When faced with the charge that a given concept of God is contradictory, the standard move among philosophers and theologians has been to try to explain away the contradiction and show that the concept of God in question is consistent. This has to do, of course, with the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). Another option, which has recently generated interest among logicians and analytic philosophers of religion, is to reject such a move as unnecessary and defend what might be called the (...) contradictory God thesis. To be sure, something close to that can be found in philosophers such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas and Nicolaus de Cusa. However, it is only recently that this approach has gained momentum, certainly driven by the contemporary advance of dialetheism and glut theoretic approaches in general, and paraconsistent logic. Needless to say, a standard move among defenders of the contradictory God thesis is to challenge the LNC. The argumentation, however, is seldomly framed in conceptual terms. Instead, it is mostly framed in ontological terms, as God being a contradictory entity. From this perspective, the contradictory God thesis is the thesis that God is a contradictory object. My goal in this paper is to provide a conceptual assessment of the discussion surrounding the contradictory God thesis. To achieve this, I make use of a general and hopefully non-controversial meta-theory of concepts and adopt a semantic approach rather than a metaphysical one. Within this framework, I address the following questions: What are the different ways we can understand the contradictory God thesis? What grounds are there for rejecting a contradictory concept of God? What standard moves are available to defend oneself from such criticisms and how do they relate to the LNC? What challenges do they present? As a secondary goal, the paper introduces a novel defense of the contradictory God thesis, drawing on a specific interpretation of the theology of the 16th-century Indian thinker Jīva Gosvāmī, which avoids the need to challenge the LNC. I term this approach ‘non-dialetheic mystical contradictory theism.’. (shrink)

Trata-se da resenha do livro O tempo e a ocasião, o encontro Espinosa Maquiavel, de Vittorio Morfino.

La nueva era de exploración espacial ha sopesado una y otra vez las posibilidades que tiene nuestro planeta de ser el lugar cósmico en el que las únicas formas de vida inteligentes del universo se hayan desarrollado. La astrofísica y la astrobiología lo ha hecho con números. Esta inquietud existencial se ha plasmado en una serie de escalas científicas que miden la importancia relativa del posible impacto sobre nuestra civilización de un encuentro con vida extraterrestre inteligente. Lamentablemente las consecuencias medidas (...) se han limitado a factores científicos y un hipotético control de daños, y a la credibilidad para con estos por parte de la opinión pública. Han olvidado sin embargo su trascendencia antropológica, moral y filosófica para nuestra especie. (shrink)

Se dice que la Ilustración es una forma resaltada de independencia tantopara el pensamiento como para la existencia. Esta clase de revolución política,social y científica prepara para la que fuera revolución principal de 1789,pero hemos de prestar gran atención a la senda que está continuando elpensar epistemológico que precede al político. Tres metáforas se disponenen este cambio: de los axiomas a los datos, de la visión al tacto, y del mecanismoal organismo.

Induction, conceived as the class of rational non-truth preserving inferences, has been a perennial problem in philosophy. Aside from the problem of justification of induction, a less debated issue is the problem of properly describing inductive inferences. The purpose of this book is to conceptually investigate this descriptive problem of induction from the standpoint of the nonmonotonic logical tradition raised inside the field of Artificial Intelligence in the last thirty years. As we try to show, an essential part of this (...) enterprise involves the analysis of a pragmatically oriented notion of probability, called by us inductive plausibility. This in turn is made from the viewpoint of paraconsistency ? which according to some is the unavoidable companion of nonmonotonicity ? and modal logic. We therefore put forward a nonmonotonic, paraconsistent and modal approach to induction and plausibility. The book shall be useful to philosophers, logicians and computer scientists interested in the problem of induction in general and in the logical analysis of induction and plausibility in particular. (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)

The article investigates from the book “Images despite everything”, by Georges Didi-Huberman (2020), four remaining photographs of Crematorium V in Auschwitz-Birkenau, taken in August 1944, by the Greek Jew Alberto Errera, a member of the Sonderkommando. It is noteworthy that it is his photographic gesture invested with the most intense emotional sense (pathos) that gives his images an indicial character that effectively operates as testimony (superstes) allowing one to imagine what is considered “unimaginable” by “Holocaust metaphysicians”. Reacting to the thesis (...) of the impossibility of representing the gas chambers, according to which any attempt to configure them would be a falsification of suffering by concession to aestheticization, the article states that it is necessary to know what is possible, whatever it is about the pain that took place there. It is also evident that it is the “zones of opacity” in Alberto Errera’s photos that, by conveying the pathos, activate the imagination and force the viewer’s thoughts. It is its “out of framing” that, mobilizing the gaze without stopping, from the icon to the index and from that to that, does not operate as an interdiction, but, on the contrary, it is what makes one see and know something more about what happened there. Finally, it can be concluded that Alberto Errera’s gesture transformed the “historical reality”, made of horror and upheaval, into a possibility of memory for the future, using only a remnant of celluloid. (shrink)

