David Lewis objected to theories that posit necessary connections between distinct entities and to theories that involve a magical grasping of their primitives. In On the Plurality of Worlds, Lewis objected to nondescript ersatzism on these grounds. The literature contains several reconstructions of Lewis’ critique of nondescript ersatzism but none of these interpretations adequately address his main argument because they fail to see that Lewis’ critique is based on broader methodological considerations. I argue that a closer look at his methodology (...) reveals the broader objection he presented against nondescript ersatzism. This objection, I further argue, remains a challenge for the ersatzer who posits structure-less entities as possible worlds. (shrink)

As a patient approaches death, family members often are asked about their loved one’s preferences regarding treatment at the end of life. Advance care directives may provide information for families and surrogate decision makers; however, less than one-third of Americans have completed such documents. As the U.S. population continues to age, many surrogate decision makers likely will rely on other means to discern or interpret a loved one’s preferences. While many surrogates indicate that they have some knowledge of their loved (...) one’s preferences, how surrogates obtain such knowledge is not well understood. Additionally, although research indicates that the emotional burden of end-of-life decision making is diminished when surrogates have knowledge that a loved one’s preferences are honored, it remains unclear how surrogates come to know these preferences were carried out. The current study examined the ways that next of kin knew veterans’ end-of-life preferences, and their ways of knowing whether those preferences were honored in Veteran Affairs Medical Center inpatient settings. (shrink)

Few people would care to deny, whether within India or without, that Buddha is the greatest Indian of all times. Whether from the standpoint of the purity of his life, the daring originality and novelty of his thought, or the extent of his influence in shaping the culture of the world, it would be hard to beat the record of Buddha. Even making every allowance for the common idea that no man is a prophet in his own land, it is (...) difficult to believe that for the last thousand years Buddha has been practically an exile from the land of his birth. It is nothing short of an irony of history, and nothing short of a tragedy for India, that the great unifying force that he represented in his time and does represent even to-day has been allowed to run waste and the great moral stamina that he sought to supply failed in its historic mission. (shrink)

I suppose the most obvious difference in fact between dreams and waking life is the chaotic nature of the former. But this somehow seems to be a mere contingency. Some of our dreams are more contingent than others, and it seems hard to impose any upper limit of coherence on them. Also it is usually after we wake up that they seem incoherent. Similarly many dreams are largely matters of sensation and emotion, mood and atmosphere, with little or no reasoning (...) in them; but this again is contingent, and dreams vary; Professor Broad, 56-57) relates a quite detailed scientific experiment which he carried out in a dream. (shrink)

