant neurobiology. As we argue, empirical evidence shows, contra Adams, that plant behavior is in many ways analogous to animal behavior. This renders (...) plants suitable to be described as cognitive agents in a non-metaphorical way. Sections two to four review the arguments offered by Adams in light of scientific evidence on plant adaptive behavior, decision-making, anticipation, as well as learning and memory. Section five introduces the ‘phyto-nervous’ system of plants. To conclude, section six resituates the quest for plant cognition into a broader approach in cognitive science, as represented by enactive and ecological schools of thought. Overall, we aim to motivate the idea that plants may be considered genuine cognitive agents. Our hope is to help propel public awareness and discussion of plant intelligence once appropriately stripped of anthropocentric preconceptions of the sort that Adams' position appears to exemplify. (shrink)

Although it is not documentarily proven, it is not unlikely that the young Wittgenstein read at least part of William James’s psychological work. In this paper we have compared their respective points of view about psychologism and the conception of the self. The result is a complex pattern of similarities and differences. If James and the early Wittgenstein coincide in their opposition to psychologism and the Cartesian conception of the subject, they do so from very different philosophical positions: that of (...) a naturalist focus in the case of the American thinker; that of a transcendental focus in the Austrian thinker. (shrink)

Cartesianism was always a subject to Wittgenstein's criticism. In his case against it, he employed a general strategy that I have called "Reductio ad vacuum". There is something right in Cartesianism but without a hidden confusing premise, the truth of Cartesianism is empty. According to the early Wittgenstein, Cartesianism was right be-cause Solipsism is true: the Self is the center of the world. But without confusing this metaphysical Self with the psychological one, Solipsism becomes empty and no different from Realism.

Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing and the associated thesis, what can be shown cannot be said, were crucial to his first philosophy, persisted throughout the evolution of his whole thought and played a key role in his views on aesthetics. The objective of art is access to the mystical, forcing us to become aware of the uniqueness of our own experience and life. When art is good is a perfect expression and the work of art becomes like a tautology. (...) An important consequence of this understanding of art is the irreducibility of the aesthetic to the scientific perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the view that, although Wittgenstein does not present an epistemology of religion in the sense of the term most commonly found in traditional philosophical texts, he does explore a different understanding of religious epistemology – one that aligns the religious attitude with a particular form of know-how.

It remains at best controversial to claim, non-figuratively, that plants are cognitive agents. At the same time, it is taken as trivially true that many animals are cognitive agents, arguably through an implicit or explicit appeal to natural science. Yet, any given definition of cognition implicates at least some further processes, such as perception, action, memory, and learning, which must be observed either behaviorally, psychologically, neuronally, or otherwise physiologically. Crucially, however, for such observations to be intelligible, they must be counted (...) as evidence for some model. These models in turn point to homologies of physiology and behavior that facilitate the attribution of cognition to some non-human animals. But, if one is dealing with a model of animal cognition, it is tautological that only animals can provide evidence, and absurd to claim that plants can. The more substantive claim that, given a general model of cognition, only animals but not plants can provide evidence, must be evaluated on its merits. As evidence mounts that plants meet established criteria of cognition, from physiology to behavior, they continue to be denied entry into the cognitive club. We trace this exclusionary tendency back to Aristotle, and attempt to counter it by drawing on the philosophy of modelling and a range of findings from plant science. Our argument illustrates how a difference in degree between plant and animals is typically mistaken for a difference in kind. (shrink)

In this short epilogue, Barragán and Ryynänen discuss the possibility of using kitsch and kitsch theories horizons for interpreting contemporaneity in various ways. The main spearhead of the critical notes is aimed at academic culture, which Barragán and Ryynänen claim to have become “kitschified” in a sense.

O artigo objetiva discutir alguns problemas avançados em determinação social do pensamento a partir das contribuições deixadas por J. Chasin tendo em vista a profícua fundamentação em Marx e Lukács. Tais problemas selecionados são apresentados assumindo como fio condutor as possibilidades da pesquisa científica de objetos ideológicos.

La tesis sostenida por David Hume en su ensayo sobre los milagros, contenida en el capítulo X de su primera Investigación, ha sido objeto continuo de interés. Sus detractores han sostenido que el conjunto del argumento de Hume fracasa. Tras reconstruir los dos argumentos proporcionados por Hume -argumento a priori y argumento a posteriori- proponemos establecer una distinción entre milagrosn y milagros para concluir que el argumento de Hume justifica el escepticismo respecto a estos últimos. En definitiva, el argumento de (...) Hume, lejos de pretender en última instancia probar la inexistencia de los milagros como un factum dentro del orden natural, tiene por objeto demarcar la distinción entre creencias científicas y creencias religiosas como dos ámbitos que deben considerarse de manera separada. Esta diferenciación ha contribuido de manera decisiva a conformar la separación entre Ciencia y Religión propia de las sociedades secularizadas contemporáneas. (shrink)

This article analyses Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense and, against resolute interpretations, defends that, perhaps influenced by Mauthner and Weininger, the Tractatus author conceived corrects ontological and ethical nonsenses like nearly to tautological senseless.

Some empirical evidence in the artificial language acquisition literature has been taken to suggest that statistical learning mechanisms are insufficient for extracting structural information from an artificial language. According to the more than one mechanism (MOM) hypothesis, at least two mechanisms are required in order to acquire language from speech: (a) a statistical mechanism for speech segmentation; and (b) an additional rule-following mechanism in order to induce grammatical regularities. In this article, we present a set of neural network studies demonstrating (...) that a single statistical mechanism can mimic the apparent discovery of structural regularities, beyond the segmentation of speech. We argue that our results undermine one argument for the MOM hypothesis. (shrink)

Not as well-known overseas as it should be, there is an important and active Italian tradition of Hume scholarship. One of its most recent and more important representatives is Professor Gianni Paganini, translator into Italian and editor of Norman Kemp Smith’s already excellent edition of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. As is well known, it was a posthumous work by the Scottish philosopher and one of his works that raises the most difficulties for his interpreters. Paganini’s edition consists of a (...) faithful and intelligent Italian translation facing the English text as edited by Norman Kemp Smith for the Clarendon Press, ninety one notes that help us understand the text, a select.. (shrink)