This article explores the theme of presence of the psychotherapist, a concept that has been of particular interest in humanistic and existential approaches. Presence was first associated with the humanistic attitudes of the practitioner and the way he or she embodies these attitudes in the here and now of the encounter. Since the publication in 2002 of Geller and Greenberg’s model of therapeutic presence, several quantitative studies have explored the relationship between the therapist’s perception of presence and other dimensions of (...) the therapeutic process. However, qualitative explorations still seem necessary to account for the complexity of the therapist’s presence and its role in the therapeutic process. Centered on the therapist’s perspective, we use an idiographic methodology and refer to lived clinical experience to highlight the dimension of sensory contact that, through the body, actualize a connection to a virtual space of the therapeutic relationship. We so describe how a therapist can achieve an embodied processing to clinical material from what we describe as “traces of presence” of the other. From this point of view, the patient’s presence incorporates itself into the therapist’s experience and the therapist can perceive aspects of this presence in a tangible, concrete, and useful way. The therapist’s presence thus takes on a meaning that is not reduced to what the patient will perceive and interpret of his or her attitude. It becomes the main material from which the therapist orients his or her clinical interventions. (shrink)

We propose a model of planned corporate environmental behaviour that emphasises the values and attitudes of managers towards the environment, environmental intentions and the context in which these intentions are formed and translated into actual performance. In particular, we focus on the extent to which environmentally reactive managers influence the environmental performance of their firms. We identify the factors that mitigate or accentuate the effects of environmental “reactivism”—i.e. a mind-set shared by those who assign to the state the responsibility of (...) protecting the environment. We generate a series of hypotheses and use structural equation modelling to test them in the context of a unique dataset of Argentinean firms. Our system’s approach to corporate environmental behaviour explains approximatively 70 % of the variation in reported environmental performance across firms while highlighting elements of the model that may potentially be influenced by policy. Amongst other things, our empirical results suggest that stakeholder pressures can be an effective tool in the development of pro-environmental attitudes and in so doing offset some of the negative effects of environmental reactivism on environmental performance. Our paper highlights a number of other important implications for the design and implementation of environmental policies that account for human managerial determinants of corporate behaviour and social factors. (shrink)

Recensión de N. Belloso Martín, El control democrático del poder judicial en España, Universidad de Burgos/ Moinho do Verbo, Curitiba, 1999.

La participación ciudadana en España ha experimentado en las últimas décadas un profundo proceso de cambio. La globalización y un estilo de vida individualista y pasivo han debilitado la sociedad civil, promoviendo una participación light. El autor realiza una tipología realista y crítica, y después nos muestra los caminos de una acción colectiva renovada, eficaz dentro de un mundo nuevo que se nos presenta con muchos retos y dificultades y en el que no podemos permanecer sin hacer nada.The civil participation (...) in Spain has experienced in the last decades a deep process of change. The globalization and an individualistic and passive way of life have debilitated the civil society, promoting a light participation. The author realizes a realistic and critical typology, and later he shows us the ways of a collective action renewed, effective inside a new world that us one presents with many challenges and difficulties and in which we cannot remain without doing anything. (shrink)

El concepto de 'legitimidad' que introduce Weber tiene que ver con el grado de aceptación que los gobernados confieren a sus gobernantes. Filósofos, como Habermas, han contestado esta concepción señalando que la aceptación debe estar enmarcada en un sistema normativo que garantice los derechos en uso de esa comunidad y estipule las reglas que el gobernante ha de cumplir para acceder al ejercicio del gobierno. Puede discutirse si la concepción de Weber es tal como la describe Habermas o si ella (...) da cuenta de los aspectos que aquí se señalan. Pero el hecho es que el concepto de 'legitimidad' se disocia, entonces, en dos: legitimidad de origen (aceptabilidad) y legitimidad funcional (el objeto del ejercicio del poder y la manera como se accede a este). [Fragmento]. (shrink)

Critical questions have been understood in the framework of argument schemes from their conception. This understanding has influenced the process of evaluating arguments and the development of classifications. This paper argues that relating these two notions is detrimental to research on argument schemes and critical questions, and that it is possible to have critical questions without relying on argument schemes. Two objections are raised against the classical understanding of critical questions based on theoretical and analytical grounds. The theoretical objection presents (...) the assumptions that are embedded in the idea of argument schemes delivering questions to evaluate arguments. The analytical objection, on the other hand, exposes the shortcomings of the theory when critical questions are used to evaluate real-life argumentation. After presenting these criticisms, a new theory of critical questions is sketched. This theory takes into account the dynamics of dialectical discussions to describe the function of critical questions and their implications for evaluating arguments. (shrink)