Humans have engaged in artistic and aesthetic activities since the appearance of our species. Our ancestors have decorated their bodies, tools, and utensils for over 100,000 years. The expression of meaning using color, line, sound, rhythm, or movement, among other means, constitutes a fundamental aspect of our species' biological and cultural heritage. Art and aesthetics, therefore, contribute to our species identity and distinguish it from its living and extinct relatives. Science is faced with the challenge of explaining the natural foundations (...) of such a unique trait, and the way cultural processes nurture it into magnificent expressions, historically and ethnically unique. How do the human mind and brain bring about these sorts of behaviors? What psychological and neural processes underlie the appreciation of painting, music, and dance? How does training modulate these processes? Are humans the only species capable of aesthetic appreciation, or are other species endowed with the rudiments of this capacity? Empirical examinations of such questions have a long and rich history in the discipline of psychology, the genesis of which can be traced back to the publication of Gustav Theodor Fechner's Vorschule der Aesthetik in 1876, making it the second oldest branch in experimental psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Aesthetics brings together leading experts in psychology, neuroimaging, art history, and philosophy to answer these questions. It provides the most comprehensive coverage of the domain of empirical aesthetics to date. With sections on visual art, dance, music, and many other art forms and aesthetic phenomena, the breadth of this volume's scope reflects the richness and variety of topics and methods currently used today by scientists to understand the way our mind and brain endow us with the faculty to produce and appreciate art and aesthetics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 34.2 (2006) 62-84 [Access article in PDF] Georg Lukács Magus Realismus? Sara Nadal-Melsió The reception of Georg Lukács's theorizing of realist narratives has been complicated and controversial, often relying on an artificial division of Lukács's oeuvre. On the one hand, the widely admired History and Class Consciousness stands as the mouthpiece for anything philosophical or political in Lukács. On the other, one finds a generalized dismissal of (...) Lukács's "reactionary" defenses of realism. But the role of realism in Lukács's oeuvre cannot be trivialized or rejected as "doctrinaire" or "outmoded"—two of the most common charges against Lukácsean literary criticism—without damaging an understanding of his political and philosophical contributions to Western Marxism.I thus propose a revisiting of Lukács's writings on literature during the 1930s. I consider them to be a development of the philosophical insights of History and Class Consciousness and as a corrective to the aesthetic theory of Theory of the Novel in the form of an axiological understanding of literary change and preservation. One cannot accept the outcome of Lukács's philosophical investigations and dismiss his often authoritarian radical advocacy of realism—for they are mutually inclusive. Lukács's project takes shape through his use of the aesthetic to salvage ideological and epistemological issues raised by his critical adoption of Marxism. What I propose is similar to what has become a trademark of Gramscian studies.1 In the same way that one does not begin an analysis of Gramsci's philosophy without addressing his molding and obsessive study of the Italian language, his twisting and redefinition of words ("hegemony," "intellectual," and so on), one should not, indeed cannot, embark on the exegesis of Lukács's philosophical writing without addressing his use of literary criticism and of nineteenth-century realism to rethink philosophical Marxism and to rename some of his terminology; "naturalism" and "realism" became, from the 1930s onward, codewords for a reworking of his earlier "reification" and "totality." After History and Class Consciousness, the superstructure, culture, and its changing values, not only became the condition of possibility for a Lukácsean/Marxist philosophy but, in a move against determinism, the only, quasi-utopian transformative force able to explain Marxism to itself. After Lukács, it comes as no surprise that Marx's last, never completed, project was a critical study of Balzac's La comédie humaine.I will focus on two moments of Lukács's "turn to literature": his famously controversial intervention in the Expressionism Debate and his less prominent entrance into the realm of "literary criticism," the essays "Narrate or Describe" and "The Intellectual Physiognomy in Characterization. " I will also read Lukács's failure to theorize contemporary realism in terms of his own insights regarding the historicity of subjective standpoints. Paradoxically, this failure functions as an example and proof of the Lukácsean narrative of literary change.While the first critical work to acknowledge the philosophical implications of Lukács's defense of realism, Fredric Jameson's 1971 Marxism and Form, remains [End Page 62] widely read, it did not bring about a reconsideration of Lukács's literary criticism. It is Jameson's contention that Lukács's entire oeuvre can be accounted for through an epistemology of narrative. Thus, Lukács's numerous writings emerge as part of a coherent and single-minded project. According to Jameson, "Lukács's work may be seen as a continuous and lifelong meditation on narrative, on its basic structures, its relationship to the reality it expresses, and its epistemological value when compared with other, more abstract and philosophical, modes of understanding" [163].2 If one agrees with Jameson's statement, one is also forced to acknowledge the sustained coherence of the Lukácsean project together with its enforced complexity. The chronology of such a lifelong project (1885–1971) began with the ambiguities of "fin-de-siècle" aestheticism and ended shortly after May '68. Lukács's recantations, revisions, and contradictions play against the backdrop of historical and institutional pressure. Yet one cannot help... (shrink)

ABSTRACTDescartes did not use the terms ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities, but a similar distinction emerges from his texts: certain qualities of objects are intrinsic pr...

