Resumen: El presente trabajo explora el estatuto del arte en la filosofía de Spinoza, en el marco de la inversión copernicana que da origen a la estética y del barroco holandés. Si bien el pensamiento spinozista se inscribe en la conversión antropológica, en donde lo bello resulta ser un efecto en el sujeto y no una cualidad de los objetos, su comprensión del arte es inasimilable a la “estética” como ámbito diferenciado y autónomo que se consolida en el siglo XVIII, (...) y más bien concibe el arte integrado a la vida y a la experiencia común -a la vez que, en cuanto praxis de origen corporal al alcance de cualquiera, presenta puntos de contacto con las vanguardias históricas del siglo XX-. Spinoza, según se propone en este texto, concibe la producción de “obras de arte” menos como un hecho estético que como una actividad corporal éticamente orientada a la vida buena.: The present work explores the status of art in the philosophy of Spinoza, within the framework of the Copernican revolution that gives rise to aesthetics and the Dutch Baroque. Although the Spinozist thought is inscribed in the anthropological conversion by virtue of which beauty turns out to be an effect on the subject and not a property of objects, its understanding of art is unassimilable to "aesthetics" as a differentiated and autonomous area that it was consolidated in the eighteenth century, and rather conceived art integrated to life and common experience -at the same time, as praxis of bodily origin within the reach of anyone, presents points of contact with the historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century-. Spinoza conceives the production of "artworks" less as an aesthetic fact than as a body activity ethically oriented to the good life. (shrink)

Abrir el postigo y disponer la mirada. De pie, ante el hueco del visillo movido a causa del viento, se malogra el sol en su intensidad por un frío que proviene de las murallas del delicado velo de polvo en los sillones, de la espesura en que todos los vahos de la cocina, sumergen la mañana frente al océano; y entonces, cuando comienzo a aferrarme a los aspectos gratos de la vida costera, a don Marcos Huala le sobreviene una especie (...) de eminente fatalismo; relata que en unos meses, el río no ha arrojado caracoles, puesto que una embarcación japonesa ha violado el funcionamiento de la soberanía local arrastrando desde el lecho del río, todo molusco existente. A la sazón, desplegándose invisible a lo largo de las paredes hasta llegar al extremo de la sala, como un recién nacido, el nuevo campo de fuerzas abre su ojo puntiagudo para anunciarnos la presencia del tráfico transnacional al interior de la comunidad de Chaihuín... (shrink)

Resumen: Esta exposición intenta comprender las formas culturales de comunicación y fijación mnémica en una narración específica que Davi Kopenawa, chamán Yanomami, expone al antropólogo Bruce Albert, en virtud de los modos de existencia amazónicos, refiriéndose en particular a la intensidad de los espíritus selváticos y a la experiencia chamánica con los mundos espirituales. En el contexto de una extensión vegetal dispersa y sobresaliente, afirmamos una sociabilidad cotidiana en el marco de una “ética respetuosa o amorosa” entre todas las formas (...) de vida, expresada estéticamente en formas significantes y transportadoras de emociones desarrolladas por la cosmología amazónica. Para ello utilizamos las nociones que Aby Warburg emplea en su estudio de la cultura de las imágenes, en tanto curso por el que estas pueden entenderse como organismos vivientes susceptibles a transformación, preservando su propia biología en la trasmisión codificada de la memoria.: This exhibition tries to understand the cultural forms of communication and mnemic fixation in a specific narrative that Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami shaman, exposes to the anthropologist Bruce Albert, by virtue of Amazonian modes of existence, especially referring to the intensity of jungle spirits and experience Shamanic with spiritual worlds. In the context of a dispersed and outstanding plant extension, we affirm a daily sociability within the framework of a “respectful or loving ethic” among all life forms, aesthetically expressed in significant and transporting forms of emotions developed by Amazonian cosmology. For this we use the notions that Aby Warburg uses in his study of the culture of images, as a course by which they can be understood as living organisms susceptible to transformation, preserving their own biology in the coded transmission of memory. (shrink)

