In our research, we examine the efforts made by Latin American business schools in the last decade to deliver a value-based education. We carry out a survey with a sample of faculty members and program directors from the whole region. We find that societal demands influenced the direction of managerial education toward values and social responsibility, changing contents and teaching methodologies in the process. Our research shows that the teaching of value-based contents—social responsibility, business ethics and environmental sustainability—has gained ground (...) in the region in the last decade, and that the emphasis on value-based contents goes hand-in-hand with a more intensive use of active learning methodologies—the case method in particular. From the perspective of respondents, the emphasis on active learning seems to correlate positively with observed changes in students’ civility. (shrink)

Does responsible leadership matter when assembling an inclusive supply chain at the Base-of-the-Pyramid? Current literature implicitly assumes that it does not. BOP scholars initially focused on the importance of shaping innovative and disruptive offerings, with radically improved price–performance ratios. Subsequent studies tended to focus on barriers to implementation of large-scale ventures at the BOP. Their common characteristic was the fact that the attributes and roles of the individuals involved were deemed unimportant. If the opportunity was there, provided barriers were removed (...) and the right value proposition was offered, the inclusive venture should take off. We evaluate three cases of leaders who succeeded in building inclusive ventures at the BOP, in contexts marked by institutional voids—where formal markets were weakly structured or nonexistent. Building a viable business under those circumstances entailed two tasks: imagining what is possible and then turning that vision into a reality. We found that, in carrying out those tasks, individuals do matter. Sampled cases show that working with nontraditional partners in inclusive supply chains requires more than aligning material incentives. Our analysis suggests that responsible leadership with a strong ethical foundation can provide powerful leverage to ensure buy-in and commitment from the various actors involved. We show how RL can impact organizations and external stakeholders through positive upward spirals. Our analysis contributes to the literature on BOP and RL by confirming, extending, and challenging existing knowledge. We propose two novel attributes and argue that context matters, influencing how RL is operationalized and defined. Understanding the critical role of RL in the construction of inclusive supply chains adds a critical missing link that sheds light into the micro level of new business creation, development, and consolidation at the BOP. (shrink)

Management of different types of partnerships plays a decisive role in company performance. Complex business ventures, such as those created to serve low-income populations, usually include both cross- and same-sector partnerships. However, the initial diversity featured in these alliance portfolios diminishes as companies take their ventures up to scale. This article develops theoretical propositions about the evolution and configuration patterns of portfolios that include both cross- and same-sector partnerships. Two longitudinal case studies serve to illustrate the theoretical framework developed for (...) alliance portfolios that include both types of partnerships. Companies that create such portfolios adopt partnership strategies that follow paths also identified in the evolution of portfolios only made up of partnerships with other private firms: i.e., an evolution from adapting to shaping and exploiting strategies. (shrink)

Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic language for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of viability. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than those given (...) so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored. (shrink)

The life–mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to life. The biggest challenge faced by proponents of this thesis is to show how an explanatory framework that accounts for basic biological processes can be systematically extended to incorporate the highest reaches of human cognition. We suggest that this apparent ‘cognitive gap’ between minimal and human forms of life appears insurmountable largely because of the methodological individualism that is prevalent in cognitive science. Accordingly, a (...) twofold strategy is used to show how a consideration of sociality can address both sides of the cognitive gap: (1) it is argued from a systemic perspective that inter-agent interactions can extend the behavioral domain of even the simplest agents and (2) it is argued from a phenomenological perspective that the cognitive attitude characteristic of adult human beings is essentially intersubjectively constituted, in particular with respect to the possibility of perceiving objects as detached from our own immediate concerns. These two complementary considerations of the constitutive role of inter-agent interactions for mind and cognition indicate that sociality is an indispensable element of the life–mind continuity thesis and of cognitive science more generally. (shrink)

