Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS, previously known as vegetative state) occurs after patients survive a severe brain injury. Patients suffering from UWS have lost awareness of themselves and of the external environment and do not retain any trace of their subjective experience. Current data demonstrate that neuronal functions subtending consciousness are not completely reset in UWS; however, they are reduced below the threshold required to experience consciousness. The critical factor that determines whether patients will recover consciousness is the distance of their (...) neuronal functions from this threshold level. Recovery of consciousness occurs through functional and/or structural changes in the brain, i.e., through neuronal plasticity. Although some of these changes may occur spontaneously, a growing body of evidence indicates that rehabilitative interventions can improve functional outcome by promoting adaptive functional and structural plasticity in the brain, especially if a comprehensive neurophysiological theory of consciousness is followed. In this review we will focus on the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in UWS and on the plastic changes operating on the recovery of consciousness. (shrink)

The paper explores the effects of social disablement caused by imprisonment, analyzing how this institution can exacerbate existing disability conditions or create new ones. Through a review of sociological literature, it highlights how the prison context can significantly contribute to an additional level of disablement. Considering the incapacitating effects of imprisonment, it emerges that the prison system acts as a “producer” of social disablement, intensifying marginalization processes and increasing societal disparities. This process is fueled by prison overcrowding, loss of employment (...) and housing, suspension of social assistance, and the breakdown of family ties, creating a vicious cycle that generates and reinforces social disablement. The article underscores the need for greater attention and research in the field of disability within the prison environment, considering the dynamic interaction between individual conditions and contextual factors that influence it. Furthermore, it calls for a critical reflection on the social function and practices of prison institutions, proposing a more inclusive approach that reconsiders penal structures and policies to mitigate the disabling effects of detention. (shrink)

Though it is held that some models in science have explanatory value, there is no conclusive agreement on what provides them with this value. One common view is that models have explanatory value vis-à-vis some target systems because they are developed using an abstraction process. Though I think this is correct, I believe it is not the whole picture. In this paper, I argue that, in addition to the well-known process of abstraction understood as an omission of features or information, (...) there is also a family of abstraction processes that involve aggregation of features or information and that these processes play an important role in endowing the models they are used to build with explanatory value. After offering a taxonomy of abstraction processes involving aggregation, I show by considering in detail several models drawn from different sciences that the abstraction processes involving aggregation that are used to build these models are responsible for their having explanatory value. (shrink)

Subjectivism is the mainstream view of practical reason. According to subjectivism, what has value for an agent must ultimately be grounded in what the agent actually desires. Subjectivism is motivated by a conservative view of the scope and extent of practical reason. Against this view, my dissertation argues that any coherent conception of an end must endow practical reason with a scope that goes beyond anything that subjectivism could accommodate. ;Subjectivism correctly grasps that nothing can count as an end for (...) an agent if she is incapable of recognizing it as such; value cannot exist independently of our capacity to appreciate it. I argue that the right conclusion to draw from this is that practical reason constitutes its own object by properly judging on practical matters. The grounds for taking a certain object to bear value lie not in the attributes of a certain object but in the nature of the activity of pursuing ends. According to the concept of practical reason I defend in this dissertation, which I call "the constitutive conception of practical reason", practical reason must set its objects from its own resources rather than find them in an external reality. ;But if practical reason does not track any independently existing objects, how can we distinguish between correct and incorrect judgements? It seems that this conception faces a dilemma: Either the activity of reason is merely a source of formal constraints, or it is an arbitrary, ungrounded exercise. I argue that this dilemma gets its grip on us only from an illegitimate separation of the rational and non-rational parts of human nature. This separation leads us to to think of our cognitive and conative powers as independent. However, the proper understanding of practical reason requires us to see our desires, emotions, etc. as presenting us with appearances of the good, as providing perspectives on something which we represent as the proper object of our pursuit. In forming an overarching conception of the good by reflectively assessing the claims of these different perspectives, practical reason sets its object. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Encomium of Helen must be seen as a speech about the value and importance of wisdom in human life and not as much as one as about logos. Gorgias sustains his vision based on a certain intellectualism which reduces moral faults to intellectual errors. This intellectualist program comprises a rationalization of emotions and a commitment with a certain tradition that discriminates between a minority with knowledge and a majority with only opinion. The consequence for Helen (...) is that she can be excused from her action at the expense of being reproached for her lack of wisdom and is thus relegated to the ignorant majority. Therefore, what is initially praise and an apology turns into severe blame. For this, I argue, the encomium can be qualified as an amusement (paignion). For the Encomium’s listeners the amusement becomes a challenge that demands they decipher the speech’s paradoxical character and appeal to their own wisdom to not be reproached like Helen. Thus the Encomium cannot be seen as a treaty nor as mere joke but rather as an intellectual agôn between the speech and the listener, which serves them “to arm the soul for contests of excellence”, as the epigram dedicated to Gorgias in Delfos says. (shrink)

