Dans l’esprit de tout lecteur plus ou moins familier des sciences humaines, l’expression « psychologie des foules » est indissociable du nom de Gustave Le Bon, qui passe pour avoir inauguré un domaine de recherche trouvant son prolongement chez Freud. Aussi fait-on le lien entre cette branche de la psychologie collective et l’idéologie réactionnaire, aux relents racistes, de son soi-disant fondateur. C’est à la dissolution de ce lien que s’attelle Elena Bovo, dans un ouvrage qui a pour double...

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...) into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

Systemic epistemic failings in institutions are often explained through settler epistemologies and settler colonial frameworks that both obscure and reproduce the conditions necessary for those failings to endure. What is never questioned in the standard picture of institutional epistemic injustice is the implicit origin myth of an ‘institutional big bang’ that spawned many modern social institutions out of presumably noble orienting goals for a well-functioning society in democratic nation-states. We are concerned with the functional outcomes of institutions in settler colonial (...) societies, and how these outcomes consistently undermine whitewashed narratives of any inherent institutional design allegedly aimed at promoting testimonial justice in settler colonial societies. Institutions are built to target and maintain a status quo, especially (but not only) when they are charged with securing part of the social order or fabric of settler colonial societies. We will illustrate this concern through a discussion of various functional outcomes of the U.S. institution of asylum using Shannon Speed’s (2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. The University of North Carolina Press) analysis of the violence Indigenous women migrants from Latin America experience within the complex administrative web of U.S. migration and asylum systems. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) Commentary on Chapters 6-10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ. It is significant as it is one of only a small number of surviving commentaries by Ibn Sīnā and offers crucial insights into not only his attitudes towards his predecessors, but also his own philosophical positions — especially with regard to the human intellect's connections to God and the cosmos — and his attempt to develop a distinctive mode of commentary.

This is the first English translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) Commentary on Chapters 6-10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ. It is significant as it is one of only a small number of surviving commentaries by Ibn Sīnā and offers crucial insights into not only his attitudes towards his predecessors, but also his own philosophical positions — especially with regard to the human intellect's connections to God and the cosmos — and his attempt to develop a distinctive mode of commentary.

This paper presents an interpretation of the paradoxical decision of Abraham done by Søren A. Kierkegaard in his work Fear and Trembling as an ethics of silence. The main idea is to understand ethics not as moral standards or specific duties, but as the responsibility of becoming a single individual in time; singularity as the intimate and personal relationship with the calling of love. In such a way, that silence is the experience of the encounter with the paradox that being (...) human means to be singular in conditions that claim an universal and general transparent manifestation dependent of the dominant rational discourse.Then, silence becomes the fundamental ethical claim to become a human person, as spirit in time, where it becomes a time of trial and examination, a temporality, where the trial is the fidelity to love’s calling, the listening of the possibilities that are presented by the anxiety of the decision. These possibilities are not immanent to the world or to history, they call for a personal choice, always containing a space of revelation; therefore of listening to the interiority of the personal choice that for Kierkegaard is the passion of faith, communicated and lived in silence. Concluding that an ethics of silence by the image of Abraham implies to re-think the role of philosophy in relationship to faith, hope and love in time, as a silent thought. (shrink)

The paper is about the connection between logic and discrimination, with special focus on Plumwood’s ideas in her groundbreaking article ‘The Politics of Reason. Towards a Feminist Logic’ (1993). Although Plumwood’s paper is not focused on the notion of discrimination, what she writes is useful for illuminating some basic mechanisms of thought that are at the basis of discriminatory practices. After an introductory section about the concepts of logic and discrimination and their possible interconnections, I present Plumwood’s ideas in 1993 (...) with a special focus on their relevance for understanding the nature of discrimination. More specifically, I use examples of discriminatory practices that make the connection between logical operations and oppression envisaged by Plumwood clear. I focus especially on two questions: Can logic produce discrimination? Can logic contribute to the fight against discrimination? If so, how? (shrink)

This paper makes an assessment of a number of texts (classics) dealing with the debate on intellectual history, as well as the discussion about the being and must be of intellectuals. The idea is to demonstrate the relevance of this debate, as well as of its endless discussion, its trajectory in other disciplines and the need for more dialogue between those who practice them.