We present an approach to understanding the origin of inertia involving the electromagnetic component of the quantum vacuum and propose this as a step toward an alternative to Mach's principle. Preliminary analysis of the momentum flux of the classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation impinging on accelerated objects as viewed by an inertial observer suggests that the resistance to acceleration attributed to inertia may be at least in part a force of opposition originating in the vacuum. This analysis avoids the ad hoc (...) modeling of particle-field interaction dynamics used previously by Haisch, Rueda, and Puthoff (Phys. Rev. A 49, 678, (1994)) to derive a similar result. This present approach is not dependent upon what happens at the particle point, but on how an external observer assesses the kinematical characteristics of the zero-point radiation impinging on the accelerated object. A relativistic form of the equation of motion results from the present analysis. Its manifestly covariant form yields a simple result that may be interpreted as a contribution to inertial mass. We note that our approach is related by the principle of equivalence to Sakharov's conjecture (Sov. Phys. Dokl. 12, 1040, (1968)) of a connection between Einstein action and the vacuum. The argument presented may thus be construed as a descendant of Sakharov's conjecture by which we attempt to attribute a mass-giving property to the electromagnetic component—and possibly other components—of the vacuum. In this view the physical momentum of an object is related to the radiative momentum flux of the vacuum instantaneously contained in the characteristic proper volume of the object. The interaction process between the accelerated object and the vacuum (akin to absorption or scattering of electromagnetic radiation) appears to generate a physical resistance (reaction force) to acceleration suggestive of what has been historically known as inertia. (shrink)

This paper articulates and argues for the plausibility of the Presentation View of Perceptual Knowledge, an under-discussed epistemology of perception. On this view, a central epistemological role of perception is that of making subjects aware of their surroundings. By doing so, perception affords subjects with reasons for world-directed judgments. Moreover, the very perceived concrete entities are identified as those reasons. The former claim means that the position is a reasons-based epistemology; the latter means that it endorses a radically anti-psychologist conception (...) of reasons. First, I articulate and motivate the Presentation View. Then, I defend the view from three incarnations of a major objection levelled within the ranks of reasons-based epistemologies: McDowell’s version of the accusation that a view like this falls prey to the Myth of the Given. I argue that all three incarnations fail to show the Presentation View to be inadequate. The first version holds that a general characterization of the Myth clearly shows that it is an incoherent idea. The second version holds that endorsing the Myth makes it impossible to construe non-conceptual items as items that can stand in rational relations to judgements and beliefs. The third version holds that endorsing the Myth leads to a conception where perceptual experiences merely cause, but do not warrant, our perceptual beliefs and judgements. I explain in detail how the Presentation View has the elements to respond to each of these objections. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to look at some existing methods of semantic information quantification and suggest some alternatives. It begins with an outline of Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s theory of semantic information before going on to look at Floridi’s theory of strongly semantic information. The latter then serves to initiate an in-depth investigation into the idea of utilising the notion of truthlikeness to quantify semantic information. Firstly, a couple of approaches to measure truthlikeness are drawn from the literature and (...) explored, with a focus on their applicability to semantic information quantification. Secondly, a similar but new approach to measure truthlikeness/information is presented and some supplementary points are made. (shrink)

The papers presented in this volume in honour of Alfonso Maieru cover some of the major topics of his research area. The institutional and intellectual life of university training in the Middle Ages, including the peculiar tradition of related works, is the focus of the papers by Louis Jacques Bataillon, William J. Courtenay, Jacqueline Hamesse, Zenon Kaluza, Loris Sturlese and Olga Weijers. Three papers, by Jacopo Costa, Pasquale Porro and Thomas Ricklin, deal with philosophical problems in Dante'sMonarchia and Convivio. (...) The complex interrelations between logic and the other main aspects of medieval philosophy, with a particular attention to theology, metaphysics and natural philosophy, are the core of the other papers by Stefano Caroti, Sten Ebbesen, Barbara Faes de Mottoni, Simo Knuuttila, Alain de Libera, Olga Lizzini, Costantino Marmo, Claude Panaccio, Ivan Bendwell, Irene Rosier-Catach, Lambert Marie de Rijk, Leonardo Sileo, Luisa Valente, and Albert Zimmermann. A larger number of friends and colleagues of Alfonso Maieru than those who appear as contributors and editors of this volume have warmly welcomed its publication. We could say, therefore, that it is absolutely contingent that the Editors are: Stefano Caroti (Universita degli Studi di Parma), Ruedi Imbach (Universite de Paris-Sorbonne), Zenon Kaluza (Centre d'Etudes des Religions du Livre, C.N.R.S), Loris Sturlese (Universita degli Studi di Lecce) and Giorgio Stabile(Universita degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"). (shrink)

La filosofía helenística es producto de un curso impartido en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UNAM por Alfonso Reyes, quien a su gran formación filosófica unía extraordinaria sapiencia del mundo griego. El libro se divide en tres partes que comprenden desde la filosofía alejandrina hasta el periodo ético y religioso de los griegos, con lo que se completa el cuadro de la filosofía helenística.