The enactive approach provides a perspective on human bodies in their organic, sensorimotor, social, and linguistic dimensions, but many fundamental issues still remain unaddressed. A crucial desideratum for a theory of human bodies is that it be able to account for concrete human becoming. In this article I show that enactive theory possesses resources to achieve this goal. Being an existential structure, human becoming is best approached by a series of progressive formal indications. I discuss three standpoints on human becoming (...) as open, indeterminate, and therefore historical using the voices of Pico della Mirandola, Gordon W. Allport, and Paulo Freire. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation we move from an existential to an ontological register in looking at modes of embodied becoming. His scheme of interpretation of the relation between modes of individuation allows us to understand human becoming in terms of a tendency to neotenization. I compare this ontology with an enactive theoretical account of the dimensions of embodiment, finding several compatibilities and complementarities. Various forms of bodily unfinishedness in enaction fit the Simondonian ontology and the existential analysis, where transindividuality corresponds to participatory sense-making and Freire’s joint becoming of individuals and communities correlates with the open tensions in linguistic bodies between incorporation and incarnation of linguistic acts. I test some of this ideas by considering the plausibility of artificial bodies and personal becoming from an enactive perspective, using the case of replicants in the film Blade Runner. The conclusion is that any kind of personhood, replicants included, requires living through an actual history of concrete becoming. (shrink)

Mascolo successfully defends a relational, developmental approach to emotions. I draw parallels between his perspective and the enactive approach, in particular with the concept of participa...

Enactive cognitive science combines questions in epistemology, ontology, and ethics by conceiving of bodies as open-ended and mutually transforming through activity. While enaction is not a theory of ethics, it can contribute to its foundations. We present a schematization of enactive ideas that underlie traditional distinctions between Being, Knowing, and Doing. Ethics in this scheme begins in the relation between knowing and becoming. Critical of dichotomous thinking, we approach the questions of alterity and ethical reality. Alterity is relevant to the (...) enactive approach, but not in the radical sense of transcendental arguments. We propose difference, instead, as a more generative concept. Following Simondon, we see norms and values manifest in webs of past and future acts together with their potentialities for becoming. We propose a transindividual concept of moral attunement that includes ethical know-how and consciousness raising. Through generative difference and attunement to configurations of becoming, enaction underpins an ethics of participation linking virtue ethics and ethics of care. (shrink)

A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. -/- Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. (...) Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy. (shrink)

We examine the question of material agency as raised in material engagement theory (MET). Insofar as MET tends to highlight the causal roles played by extra-bodily material flows in human practices, the term “material agency” does not sufficiently distinguish cases in which these flows are part of an agentive engagement from cases in which they are not. We propose an operational criterion to effect such a distinction. We claim this criterion is organizational, i.e., systemic, and not causal. In the enactive (...) account, agency requires three organizational conditions: self-individuation, interactional asymmetry, and normativity. These conditions can have organic, sensorimotor, and sociomaterial realizations. The dance of human productive practices is indeed spread between brains, bodies, and the world, as MET claims, but it is distributed in an organized manner that involves constraints and norms at various scales. We put forward a relational and non-anthropocentric perspective toward an enactive approach to productive practices. We discuss some aspects of agentive ensembles rendered more intelligible by our proposal, including incorporation, soft assembly and non-decomposability, and the grounding of teleology normative processes at multiple scales. In this manner, we seek to continue the dialog between MET and enactive theory, beginning with the view that a situated system must realize certain minimal organizational conditions to be called an _agent_. (shrink)

There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of the enactive approach. The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse range of areas. One hot topic has been the establishment of an enactive approach to social interaction. The main purpose of (...) this paper is to serve as an advanced entry point into these recent developments. It accomplishes this task in a twofold manner: it provides a succinct synthesis of the most important core ideas and arguments in the theoretical framework of the enactive approach, and it uses this synthesis to refine the current enactive approach to social interaction. A new operational definition of social interaction is proposed which not only emphasizes the cognitive agency of the individuals and the irreducibility of the interaction process itself, but also the need for jointly co-regulated action. It is suggested that this revised conception of ‘socio-cognitive interaction’ may provide the necessary middle ground from which to understand the confluence of biological and cultural values in personal action. (shrink)