In 2023, Beall and Ficara present what they call Hegelian conjunctions. A Hegelian conjunction is a true conjunction of contradictory opposites in which the conjuncts, separately taken, are untrue and for which simplification fails. The analysis in Beall & Ficara History and Philosophy of Logic 44 (2) 119-131, 2023 is important for various reasons. First, for overcoming the deleterious state of estrangement between two ways of conceiving and practicing logic, the “dialectical” or “continental” and the “analytical” one. Second, for strengthening (...) a new, promising way of conceiving conjunction in paraconsistency (d’Agostini Synthese 199, 6845 6874, 2021). Yet it needs an enlargement, mainly in two dimensions, a hermeneutical and a logical one. The former concerns the textual basis used by Beall and Ficara for motivating their account (the focus of their analysis is a small part of the early Hegelian fragment on Vereinigung – unification/conjunction). The latter is the semantics proposed by Beall and Ficara. In this paper, I focus on the first dimension, in the conviction that the condition for making the chief formal characteristics of dialectics (the logical dimension) clearer is a grasp of the Hegelian fragment in its entirety and complexity. The fragment is crucial for thinking about the logic, metaphysics and epistemology of true contradictions. Yet it counts as obscure. My aim is to make its content more accessible, and to present its relevance for conjunctive paraconsistency. (shrink)

Se analiza los que se ha considerado un "descentramiento" del sujeto a partir de la crítica a la racionalidad tal como la concibió la modernidad. Se considera especialmente el impacto del giro lingüístico, sus aportes y también sus consecuencias negativas. Se realiza un análisis crítico de las posiciones contextualistas, sus consecuencias escépticas y las derivaciones en el orden de la acción. Se plantea finalmente el tema del sujeto y sus posibilidades, destacando especialmente su capacidad para configurar nuevos sentidos y crear (...) nuevos lenguajes, pero también en su capacidad de discernir y de posicionarse en el juicio. The work analizes what has been considered a "decentration" of the subject, starting from the critique of rationality such as it was conceived by modernity. The impact of the linguistic turn is especially taken into consideration, as well as its contributions and its negative influences. A critical analysis of contextualist positions, its sceptical consequences and derivations as regards action is dealt with. Finally, the theme of the subject and its possibilities is raised, pointing out especially its capacity to bring about new senses and to create new languages, but also its capacity to discern and take positions in judgement. (shrink)

Cet article a pour but d’étudier les perspectives que fournit l’approche performative de l’argument, afin de répondre à deux questions classiques liées à l’interprétation du cogito. D’abord : quel type de contrainte logique ou non logique le « donc » exprime-t-il dans la formulation de cet argument? Ensuite : quel type d’existence est manifesté par l’argument, ou par sa formulation par Hintikka : « Cogito ergo quis est? ».

Resumen Este trabajo, de carácter exploratorio, descriptivo e interpretativo, estudia las actividades de imagen presentes en un conjunto de cartas electorales enviadas por los principales partidos políticos españoles a los ciudadanos de ese país entre 2004 y 2019; concretamente, las cartas electorales relativas a las elecciones al Parlamento Europeo celebradas en 2004, 2009, 2014 y 2019. Las cartas electorales constituyen una parte del discurso político escrito en las que el candidato a unas elecciones se dirige a los potenciales votantes con (...) un discurso persuasivo, orientado a conseguir su voto. En este contexto, las actividades que se llevan a cabo son principalmente de autoimagen, si bien es posible encontrar también actividades de cortesía y críticas hacia otros partidos políticos -u otros actores sociales-que se enmarcan en una descortesía muchas veces carente de identificación del sujeto concreto al que se dirige y que, en ese sentido, entendemos como despersonalizada. Este trabajo pone de manifiesto tales actividades, mediante el análisis y comparación de estas cartas, no solo de manera sincrónica sino también, cuando es posible, de manera diacrónica. Creemos que todavía no hay ningún trabajo que haya analizado este tipo de textos desde la perspectiva aquí planteada, por lo que consideramos que es un estudio que, además de original, puede abrir camino a otros investigadores que deseen realizar análisis similares o con los que establecer comparaciones. (shrink)