Qual o sentido da vida? Por que aqui estamos? Será destino? Será escolha? Neste livro, Mario Sergio Cortella e Leandro Karnal, dois dos maiores pensadores contemporâneos no Brasil, se encontram para refletir sobre essas questões que há séculos fascinam e intrigam a humanidade. A ciência, a filosofia, a religião e a arte têm oferecido algumas possibilidades de resposta que os autores discutem aqui. Afinal, pode ser aterrador imaginar que não há um destino, algo que explique a nossa existência. Por (...) outro lado, a ausência de sentido nos deixa livres para ser e viver conforme desejarmos - embora isso implique também responsabilidade. Mas somos mesmo livres? Seja escolha ou destino, seja a vida um drama que vamos tecendo ou uma tragédia anunciada, fato é que estamos sempre a procurar algum propósito que torne a existência mais significativa. Mas o que explica que algumas pessoas tenham mais sucesso do que outras no que fazem? Seria dom, vocação ou resultado de um esforço? Como os autores apontam, talvez a vida seja menos inspiração e mais transpiração. (shrink)

Geometric statements are expressions of natural language with descriptive meaning, since they refer to things such as triangles, and to their characteristics. It is shown, following statements by authors such as Carnap (Philosophical foundations of physics) that geometric meanings are not factual, but mathematical, so that it is not geometric theories that apply, but geometrically interpreted factual theories. Under the Euclidean paradigm, the object of study of geometry was space, but the theoretical pluralism that replaced it resulted in the creation (...) in the discipline of a new plural ontology according to which there are different spaces: Euclidean, hyperbolic and elliptic. Thus, geometrical knowledge no longer seems to be a knowledge of the universal (of universal characteristics of space), but of the particular: of individual spaces. If geometrical theories are mathematical, these questions constitute obstacles both to the thesis that mathematical knowledge is universal, and to the thesis that it is universally applicable. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en analizar la relación Dewey-Honneth con el propósito de profundizar en la comprensión de la idea de > y evidenciar algunos puntos de encuentro que, en el ámbito de la filosofía social, se dan entre la tradición pragmatista y la teoría crítica de la sociedad representadas por John Dewey y Axel Honneth. Se considera la existencia de cierto aire de familia en el entendimiento de Honneth sobre la idea > con relación a las consideraciones (...) del pragmatismo, especialmente las elaboradas por C. S. Peirce y Dewey, en lo que respecta al análisis de la relación entre teoría y praxis. La tesis que se defiende afirma que para Dewey y Honneth, existe una prioridad metodológica de la experiencia para la comprensión de la moralidad en el contexto de la reconstrucción normativa de la misma; dicha prioridad entiende que la fuente de normatividad se constituye en el análisis de las prácticas sociales individuales y colectivas, de cómo se relacionan los individuos y los grupos con las instituciones vigentes, y de la incidencia recíproca de las mismas en su interacción con el ambiente social, económico, político y cultural. (shrink)

Standpoint theory makes the claim that there are social positions from which privileged perspectives on knowledge can be obtained. This article describes some arguments that stake out relatively narrow grounds for the relevance of standpoint theory to science and technology: namely, the oppressed are in a potentially good position to understand social relations. Although these grounds seem narrow and apparently irrelevant to the bulk of the activity of the sciences, recent work in science and technology studies indicates that social relations (...) are topics and resources as much in physics and mathematics as in primatology and psychology. So, if we accept the arguments for standpoint theory, the social picture of science should lead us to recognize the wide-ranging applicability of standpoint theory to science. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta y analiza dos posturas acerca de las representaciones y clasificaciones científicas que Ian Hacking en ¿La construcción social de qué? denomina realismo o estructurismo inherente y nominalismo. La primera sostiene que las divisiones del conocimiento científico expresan o reflejan divisiones estructurales de la realidad a la que se refieren, en tanto que la segunda considera que toda división o estructura atribuida por la ciencia a la realidad se encuentra sólo en las representaciones mismas. Se sostiene que tal (...) criterio clasificatorio resulta pertinente y fructífero para las discusiones actuales acerca de la naturaleza del conocimiento científico, que pone de relieve diversas cuestiones profundas e intensamente debatidas a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía, y que el empleo del término “nominalismo” –a pesar de su polisemia y de ser poco utilizado actualmente en la filosofía de la cienciaes acertado por cuanto la discusión es en gran medida semántica, ya que se basa en dos concepciones contrapuestas acerca de la naturaleza del lenguaje humano. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se aborda el pensamiento de E.M. Cioran desde la perspectiva de un sinsabor vital denominado sentimiento de muerte. El término, aunque aparece solo en su primer escrito, es transversal a toda su obra, puesto que para el autor los seres humanos nos intuimos como posesos de la muerte en cada momento de nuestra existencia. Esto cambia el tono normal de la vida, al poner frente a la persona una realidad carente de sentido y dominada por circunstancias radicales y limitantes (...) como el dolor y la agonía, que culmina en una atmósfera gobernada por la intuición trágica de la vida. ABSTRACT The article addresses the thought of E.M. Cioran from the perspective of that vital uneasiness known as the sentiment of death. Although the term appears only in his first book, the idea cuts across his entire work given that, for Cioran, human beings intuit themselves as possessed by death at every moment of their lives. When persons are faced with a meaningless reality, dominated by radical and limiting circumstances such as pain and agony, the whole tenor of life changes until it becomes a tragic intuition of life. (shrink)

