Emile Durkheim is one of the fathers of sociology. Suicide brings his work conceptual and analytical tools to understand the moral architecture of society. In this article we review these artifacts of social theory, scientifically contrasted his time, able to measure the integrative force of human groups and to identify the variables that determine its operation. Despite the unstoppable individualism that defines our societies, is still valid sociological analysis that accounts for the collective nature of many of our decisions and (...) behaviors. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo, asumir desde Colombia y América Latina,el texto más renombrado del filósofo alemánWalter Benjamin: Tesis sobre elConcepto de Historia. En mi interpretación, el tiempo histórico incluye larevolución, que Benjamin sitúa en la tradición de Marx y en la “Liga Espartaco” de Alemania, para reivindicar plenamente a los vencidos y excluidos.

Este ensayo quiere restablecer polémicamente una lectura de la revolución francesa y sus utopías a través de autores como Alexis de Tocqueville y Carlos Marx, continuando con Jean Jaurés y Pedro Kropotkine hasta la actualidad, en que se ubica la disputa central entre revisionistas, Francois Furet como el máximo exponente y los historiadores sociales Georges Lefebvre, Daniel Guérin, George Rudé y Albert Soboul. Para proponer una lectura de historia-presente sobre la revolución francesa y sus criterios de actualidad.

In this study, we analyzed the relationship between the amodal (semantic) development of words and two popular emotional norms (emotional valence and arousal) in English and Spanish languages. To do so, we combined the strengths of semantics from vector space models (vector length, semantic diversity, and word maturity measures), and feature-based models of emotions. First, we generated a common vector space representing the meaning of words at different developmental stages (five and four developmental stages for English and Spanish, respectively) using (...) the Word Maturity methodology to align different vector spaces. Second, we analyzed the amodal development of words through mixed-effects models with crossed random effects for words and variables using a continuous time metric. Third, the emotional norms were included as covariates in the statistical models. We evaluated more than 23,000 words, whose emotional norms were available for more than 10,000 words, in each language separately. Results showed a curve of amodal development with an increasing linear effect and a small quadratic deceleration. A relevant influence on the amodal development of words was found only for emotional valence (not for arousal), suggesting that positive words have an earlier amodal development and a less pronounced semantic change across early lifespan. (shrink)

Este volumen recoge las lecciones del X Curso de Cultura hispanojudía y sefardí de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, organizado por la Asociación de Amigos del Museo Sefardí (Toledo, Septiembre 2000) y consagrado al Pensamiento y Mística hispanojudía y sefardí. Las quince conferencias aquí reunidas ofrecen una perspectiva amplia, representativa y completa de los momentos, autores y temas más significativos tratados por pensadores y místicos sefardíes desde la Edad Media hasta nuestros días. Se aprecia una continuidad en los problemas y (...) una búsqueda constante de nuevas soluciones, adaptadas a las circunstancias de cada época. Es la primera vez que aparece en lengua castellana una visión global de esta rica faceta de la cultura hispanohebrea, que permite al lector acercarse a la evolución del pensamiento de los judíos originarios de Sefarad antes y después de 1492, tanto en su faceta filosófica con en su faceta mística (cábala). (shrink)

Physicalism, if it is to be a significant thesis, should differentiate itself from key metaphysical contenders which endorse the existence of platonic entities, emergent properties, Cartesian souls, angels, and God. Physicalism can never be true in worlds where things of these kinds exist. David Papineau, David Spurrett, and Barbara Montero have recently developed and defended two influential conceptions of physicalism. One is derived from a conception of the physical as the non-mentally-and-non-biologically identifiable. The other is derived from a conception of (...) the physical as the non-sui-generis-mental. The paper looks at the resources available to those conceptions, but argues that each is insufficient to yield a conception of physicalism that differentiates it from key anti-physicalist positions. According to these conceptions, if we lived in a world full of things that clearly cannot be physical, we would still live in a physical world. Thus, such conceptions of physicalism are of little theoretical interest. (shrink)

Em analogia com outras discriminações, como o racismo ou o sexismo, o especismo é concebido como uma forma de discriminação moral com base na espécie. Em grande medida, a discussão contemporânea sobre a importância moral dos animais surgiu e desenvolveu-se em torno da crítica e da defesa do especismo. Este artigo oferece uma visão da discussão filosófica contemporânea sobre o especismo. Após uma breve introdução, apresenta-se uma definição de especismo e caracterizam-se vários tipos de especismo, sendo o Antropocentrismo o mais (...) relevante. Depois, expõe-se um argumento proeminente contra o Antropocentrismo: o argumento dos casos marginais. Por fim, algumas posições antropocêntricas são criticamente discutidas. (shrink)