The present article provides an overview of the key subjects of scholarly research in the areas of epistemology and the philosophy of science and technology conducted in Russia between the 1980s and the present. These disciplines are shown to be deeply rooted in Soviet philosophy and still developed by contemporary Russian philosophers, with both the historical experience of the Russian philosophical thought and foreign conceptions and schools, classical as well as modern, drawn upon. The corollary is that epistemology and the (...) philosophy of science have been the most widely studied philosophical disciplines in Russia over the last couple of decades and retain this status to date. (shrink)

We offer a syntax–semantics interface for a previously undiscussed type of event-external pluractional operator. While earlier literature discusses overt cases of such operators that act as derivational affixes and attach at the V-level, we here report evidence for a covert operator, which behaves like an inflectional affix at the level of Aspect. This analysis enriches our understanding of pluractional operators as markers of verbal plurality in languages where verbs are lexically cumulative and pluractionality as accounted for previously would appear to (...) be superfluous, at least at first sight. We formulate our claims on the basis of the Romanian supine, whose nominal form has previously been argued to carry a pluractional operator. (shrink)

Straipsnyje apžvelgiamos filosofijos ir sociologijos perspektyvos skaitmeninių medijų akivaizdoje, atskleidžiama, kaip skaitmeninių medijų raida prisideda prie naujųjų disciplinų atsiradimo, sėkmingai jungiančių tiek filosofines, tiek sociologines prieigas. Remiantis garsaus medijų filosofo Michaelio Heimo tyrimais, nagrinėjamos sąsajos tarp kibernetinės erdvės ir technologijų raidos, išryškinamas jų poveikis transformacijoms, vykstančioms kibernetinės erdvės „žemėlapiavime“. Svarstant filosofijos ir sociologijos perspektyvas medijuotoje kultūroje pristatomi Franko Hartmanno tyrimai, skirti mediologijos problematikai, parodoma, kaip mediologijos rėmuose „žemėlapiuojama“ virtualioji tikrovė. Galiausiai, taikant mediologijos metodinę prieigą, nagrinėjami konk­retūs virtualios (augmentuotos) tikrovės pavyzdžiai. (...) Argumentuojama, kad aug­mentuotos erdvės projekcijos yra gana jauna, itin dinamiška ir sparčiai kintanti medijų meno sritis, o jos sąsajos su technologijomis yra itin glaudžios, todėl mediologija yra itin paranki jos analizei. (shrink)

Based on the notion that time, space, and number are part of a generalized magnitude system, we assume that the dual-systems approach to temporal cognition also applies to numerical cognition. Referring to theoretical models of the development of numerical concepts, we propose that children's early skills in processing numbers can be described analogously to temporal updating and temporal reasoning.

The place occupied by Kant’s philosophical ideas in the reflections of the Russian philosopher, Nikolay Strakhov, needs further study. The material for a historical-philosophical reconstruction of Strakhov’s reception of Kant’s philosophy is the Russian thinker’s home library catalogue, his correspondence and his own philosophical works. Among Strakhov’s interlocutors were not only philosophers and natural scientists, but also writers, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Afanasy Fet, who in many ways determined the cultural and intellectual horizon of the epoch. The many (...) years of correspondence with the last two writers went a long way to shape and develop Strakhov’s perception of Kant as a thinker. Indeed, without a virtual dialogue with Kant no modern philosophical system can be built. Strakhov’s reflections on the Kantian style of thinking, adoption of Kantian criticism as the model of epistemic analysis in many ways determined the features of his own philosophical work and became a catalyst of renewed interest in Russia in the Kantian philosophy in the last third of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