Nos proponemos exponer, analizar y contrastar dos de las principales reflexiones sobre los fundamentos de la técnica en la filosofía contemporánea: Bergson y Heidegger. Para esto, en primer lugar, revisaremos el planteamiento bergsoniano del homo faber, destacando su comprensión instrumental y antropológica de la técnica. Con esto, en segundo lugar, contrastaremos la reflexión del filósofo francés con la descripción heideggeriana de la técnica. Es fundamental realizar este contraste, dado que, si para Bergson la técnica se resuelve en la fabricación instrumental, (...) para Heidegger responderá a un modo de apertura fundamental del Dasein. Finalmente, expondremos algunos puntos de cercanía entre ambas propuestas en el marco de sendas críticas a la ciencia y técnica moderna, destacando su operatividad provocante e irreflexiva. (shrink)

Italian translation by Sergio Cremaschi of ROBERTO MANGABEIRA UNGER, Knowledge and Politics, , Free Press, New York 1975.

Este artículo analiza los aspectos metodológicos principales del proyecto heideggeriano de una ontología fundamental. Heidegger considera que no hay un punto de partida privilegiado, porque todos estamos hermenéuticamente situados. Por ello propone que la investigación filosófica comience justo donde ya nos encontramos. Esto significa que debemos apropiarnos de nuestra situación hermenéutica. La explicación de esta idea mostrará la clave metodológica de la ontología heideggeriana: la indicación formal. Ella habilita un acceso al fenómeno sin abandonar el marco de la facticidad.

Existen conceptos o concepciones sobre la realidad que permean asiduamente el despliegue del pensamiento y la vida en sus devenires cotidianos o fácticos. En este sentido, quien comienza a formarse en los quehaceres de la investigación filosófica, encara con alguna frecuencia la responsabilidad de confrontar aquellas nociones que, bajo la forma de precomprensiones, obstruyen las transiciones comprensivas e interpretativas propias de toda tarea investigativa. En este caso, la posibilidad de distinguir el contenido característico de las ideologías naturalistas, de aquellas otras (...) que le son propias a las filosofías trágicas o inmanentistas, quizá pueda incidir argumentalmente en las tensiones dialógicas que hoy atraviesan a las culturas cuando se pone de manifiesto el deseo de reivindicar posiciones totalitarias o relativistas en relación con esferas de la vida y del pensamiento humanos tan diversas como la política, la religión, el género, la sexualidad, la etnia, la raza, entre otras. La tarea de quien se forma en investigación filosófica consiste, en buena medida, en advertir que los conceptos filosóficos logran vivificarse cuando ceden a la interlocución vital que les proponen constantemente las contingencias propias de todo lapso histórico. En efecto, algunos asuntos se palpan en la atmósfera de un tiempo determinado; también se encuentran en las tramas tangibles de las existencias humanas. (shrink)