The production of good sound generation in the violin is a complex task that requires coordination and spatiotemporal control of bowing gestures. The use of motion-capture technologies to improve performance or reduce injury risks in the area of kinesiology is becoming widespread. The combination of motion accuracy and sound quality feedback has the potential of becoming an important aid in violin learning. In this study, we evaluate motion-capture and sound-quality analysis technologies developed inside the context of the TELMI, a technology-enhanced (...) music learning project. We analyzed the sound and bow motion of 50 participants with no prior violin experience while learning to produce a stable sound in the violin. Participants were divided into two groups: the experimental group received real-time visual feedback both on kinematics and sound quality, while participants in the control group practiced without any type of external help. An additional third group of violin experts performed the same task for comparative purposes. After the practice session, all groups were evaluated in a transfer phase without feedback. At the practice phase, the experimental group improved their bowing kinematics in comparison to the control group, but this was at the expense of impairing the sound quality of their performance. At the retention phase, the experimental group showed better results in sound quality, especially concerning control of sound dynamics. Besides, we found that the expert group improved the stability of their sound while using the technology. All in all, these results emphasize the importance of feedback technologies in learning complex tasks, such as musical instrument learning. (shrink)

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of our ordinary experiences. (...) I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness : a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend a pair of necessary conditions on evidence-based knowledge which bear resemblance to the troubled sensitivity principles defended in the philosophical literature. We can think of the traditional principles as simple but inaccurate approximations of the new proposals. Insofar as the old principles are intuitive and used in scientific and philosophical contexts, but are plausibly false, there’s a real need to develop precise and correct formulations. These new renditions turned out to be more cautious, (...) so they won’t be able to do everything the old principled promised they could. For example, they respect closure for knowledge. But these sober formulations, or something like them, might be the best that we can do with respect to sensitivity. And there’s value in understanding the limits to these types of principles. (shrink)

Como afirma Roland Vaschalde en Suivant Michel Henry (2022), el título se sirve de la expresión «siguiendo a» (suivant) tanto con el sentido de «según» como con el de «como se sigue de», con lo cual no pretende «repetir» a Henry, sino asimismo prolongar los horizontes de la fenomenología de la praxis viviente. Si, de acuerdo con la tópica henriana, dicho «seguir» en tanto uno de los haceres propios a mi «yo puedo» se funda en una «persecución», es decir, en (...) un «sufrirse» ya sea en la imposibilidad de apropiarse del otro, ya sea en tanto sentirse «perseguido», es decir, hallarse bajo la dominación del otro en la imposibilidad de liberarse del peso de mi propio yo, el cual a su vez se «goza» en el olvido de dicha imposibilidad en la ilusión trascendental de su «consecución» en tanto la coincidencia de mi yo con la vida, lo que queda por pensar es la posibilidad del «proseguir» en tanto la transformación de la propia topología. Y es dicho «proseguir» el cual impulsará nuestra lectura a través de las figuras de lo onírico, de lo poscolonial, de la psicopatología, del judaísmo y de la cartografía del cuerpo, en tanto lo «imperseguible» de la fenomenología henriana. (shrink)

This volume answers the question: Why do we believe what we believe? It examines current research on the concept of beliefs, and the development in our understanding of the process of believing. It takes into account empirical findings in the field of neuroscience regarding the processes that underlie beliefs, and discusses the notion that beyond the interactive exploratory analysis of sensory information from the complex outside world, humans engage in an evaluative analysis by which they attribute personal meaning and relevance (...) to the probabilistic representations of objects and events. Beliefs exert a strong influence on behaviour, decision-making, and identifying and solving problems. Despite their importance, beliefs have until recently not been at the centre of scientific interest. In fact, "belief" is an ill-defined phenomenon. From a transdisciplinary perspective the actual approaches to understanding belief seem incompatible as they attempt to highlight such different topics as "belief - religion", "belief - spirituality", "belief - faith", "belief - knowledge", "belief - attitude", "belief - disbelief", "belief - illusion", and "believing - brain function". This situation contradicts the idea that belief is close to pathological phenomena and that it should be eliminated from scientific discussions. Rather, believing is fundamental for understanding the many problems of every-day life. In fact, the book shows that beliefs are relevant for politics, international affairs, economy, law, or religions also in modern societies. This book presents the increasing scientific interest in beliefs and believing, and reflects the change in focus from the content aspect of belief towards the fluid nature of believing. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethics of contemporary managerial compensation in the context of executive stock options. Economic considerations would dictate that executive stock options should be adjusted to eliminate the effect of overall stock market movements which are beyond the control of the executive. However, in practice, most executive stock options are not adjusted to control for these outside factors. Agency considerations are the most likely culprit. Adjusting for the influence of outside factors, such as a generally rising stock market, (...) from executive stock options sets a higher bar for managers to reach. Furthermore, traditional accounting standards permitted firms that did not adjust options to avoid reporting options as expenses. This presents CEOs and boards of directors with a major ethical dilemma. On the one hand, their duty to their shareholders and stakeholders dictates that executive stock options should be adjusted to eliminate outside noise from unrelated movements in the overall stock market. However, financial statements are presented in the language of accounting. If the overwhelming majority of the users of a language define a particular item in one way, then to deviate from the norm implies that the recipient of such a deviant statement may not properly interpret the statement. Likewise, if the standard practice is for firms to use unadjusted options and thus under-report expenses, to deviate from this industry norm risks that users of financial statements would not properly interpret the financial statements, with perhaps negative consequences for the shareholders. In short, if "everyone else does it," then it could be wrong for an individual firm to deviate from the norm as that would harm the shareholders. (shrink)