Las siguientes líneas presentan un análisis de las connotaciones de la utopía, a través del cual es posible un cuestionamiento certero acerca de si, hasta el momento, por medio de lo institucional/académico, se ha estado considerando, y con ello, proyectándose didácticamente, una utopía que, lejos de la ambigüedad, no es el mismo sueño para estamentos privilegiados que para la mayoría de las personas que no ostentan dichos privilegios. Desde el pasado a la más rabiosa actualidad, se trata de mostrar cómo (...) hay otra forma de enseñar la utopía, que puede ser un pensamiento racional, y algo más pragmático, de lo que quizás nos inculcaron, algo con una vigencia y una potencialidad que diversas fuentes, desde la investigación social, y educativa, pueden atestiguar. (shrink)

La autora presenta al “Estado de derecho” como un campo de lucha. Desde arriba, se busca conferirle ese estatuto al nuevo poder mundial, correlato y brazo político-militar de las burocracias privadas. Es la estrategia de globalización –que reduce la democracia a puro procedimentalismo formalista- y que no puede sino generar desde abajo resistencias mundiales: resistencias programáticas y organizadas que buscan construir otro mundo posible, por un lado, y por otro lado resistencias irracionales, sin capacidad de articulación política. La autora recorre (...) el pensamiento de Hinkelammert, destacando la crítica que elabora al fetichismo de la mercancía, del dinero y del capital y su planteamiento de un conflicto entre rebelión legítima frente a la ley despótica e idolatría de la ley. (shrink)

El trabajo analiza la obra del filósofo Arturo Andrés Roig, recientemente fallecido, desde la perspectiva del humanismo latinoamericano, corriente de pensamiento crítico de fuerte presencia en América Latina. El núcleo de la propuesta teórica de Roig está dado por la problemática del sujeto o, como ..

Apartir de una revisión de la definición tradicional de la filosofía y de una crítica de sus supuestos, el artículo propone una formulación del quehacer filosófico latinoamericano acorde a las exigencias de una agenda teórica y práctica actual. A continuación se valora el aporte de Franz Hinke..

Based on a crit i cal analisis of the fun da - men tal works of Hinkelammert, an at tempt is made to sys tem atize his eth i cal and po lit i cal thoughts in ref er ence to the op po si tion be tween “global mar ket/civic cit i zen ship”. The ef fort to re cover the lib er tar ian potencial in ..

El trabajo propone un recorrido por la historia hispanoamericana del siglo XIX, a fin de recuperar para la reflexión presente las formulaciones más destacadas de la vastísima tradición intelectual de la unidad continental, así como también los antecedentes, menos prolíficos pero no por ello menos importantes, de una teoría de la democracia en un sentido amplio, popular y participativo. El cruce de estas dos vertientes del pensamiento de nuestra América constituye en conjunto un programa identitario que todavía nos interpela y (...) que tiene mucho para aportar a los proyectos presentes y futuros de la patria latinoamericana. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFrom a specific point of view, mediation is the process whereby a third party helps to change their attitude from an adversarial one to a collaborative one which allows them to work together in finding and creating solutions to their conflict. Mediation deals with conflict from its own perspective and it has its own status as a dispute resolution process in the systems of justice, where it is recognized. The Philosophy of Mediation has been developing as a discipline, which analyses (...) the status of mediation as knowledge. It studies its nature, its constituent elements, its ontological foundations and its connection with other disciplines. This article argues that it is possible to include certain basic principles of the philosophy of María Zambrano in the Philosophy of Mediation framework. Those elements are essential for understanding the world of human conflict since they provide a new perspective from which to see dispute resolution methodologies. They can be summed up in the idea of including the hidden as the substrate of the visible, revealing the underlying forces of human existence. Within the context of the mediation, the understanding of these forces could help to resolve conflicts. (shrink)

