This books offers an annotated edition of Nifo’s De intellectu (1503), including an extensive analytical summary of the contents, as well as a chronology of Nifo’s life and works, and a full index of the chapters of this work.

The first modern edition of the Instituzione d’ogni stato lodevole delle donne cristiane (1575), and the Ricordi di Monsignor Agostino Valier Vescovo di Verona lasciati alle monache nella sua visitazione fatta l’anno del santissimo Giubileo 1575 (1575) by Cardinal Agostino Valier (Venice, 7 April 1531 – Rome, 23 May 1606). The Instituzione includes three texts meant respectively for unmarried women, widows, and married women (Del modo di vivere delle vergini che si chiamano demesse; Della vera e perfetta viduità; (...) Instruzione delle donne maritate), while the Ricordi is a book for nuns on monastic life. The texts by Agostino Valier are an important example of conduct literature for and about women in Counter-Reformation Italy. Contents include: a historical introduction to the author and his works; the Italian texts with notes; an index of names cited in the treatises; a bibliography. (shrink)

La filosofía ha reflexionado a menudo acerca de la naturaleza de la burocracia, de su lógica y método, de sus consecuencias. En este artículo se quiere presentar cómo la inimputable y, por ello, irrazonable lógica burocrática se fundamenta en una psicopatológica religiosa, “mística”. Para mostrar esta temática nos servimos de lo que han escrito Max Weber en su Economía y sociedad y Hannah Arendt en Los orígenes del totalitarismo, ya que nos parecen los autores que más han comprendido y señalado (...) el fundamento místico-religioso de la lógica burocrática. Por ello, en un primer punto mostraremos en qué consiste según estos autores la lógica del pensamiento burocrático y, en un segundo punto, señalaremos el fundamento patológico-religioso de esta lógica. (shrink)

One of Thomas Kuhn's profoundest arguments is introduced in the 1970 “Postscript” to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Kuhn is discussing the idea of a “disciplinary matrix” as a more adequate articulation of the “paradigm” notion he'd introduced in the first, 1962, edition of his famous work . He notes that one “element” of disciplinary matrices is likely to be common to most or even all such matrices, unlike the other elements which serve to distinguish specific disciplines and sub-disciplines (...) from one another. This is the element which he calls “values”, which, as he notes , being common to a number of otherwise distinct disciplinary matrices, “do much to provide a sense of community to natural scientists as a whole”. On the other hand, they also do much, and crucially in Kuhn's view, to promote and sustain a healthy diversity among the practitioners who share any specific disciplinary matrix. In particular, Kuhn claims that “individual variability in the application of shared values may serve functions essential to science.”. (shrink)

Deductive inference is usually regarded as being “tautological” or “analytical”: the information conveyed by the conclusion is contained in the information conveyed by the premises. This idea, however, clashes with the undecidability of first-order logic and with the (likely) intractability of Boolean logic. In this article, we address the problem both from the semantic and the proof-theoretical point of view. We propose a hierarchy of propositional logics that are all tractable (i.e. decidable in polynomial time), although by means of growing (...) computational resources, and converge towards classical propositional logic. The underlying claim is that this hierarchy can be used to represent increasing levels of “depth” or “informativeness” of Boolean reasoning. Special attention is paid to the most basic logic in this hierarchy, the pure “intelim logic”, which satisfies all the requirements of a natural deduction system (allowing both introduction and elimination rules for each logical operator) while admitting of a feasible (quadratic) decision procedure. We argue that this logic is “analytic” in a particularly strict sense, in that it rules out any use of “virtual information”, which is chiefly responsible for the combinatorial explosion of standard classical systems. As a result, analyticity and tractability are reconciled and growing degrees of computational complexity are associated with the depth at which the use of virtual information is allowed. (shrink)