This article examines Leon Kass's contention that a choice for physician-assisted suicide is “undignified.” Although Kass is Jewish rather than Christian, he argues for positions that most Christians share, and he argues for these positions without presupposing the truth of specific religious claims. I argue that although Kass has some important intuitions, he too readily assumes that these intuitions will be shared by his audience, and that this assumption diminishes the force of his argument. An examination of the limitations of (...) Kass's argument is helpful insofar as it illustrates the real challenge faced by religious believers who wish to defend their beliefs in the “public forum.” For it illustrates that what needs to be made “accessible” is the Judeo-Christian understanding of man and his place in the world. While I do not wish to claim that this task is impossible, I do think that it is far more difficult than most realize. Like all important tasks, however, unless we wrestle with the difficulties it raises, our arguments will strike many as unconvincing. (shrink)

Este artículo describe el método de puesta en marcha del sistema de gestión de listas de lecturas de Leganto a través de tres asignaturas de la Universidad de León (ULE). Éste ha sido un proceso de colaboración entre el personal de la biblioteca y el profesorado, que ha permitido analizar la forma de integrar este recurso dentro del proceso de aprendizaje de nuestros estudiantes. Esta herramienta potencia y dinamiza el uso de los recursos de la biblioteca y facilita la actualización (...) de parte de la información de las guías docentes. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar las características principales de la propuesta estética del director alemán Thomas Ostermeier (Soltau, 1968), poco conocido en el contexto peruano, pero de gran vigencia en el panorama actual de la dirección europea. Ostermeier es director artístico del Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz de Berlín y ganador del Leone d’oro por la carrera artística de la Bienal de Venecia. Asimismo, ha puesto en escena casi medio centenar de obras tanto de autores clásicos como contemporáneos. (...) El presente trabajo está dividido en dos secciones. En la primera se expone el desarrollo de la dirección teatral en Alemania a partir de una revisión bibliográfica, con el objetivo de acercar al lector al conocimiento de dicha tradición, desde el s. XVI hasta inicios del s. XXI, y brindarle el contexto adecuado para la comprensión de la sección siguiente. En la segunda, en cambio, se analiza el caso del director alemán, tomando como referencia la producción crítica alemana e italiana, y los propios escritos del artista. Nuestra hipótesis es que la poética de Ostermeier (nuevo realismo) responde a algunas de las preocupaciones históricas de la dirección alemana: atención a la actuación, metodología inductiva de trabajo y compromiso político. (shrink)

Until now studies on the historical development of atomic spectroscopy have focused on three main aspects-its first applications as a method of chemical analysis, the formulation of spectral laws , and the rise of the old quantum theory. These developments of spectroscopy were based on the same assumption: the invariance of the atomic spectrum after fixing the chemical element . This paper shows that running alongside these lines of research there was another, no less important area of study based on (...) the negation of this assumption. The focus of these latter studies was the behaviour of atomic spectra as a function of different working conditions. English astrophysicist Sir Norman Lockyer played a central role in this research. While studying the effect of temperature on spectral lines and comparing stellar spectra with laboratory spectra, he discovered a new class of spectral lines . In an attempt to explain the origin of these lines, Lockyer, at the beginning of 1897 , hypothesized the 'dissociation' of the chemical elements into simplified forms of matter, named proto-elements. Lockyer's studies are mentioned by Thomson in the paper which introduces the corpuscle for the first time. In this paper we have tried to reconstruct the history of Lockyer's proto-elements and highlight the links between them and Thomson's corpuscle. Our analysis has shown that not only the famous studies on discharges in rarefied gases but also Lockyer's stellar spectroscopy played an important role in the work of J. J. Thomson, convincing him that the atom was complex and divisible. (shrink)

Cowan fails to obtain a magical number of 7 because his analysis is faulty. This is revealed by an alternative analysis of Cowan's own tasks. The analysis assumes a number 7 for adults, and neoPiagetian mental- capacity values for children. Data patterns and proportions of success (reported in Cowan's Figs. 2 and 3) are thus quantitatively explained in detail for the first time.