“But in the history of cross-breeding, the union effected outside marriage was of infinitely greater importance. The tales of the chroniclers and missionaries often paint a dark picture of the relations between conqueror and Indian woman—rape, kidnapping, sale and exchange of women, a system of concubinage and harems etc.” (Angel Rosenblatt, La Población indigena de América)“There is racial conflict in Latin America and racial harmony which can be seen only by those who have eyes. The governments and the people (...) themselves see them only very late.” (Sarmiento, Conflicto y Armonías de las razas en América)The colonial period left no fertile seeds for a culture in the soil of South America. As Ricardo Rojas assures us, “We do not find a single imaginative work in prose in these three hundred years.” “All of our colonial literature is confined within the limits of the historical genre…everything in it is the unfolding of a chronicle. To fix the memory of social facts, memorials were written to military conquests and hagiographies of spiritual ones, poems on the English invasions and the emancipation of America. Even the brief erotic and religious poems are only monuments in verse, and so are Tejeda's works whose autobiographical character cannot be denied.” (La Literatura Argentina). (shrink)

This paper claims that we have direct and complete perceptual access to other people’s emotions in their bodily and behavioural expression. The claim is understood, not by analogy with the perception of three-dimensional objects or physical processes, but as a form of Gestalt perception. In addition, talk of direct perceptual access to others’ emotions is shown not to entail a behaviourist view of mind; and talk of complete perceptual access is shown to include both the phenomenological character and the dispositional (...) nature of emotions. (shrink)

El autor examina primeramente la postura de Jürgen Habermas, para mostrar lo atractivo que resulta negar categóricamente los dilemas políticos; luego aboga por la aceptación de estos conflictos, y argumenta que su posición no violenta la lógica deóntica básica. Pasa tras ello a discutir tres situaciones en que entran en conflicto normas fundamentales, en las se reconoce la realidad del conflicto normativo entre la voluntad democrática de promover la cultura nacional y los derechos de los subgrupos. Expone finalmente contra-argumentos que (...) declara admisibles, pero manteniendo que el mejor modo de comprender estas tensiones es aceptando que está frente a una dilema político. (shrink)

El artículo contrasta las teorías de Habermas y Nino mostrando la complejidad de la idea de democracia deliberativa, a la vez de sostener que una crítica de las teorías de Habermas y Nino abre la posibilidad de esbozar una visión democrática que trasciende la deliberación. Desarrolla el modo en que los autores entienden la democracia y vinculan sus visiones entre la deliberación democrática y la reflexión moral, y con los asuntos éticos y transaccionales. Señala que Habermas permite más distinciones que (...) Nino, pero que al explicar ambos autores la democracia exclusivamente en términos del modelo deliberativo, pasan por alto importantes aspectos del proceso democrático, tales como intercambios comunicativos no deliberativos e interacciones no discursivas, que son los que permiten comprender que la idea democrática tenga arraigo en contextos radicalmente disímiles. (shrink)

Henri Maldiney, fenomenólogo francés está aún por descubrir en la investigación hispana. Analizar su diálogo crítico con Heidegger es una manera adecuada de entrar en sus obras. Abordar el diálogo sobre temas como el acontecimiento y el ser humano es decisivo porque estos son temas centrales en la obra de ambos. Al hacerlo, mostraremos que para Maldiney la analítica existenciaria es insuficiente para comprender la apertura radical que es el ser humano. El acontecimiento y lo pático son categorías decisivas para (...) él, que se comprenden desde la transpossibilité y la transpassibilité. Estas permiten comprender el acontecimiento más allá del proyecto, del destino y la inherencia del ser humano en el mundo. (shrink)

This paper suggests that an ontologically reductionist view of nature which also accepts the completeness of causality at the level of physics can support (1) the blissful transfiguration of the moral, (2) mystical release from standard ego-identification, and (3) psycho-physical transformation cultivated through meditative practice. This mystical naturalism provides the basis for a thicker, more vigorous institutional religious life, including religious life centred around meditation practices, personalist meanings, and the theology of incarnation, than current proposals for strongly naturalist religions allow.