Partiendo de la distinción filosófica entre las leyes de la ciencia y las leyes de la naturaleza, en el presente artículo se defiende la indispensabilidad explicativa de las leyes de la ciencia en el campo de las ciencias cognitivas. Se sostiene que las leyes de la ciencia desempeñan un papel epistémico indispensable tanto en el análisis funcional como en la explicación mecanicista de las capacidades cognitivas. De esta manera, se ofrece una elucidación plausible del poder explicativo de las ciencias cognitivas (...) en términos del papel epistémico de las leyes de la ciencia, suspendiendo el juicio, de manera prudente, respecto del controvertido estatus metafísico de las leyes naturales. Se pone en evidencia que tanto quienes defienden como quienes rechazan el compromiso ontológico con leyes causales intencionales presuponen que esas leyes no contribuyen a la explicación funcionalista ni mecanicista de los fenómenos que describen. Sin embargo, en el presente trabajo se argumenta, primero, que el análisis funcional requiere la especificación de leyes científicas no causales y, segundo, que la representación científica precisa de las actividades y de la organización dinámica de un mecanismo se despliega mayoritariamente, en el contexto de un modelo mecanicista, mediante la especificación de leyes científicas. La conclusión es que las leyes científicas (aunque no necesariamente las leyes de la naturaleza) desempeñan un papel indispensable en la explicación en ciencias cognitivas. (shrink)

A guerra civil iniciada no final de 2013 no Sudão do Sul causou, pela primeira vez na história das Nações Unidas, um afluxo gigantesco de deslocados internos para o interior de bases da Missão das Nações Unidas no Sudão do Sul, em busca de proteção. Assim, foram criados os Protection of Civilian Sites. Com a chegada de dezenas de milhares de pessoas em poucas semanas, houve um enorme crescimento nas demandas humanitárias e de segurança. Para prover a necessária proteção, foi (...) necessário o trabalho conjunto de militares, policiais e civis da UNMISS, que será apresentado nesse trabalho. (shrink)

The Doctrina ad Antiochum ducem, incorrectly attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria, owes its importance to the transmission of extensive extracts from the Shepherd of Hermas. Doctrina is transmitted in Greek in two recensions, a brevior and a longa ; however the same recensio longa has been subject to a number of redactional phases. A Latin version edited only recently, the object of this present study, sheds light on these later redactions. Stylistic and historical-literary considerations prompt a dating in the 40’s (...) of the sixth century and assign paternity to Paschasius of Dumium, a monkwho lived in a monastery of the same name in northwest of Braga that was founded at the same time by Martin of Braga. The dating of the Latin version also entails a more precise dating of the original Greek, assignable to the beginning of the sixth century. (shrink)

This text proposes some lines of reflection and action related to a project that links philosophy and childhood, whose pedagogical and investigative activity has been developed in the province of Córdoba, Argentina, for more than twenty-five years. To do this we recover an experience of workshops with children and adults, in a continuous process of reflection on childhood and how children think about themselves. That experience focuses on imagining a particular space and time – living together on an island where (...) adults cannot be found--and from there question the forms of decision making and participation – of political action – that children perform in the territories they inhabit. Here it is proposed that the circumstance of incompleteness regarding issues such as politics and sexuality encompass all age situations and, therefore, it is more appropriate to let ourselves be traversed by restlessness and doubt than to accept a preconceived world in which problems quickly find answers, and what you do not know or cannot be located in a fixed category is unknown, ignored, or remains hidden. We propose to start by not postulating any pre-conceived notions regarding childhoods--thinking of them as hypotheses with unexplored names, bodies and thoughts to get to know. Likewise, it is assumed that reflection on teaching practice relocates philosophy teachers as intellectuals who keep universal explanations in their “professorial pockets,” and reinvent themselves by dealing with specific problems, the small discoveries one makes through exchanges with others--those others that, as in the case of children, there is much to learn about and from. This is the ethical and political task that emerges from a continuous reflection on shared action. Welcome, then, to the island where everything is to be decided and participated in, the island of Serendipity. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic produced immeasurable impacts on the economy, education, and socialization, besides the loss of millions of lives. Thus, there has been an accelerated development of an unprecedented number of COVID-19 vaccine candidates to control the pandemic. The World Health Organization’s emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines still in clinical trial allowed immunizing the population. This paper presents a perspective of the bioethical precepts of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice in the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines. Furthermore, it emphasizes (...) the importance of surveillance at all stages of vaccine development to detect adverse effects and ensure compliance with bioethical precepts. (shrink)

La presente investigación se propone mostrar que la rehabilitación del ser sensible realizada por la filosofía de Merleau-Ponty es comprensible a partir de una dimensión originariamente virtual. Para esto se plantea una primera descripción del ser sensible a partir de su latencia constitutiva, colocando atención al desplazamiento de su definición que va desde lo dado a la percepción hacia lo que viene-a-ser en su transaparecer. De tal modo, el ser sensible no es originariamente la pura presencia, antes de esto el (...) ser sensible se comprenderá a partir de un proceso de diferenciación entre lo visible y lo invisible. Así, el sentido del ser sensible viene a expresión medialmente, en la medida en que lo sensible es una singularización de un trasfondo operativamente virtual. Finalmente, la presencia singularizada en la experiencia del cuerpo propio y de toda experiencia sensible adquiere un sentido a modo de constante actualización de potencias virtuales, que abren al mundo como permanente desborde, desajuste y descentramiento. (shrink)