Our aim in this paper is to propose an ontology for numbers that is compatible with an epistemology that does not invoke mysterious faculties. On the basis of my explanatory system, we find objects capable of being classified: horses, colors, etc. Once grouped, they can be reclassified in units, pairs, and so on. When they use expressions like “three horses”, in fact, I believe that what they mean is “a threesome of horses”. I call nonmathematical numbers those reclassification, and I (...) suggest that arithmetical numbers could be regarded as pictures of nonmathematical numbers, that are closely connected with empirical facts. (shrink)

Este trabajo es una aproximación a la crítica de Martin Heidegger a la cibernética. La primera parte es una descripción de lo que él escribió o dijo sobre el tema y de algunas nociones cercanas como la de ciencia, técnica y el principio de razón. Para Heidegger la cibernética es una nueva ciencia fundamental que sustituye a la filosofía. Las nuevas ciencias cibernéticas son el derecho, la naturaleza, la historia o el arte. En la segunda parte me pregunto si la (...) crítica de Heidegger sigue vigente. ¿Todavía puede hablarse de ciencia en el mismo sentido que él? Su vigencia depende de si la causalidad todavía es el saber perseguido por la inteligencia artificial. Concluyo que sí, la causalidad todavía es perseguida por razones de utilidad. Por último, presento y dejo abiertos algunos de los temas relacionados con el Derecho como nueva ciencia cibernética. (shrink)

(1999). Planetary culture and the crisis of the future. World Futures: Vol. 54, Challenges of Evolution at Pat I: The Human Factor in Evolution, pp. 297-311.

As third wave feminist philosophers attending graduate schools in different parts of the country, we decided to use our e-mail discussion as the format for presenting our thinking on the subject of third wave feminism. Our dialogue takes us through the subjects of postmodernism, the relationship between theory and practice, the generation gap, and the power relations associated with feminist philosophy as an established part of the academy.

Starting from personal experiences which led him to give up teaching at the University of Venice, Alfonso Berardinelli concentrates on the difficulties and paradoxes of the relationship between educational institutions, on the one hand, and the anarchist and misanthropic character of modern literature on the other. The majority of the `classics' of modern times, from Baudelaire to Kafka, from Tolstoy to Svevo, are `scandalous' even today: one cannot teach them without trying to convey the shock of their extraneousness from (...) the modern world and its culture. Modern literature is, in actual fact, almost always anti-modern, asocial, anti-social, apocalyptic. It is not possible to turn it into a simple `object of study' without betraying it. (shrink)

En este artículo se examinan, en primer lugar, los desarrollos aristotélicos acerca del fenómeno del psitacismo (la repetición inútil de palabras y expresiones), tal y como son expuestos en las Refutaciones sofísticas. Estos análisis son utilizados, en segundo lugar, para aclarar un argumento propuesto en Metafísica B de acuerdo con el cual el ser no es un género.

The climate crisis has implications for the idea of justice. The paper explores this idea to inquire whether climate change wrongs animals and, if it does, how these wrongs are constitutive of an injustice. The first question is answered in the positive to then propose an answer to the second question through an account of climate injustice articulated as a problem of distribution of ecological space. On that basis, the general conclusion of the paper is that at least some harms (...) suffered by animals are constitutive of climate distributive injustices. They are cases of wrongful appropriation of ecological space, that is, of the benefits that the Earth’s life-support systems and its physical resources provide to sentient animals. These are wrongs against animals that should be condemned, prohibited and redressed. (shrink)

The main goal of the paper is to present an objection to the mental files framework. Alongside being representational resources that the mind exploits when having attitudes concerning particulars, many philosophers have explored the idea that singular concepts can serve another function: that of storing alleged information about their referents. In other words, singular concepts are characterized as mental files. Given that the latter implies an overwhelming and unnecessary complication of what’s in our minds, I argue that we should only (...) keep the representational function of concepts. The work files are supposed to do, I claim, can be exported to other aspects of the cognitive system. (shrink)

(2013). The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 197-199.