The purpose of this article is to show that animal rights are not necessarily at odds with the use of animals for research. If animals hold basic moral rights similar to those of humans, then we should consequently extend the ethical requirements guiding research with humans to research with animals. The article spells out how this can be done in practice by applying the seven requirements for ethical research with humans proposed by Ezekiel Emanuel, David Wendler and Christine Grady to (...) animal research. These requirements are i) social value, ii) scientific validity, iii) independent review, iv) fair subject selection, v) favorable risk-benefit ratio, vi) informed consent, and vii) respect for research subjects. In practice, this means that we must reform the practice of animal research to make it more similar to research with humans, rather than completely abolish the former. Indeed, if we banned animal research altogether, then we would also deprive animals of its potential benefits – which would be ethically problematic. (shrink)

Against any obscurantist stand, denying the interest of natural sciences for the comprehension of human meaning and language, but also against any reductionist hypothesis, frustrating the specificity of the semiotic point of view on nature, the paper argues that the deepest dynamic at the basis of meaning consists in its being a mechanism of ‘potentiality navigation’ within a universe generally characterized by motility. On the one hand, such a hypothesis widens the sphere of meaning to all beings somehow endowed with (...) the capacity of moving and/or perceiving movement. On the other hand, through a new evolutionist interpretation of the concept of generativity, such a hypothesis preserves the peculiarity of human meaning, meant as essentially founded on a certain intuition of infinity. Two corollaries stem from this hypothesis: first, religiosity can be considered as a matrix of grammars of infinity, aiming at regimenting its flight of potentialities. Second, non-genetic transmission of cultural information exerts determinant influence also at the level of that very deep mechanism of the human predicament that is the cognitive navigation of motor potentialities. A re-reading of the structuralist epistemology, scientific literature on the nervous cells of jellyfish, and some recent experiments on the mirror neurons of dancers, as well as certain intuitions of Teilhard de Chardin, are the main arguments of the paper. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the dominant approach to explaining intentionality has been a naturalistic approach, one appealing only to non-mental ingredients condoned by the natural sciences. Karen Neander’s A Mark of the Mental (2017) is the latest installment in the naturalist project, proposing a detailed and systematic theory of intentionality that combines aspects of several naturalistic approaches, invoking causal relations, teleological functions, and relations of second-order similarity. In this paper, we consider the case of perceptual representations of colors, which (...) is a challenging case for Neander’s theory. This case will brings out a general methodological concern with Neander’s and other naturalistic theories: these theories generally rest on the assumption that the mental intentionality we are acquainted with in everyday life—the phenomenon exhibited by desires for cups of coffee, perceptual experiences of dogs playing in yards, and thoughts about the weather—is the very same kind of phenomenon that cognitive science studies under labels such as “mental representation” and, in some cases, “information processing.” This assumption is dubious, as the case of Neander’s theory illustrates. (shrink)

The authors' results support a functionalist conception of working memory: a manifold repertoire of schemes/schemas (long-term memory) and a small set of general-purpose “hidden operators.” Using some of these operators I define mental (i.e., endogenous) attention. Then, analyzing two of the authors' unexplained important findings, I illustrate the mental-attention model's explanatory power. Multivariate methodology that varies developmental, task differences, and individual differences is recommended.

Neste artigo,é exposto e discutido o caminho percorrido por Hasdai Crescas , filósofo judeu medieval que viveu em Barcelona, na elaboração de sua prova para a existência de Deus, formulada com base em sua crítica às provas apresentadas por Maimônides no "Guia dos Perplexos". A crítica de Crescas parte da formulação de um conceito geral de existência aplicável tanto ao ser necessário quanto aos seres contingentes. Outro aspecto interessante em seu caminho para a elaboração da prova da existência de Deus (...) é a distinção que ele faz entre quididade e existência no ser necessário, posição única entre os medievais e que introduz um importante aspecto de imanência em sua ideia de Deus, distinguindo-a radicalmente daquela defendida por Maimônides. This article presents and discusses the path followed by Hasdai Crescas , medieval Jewish philosopher who lived in Barcelona for the elaboration of his proof for existence of God, formulated from his critique of the evidence presented by Maimonides in the "Guide of the Perplexed". Crescas's critique starts with the formulation of a general concept of existence applicable to both the necessary being as to the contingent beings. Another interesting aspect of his way to formulate his proof is Crescas's distinction between existence and quiddity in the necessary being, a unique position among the medieval philosophers that introduces an important aspect of immanence in his idea of God, which radically differs from that advocated by Maimonides. (shrink)