Dla zrozumienia Poppera teorii języka sprawy najważniejsze wydaje się być nie tyle jej właściwa rekonstrukcja, gdyż zrekonstruowanie ogólnych poglądów Poppera na język nie jest trudne, ile uchwycenie specyficznego dla Poppera stosunku do języka, który nadał szczególne piętno zarówno jego wczesnej filozofii nauki, wyłożonej w latach trzydziestych, jak i późniejszym koncepcjom metafizycznym i epistemologicznymi. W przeciwieństwie do poglądów na ewolucję i funkcję języka ów ogólny sposób traktowania języka pozostaje w filozofii Poppera w sferze założeń, w dodatku nie zawsze wyłożonych expressis verbis, (...) a mieć można obawy, czy do końca uświadamianych. Wiele do życzenia pozostawia również precyzja znaczeń niektórych używanych przez Poppera terminów co dodatkowo komplikuje sprawy. (shrink)

The Routledge International Handbook of Neuroaesthetics is an authoritative reference work that provides the reader with a wide-ranging introduction to this exciting new scientific discipline. The book brings together leading international academics to offer a well-balanced overview of this burgeoning field while addressing two questions central to the field; how the brain computes aesthetic appreciation for sensory objects, and how is art created and experienced.

Human aesthetic experiences are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endowment (Ayala 2010). As part of the scientific efforts to characterize the biological foundations of our human uniqueness, recently there has been (...) interest in the brain’s underpinnings of aesthetic reactions to art on the one hand, and in the neural correlates of moral judgment and decision-making on the other (Greene and Paxton .. (shrink)

El libro de Michael Heinrich tiene el doble mérito de presentar una mediación de la obra cumbre de Karl Marx, redactada en un lenguaje claro y accesible, y de proponer, al mismo tiempo, una interpretación densa y erudita del famoso texto. El autor no sólo evita las simplificaciones y los esquematismos, sino que incluso se interna por las complejidades y paradojas del pensamiento marxiano, que han dado origen a discusiones y polémicas nunca saldadas, y nos ofrece siempre una posición argumenta..

In August 2011 Edward Fullbrook, the editor of the Real World Economics Review and the driving force behind the World Economics Association (WEA), asked the three of us to take on editorial roles in the newly established philosophy, methodology and history of thought journal of the association. The project was, to say the least, rather daunting. We had a document outlining the scope and editorial policies of the would-be journal written by Grazia Ietto-Gillies. Grazia had also developed the proposed Open (...) Peer Discussion Forum (OPD), based on her research into similar peer review systems used within the natural sciences. However, we had never met each other nor worked together and we lacked administrative and technical support. In addition, scheduling editorial meetings between Rome, Mexico City and Oxford proved rather challenging! Nevertheless, a combination of belief in the cause of the WEA and foolhardiness led us all to accept. The first issue of the journal is the fruit of our collective labours as well as those of our authors. In addition, both Jake McMurchie (the association's IT expert) and Jane Spurr (our production and layout expert) have been instrumental in the process of transforming a vibrant open peer discussion into six conventional journal articles. (shrink)

A Latin-American/Spanish edition of the medieval classic. Boethius' treatises on meditation and beauty are still valid to this very day.

Trope theory is a leading metaphysical theory in analytic ontology. One of its classic statements is found in the work of Donald C. Williams who argued that tropes qua abstract particulars are the very alphabet of being. The concept of an abstract particular has been repeatedly attacked in the literature. Opponents and proponents of trope theory alike have levelled their criticisms at the abstractness of tropes and the associated act of abstraction. In this paper I defend the concept of a (...) trope qua abstract particular by rejecting arguments that purport to show that tropes should not be understood as abstract and by arguing that the abstractness of tropes plays an indispensable role in one of our more promising trope-theoretic analyses of universals and of concrete objects. (shrink)

The concept of instantiation is realized differently across a variety of metaphysical theories. A certain realization of the concept in a given theory depends on what roles are specified and associated with the concept and its corresponding term as well as what entities are suited to fill those roles. In this paper, the classic realization of the concept of instantiation in a one-category ontology of abstract particulars or tropes is articulated in a novel way and defended against unaddressed objections.