Free Public Reason examines the idea of public justification, stressing its importance but also questioning the coherence of the concept itself. Although public justification is employed in the work of theorists such as John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Thomas Nagel, and others, it has received little attention on its own as a philosophical concept. In this book Fred D'Agostino shows that the concept is composed of various values, interests, and notions of the good, and that no ranking of these is (...) possible. The notion of public justification itself is thus shown to be contestable. In demonstrating this, D'Agostino undermines many current political theories that rely on this concept. Having broken down the foundations of public justification, D'Agostino then offers an alternative model of how a workable consensus on its meaning might be reached through the interactions of a community of interpreters or delegates at a constitutional convention. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Ethical thinking about social science research is dominated by a biomedical model whose salient features are the assumption that only potential harms to subjects of research are relevant in the ethical evaluation of that research, and in the emphasis on securing informed consent in order to establish ethical probity. A number of counter‐examples are considered to the assumption, a number of defences against these counter‐examples are examined, and an alternative model is proposed for the ethical evaluation of social science (...) research: a model which can cope with the systemic harms which have been identified. This model is based on John Rawls's idea of original position reasoning and treats social science research as an institutional feature of the basic structure of society. (shrink)

Given the seditious and, at the same time, ineradicable nature of religion, it is up to the political scientist to suggest to the sovereign how to action its two components in order to give them a form that is harmless to the state. For this purpose, Hobbes proposes a radical reform of worship capable of restraining it within the limits of that «Reason dictated to be done by the weak to the more potent men» and, therefore, cleaned of all alleged (...) supernatural, metaphysical and mysterious aspects superimposed on it by theologians. (shrink)

El realismo cristiano y el idealismo griego, obra de Laberthonnière, propone una cuestión que es actual justamente por el hecho que ha sido dada por obvia, censurada y olvidada en el contexto teológico de casi toda la historia de la Iglesia. Es decir, plantea preguntas acerca de la posibilidad y conveniencia del uso de la forma mentis del pensamiento griego en el ámbito de la fe cristiana y de su filosofía-teología. Para Laberthonnière, como muestra en esta obra, es imposible una (...) concordancia entre estos dos pensamientos so pena de una desnaturalización de la misma fe cristiana. Indirectamente, esta obra pone a tema la originalidad del pensamiento de Cristo que es hebreo y no griego y cómo la asunción del pensamiento filosófico griego puede llevar a una desnaturalización del pensamiento hebreo de Cristo y de la fe cristiana vivida en la Iglesia. Christian realism and Greek idealism, Laberthonnière work, puts a question that is now precisely because it has been given by obvious, censured and forgotten in the theological context of almost the entire history of the Church. That is, it puts questions about the possibility and desirability of using the forma mentis of Greek thought in the field of Christian faith and philosophy-theology. To Laberthonnière, as shown in this work, there is an impossible concordance between these two thoughts on pain of distortion of the Christian faith. Indirectly, this book puts theme originality of thought of Christ which is Hebrew and not Greek and as the assumption of Greek philosophical thought can lead to a distortion of Hebrew thought of Christ and the Christian faith lived in the Church. (shrink)

Han intentado siempre hacernos vivir en un zoológico de cuerpos sin pensamiento, en una filosofía de la miseria del cuerpo que ha terminado siendo una miseria de filosofía del cuerpo. Hay que volver a pensar la ley de movimiento del cuerpo, puesto que no tiene - felizmente- leyes naturales, instintos predeterminados, animales. Es más, hay que volver a pensar cómo construir el cuerpo según un método, es decir, por medio de la relación con otros cuerpos pensados y pensantes. Finalmente, habitando (...) el cuerpo podemos habitar el mundo, engendrar un universo de cuerpos pensados y pensantes. (shrink)

El pensamiento cristiano, para el cual la gracia perfecciona la naturaleza y no la destruye, no impide la fundamentación laica-racional, es decir, sin presupuestos teológicos de la libertad. En este sentido, queremos retomar la lección de Tomás de Aquino sobre el acto libre que puede constituir un aporte para este propósito. En el presente trabajo se expondrán las inferencias laicas que se pueden extraer de la génesis y desarrollo de la naturaleza jurídica y económica del acto libre, así como las (...) presenta Tomás. El desarrollo del estudio no repite, sino que prolonga la filosofía de Tomás y, aunque no usa el lenguaje habitual de los estudios tomistas, se mantiene fiel a su lógica y pensamiento. (shrink)