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, women’s studies research and theoretical confrontations became common both inside and outside Italian universities, producing a substantial cultural and scientific inheritance. However, the teaching of such content had to follow an accidental path deprived of any institutional visibility. Women’s studies was forced to adapt itself to existing didactic structures, ‘hidden’ inside single courses and single disciplines, without being evident itself in the university. Only in the late 1990s did such studies become institutionally formalized. Nowadays, (...) there is a rapid growth in women’s studies in Italy, thanks particularly to the course,Women Politics and Institutions, created in 2004. In this Open forum, the authors try to suggest what future scenarios might look like, anticipating a not yet realized horizon. (shrink)

The article focuses on past epidemics and previous confinements, looking for the art of journeying through immobility. It rekindles the plague that ravaged the city of Turin in the 1630s, as well as Xavier de Maistre who, confined in the military citadel in 1790, wrote the Voyage autour de ma chambre, perhaps the first example of modern ‘anodeporics’, a neologism to designate immobility travelogues. The essay then explores other pandemics and subsequent attempts at imitating De Maistre. First, it concentrates on (...) Wilkie Collins, the author of the 1852 short story “A Terribly Strange Bed”, who remained stranded with his father William, the painter, at the frontier of the Kingdom of Piedmont because of the cholera that broke out there in 1836. Second, it bears on Almeida Garrett, who resisted the siege of typhus-struck Oporto in 1832-3 and, ten years later, penned another classic of ‘anodeporics’, Viagens na minha terra, also inspired by De Maistre. After consideration, from the perspective of semiotics, of what is needed to “journeying throughout immobility”, the essay ends with a study of the most famous anodeporic tale in world literature, also containing ironic quotes by De Maistre: Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph, named after a fictional device for mystical travel confined in a basement of 1940s Buenos Aires. The conclusion of this semiotic exploration through pandemics, lockdowns, and immobility travelogues is simple: in case of forced immobility, the practice of exploring space through time can be replaced by the alternative practice of exploring time through space. (shrink)

Brazilian women rely on sterilization as the main source of birth control. Sterilization has been one of the causes of the steep decline in fertility in Brazil, at least since the second half of 1970. It is hypothesized that understanding couples’ relationships might be key to explaining this high rate of female sterilizations. Possible reasons for the higher level of fertility among women in unstable unions than among women in stable ones could be the less effective use of contraceptive methods, (...) or that women in unstable unions tend to use less effective or reversible contraceptive methods. In this paper discrete time modelling of the timing of sterilization according to union histories is presented. The analysis uses the calendar data of the 1996 Brazilian DHS. It is shown that women in second or higher order unions have a lower risk of sterilization. This result should be taken into account in the analysis of the determinants of female sterilization in Brazil. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 41-62.

This original and interdisciplinary volume explores the contemporary semiotic dimensions of the face from both scientific and socio-cultural perspectives, putting forward several traditions, aspects, and signs of the human utopia of creating a hybrid face. The book semiotically delves into the multifaceted realm of the digital face, exploring its biological and social functions, the concept of masks, the impact of COVID-19, AI systems, digital portraiture, symbolic faces in films, viral communication, alien depictions, personhood in video games, online intimacy, and digital (...) memorials. The human face is increasingly living a life that is not only that of the biological body but also that of its digital avatar, spread through a myriad of new channels and transformable through filters, post-productions, digital cosmetics, all the way to the creation of deepfakes. The digital face expresses new and largely unknown meanings, which this book explores and analyzes through an interdisciplinary but systematic approach. The volume will interest researchers, scholars and advanced students who are interested in digital humanities, communication studies, semiotics, visual studies, visual anthropology, cultural studies, and, broadly speaking, in innovative approaches about the meaning of the face in present-day digital societies. (shrink)