During the French Revolution, obstetrics underwent substantial transformations in practice, teaching, and the physical spaces where it was conducted. The revolutionary authorities implemented reforms in French medical institutions that promoted an instrument-centred style and the dissemination of novel surgical techniques in obstetrics. The selection of professors for the obstetrics chair at the newly established École de santé and the appointment of chiefs for the new maternity ward in Paris favoured proponents of a mechanistic approach to labour assistance. This essay explores (...) the theoretical principles and societal pressures that guided these transformative reforms and the remarkable changes they introduced in healthcare and in the practise of medicine and surgery. Furthermore, it examines the consolidation of new epistemological, ethical, and professional boundaries within the context of late eighteenth-century French obstetrics. A critical section of this study focuses on the debate ignited by the contemporaries who voiced concerns that the rise of surgical interventions on pregnant women's bodies might result in unwarranted violence, in a diminishing of midwives’ roles, and in a departure from the tradition of natural childbirth. These controversies among obstetricians highlight significant contradictions within the Revolutionary medical reforms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Phenomenology of Superstition or a Phenomenological Superstition?Elena Ibáñez-Guerra (bio)KeywordsBehaviorism, constructionism, intentionality, operant behaviorWhen the editors of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology asked me to make some brief comments on two articles for the special issue edited by Pérez-Álvarez and Sass, I was delighted to accept, thinking that the task would be a straightforward one, and that I could easily meet the agreed deadline. But nothing could be further (...) from the truth. The articles were of such density and their content of such profundity that it took months of interpretation and study, and of bringing my own knowledge up to date, before I was in a position to understand the concepts, adjust my beliefs, and make some comments. I could certainly have delivered some kind of eulogy about the brilliance of their content; I might have countered with my own article. However, what seemed most coherent to me was to meet their arguments head on and deal with what I consider to be their principal weaknesses, leaving the bouquets for the end.The articles set out, as I understand them and within the clinical context, to relate phenomenology, in its most traditional form, with the most current form of Skinnerian behaviorism, situating themselves in a contextualism that is, at the same time, close to and removed from the most radical type of social constructionism.But let us begin by looking more closely at “Phenomenology and Behaviorism.” It is novel for me, though Professor Pérez-Álvarez had already proposed it several years ago (Pérez-Álvarez 1992), to view operant behavior as intentionality, or at least as involving final causality according to the Aristotelian classification. It is a surprising contention, not least because, as I recall, Skinner lived in a time and a context (historical reason) in which the basic goal of psychology was to convert itself into a natural science, comparable in all respects to physics, which it took as a model, focusing therefore on efficient causality (also according to Aristotle’s terminology), so that behavior was considered as the immediate consequence of a stimulus, and the stimulus–response association became the cornerstone of the discipline. It is true that the operant behavior concept refers to the functional relationship between behavior and reinforcement, but it is no less true that Skinner’s definition of reinforcement is totally empirical—“all that which increases or decreases the probability”—meaning that reinforcement can be considered neither as a motive nor as a reason for behavior, unless it be in the eyes of the observer. [End Page 251]Furthermore, even though Yela (1987) refers to Ortega y Gasset’s formula “I am myself and my circumstances” as a Skinnerian approach, the truth is that Yela himself argues that it is precisely the self that constitutes personality, such that I have a personality because I am me, and not vice versa, as Skinner would appear to argue. In this regard, Ortega’s celebrated formula has generally been interpreted, from the most personalist perspectives, as “the circumstances are myself”—to highlight the denial of the psychological subject by radical behaviorism (Mischel’s [1968] criticism of the concept of personality is relevant here). On top of this, Skinner’s rejection of all that was not directly observable, or at least, that could not be operationalized, calls into question the admissibility of anything called final cause or intentionality of behavior. In his philosophy, all the indications are that contingencies are what determine behavior; and that there would be no room for a structural causality, as Althusser would argue, or of a reciprocal determinism, in Bandura’s terms, or even of an interaction between subject and environment, as modern interactionists would maintain. “I am myself and my circumstances” seems in Skinner to become “the circumstances are me”, and indeed, the reinforcement history – which in the article in question is considered as something akin to the Sartrian idea of “life project” – is for Skinner nothing more than a continuous association of events. In my view, Ortega’s perspectivism would perhaps be closer to the sociology of the American action theorists, Merton, Parsons, etc., than to Skinnerian behaviorism, since “action”—as the action theorists... (shrink)

