América Latina es un concepto, una construcción intelectual que intenta dar cuenta de un grupo de estados nacionales, variable en su composición pero con un núcleo estable, las ex colonias españolas y portuguesas del continente americano. Hoy no hay en América Latina un programa de desarrollo nacional alternativo a la integración al mundo capitalista global. Las experiencias nacionales que la izquierda dirige no constituyen una imagen como la que representó Cuba en los años sesenta, ni desde el punto de vista (...) de los programas ni desde el liderazgo. Lo que se construyó en las décadas de los cincuentas y sesentas fue una conciencia de la relevancia de un proyecto continental que merecía ser respaldado por una teorización del conjunto, la construcción de un objeto de conocimiento al mismo tiempo que un actor político colectivo. Como quiera que sea, esta conciencia se desarrolló alrededor de las instituciones internacionales y nacionales residentes en Santiago de Chile y comenzó a desvanecerse junto con el proyecto de Allende y la Unidad Popular. (shrink)

This essay traces the connected histories of Portuguese and French anthropology in the late nineteenth century. By looking at a Portuguese scientific institution, the Carlos Ribeiro Society, it considers how French race science, known as anthropologie, was adopted and adapted across the European Latin world as a type of “stranger-science.” That is: as an authoritative outsider scientific formation, installed into national terrain in accordance with insider strategies for turning foreign elements into native forms of scientific sovereignty and modernity. French anthropology’s (...) international diffusion becomes meaningful in the light of the Portuguese incorporating what was foreign and modern as a means to generate vitality, and authority endogenously in their own national context. Hence, addressing the circulation of stranger-sciences can pave the way for an original conceptualizing of the transnational life of race science across and even beyond the Latin world. (shrink)

The ἐκπύρωσις, or world's conflagration, followed by the restoration of an identical world seems to go against the rationality of the Stoic god. The aim of this paper is to show that Cleanthes, the second head of the School, can avoid this paradox. According to Cleanthes, the conflagration is an inevitable side-effect of the necessary means used by god to sustain the world. Given that this side-effect is contrary to god's sustaining activity, but unavoidable, god's rationality requires the restoration of (...) an identical world once the conflagration subsides. The paper also deals with the relation between Cleanthes and other early Stoics on the topic of conflagration. In particular, Cleanthes' position seems to differ from Chrysippus'. For in contrast with the Cleanthean god, who causes the conflagration as a side-effect only, the Chrysippean god, according to an influential interpretation put forward by Jaap Mansfeld, causes the conflagration as his ultimate cosmological goal. (shrink)

Using a hypothetical language game as a premise and working through the theory of decryption of power, the book decrypts the pillars of the philosophy of being, mainly Heidegger´s construction of the “ready to hand,” proposing a novel theory of being as difference that is impregnated in politics.

Learning equivalence classes of acyclic models with latent and selection variables from multiple datasets with overlapping variables is discussed. The problem of inferring the presence of latent variables, their relation to the observables, and the relation among themselves, is considered. A different approach for identifying causal structures, one that results in much simpler equivalence classes, is provided. It is found that the computational cost is much higher than the procedure implemented, but if datasets are individually of modest dimensionality, it might (...) be doable in practice. From the point of view of search algorithms for optimizing structure, much of the machinery of combinatorial optimization could optimize the penalized composite likelihood score by enforcing constraints such that the independence models over different subsets of variables agree on the overlapping sets. (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)

This paper focuses on two prominent arguments claiming that physicalism entails reductionism. One is Kim’s causal exclusion argument (CEA), and the other is Papineau’s causal argument. The paper argues that Kim’s CEA is not logically valid and that it is driven by two implausible justifications. One is “Edward’s dictum”, which is alien to non-reductive physicalism and should be rejected. The other is by endorsement of Papineau’s conception of the physical, immanent in Papineau’s causal argument. This argument only arrives at the (...) physical property-property identities by using a conception of the physical that licenses anything to be reductively physical, including putative core anti-physical entities; thus, leaving Papineau’s causal argument and Kim’s CEA without a reductive physicalist conclusion of philosophical interest. (shrink)

In order to achieve a true democracy, this book explores different political and philosophical traditions that do not necessarily seem to speak in unison, notwithstanding their common goal: to propose an alternative to hard-line neo-liberalism, Western hegemony and coloniality.