This paper examines cognitive processes from an evolutionary, ecological and systemic perspective. Starting from Darwinian theory and the development of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the reference to evolutionary biology allows a rethinking of minds as complex phenomena "at the crossroads" between organisms and the environments they inhabit and contribute to build. It is proposed that this vision opens a space to overcome philosophical traditions that see in the minds "things" and in cognition a mirroring or representation of the world, to come (...) to an understanding of the former in terms of complex systems and to interpret the latter through the concept of "enaction". (shrink)

La reflexión cristiano-teológica sobre el cuerpo se encuentra casi en sus inicios. En nuestro estudio nos proponemos suplementar la reflexión ya hecha en el ámbito cristiano-teológico latinoamericano aportando algunas sugerencias de cómo podría ser pensado el cuerpo de Cristo y de los cristianos de modo que representen para todos los hombres el evangelio, la buena noticia del cuerpo.

Los cristianos y la teología leen la encarnación de Cristo como adviento e irrupción de Dios en la historia de los hombres. Tomando ocasión de la lectura de Booz endormi de Victor Hugo, Charles Péguy presenta lo que él considera el único reconocimiento del acontecimiento de la encarnación por parte de un pagano. Esta lectura que al mismo tiempo es una presentación de un aspecto del pensamiento de Péguy sobre la encarnación, muestra a esta como una producción que también se (...) refiere al hombre y para cuyo reconocimiento se necesitaría un método teológico que Péguy define como bergsoniano. De este modo, Péguy ofrece interrogaciones y un camino interesante para el pensamiento teológico y de la fe cristiana para volver a reflexionar sobre la verdadera humanidad del hebreo Jesús y sobre el significado que el hombre representa para el mismo Dios hecho carne. (shrink)

La evidencia histórica de los siglos pasados y actuales muestra los límites de una pretendida ciencia pedagógica y de sus métodos de aprendizaje concebidos a priori, es decir, entendidos como una teoría presupuesta. En este sentido, el método educativo propuesto por Lucien Laberthonnière (1860-1932) puede ser reconocido como un aporte notable y aún actual. Por ello, el objetivo de este estudio es, ante todo, presentar el pensamiento educativo de Laberthonnière. En segundo lugar, se quieren ofrecer algunas reflexiones críticas que prolonguen (...) la lección del autor. Si para él la educación es una obra en común entre la autoridad del educador y la libertad del educando, ¿su fin es engendrar sujetos cívicos que estén habilitados para trabajar con el otro hombre, no contra él? En este sentido, se mostrará que su propuesta es la de una educación en la que el método de la relación compuesta entre la autoridad del educador y la libertad del educando sabe engendrar sujetos cívicos con miras a la producción de beneficios universales, es decir, civilizadores. (shrink)

To understand the continuing importance of John Rawls’s work, we need to understand the background, the object and the method of his fifty-year quest as a political thinker. The background to Rawls’s investigation was a (carefully circumscribed) acknowledgement of a certain kind of evaluative pluralism. The object of Rawls’s work was to develop a method of commensuration that would enable us, the free and equal citizens of a democratic society, to identify a common basis for our dealings, in search of (...) mutual benefit, with one another. Finally, the method used by Rawls in his work was broadly, though tacitly rather than explicitly, pragmatist in character, especially in the sense that Rawls was aiming, now explicitly, to develop principles of political association that generate their own support in the attitudes and actions of those whose behavior they are intended to guide. (shrink)