Truthmaker monism is the view that the one and only truthmaker is the world. Despite its unpopularity, this view has recently received an admirable defence by Schaffer :307–324, 2010b). Its main defect, I argue, is that it omits partial truthmakers. If we omit partial truthmakers, we lose the intimate connection between a truth and its truthmaker. I further argue that the notion of a minimal truthmaker should be the key notion that plays the role of constraining ontology and that truthmaker (...) monism is not necessary for an appropriate solution to the problem of finding truthmakers for negative truths. I conclude that we should reject truthmaker monism once and for all. (shrink)

Structural universals are a kind of complex universal. They have been put to work in a variety of philosophical theories but are plagued with problems concerning their compositional nature. In this article, we will discuss the following questions. What are structural universals? Why believe in them? Can we give a consistent account of their compositional nature? What are the costs of doing so?

The revival of analytic metaphysics in the latter half of the twentieth century is typically understood as a consequence of the critiques of logical positivism, Quine’s naturalization of ontology, Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, clarifications of modal notions in logic, and the theoretical exploitation of possible worlds. However, this explanation overlooks the work of metaphysicians at the height of positivism and linguisticism that affected metaphysics of the late twentieth century. Donald C. Williams is one such philosopher. In this paper I explain (...) how Williams’s fundamental ontology and philosophy of time influenced in part the early formation of David Lewis’s metaphysics. Thus, Williams played an important role in the revival of analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

Saunders Mac Lane has drawn attention many times, particularly in his book Mathematics: Form and Function, to the system of set theory of which the axioms are Extensionality, Null Set, Pairing, Union, Infinity, Power Set, Restricted Separation, Foundation, and Choice, to which system, afforced by the principle, , of Transitive Containment, we shall refer as . His system is naturally related to systems derived from topos-theoretic notions concerning the category of sets, and is, as Mac Lane emphasises, one that is (...) adequate for much of mathematics. In this paper we show that the consistency strength of Mac Lane's system is not increased by adding the axioms of Kripke–Platek set theory and even the Axiom of Constructibility to Mac Lane's axioms; our method requires a close study of Axiom H, which was proposed by Mitchell; we digress to apply these methods to subsystems of Zermelo set theory , and obtain an apparently new proof that is not finitely axiomatisable; we study Friedman's strengthening of , and the Forster–Kaye subsystem of , and use forcing over ill-founded models and forcing to establish independence results concerning and ; we show, again using ill-founded models, that proves the consistency of ; turning to systems that are type-theoretic in spirit or in fact, we show by arguments of Coret and Boffa that proves a weak form of Stratified Collection, and that is a conservative extension of for stratified sentences, from which we deduce that proves a strong stratified version of ; we analyse the known equiconsistency of with the simple theory of types and give Lake's proof that an instance of Mathematical Induction is unprovable in Mac Lane's system; we study a simple set theoretic assertion—namely that there exists an infinite set of infinite sets, no two of which have the same cardinal—and use it to establish the failure of the full schema of Stratified Collection in ; and we determine the point of failure of various other schemata in . The paper closes with some philosophical remarks. (shrink)

In the ontology of music the Aristotelian theory of musical works is the view that musical works are immanent universals. The Aristotelian theory (hereafter Musical Aristotelianism) is an attractive and serviceable hypothesis. However, it is overlooked as a genuine competitor to the more well-known theories of Musical Platonism and nominalism. Worse still, there is no detailed account in the literature of the nature of the universals that the Aristotelian identifies musical works with. In this paper, I argue that the best (...) version of Musical Aristotelianism identifies musical works with structural universals. I first motivate the view by outlining its explanatory benefits. I then argue that Musical Aristotelianism is preferable to Musical Platonism and present a novel account of musical works as structural universals by developing D. M. Armstrong’s theory of structural universals. I discuss the consequences of Musical Aristotelianism with respect to on-going issues in debates about musical works and defend the view against an influential objection, concluding that Musical Aristotelianism is a genuine competitor in debates about the nature of musical works. (shrink)