We study the interconnection between Physics and Mathematics in concrete instances, departing from the usual expression for the Coulomb electric field, produced by a point-like charge. It is scrutinized by means of six epistemology-intensive questions and radical answers are proposed, intended to widen one’s understanding of the subject. Our interventions act along two complementary directions. One of them regards ontology, since questions induce one to look closely at the electric charge, from different perspectives, promoting reflections about its nature and reinforcing (...) the corresponding concept. Formal manipulations rely on the identification of concepts with symbols, and the other direction concerns the spatial extension of mathematical structures. Our questions and their somewhat unusual answers help disclosing information which is not present in many textbooks, and show that Mathematics can be used as an efficient epistemological tool in Physics teaching. (shrink)

This article reflects on a significant dimension of the modern history of race in Europe and the world: the processes of mobility of humans as things that accompanied the scientific pursuit of the immutable racial condition of humans. It asks what it might mean to approach racial conceptions as historically embedded in, and shaped by, racial regimes of mobility, that is, the regimes encompassing the practices and apparatuses for the displacement of human bodies as “scientific things” of racial significance for (...) museum and laboratory networks. The article articulates race in Europe as entailed in a history of national, colonial, and postcolonial regimes of mobility. First, it is suggested that the history of race in science can be understood as the history of regimes of mobility of humans as things. It is then discussed how this history of mobility regimes connects with the making of collectives within and beyond Europe—national, imperial, indigenous, and postcolonial. Finally, the article investigates the contemporary expressions of racial regimes of mobility. (shrink)

Technological advances in the information and knowledge society have influenced and transformed economic, social and educational dynamics. Currently there are many digital gaps related to the access to technology, lack of digital literacy and social use. These gaps vary based on the population ages and become more notorious in elders. This digital illiteracy is making all technological developments of the XXI Century to be underused, not making possible to take advantage of all the possibilities that they offer to our society, (...) in this case, to Colombia. This study aims at analyzing the penetration level and use of handheld digital devices, especially the cellular phone, in adult population, based on the 2016 national survey of life quality in Colombia, elaborated by Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística-DANE, specifically on the module of ownership and use of ICT goods. Results of four age groups are compared: 32 years or under, from 33 to 45, from 46 to 59, and over 60. The total sample is 37047 inhabitants of the Colombian territory, grouped by regions (Antioquia, Bogota, Caribbean, Eastern Central, Orinoquia, Amazonia, Pacific, San Andres, and Valle del Cauca). Data have been analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistical procedures, contingency tables analysis, and logistic regression, in order to identify and know the effect of age on the level of penetration and use of handheld digital devices when comparing results in young adults and older ones. Findings show that young adults use these technologies in a greater proportion when comparing to older adults, showing a significant correlation between age and the increase of the digital gaps of access and social use of handheld digital devices. Even when characteristics like country regions, level of education, and the urban or rural setting are taking into account, the probability of obtaining penetration and use of handheld digital devices decreases significantly when attaining old age. (shrink)