...the problem of...how cognition...is possible at all...can never be answered on the basis of a prior knowledge of the transcendent [i.e. the external, spatio-temporal, empirical]...no matter whence the knowledge or the judgments are borrowed, not even if they are taken from the exact sciences.... It will not do to draw conclusions from existences of which one knows but which one cannot "see". "Seeing" does not lend itself to demonstration or deduction. [Husserl 1964a, pp. 2-3].

This book aims to understand human cognition and psychology through a comprehensive computational theory of the mind, namely, a "cognitive architecture.".

El régimen establecido por Hugo Chávez y continuado por Nicolás Maduro en Venezuela ha generado repercusiones sociales, migratorias, económicas y políticas que han trascendido las fronteras del país, convirtiéndose en un factor desestabilizador para la democracia y la seguridad de América Latina. Para explicar dicho fenómeno, se propone analizar los antecedentes, contextos y elementos que propiciaron su surgimiento y consolidación. Para ello, después de discutir el concepto y las características del populismo, se hace una revisión de su plasmación histórica en (...) los populismos clásicos latinoamericanos de mediados del siglo XX. La sección final se centra en analizar las peculiaridades del neopopulismo latinoamericano y del Socialismo del Siglo XXI en Venezuela. A través de esta exploración, se busca comprender sus bases ideológicas, características y consecuencias, así como proponer hipótesis sobre las causas de su permanencia en el poder. (shrink)

O propósito deste livro é preencher a lacuna existente no mercado editorial brasileiro no que diz respeito a obras de cunho acadêmico sobre hinduísmo e filosofia indiana. Essa lacuna se reflete, dentre outras, na inexistência de publicações em português que pretendam ir além do mero aspecto introdutório deste que é um dos maiores clássicos da literatura religiosa indiana e mundial: a Bhagavad-gita; também se reflete na inexistência de literatura especializada sobre as várias tradições indianas que têm a Bhagavad- gita como (...) um de seus textos canônicos. -/- Reunindo professores e pesquisadores do Brasil, Israel, Estados Unidos e Reino Unido, este volume apresenta uma visão acadêmica e acessível da Bhagavad-gita centrada em dois aspectos principais: introdução e contextualização da Gita no que se refere à sua história, estrutura e conceitos-chave, de um lado, e análise detalhada de algumas das noções e temas mais relevantes do texto, de outro. Também proporciona visão geral de uma das tradições da Índia - tanto vedanta como vaishava - que mais sofreram influência da teologia e filosofia da Bhagavad-gita: o vaishnavismo gaudiya de Caitanya (1486-1533). -/- O livro encontra-se estruturado em três grupos, ou partes. A primeira, intitulada "Visão Geral da Bhagavad-gita", é composta de dois capítulos e tem como objetivo introduzir o leitor ao Gita como um todo. A segunda, intitulada "Conceitos e Tópicos-Chave da Bhagavad-gita", contém cinco capítulos, cada um centrado na análise de um conceito ou tópico específico da Gita. A terceira e última parte, intitulada "Hinduísmo e Vaishnavismo", é composta por três capítulos e visa apresentar o vaishnavismo, mais especificamente o vaishnavismo gaudiya, situando-o dentro do contexto mais geral do que hoje se denomina hinduísmo. (shrink)

Consistent with the planning–control model, recent fMRI data reveal that the inferior parietal lobe, the frontal lobes, and the basal ganglia are involved in motor planning. Inconsistent with the planning–control model, however, recent behavioral data reveal a spatial repulsion effect, indicating that the visual context surrounding the target can sometimes influence the on-line control of goal-directed action.