According to the sensorimotor approach, perception is a form of embodied know-how, constituted by lawful regularities in the sensorimotor flow or in sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs) in an active and situated agent. Despite the attention that this approach has attracted, there have been few attempts to define its core concepts formally. In this paper, we examine the idea of SMCs and argue that its use involves notions that need to be distinguished. We introduce four distinct kinds of SMCs, which we define (...) operationally. These are the notions of sensorimotor environment (open-loop motor-induced sensory variations), sensorimotor habitat (closed-loop sensorimotor trajectories), sensorimotor coordination (reliable sensorimotor patterns playing a functional role), and sensorimotor strategy (normative organization of sensorimotor coordinations). We make use of a minimal dynamical model of visually guided categorization to test the explanatory value of the different kinds of SMCs. Finally, we discuss the impact of our definitions on the conceptual development and empirical as well as model-based testing of the claims of the sensorimotor approach. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

Learning to perceive is faced with a classical paradox: if understanding is required for perception, how can we learn to perceive something new, something we do not yet understand? According to the sensorimotor approach, perception involves mastery of regular sensorimotor co-variations that depend on the agent and the environment, also known as the “laws” of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs). In this sense, perception involves enacting relevant sensorimotor skills in each situation. It is important for this proposal that such skills can be (...) learned and refined with experience and yet up to this date, the sensorimotor approach has had no explicit theory of perceptual learning. The situation is made more complex if we acknowledge the open-ended nature of human learning. In this paper we propose Piaget’s theory of equilibration as a potential candidate to fulfill this role. This theory highlights the importance of intrinsic sensorimotor norms, in terms of the closure of sensorimotor schemes. It also explains how the equilibration of a sensorimotor organization faced with novelty or breakdowns proceeds by re-shaping pre-existing structures in coupling with dynamical regularities of the world. This way learning to perceive is guided by the equilibration of emerging forms of skillful coping with the world. We demonstrate the compatibility between Piaget’s theory and the sensorimotor approach by providing a dynamical formalization of equilibration to give an explicit micro-genetic account of sensorimotor learning and, by extension, of how we learn to perceive. This allows us to draw important lessons in the form of general principles for open-ended sensorimotor learning, including the need for an intrinsic normative evaluation by the agent itself. We also explore implications of our micro-genetic account at the personal level. (shrink)

Knowing is an activity through which agents and world produce themselves. This is often expressed by the enactive claim that agents bring forth a world. I analyse this idea for different modes of agent–environment engagement: interactional, transactional, and constitutional. Something is produced in each case. Bringing forth a world is not only an epistemic but an ontological claim. Acts in their fine structure result from a process of fact production, or f/acts. F/acts co-emerge with their 'preconditions', e.g.intentions, affordances, across the (...) subject/object divide. F/acts define their inner temporality and affectivity, comprising both event and experience. A plurality of worlds is admitted in this enactive view, without entailing antirealism. We cannot bring forth just any world. World resistance organizes action and experience. I touch on the implications for objectivity and free will and discuss the primordiality of activity, community, and relationality. From a notion of groundlessness in early enactive work, I suggest that a participatory universe is better conceived as a meshwork of groundless grounds. (shrink)

pt. 1. Apuntes autobiográficos.--pt. 2. Páginas selectas.