In 2010, American sociologist John Levi Martin asserted that in-depth interviews are inadequate for the study of culture. This sparked a debate in the discipline over the legitimacy of interview methods for researchers of culture and others. Here, we contextualize and contribute to this debate. We review the ideas of Martin and argue that in-depth interviews are in fact valid, well-supported in the field, and useful for investigating cultural phenomena. We build this counter-argument on three angles: epistemological, theoretical and methodological. (...) Given this defense, we also explore how social scientists are implementing innovative ways to complement in-depth interview approaches, such as through social network analysis. En el año 2010, John Levi Martin, un reconocido sociólogo estadounidense dedicó una de sus publicaciones para aseverar que las entrevistas en profundidad eran inadecuadas para estudiar fenómenos culturales. Esto desató un debate en la disciplina respecto a la legitimidad de los métodos basados en entrevistas para aquellos investigadores estudiosos de la sociología de la cultura u otras áreas similares. En este trabajo, contextualizamos y contribuimos a este debate. Revisamos las ideas de Martin y defendimos la idea de que las entrevistas en profundidad realmente son válidas y que existen favorables antecedentes en su aplicación. Por lo tanto sí son necesarias al investigar este tipo de fenómenos. Construimos esta contra-respuesta desde tres ángulos: epistemológico, teórico y metodológico. Haciendo nuestra defensa de este tipo de entrevistas, también damos cuenta de la manera en que científicos sociales implementan formas innovadoras para complementar su función, tal como sucede en el análisis de redes sociales. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a simplified, possibilistic semantics for the logics K45, i.e. a many-valued counterpart of the classical modal logic K45 over the [0, 1]-valued Gödel fuzzy logic \. More precisely, we characterize K45 as the set of valid formulae of the class of possibilistic Gödel frames \, where W is a non-empty set of worlds and \ is a possibility distribution on W. We provide decidability results as well. Moreover, we show that all the results also apply (...) to the extension of K45 with the axiom, provided that we restrict ourselves to normalised Gödel Kripke frames, i.e. frames \ where \ satisfies the normalisation condition \ = 1\). (shrink)

Las investigaciones que Carlos Alchourrón desarrolló en la Filosofía del Derecho se vincularon, desde inicios de la década de 1980, con problemáticas críticas de la Inteligencia Artificial. Su contribución a la construcción de una lógica de las normas se conectó rápidamente con la deducción automática y los Sistemas Expertos Jurídicos. Su preocupación por la cuestión de los conflictos de obligaciones que pueden plantearse en un sistema normativo cuando el juez se enfrenta a la necesidad de emitir un veredicto considerando ciertos (...) hechos, se vinculó, en sus trabajos, con la noción más general de "condicionales derrotables" y con la formalización del Razonamiento No Monótono. Pero su contribución de mayor impacto fue aquella derivada de la búsqueda de una solución al problema de los resultados múltiples que surgen de la derogación de una norma en un sistema jurídico, problema que puede ser visto, en un contexto epistémico, como el de la contracción de un conjunto de creencias. Su enfoque constructivo, que desarrolló con David Makinson, convergió con el axiomático elaborado por Peter Gärdenfors, dando lugar al surgimiento de la teoría de los Cambios Racionales de Creencias, más conocida como AGM, teoría que fue adoptada en IA como un modelo standard para la especificación de las actualizaciones de Bases de Conocimiento, operaciones que, habitualmente, involucran la introducción de una nueva creencia que puede ser inconsistente con las anteriores. ¿Por qué AGM adquirió rápidamente carta de ciudadanía en IA, al punto de que su influencia, medida según la cantidad de menciones bibliográficas del artículo fundacional de 1985, se ha duplicado en la última década? Mostraremos en este trabajo que la teoría apareció en un momento de crisis de la IA y que el alto nivel de abstracción del modelo de AGM era lo que muchos investigadores de la disciplina estaban buscando. El presente artículo, luego de describir la génesis de AGM, realiza un análisis histórico de las circunstancias en las cuales la teoría se introdujo en la IA y una evaluación cuantitativa y cualitativa de su impacto en dicha disciplina. The main lines of research that Carlos Alchourrón developed in the Philosophy of Law, were connected, from the beginnings of the 80' s, to some critical problems in the Artificial Intelligence. His contributions to the construction of a logic of norms were rapidly linked to automatic deduction and the Legal Expert Systems. His concerns for the conflict of obligations that could arise in a normative system when a judge has to issue a ruling taking some particular facts into account were associated in his work with the more general notion of "defeasible conditionals" and with the formalization of Non Monotonic Reasoning. But his most relevant contribution was the one derived from the search of a solution to the problem of multiple outcomes resulting from the derogation of a norm in a legal corpus, which may be considered -within an epistemic framework- analogous to the contraction of a set of beliefs. The constructive approach he worked out with David Makinson converged with Peter Gärdenfors' axiomatic, giving rise to the formulation of the theory of Rational Changes of Belief, which was adopted in AI as a model for the specification of the updates of Knowledge Bases as it usually involves a new belief that may be inconsistent with the old ones. (shrink)

In this article we will argue that given certain conditions for the evolution of bi- ological controllers, these will necessarily evolve in the direction of incorporating consciousness capabilities. We will also see what are the necessary mechanics for the provision of these capabilities and extrapolate this vision to the world of artifi- cial systems postulating seven design principles for conscious systems. This article was published in the journal Neural Networks special issue on brain and conscious- ness.