Is expertise in applied ethics compatible with individual autonomy and democratic self‐governance? This depends on whether a ‘tracking condition’ is satisfied for expert claims about issues in applied ethics. This condition requires that, when expert deliberations are properly conducted they ‘track’ the courses of reasoning that the experts’ clients would themselves have undertaken if they had (perhaps subject to certain conditions) considered the matters for themselves. Pluralism of the kind thematised by Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire suggests that the tracking (...) condition typically will not be satisfied and, hence, that whatever experts are praticising in applied ethics they are doing it contrary to democratic principles of autonomy and self‐government. The implications of this result are sketched and some standard objections briefly considered. (shrink)

While putting forward the proposal of a “philosophy of technology in the nominative case,” grounded on the concept of Neoenvironmentality, this paper intends to argue that the best definition of our current age is not “Anthropocene.” Rather, it is “Technocene,” since technology represents here and now the real “subject of history” and of (a de-natured) nature, i.e. the (neo)environment where man has to live.This proposal culminates in a new definition of man’s humanity and of technology. Switching from natura hominis to (...) conditio humana, the peculiarity of man can be defined on the basis of an anthropic perimeter, the core of which consists of man’s worldhood: man is that being that has a world (Welt), while animal has a mere environment (Umwelt). Both man’s worldhood and animal’s environmentality are derived from a pathic premise, namely the fundamental moods (Grundstimmungen) that refer them to their respective findingness (Befindlichkeit).From this anthropological premise, technology emerges as the oikos of contemporary humanity. Technology becomes the current form of the world – and so gives birth to a Technocene – insofar as it introduces in any human context its ratio operandi and so assimilates man to an animal condition, i.e. an environmental one. Technocene corresponds on the one side to the emergence of technology as (Neo)environment and on the other to the feralization of man. The spirit of Technocene turns out to be the complete redefinition of the anthropic perimeter.While providing a non-ideological characterization of the current age, this paper proposes the strategy of an ‘anthropological conservatism,’ that is to say a pathic desertion understood as a possible (pre)condition for the beginning of an authentic Anthropocene, i.e. the age of an-at-last-entirely-human-man. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses Karl Löwith’s anthropological critique of existential analytic that is formulated in his Habilitation thesis (Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen, 1928), where he develops an anthropological counter-paradigm, i. e.Mitanthropologie, in opposition to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Given the extent and the complexity of such a subject, I will limit the present inquiry to two specific topics: theMiteinandersein(Being-with-one-another) and above all theSein zum Tode(Being-towards-death). In practice, I will first explain the basic features of Mitanthropologie together with (...) the crucial critique that it levels atBeing and Time. I will follow by outlining the importance of theTodesfrage(the question of death) within the existential analytic by means of a comparison between Heidegger’sBeing-towards-deathand Kierkegaard’sSickness unto death(Krankheit zum Tode). Finally, I will expound Löwith’s objection toBeing-towards-death, which is expressed in the alternative formulaFreiheit zum Tode(Freedom-towards-death). (shrink)

The relationship between dream content and waking life experiences remains difficult to decipher. However, some neurobiological findings suggest that dreaming can, at least in part, be considered epiphenomenal to ongoing memory consolidation processes in sleep. Both abnormalities in sleep architecture and impairment in memory consolidation mechanisms are thought to be involved in the development of psychosis. The objective of this study was to assess the continuity between delusional contents and dreams in acutely psychotic patients. Ten patients with a single fixed (...) and recurring delusional content were asked to report their dreams during an acute psychotic break. Sixteen judges with four different levels of acquaintance to the specific content of the patients’ delusions were asked to group the dreams, expecting that fragments of the delusional thought would guide the task. A mathematical index was developed in order to compare correct groupings between the four groups of judges. Most judges grouped the dreams slightly above chance level and no relevant differences could be found between the four groups [F = 1.297; p = n.s.]. Scoring of dreams for specific delusional themes suggested a continuity in terms of dream and waking mentation for two contents . These findings seem to suggest that at least some delusional contents recur within patients’ dreams. Future studies will need to determine whether such continuity reflects ongoing consolidation processes that are relevant to current theories of delusion formation and stabilization. (shrink)