There is a growing interest in Evald Ilyenkov’s work and its significance for contemporary debates. This interest spans several disciplines. One key thread in Ilyenkov’s ideas concerns a perspective on the relation between biology and psychology. In rejecting crude reductionism and individualism, Ilyenkov put forward a view of mind and personhood as emerging from activity and social practice. In his rejection of brain-bound notions of the mind, Ilyenkov’s ideas bear interesting resonances with current work in 4E cognition. One particularly interesting (...) resonance that has occasionally been noticed are the connections with the enactive approach to life and mind. However, beyond some hints at interesting convergences, there is to date no detailed comparison between the two views. The present article attempts to address this gap, examining both complementarities and possible tensions between the two approaches. Rejecting cognitive views detached from environmental and social processes, the enactive approach, as exemplified by De Jaegher and Di Paolo’s concept of participatory sense-making, emphasises the dynamic constitution of cognition through embodied and situated activities. The article draws parallels between Ilyenkov’s emphasis on historically and culturally situated activity, notably labour, and the enactive understanding of human bodies as dynamically constituted in human activity. The article explores the Ilyenkovian and enactive perspectives on the dialectics of ideality, challenging traditional dualistic views and proposing that the ideal emerges as metastable patterns in the ongoing interactions between world, practices, norms, and bodies. The article concludes by suggesting future research directions for the enactive approach, particularly in areas emphasised by Ilyenkov, such as labour and the mediation of material/cultural artefacts. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Loving the Earth by Loving a Place: A Situated Approach to the Love of Nature” by Laura Candiotto. Abstract: Candiotto elaborates a down-to-earth enactive epistemology and applies it to environmental ethics. I comment on the timeliness of her intervention and the challenges for an enactive account of place. I concur with her exhortation to a participatory loving of place by becoming native, but notice that the conditions for enacting it are inaccessible for most. Some (...) healing is needed first. (shrink)

Prompted by our commentators, we take this response as an opportunity to clarify the premises, attitudes, and methods of our enactive approach to human languaging. We high-light the need to recognize that any investigation, particularly one into language, is always a concretely situated and self-grounding activity; our attitude as researchers is one of knowing as engagement with our subject matter. Our task, formulating the missing categories that can bridge embodied cognitive science with language research, requires avoiding premature abstractions and clarifying (...) the multiple circularities at play. Our chosen method is dialectical, which has prompted several interesting observations that we respond to, particularly with respect to what this method means for enactive epistemology and ontology. We also clarify the important question of how best to conceive of the variety of social skills we progressively identify with our method and are at play in human languaging. Are these skills socially constituted or just socially learned? The difference, again, leads to a clarification that acts, skills, actors, and interactions are to be conceived as co-emerging categories. We illustrate some of these points with a discussion of an example of aspects of the model at play in a study of gift giving in China.Keywords: Enactive epistemology, Enactive ontology, Dialectics, languaging, Shared know-how. (shrink)

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide (...) an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research. (shrink)

An important amount of research effort in psychology and neuroscience over the past decades has focused on the problem of social cognition. This problem is understood as how we figure out other minds, relying only on indirect manifestations of other people's intentional states, which are assumed to be hidden, private and internal. Research on this question has mostly investigated how individual cognitive mechanisms achieve this task. A shift in the internalist assumptions regarding intentional states has expanded the research focus with (...) hypotheses that explore the role of interactive phenomena and interpersonal histories and their implications for understanding individual cognitive processes. This interactive expansion of the conceptual and methodological toolkit for investigating social cognition, we now propose, can be followed by an expansion into wider and deeply-related research questions, beyond (but including) that of social cognition narrowly construed. Our social lives are populated by different kinds of cognitive and affective phenomena that are related to but not exhausted by the question of how we figure out other minds. These phenomena include acting and perceiving together, verbal and non-verbal engagement, experiences of (dis- )connection, management of relations in a group, joint meaning-making, intimacy, trust, conflict, negotiation, asymmetric relations, material mediation of social interaction, collective action, contextual engagement with socio-cultural norms, structures and roles, etc. These phenomena are often characterized by a strong participation by the cognitive agent in contrast with the spectatorial stance typical of social cognition research. We use the broader notion of embodied intersubjectivity to refer to this wider set of phenomena. This Research Topic aims to investigate relations between these different issues, to help lay strong foundations for a science of intersubjectivity - the social mind writ large. To contribute to this goal, we encouraged contributions in psychology, neuroscience, psychopathology, philosophy, and cognitive science that address this wider scope of intersubjectivity by extending the range of explanatory factors from purely individual to interactive, from observational to participatory"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Despite the recognized importance of bodily movements in spatial audition, few studies have integrated action-based protocols with spatial hearing in the peripersonal space. Recent work shows that tactile feedback and active exploration allow participants to improve performance in auditory distance perception tasks. However, the role of the different aspects involved in the learning phase, such as voluntary control of movement, proprioceptive cues, and the possibility of self-correcting errors, is still unclear. We study the effect of guided reaching exploration on perceptual (...) learning of auditory distance in peripersonal space. We implemented a pretest-posttest experimental design in which blindfolded participants must reach for a sound source located in this region. They were divided into three groups that were differentiated by the intermediate training phase: Guided, an experimenter guides the participant’s arm to contact the sound source; Active, the participant freely explores the space until contacting the source; and Control, without tactile feedback. The effects of exploration feedback on auditory distance perception in the peripersonal space are heterogeneous. Both the Guided and Active groups change their performance. However, participants in the Guided group tended to overestimate distances more than those in the Active group. The response error of the Guided group corresponds to a generalized calibration criterion over the entire range of reachable distances. Whereas the Active group made different adjustments for proximal and distal positions. The results suggest that guided exploration can induce changes on the boundary of the auditory reachable space. We postulate that aspects of agency such as initiation, control, and monitoring of movement, assume different degrees of involvement in both guided and active tasks, reinforcing a non-binary approach to the question of activity-passivity in perceptual learning and supporting a complex view of the phenomena involved in action-based learning. (shrink)