Los movimientos sociales e indígenas carecerán de fuerza transformadora, en tanto y en cuanto no desafíen el antropocentrismo y las dicotomías esenciales que sustentan el sistema de poder. Deben plantearse una verdadera deconstrucción y reconstrucción de la filosofía que hasta ahora ha permitido la colonización, recuperando las bases filosóficas originarias, en su calidad de diferentes-semejantes a la hegemónica, con su propia ciencia generadora de conocimiento y no de «saber local». La tradición cultural originaria es un modelo de vida alternativo al (...) hegemónico, que podemos adoptar todos los que sintamos la exigencia de descolonizarnos, sin discriminaciones étnicas, y sin, por ello, generar dicotomías entre lo indígena y lo occidental. La condición para erradicar las hegemonías es asumir la diferencia-semejanza como el sustento de las relaciones con otros individuos, con otras culturas y con la totalidad de los seres naturales y cósmicos, y como expresión de un paradigma que no admite centrismos ni jerarquías de ninguna clase. Por tanto, rechaza las relaciones de dominación/subordinación y admite la convivencia en equilibrio, complementación, consenso y respeto a la identidad del otro, que de ninguna manera es nuestro antagónico. (shrink)

These two volumes consist of a critical edition and English translation of the two earliest known Armenian sets of scholia on the Heavenly Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite. Composed in the monastic schools of Erznka in the late thirteenth century, these scholia provide significant insight into how the Heavenly Hierarchy in particular, and Armenian translations of Greek texts in general, were understood by Armenian scholars in the Middle Ages. This editio princeps of the scholia represents a rare critical edition of (...) a native Armenian composition from the medieval period. In addition to the text and translation, these volumes include a textual commentary as well as a critical collation and English translation of a number of scholia from the Armenian version of the Greek scholia on the Heavenly Hierarchy. (shrink)

En este trabajo busco aproximarme a una historia in-finita de la naturaleza en el pensamiento-en-imagen de Paul Klee a partir de una interpretación de los parágrafos 76 y 77 de la Crítica de la facultad de Juzgar de Kant. Para su lectura, propongo considerar como contrapunto uno de los principios del entendimiento puro que Kant considera en la Crítica de la razón pura, este es: el principio de las anticipaciones de la percepción. A saber, el principio que explica la condición (...) de toda sensación. Para preguntar por una historia in-finita de la naturaleza es fundamental atender a la diferencia implicada en la relación entre naturaleza y arte que advierte Klee. Dicha diferencia conlleva considerar el origen de esta historia como fractura por la atención puesta hacia lo que la diferencia, lo cual exige pensar en lo que denomino un cambiode percepción. (shrink)

Güinope, Honduras was the site of a highly acclaimed people-centered development project in the 1980s. The ACORDE/Ministry of Natural Resource/World Neighbors Integrated Development Program (IDP) was unique for its time, since rather than relying on technology transfer, it promoted innovation skills for local generation of responses to needs. Furthermore, it was one of the first efforts in Latin America to employ villagers as principal agents of change. Fifteen years after the inception of the IDP and ten years after its completion, (...) the authors interviewed farmers in their fields and held a series of participatory workshops over eighteen months with ten outstanding farmers who had become project leaders. The leaders identified influential factors behind their involvement and produced recommendations for rural development interventions. Further, a generalized concept map typifying ideal characteristics for farmer promoters was constructed. Recommendations for development agencies centered on project design and implementation, demanding a methodology for strengthening local innovative capacities, participation, and control over resources. Ultimately, the leaders downplayed the role of technologies in rural development and called for special attention to enabling communities to confront external pressures, in particular recent government ``modernization'' policies, that they felt threatened community livelihood. (shrink)

Written in 620 ca., the Pandects of the Holy Scripture by Antiochus, monk of the Great Laura of Saint-Sabas, represents a remarkable example of the kefavlaia literary genre in the Early Byzantine Period. It includes, among its many patristic sources, a series of 26 passages borrowed from the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, as found in their recensio media. The quotations are distributed in 13 of the 130 total chapters of the work. This second part of the study aims to (...) propose the critical text of the Epistles of Ignatius contained in the Pandects and so to cast light on Antiochus’ use of his sources in creating his own work. (shrink)