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)

El presente trabajo examina la naturaleza de la realidad en el marco de la física moderna, incluyendo laposibilidad de la libertad. Adicionalmente, propone una reforma a la metafísica del realismo. Para el realismo,el mundo es como es, independiente de la mente. Sin embargo, la relatividad general supone que la velocidadde los objetos y el orden temporal de los eventos dependen del marco de referencia que se adopte. Qué marco de referencia se adopta responde a intereses humanos, pero sigue habiendo hechos (...) físicos independientes delmarco de referencia: la velocidad de la luz, la distancia espaciotemporal, la equivalencia entre energía y materia,entre otros. Por otro lado, la “interpretación de Copenhague” estima que los estados cuánticos están en una superposición que solo se concreta en el momento de observación: el “gato de Schrödinger” está vivo y muerto, hasta que lo observamos. Sin embargo, se analizan posibilidades realistas menos inverosímiles. La física moderna, determinista o indeterminista, también amenaza la posibilidad de que tengamos libertad. Se analiza y desarrollala compatibilidad de la libertad como autogobierno con la física moderna. A pesar de que aspectos centrales dela metafísica realista se conservan, se concluye con una concepción filosófica-científica del universo que integrea los seres mentales dentro del mismo, lo cual supone una reforma a la metafísica del realismo científico estándar. (shrink)

Una de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil que ha adquirido gran relevancia en el combate a la pobreza alimentaria en el estado de Sonora es el Banco de Alimentos de Hermosillo (BAH). Su objetivo es combatir el hambre y la desnutrición mediante la distribución de alimentos a zonas marginadas. Pesqueira, es una de las localidades en situación crítica de pobreza alimentaria y que ha sido beneficiada por los apoyos que otorga el BAH. Sin embargo, a pesar de que esos (...) apoyos son reconocidos como una ayuda importante en términos de asistencia alimentaria, se desconoce objetivamente su impacto nutricional y económico. La metodología consistió en la tipificación de las canastas alimentarias (CA) durante un periodo de cuatro meses para contrastar su aporte nutricional y su valor en el mercado. Los resultados son los siguientes: de acuerdo a la composición nutrimental de la CA, es posible observar que sólo cubre el 20% de la ingestión diaria recomendada. En términos económicos, las CA han contribuido a que la población beneficiaria reduzca sus niveles de pobreza alimentaria en un 40%, aunque persiste la pobreza en términos absolutos. (shrink)

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)

Se identifica el argumento de que la teoría de que hay propiedades computacionales suficientes para propiedades mentales es una teoría o falsa o vacía, ya que las propiedades computacionales no son empíricamente descubriles, intrínsecas ni causales, como sí lo son las propiedades mentales. Es un argumento que se puede destilar de los problemas que John Searle imputa a la ciencia cognitiva computacional, pero encuentra su correlato antecedente en el argumento que Max Newman utilizó para refutar el estructuralismo físico de Bertrand (...) Russell. Sin embargo, se utiliza la teoría computacional elucidada por la máxima pragmática para argumentar que la ciencia cognitiva computacional no está sujeta a la crítica de Searle, aunque haya sido exitosa la crítica al estructuralismo físico. (shrink)

Comparação entre as duas versões da dedução kantiana dos conceitos puros do entendimento, a da 1ª edição de 1781 e a de 1787. Focam-se aqui principalmente as discrepâncias referentes à dedução objetiva, isto é, aquela encarregada de demonstrar que as categorias são as condições de possibilidade dos objetos de experiência.