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

Passive frame theory attempts to illuminate what consciousnessis, in mechanistic and functional terms; it does not address the “implementation” level of analysis (how neurons instantiate conscious states), an enigma for various disciplines. However, in response to the commentaries, we discuss how our framework provides clues regarding this enigma. In the framework, consciousness is passive albeit essential. Without consciousness, there would not be adaptive skeletomotor action.

To further illuminate the nature of conscious states, it may be progressive to integrate Merker's important contribution with what is known regarding (a) the temporal relation between conscious states and activation of the mesodiencephalic system; (b) the nature of the information (e.g., perceptual vs. premotor) involved in conscious integration; and (c) the neural correlates of olfactory consciousness. (Published Online May 1 2007).

This volume brings together this new knowledge in a single, concise source, covering most if not all of the basic questions regarding human action: What are the ...

Perhaps the time has come to re-examine the basic notions of cognitive science. Together with previous challenges against associationism, the target article should be viewed as a call to arms to re-evaluate the empirical basis for contemporary conceptualizations of human learning and the notion of a concept that has become too imprecise for describing the elements of cognition.

Mark Greenberg argues that legal obligations are those moral obligations created by the actions of legal institutions in the legally proper way. Here I defend three main claims. First, I argue that, although very often misunderstood, Joseph Raz is also a defender of MITL. Secondly, I argue that while both Greenberg and Raz are committed to MITL, they disagree about the conditions under which a moral obligation can be said to be created in the legally proper way. Finally, I argue (...) that Raz’s variant of MITL is better than Greenberg’s. It rests on a more plausible account of authority and it avoids one of the crucial defects threatening Greenberg’s view, namely, its overinclusiveness. (shrink)

Buscando aportar a la investigación sobre la imaginación de futuro actual, el artículo explora una ficción científica, El ministerio del futuro (2020), de Kim Stanley Robinson. Esta novela tiene dos singularidades: comienza en julio de 2024, por lo que narra un futuro inminente, prolongando posibilidades concretas de nuestro presente, y propone, basándose en artículos académicos existentes, una moneda —carboncoin— para la transición ecológica. Ello la convierte en una ficción científica especulativa de estrategia, noción explorada en el artículo para comprender esta (...) forma de imaginar el futuro. Tras presentar una serie de conceptos sociológicos para el estudio del dinero (con énfasis en “ficción social”, de Nigel Dodd) y esbozar una historia de la imaginación del futuro del dinero, sosteniendo que, desde 2008, vivimos en una coyuntura de transformación de la moneda, se analiza la futurización del dinero presente en la novela. Se exploran las características e implicaciones del carboncoin, que premia la captura de carbono, analizando momentos de su diseño y devenir en relación a las instituciones bancarias, el dólar, las tecnologías y los dilemas de su adopción. Poniendo a dialogar la trama de la novela con fenómenos históricos, posiciones teóricas, discursos políticos, procesos sociales y tecnológicos, se intenta dar volumen a la hipótesis de que el modo de imaginar el futuro en una ficción científica actual, que especula con el porvenir del dinero en tiempos de cambio climático, puede ofrecer nuevas posibilidades de pensar el futuro a las ciencias sociales. (shrink)