Introduction. The technical art of cinematography is traditionally regarded as a synthetic unity of scientific and technological progress and creativity. The possibility of unlimited copying of movie plots makes it possible to extend the authority of cinema to broad areas of public attention and forms a mass man. At the same time, the fact that cinema is, first of all, an experiment with time, organized by technical means, remains behind the scenes. The purpose of the study. If the core issues (...) of humanity are centered on the problem of life and death, on the problem of mastering and overcoming time, then cinema clearly shows that humanity has a ready-made embodied model of its desire. Methods. The authors use a phenomenological method that allows one to see the temporal fabric behind the “opaque body” of cinema. The eidetic reduction to the foundations of the constructed film plot temporal reality is complemented by the structuralist method of analyzing technical devices and technological methods of the film industry. Scientific novelty of the research. The ontology of the technical art of cinema goes beyond rationality and pragmatics. By launching a special kind of experiment with time, cinema technologies allow the viewer to be present in the bifurcation moments of temporal metamorphoses that connect different temporal modes. The temporal fabric is subject to the plot logic. Results. In cinema, time is constructed by technical means. The nature of this construction allows us to see the layered structure of time, the intersections of time flows, influxes, reverse time orders and stops in time. The cinema technique clearly shows that time barriers are conditional. Conclusions. Cinema dissolves any empirical density, creating gaps in it and transitions to other worlds. The connection between the worlds is carried out by constructed time. Time is taken out of objects and, obeying the course of the narrative, expands the reality of the world. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo valorar la contribución del Centro de Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas en Salud a las Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas en el sector de la Salud de Camagüey, desde la contextualización de la política científica cubana en la proyección estratégica de la entidad. En el mismo se expone la trayectoria de la gestión de la actividad científico-tecnológica del centro. Se utilizó la revisión de los documentos y resultados generados por la entidad y trabajos publicados (...) acerca de la actividad científica. Se concluye que el centro es una institución pertinente y con sus resultados impacta en la formación integral de los recursos humanos y en el desarrollo del enfoque social de los problemas de salud. The objective of this work is to value the contribution of the Center of development for the Social and Humanity Sciences in Health to the Social and Humanity Sciences in the health area in Camagüey, from the contextualization of the Cuban scientific policy in the strategic projection of this center. Its trajectory on the management of the scientific-technological activity was exposed. It was used the revision of documents and results generated by the institution, and published works about the scientific activity. It is concluded that the center is pertinent and its results have an impact in the integral formation of the human resources and the development of the social viewpoint of health problems. (shrink)

The article argues that the prohibition of abortion in Chile, other than when the mother's life is in danger, is a form of human rights violation targeting women specifically. The Pro-Birth Policy was established in Pinochet's Chile as a response to the previous government's attempts, under Allende, to encourage family planning and to educate and inform women about their choices. This had been done to put an end to the increase in back-street abortions with the inevitable toll on women's lives. (...) Pinochet's regime reversed these women-oriented family planning policies, and criminalized abortion, on the basis of costs to the state and, more importantly, the need to increase the birth rate for reasons of national security. Women's bodies were used by the Pinochet regime, both by sexual violence and torture, and by the denial of women's reproductive and sexual rights, as a means to impose discipline and order on society. The fact that this is still not acknowledged in the construction of a collective memory indicates that the issue has not yet been resolved in democratic Chile. (shrink)