In this work, the evolution of demographic and health patterns in a Basque rural population from Spain is analysed, as they relate to progress in demographic and epidemiological transition. For this purpose, parochial record data on 13,298 births and 9215 deaths, registered during the 19th and 20th centuries (180090) resulting from cardiovascular diseases and malignant neoplasms (post-transition causes). This last point is in contrast with observations from the first four decades of the 20th century, when infectious diseases and respiratory ailments (...) were determining factors in mortality among this population. The data provided by the study of the variation over time in demographic and health patterns indicate that reducing the risk of mortality is one of the most important preconditions for fertility decline. (shrink)

The focus of this work is the analysis of changes in completed family size and possible determinants of that size over time, in an attempt to characterize the evolution of reproductive patterns during the demographic transition. With this purpose in mind, time trends are studied in relation to the mean number of live births per family (as an indirect measure of fertility), using family reconstitution techniques to trace the reproductive history of each married woman. The population surveyed is a Spanish (...) rural community called Lanciego, located at the southern end of the province of Alava (Basque Country). A total of 24,510 parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials made between 1800 and 1969 were examined to obtain the demographic data set. For each reconstituted family, the variables included in the study were the number of live births per family or family size (FAMS), year of marriage (YEAR), age at marriage of both partners (AMAN, AWOM), wife’s age at the end of marriage (WEND), duration of marriage (MARD), age at first maternity (A1CH), length of reproductive span (REPS) and number of children dying before their first anniversary (MINF). Through a principal component analysis, three factors were found that explained more than 75% of the total variance. Association of variables in factors I and III was particularly useful in characterizing the variability of mean family size in pre-transitional, transitional and post-transitional cohorts. During demographic transition, a decreasing trend is observed in the variables FAMS, REPS and MINF, while variables AWOM, AMAN, WEND and A1CH show a tendency to increase over the 20th century. Results obtained by multiple regression analysis confirm that the best predictors of family size (dependent variable) were REPS and MINF, which between them explained over 85% of the total variation in FAMS (R2=0·853). In Lanciego, birth control seems to be present on the evidence of an increase in age at first maternity and a decrease in age at last parturition, indicating that the beginning of the reproductive span is delayed and its end is brought forward. Interaction between family size and infant mortality is discussed in the light of various hypotheses, including replacement of descendants, the so-called biological effect and the theory of r and k selection. (shrink)

Hay una pluralidad de maneras de leer e interpretar una obra ya clásica del pensamiento filosófico como es la Fenomenología del Espíritu. En este trabajo se busca hacer una recepción de la aventura intelectual que propone Hegel para acceder a la ciencia, girando en tomo a una de sus figuras axiales: la Revolución de 1789. El ejercicio pretende, entonces, esclarecer el todo a partir de una de sus partes y viceversa, según el razonamiento dialéctico. Pero dado que esta lectura se (...) hace desde la actualidad, se esfuerza además en sacar algunas lecciones de la historia a la luz de la reflexión hegeliana. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta en su primera parte un resumen de la teoría de la argumentación de Chaim Perelman y Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. En él se destacan los elementos esenciales de esa teoría: su punto de partida como crítica a la concepción clásica de la racionalidad en Occidente, pensada desde Descartes como idéntica a la razón demostrativa; el origen aristotélico de la argumentación en la retórica o arte de la persuasión; el concepto de "auditorio universal" como destinatario de los argumentos; la noción (...) de "razonable" y su relación con el concepto de lo "racional". En la segunda parte se somete a crítica la posición de los autores frente a la relación entre lo racional y lo razonable. Se defiende la tesis de que lo racional es condición necesaria de lo razonable (cosa que no aceptan Perelman y Olbrechts), y para hacerlo, se apela a las ideas de Piaget sobre la existencia de una "lógica natural"; se usa el concepto de cálculo de la deducción natural como una clase de formalismo lógico aplicado a la argumentación; se utilizan las ideas de Apostel y de Grice sobre la implicación conversacional, y se aplica el formalismo construido por von Wright para el análisis lógico de la acción, con el fin de clasificar los tipos elementales de acción argumentativa. (shrink)

One of the global challenges addressed in this article, particularly in the Global South, is the high prevalence of child marriage. The author is situated in an area with one of the highest rates of child marriage in Indonesia. The rationale for selecting this case study is to examine the concept of spiritual freedom and its potential to empower women to challenge the oppression they face with regard to their bodies, rights, and futures. Child marriage should be regarded as a (...) criminal act in the context of Christianity. However, this issue does not appear to be a prominent topic in educational institutions, places of worship, or global discourse. This research employs a qualitative methodology, utilising interview techniques with women who have experienced child marriage. The author then engaged in a process of reflection with feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young, concurrently addressing theological concerns and the role of Christian education. The findings indicate that Christianity and government policy on health are inextricably linked, as health is a divine mandate for humanity to fulfil its responsibilities.Contribution: This article makes a contribution to the field of research in Central Kalimantan and serves to proclaim to the global community that Christian education must address the issue of child marriage as a matter of urgency. (shrink)