Tourism industry is increasingly stripping traveling of one of its most fundamental anthropological and existential values: its being a laboratory in which travelerscan temporarily experience the disruption of their regime of sedentary belonging, protected by a plan of return. According to this perspective, non-touristy travelingis one of the best ways to test the limits of one’s tolerance to cultural diversity and acknowledge, as a consequence, the identity of one’s cultural and existential‘home.’ Yet, modern and contemporary travelogues mostly extol the traveler’s (...) heroic capacity to overcome the limits of tolerance. Claiming that such emphasis stems from the colonial desire to domesticate and assimilate the world and its diversity, the article proposes to subvert this logic and to replace panoramic travelogues, dominated by the will power of subjects, with prosopopoeic travelogues, that tell the stories of how the things of the world, relics of centuries of civilization, reject travelers and their desire of domestication and conquest. As an example of this subversion, the article proposes a semiotic exploration of toilets, their variety, and their ‘cultural resistance.’. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Humble leadership can be described as a positive psychological feature that allows leaders to admit their limitations, be open to new ideas, and give a voice to others while also recognizing their merits. The present study (n = 268 participants) explored the persuasive effects of a female politician communicating a humble stance by considering the role emotional displays at play (joy, calmness, sadness, and anger) when discussing a moral issue (hosting immigrants). The results revealed that the politician elicited positive emotions (...) and evaluations of her competence and benevolence, especially when exhibiting a sad facial display, by contributing to the intention to accept the moral gist of her persuasive message. Overall, these ‘gendered’ effects are discussed in relation to the ‘political authenticity’, which can be perceived as high especially when the humble message is connected with several social reasons, as is the case with gender or social status. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 213-245.

The authors examine the conceptual frameworks and substantive ideas of three authors, Lawrence Cremin, Neil Postman and Christopher Lasch, all of whom view technologies as educators. The authors focus on the television as educator and exposit these thinkers' views about relations between television's education and the education of schools, families and communities. The broader social significance involves an examination of the extent to which television's education impoverishes public discourse, the lifeblood of democracy; and the extent to which television's education weakens (...) parents' efforts to educate their children. Cremin and Postman lead the way in respectively providing a framework of analysis and identifying the problems but Cremin fails to recognize the severity of the problems and Postman does not adequately address them. Lasch's work is most promising, his formu lations fit neatly within Cremin's framework but address the problems in a way that improves upon Postman. (shrink)

This paper contends that a research ethics approach to the regulation of health data research is unhelpful in the era of population‐level research and big data because it results in a primary focus on consent (meta‐, broad, dynamic and/or specific consent). Two recent guidelines – the 2016 WMA Declaration of Taipei on ethical considerations regarding health databases and biobanks and the revised CIOMS International ethical guidelines for health‐related research involving humans – both focus on the growing reliance on health data (...) for research. But as research ethics documents, they remain (to varying degrees) focused on consent and individual control of data use. Many current and future uses of health data make individual consent impractical, if not impossible. Many of the risks of secondary data use apply to communities and stakeholders rather than individual data subjects. Shifting from a research ethics perspective to a public health lens brings a different set of issues into view: how are the benefits and burdens of data use distributed, how can data research empower communities, who has legitimate decision‐making capacity? I propose that a public health ethics framework – based on public benefit, proportionality, equity, trust and accountability – provides more appropriate tools for assessing the ethical uses of health data. The main advantage of a public health approach for data research is that it is more likely to foster debate about power, justice and equity and to highlight the complexity of deciding when data use is in the public interest. (shrink)