I consider some of the objections that have been raised against a conceptualist solution to the “grounding problem”, I address in particular two objections that I call Conceptual Validity and Instantiation, and I attempt to answer them on behalf of the conceptualist. My response, in a nutshell, is that the first of these objections fails because it ascribes to the conceptualist some commitments that do not really follow from the view’s basic insight, while the second objection also fails because it (...) denies the conceptualist resources that the alternative positions are allowed to use. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that Descartes is committed both to a compatibilist view concerning the relation between free will and divine preordination, namely, one according to which both of these views come out true, and to a libertarian view as regards human free will. I defend here that what allows our author to maintain both of these committments is what I call Mysterism, namely, the view according to which God's immense and incomprehensible nature explains our incapacity to understand fully (...) that compatibility through our own finite reason. (shrink)

“But in the history of cross-breeding, the union effected outside marriage was of infinitely greater importance. The tales of the chroniclers and missionaries often paint a dark picture of the relations between conqueror and Indian woman—rape, kidnapping, sale and exchange of women, a system of concubinage and harems etc.” (Angel Rosenblatt, La Población indigena de América)“There is racial conflict in Latin America and racial harmony which can be seen only by those who have eyes. The governments and the people themselves (...) see them only very late.” (Sarmiento, Conflicto y Armonías de las razas en América)The colonial period left no fertile seeds for a culture in the soil of South America. As Ricardo Rojas assures us, “We do not find a single imaginative work in prose in these three hundred years.” “All of our colonial literature is confined within the limits of the historical genre…everything in it is the unfolding of a chronicle. To fix the memory of social facts, memorials were written to military conquests and hagiographies of spiritual ones, poems on the English invasions and the emancipation of America. Even the brief erotic and religious poems are only monuments in verse, and so are Tejeda's works whose autobiographical character cannot be denied.” (La Literatura Argentina). (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo se propone Hamar la atención sobre algunos pasajes de los Dialogos platónicos con el fin de poder extraer de su analisis algunas consideraciones respecto de la noción de logos en relación con la figura del filósofo. Para esto, dividire la exposición segun los siguientes puntos: (I) para constituir una base de apoyo hermeneutico adecuada, recordare primero la naturaleza de la tekhne eidolopoiike tal como es presentada en el Sofista (235d y ss.); luego (II) sefialare la importancia de (...) ciertos pasajes de los Dialogos medios que se refieren a la limitación y función intrinseca del logos ante la captación del ser verdadero; y por ultimo, (III) dare un ejemplo de la superación filosofica del logos teniendo en cuenta lo encontrado en II. En la conclusión intentare realizar una adecuada ponderación de la exposición propuesta.  . (shrink)

La crítica del sujeto moral realizada por Adorno resulta clave para comprender su proyecto filosófico. Por un lado, permite reconstruir los momentos esenciales de su crítica a la filosofía del sujeto. Pero la crítica moral también ofrece la posibilidad de realizar una indagación más formal de su obra, dado que la misma figura como uno de los objetos privilegiados de la Dialéctica Negativa. De este modo, al revisar su crítica moral uno tiene la oportunidad de plantear la difícil pregunta por (...) la forma de esa filosofía que se presenta a sí misma como una dialéctica que exacerba la negatividad del pensamiento. (shrink)