The ArgumentEmergency medicine, a new medical specialty in the United States, is an ethical practice that has developed through its interaction with the spaces in which it is situated. We discuss this claim in two steps followed by a demonstration. First we examine the historical evolution of the hospital, to provide the background for a lengthier account of the historical transformation of the emergency room. We then introduce Foucault's approach to ethics, to explain the sense in which emergency medicine is (...) an ethical practice constituted, in part, by its space of operation. The preliminaries of the application of our historico-ethical framework to emergency medicine, are presented, focusing on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Our intention is to provide a framework for the newest clinical specialty as an ethical practice in order to understand how to individuate its emerging ethical problems. The emphasis on space throughout enables us to integrate the historical development of emergency medicine with its present concrete setting, and to establish a basis for analyzing emergency medicine that does not rely uncritically on either a preferred ethical perspective or the perspective of its practitioners. (shrink)

Possibilities of scientific research about radio are explored, radio as mass media and contemporary language, within of an overview of radio studies. Two analytical traditions about radio are sketched, suggestioning that anthropology of radio should deepen early observations and reflections of Ru..

Tradición patrimonial y administración señorial en la América Latina Aspectos básicos del liberalismo brasileño del siglo XIX - El pensamiento conservador en Colombia, a lo largo del siglo XIX - El pensamiento conservador en Colombia, a lo largo del siglo XX - Iberoamérica como totalidad - Clientelismo mesianismo y liberación en la cultura Latinoamericana - Catequesis misionera y "saber de salvación" en el Brasil colonial - La filosofía brasileña en los siglos XVII, XVIII y XIX - La filosofía brasileña en (...) el siglo XX - Positivismo y realidad Latinoamericana - Cinco concepciones de la integración Latinoamericana - Etica y política en la cultura brasileña - Catolicismo y modernidad : la función moralizadora de la iglesia. (shrink)

Coriolanus, the legendary fifth-century BC general who turned against his native city for banishing him, is painted by Shakespeare as the paragon Stoic warrior. Physically strong and detached, at home in the battlefield, he is the military man par excellence. Fearless, he sheds few tears. But the turning point in Shakespeare's play comes when Coriolanus remembers how to weep. He admits that "It is no small thing to make mine eyes sweat compassion."The absence of compassion in health care is increasingly (...) remarked upon. In 2009, it led to a campaign to broaden New Zealand's Code of Patients' Rights to include the legal right "to have services provided with compassion, including a prompt and humane response to .. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es, por una parte, ofrecer una nueva interpretación de la teoría estoica de los universales a la luz del debate entre nominalismo, conceptualismo y realismo, y, por otra, desentrañar un paralelismo entre el análisis propuesto por los estoicos de enunciados cuyo sujeto gramatical son términos genéricos, y el análisis propuesto por Russell de enunciados como "El actual rey de Francia es calvo". Al final del trabajo se estudian las bases metafísicas de la teoría estoica de (...) los universales y se señala una posible tensión en su interior. The aim of this paper is to offer a new interpretation of the Stoic theory of universals in the light of the debate between nominalism, conceptualism and realism, and to bring out a parallel between the analysis proposed by the Stoic Chrysippus of statements whose grammatical subject is a generic term, and the analysis developed by Russell of statements such as "The current King of France is bald". At the end of the paper, the metaphysical basis of the Stoic theory of universals is examined and a possible contradiction in it is brought out. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta un argumento en favor de la exigencia de verdad de las proposiciones descriptivas de los hechos en controversias que normalmente integran el contenido de las sentencias en el derecho contemporáneo. Esta exigencia es, de este modo, un criterio de justificación de las decisiones judiciales. Para desarrollar el argumento se recurre al análisis de las nociones de “decisión judicial”, de “aplicación” de normas generales y de “justificación normativa”. Se revisan, asimismo, diversas formas del escepticismo kelseniano acerca de esa (...) exigencia de verdad y se sostiene que no son exitosas. (shrink)

The ‘value-free ideal’ has been called into question for several reasons. It does not include “epistemic values”—viewed as characteristic of ‘good science’—and rejects the so-called ‘contextual’, ‘non-cognitive’ or ‘non-epistemic’ values—all of them personal, moral, or political values. This paper analyzes a possible complementary argument about the dubitable validity of the value-free ideal, specifically focusing on social sciences, with a two-fold strategy. First, it will consider that values are natural facts in a broad or ‘liberal naturalist’ sense and, thus, a legitimate (...) part of those sciences. Second, the paper will not reject the value-free ideal; rather, it will construe this ideal in a special way, not casting values aside in sciences, but bringing them to the table and rationally discussing them. Today’s predominant naturalistic view has tended to ‘naturalize’ values by looking for physicalist explanations for them—a move resisted by defenders of normativism in social sciences. At the same time, a contending ‘liberal naturalist’ stream has emerged, claiming that not all natural entities can be explained by the methods and concepts of physical sciences, and favors a non-materialist naturalism which includes mind, consciousness, meaning and value as fundamental parts of nature that cannot be reduced to matter. Hence, it may be posited that non-epistemic values could be ‘naturally’ included in the field of human sciences. (shrink)

Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill supported Abraham Lincoln against what they called the “Slave Power”. Both thinkers fought for the abolition of slavery, and backed the Union in the American Civil War. Marx spread out his opinions on the war and the future social and political changes in several newspapers, while Mill was active trying to persuade the English public realm to prevent England from joining the South. Both shared an historical vision of the future in which human progress (...) was attached to the United States. However, the aims of both thinkers differed in other grounds. Mill was interested in the moral regeneration of American society whereas Marx focused in instilling the revolutionary desire for emancipation among the working classes, starting in the United States. (shrink)

The present paper studies a family of Stoic proofs of the intelligence of the cosmos, i. e. of the thesis that the cosmos is intelligent in the strong sense that it is, as a whole, something that thinks. This family, ‘F2’, goes back to a proof, ‘XP’, found in Philebus 29a9–30 a8 and Xenophon Mem. 1.4.8. F2 infers the intelligence of the cosmos, as XP does, from the general idea that our intelligence proceeds from the cosmos, which is the ultimate (...) cause of why we are intelligent, and the further claim that, since this is so, the cosmos itself must be intelligent. They differ from one another, however, in how they account for. In this paper, I present a new reason for why the accounts are different, that complements those given by David Sedley in a recent and important study of Stoic cosmology. Based on the analogy between intelligence and the four elements, XP puts forward the idea that the intelligence currently present in us is a portion of cosmic intelligence that has separated from it at some point in the past, and that has travelled from the outside cosmos to us. In contrast, the theory used by F2 to explain the generation of human intelligence is grounded not in the notions of separation and locomotion, but in that of transmission of a state. As I argue in some detail, the separation-locomotion model and the transmission model are not only different from each other, but also logically independent from one another: in general terms, neither entails the other. This transmission model used by the Stoics in a proof of the intelligence of the cosmos, I submit, is a major innovation in ancient cosmological and metaphysical thinking. (shrink)

This book develops a philosophical analysis of economic reality and economic science from an Aristotelian point of view. It is the result of many years of thinking and philosophical study about these topics. It differs from other philosophy of economics books as it also deals with economic reality (not only the science) and approaches its subject from an Aristotelian perspective. It differs from other Aristotelian studies about economics as it covers the whole of philosophy of the economy. This book argues (...) why Aristotle's thinking guarantees an appropriate interdisciplinary synthesis. (shrink)

En este trabajo discuto el argumento de Crisipo a favor de la indestructibilidad del cosmos que aparece en Eusebio, Praeparatio Evangelica 15.18.1-3. Este argumento complementa al que aparece en Plutarco, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis1052C, pero descansa sobre una base distinta, a saber, la teoría de la disolución de los cuerpos complejos en los cuatro elementos y la teoría sobre cómo estos últimos se transforman los unos en los otros. Según veremos, existen antecedentes importantes de estas teorías en Anaxímenes y su teoría (...) del cambio. Al final, me ocupo de dos objeciones que los propios estoicos formularon en contra del argumento de Crisipo. (shrink)

This essay starts by accepting Cécile Fabre's argument in her book Spying through a Glass Darkly that intelligence work, including using incentives and pressures to encourage betrayal and treason, can be morally justified based on the criteria of necessity, effectiveness, and proportionality. However, while assessments of spying tend to be based on Cold War notions, I explore it here in the messier reality of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and “new wars.” In addition, I suggest a methodological expansion: adding a sociological perspective to (...) the ethical discussion by exploring the wider effects on society, over longer periods, of the operation of informers. Based on these shifts in perspective and context, I identify additional social harms generated by espionage that should lead to a more restrictive view of ethical espionage than the one emerging from Fabre's work. I argue that many of these social harms are created by the mass recruitment of informers, in asymmetrical conflicts where governments have leverage over suspected communities, and given the (often mistaken) belief that everyone recruited to act as informer is an “asset,” primarily providing advantages. I argue, therefore, that the decisive issue is one of scale: many of the ethical problems created by espionage in these contexts result from the widespread systematic recruitment of informers, while small-scale, targeted, ad-hoc recruitment can more easily avoid such problems. (shrink)