Relying on evidence from fifteen epigraphic collections and sixty-odd ancient sources as well as discussing a literature of over five hundred titles, the essay’s highly unorthodox conclusions are a case in point of the micrological ideal of achieving novelty on any given subject by way of transcribing and studying first-hand all relevant materials – edited and unedited alike. The paper’s ambition was to shed new light on one of the most intriguing analogies of the whole Aristotelian corpus, namely the comparison (...) between words and pebbles. A review of all material evidence and virtually all extant sources made short work of two related, albeit mutually exclusive, misconception about ancient reckoning boards and their workings: (1) the idea that – for all practical purposes – the abacus’ arrangement mirrored the decimal system, its columns and rows conveniently matching units, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. (2) the idea that the inscriptions on several surviving counting boards were a nuisance to the extent that, being inconsistent to a fault with the decimal system itself, they made actual calculations harder than they already were (as opposed to making them easier, as one would expect). The paper demonstrated that the first assumption – the « decimal » bias – is simply mistaken and betrays little or no awareness of the epigraphic and archaeological evidence. The paper also demonstrated that the second assumption – the « abacus riddled with complications » bias – simply defeats the purpose of resorting to the abacus in the first place and betrays a poor understanding of its practical vocation which, most assuredly, was not to add to the very problem it was meant to solve. After bulldozing its way through both misunderstandings, the essay focused on the abacus most distinctive features, that is positionality (i.e. the abacus being a positional system through and through) and hybridity (i.e. the abacus’ place value system being monetary in nature and purpose, as opposed to it being abstract and homogeneous). The final result is an interpretation that moves away from the received views by showing that the prologue of the Sophistici elenchi offers no support to the notion that, when Aristotle referred to counters, he was leaning on a kinship of sorts – or any kinship, for that matter – between abstract calculation and speech. Once we turns the pebble’s simile on its head and set it back upon its feet (Aristotle’s pebble analogy is about pebbles, what else?), it becomes clear that it presupposed numeracy all right, but it was not about numeracy itself. Moreover its goal was not to explain why computational and linguistic symbolisms succeed, but to explain how they fail – failure being the whole point; in this particular instance, failure to detect and prevent abusive value shifts affecting words and counters alike. (shrink)

« Qu’est-ce que le langage et à quoi sert-il ? » -/- « Qu’est-ce qu’un signe linguistique et en quoi consiste sa signification ? » -/- « Quels sont les effets que les expressions linguistiques produisent, les contraintes qu’il faut respecter et les précautions qu’il convient de prendre lorsqu’on les utilise ? » -/- Ce complexe de questions, dont on peut retracer l’origine dans un certain nombre de textes de l’Antiquité, oriente depuis les enjeux fondamentaux de la réflexion sur la (...) nature et le sens des expressions linguistiques ainsi que sur les conditions effectives de leur utilisation. Au fil des débats philosophiques, littéraires et autres, cette compréhension du langage s’est déclinée en une variété de manières d’entendre ce que, pour une expression linguistique ou une suite d’expressions linguistiques données, « signifier » veut dire. Les contributions de ce numéro thématique se sont concentrées sur les idées linguistiques que les auteurs de langue et culture grecque – confrontés, plus ou moins explicitement, à la question « comment penser le langage ? » – ont développées afin de rendre compte du phénomène complexe de la signification comme propriété des signes linguistiques, corrélat d’un contenu de pensée ou encore comme produit d’une pratique réglée d’échanges. (shrink)

Pour des raisons essentiellement liées à la vocation des textes où la notion de présupposition a fait son apparition, c’est la présupposition d’existence qui s’est imposée la première à l’attention des philosophes du langage. Elle a également déterminé l’orientation des débats en les focalisant sur quelques problèmes traditionnels, au premier chef desquels le problème de l’absence de référence de certaines expressions et celui des imperfections du langage naturel. Contrairement aux noms propres et aux descriptions définies, les termes qui signifient des (...) universaux ont joué un rôle très marginal dans la discussion de ce qui est présupposé par les énoncés que nous échangeons. Ce sont pourtant les noms d’espèces et de genres qui ont été associés les tout premiers à des phénomènes qui relèvent de la présupposition. Afin de montrer que cette association n’a rien perdu de son intérêt, nous avons étudié le traitement qu’Aristote réserve à la famille de paralogismes qui exploitent la similarité morphologique entre noms propres et noms communs pour rattacher la même présupposition d’existence aux uns et aux autres, alors même que cette présupposition est légitime dans un cas (celui des expressions qui désignent des choses particulières), abusive dans l’autre cas (celui des expressions qui signifient des universaux). (shrink)