"Knowing how we know" is the subject of this book. Its authors present a new view of cognition that has important social and ethical implications, for, they assert, the only world we humans can have is the one we create together through the actions of our coexistence. Written for a general audience as well as for students, scholars, and scientists and abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and new social and cultural phenomena, this revised edition includes a new afterword (...) by Dr. Varela, in which he discusses the effect the book has had in the years since its first publication. (shrink)

We propose that to understand the biological and neurophysiological processes that give rise to human mental phenomena it is necessary to consider them as behavioral relational phenomena. In particular, we propose that: a) these phenomena take place in the relational manner of living that human language constitutes, and b) that they arise as recursive operations in such behavioral domain. Accordingly, we maintain that these phenomena do not take place in the brain, nor are they the result of a unique operation (...) of a human brain, but arise with the participation of the brain as it generates the behavioral relational dynamics that constitutes language. (shrink)

El artículo analiza la relación entre ipseidad y promesa desde la perspectiva de la identidad narrativa que propone el filósofo francés Paul Ricoeur. Desde dicha perspectiva, la promesa aparece como paradigma de la ipseidad, pues, en ella la identidad aparece como polo de responsabilidad, creatividad e intersubjetividad. El artículo termina con el intento de esbozar la ontología detrás de la tesis de la identidad narrativa.

En el presente artículo se pretende comprender el horizonte en el que la sociedad contemporánea construye su sentido de la cotidianidad, a partir de la positividad y negatividad del aburrimiento. El método empleado será la propuesta interpretativa de Heidegger, orientado por el concepto de cotidianidad en dialogo con Han, en lo referente a la manifestación del aburrimiento en la vida cotidiana de los sujetos. En una primera instancia se abordan las determinaciones de la racionalidad instrumental y el neoliberalismo en la (...) construcción de sentido en la de la sociedad contemporánea. Posteriormente, en un segundo lugar, se comprende la imposibilidad dialéctica de la positividad del aburrimiento, para luego entender cómo la negatividad del aburrimiento posibilita desde la dialéctica una negación del discurso neoliberal. Esta comprensión resulta relevante al momento de plantear la negatividad del aburrimiento como una posibilidad de mundo. Se concluye, que el aburrimiento es una apertura a los modos en los que la sociedad contemporánea construye su cotidianidad. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se propone un estudio comparativo de las producciones de algunos referentes de la Investigación Participativa. Se revisan algunos de los textos de Orlando Fals Borda, Paulo Freire, João Bosco Guedes Pinto, Michel Thiollent, María Teresa Sirvent y Joel Martí. Este trabajo se inscribe en el proceso reciente de transformación universitaria en Uruguay, en particular, en una de sus iniciativas: la de la integración curricular de la extensión a través de lo que se ha denominado “prácticas universitarias (...) integrales”. En este marco, la reflexión teórico-metodológica sobre la extensión crítica y las prácticas de investigación-acción conectadas con ella resultan fundamentales para dotar las iniciativas en curso de mayor pertinencia académica y potencial transformador. (shrink)

editorial changes not yet reviewed by author Purpose My intent in this essay is to reflect on the history of some biological notions such as autopoiesis, structural coupling, and cognition, that I have developed since the early 1960’s as a result of my work on visual perception and the organization of the living. No doubt I shall repeat things that I have said in other publications (Maturana and Varela 1980 and 1988), and I shall present notions that once they are (...) said appear as obvious truisms. But the reader it is not invited to attend to the truisms, rather he or she is invited to attend to the consequences that they entail for the understanding of biological processes. After all, explanations or demonstrations always become self evident once they are understood and accepted. KEYWORDS Autopoiesis, structural coupling, cognition, explanations, self consciousness, 1. Autopoiesis 1.1 Origins of the notion In November 1960, a first year medical student asked me the question “What began three thousand eight hundred million years ago so that you can say now that living systems began then?” I realized that I could not properly answer that question, so I said “I cannot answer this question now, but if you come back next year I shall propose an answer then.” Thus I accepted the question of the student to be answered later, and as I did so, I accepted also the question for myself. I realized that to answer this question I had to create a living system, either conceptually or practically, because I had to be able to say what kind of systems were living system to be able to say how they began. While in the attempting to answer the dual questions of what kind of systems are living systems, and of how did they begin so that I could now speak of their origin, it became obvious to me that living systems exist as autonomous entities in the form of self contained closed molecular dynamics of self production, open to the flow of molecules through them. Indeed, one can say that living systems arose in the history of the earth in the moment in which some spontaneous networks of molecular autocatalytic processes became closed upon themselves.. (shrink)

Purpose: To show how is it that that which we connote with notions of self and consciousness are configurations of sensorialities that arise in the flow of our living in recursive coordinations of doings which eventually they guide, and not entities independent of our doings. Approach: Following the consequences of our condition of structure determined systems that do not distinguish in the experience whether what they live is a perception or an illusion. Findings: That we human beings occur as relational (...) dynamics of recursive coordinations of feelings in which self and consciousness occur as configurations of sensorialities in the evanescent continuous present of the the changing flow of our living which they also guide. Practical Implications: Thinking, acting and reflecting in the awareness that self and consciousness are not physical entities or properties. (shrink)

Natura 2000 is a network of natural sites whose aim is to preserve species and habitats of relevance in the European Union. The policy underlying Natura 2000 has faced widespread opposition from land users and received extensive support from environmentalists. This paper addresses the ethical framework for Natura 2000 and the probable moral assumptions of its main stakeholders. Arguments for and against Natura 2000 were analyzed and classified according to “strong” or “weak” versions of the three main theories of environmental (...) ethics – anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism. Weak (intergenerational) anthropocentrism was found to underlie the Natura 2000 network itself and the positions of environmentalists, while strong (traditional) anthropocentrism pervaded the positions of economic developers. Land users seemed to fall somewhere between weak and strong anthropocentrism. The paper discusses the relation between ethics and different attitudes towards Natura 2000, highlighting some of the implications for the network’s ongoing implementation. It is shown that Natura 2000 achieves a strong reversal of the burden of proof from conservation to economic development and land use change under anthropocentrism. It is argued that the alleged theoretical divide between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism in relation to the burden of proof does not seem to hold in practice. Finally, it is predicted that the weak versions of anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism, are likely to converge extensively in respect to nature conservation policy measures. (shrink)

Philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Donald Davidson have explained that we cannot derive predictions from judgments such as "he boasted from vanity." Such judgments are also the source of countless painful mistakes. However, are they necessarily unreliable? Often enough, even if only gradually and partially, we get people right. Assuming that we do is already assuming that there must be a connection, if not causal then at least casual, between what a person is, what she does, and how she (...) acts; and that we may describe it correctly. If no ironclad generalizations can be made that connect the way a person is, her reasons, and her actions, how might we describe correctness in judgments such as this?Anscombe... (shrink)

The phenomenon of size constancy is defined as the apparent perceptual invariance of the linear dimensions of a seen object as this approaches the eye or recedes from it. It has been interpreted as resulting from the application by the brain of a size correction, made possible by the subject's apprehension of distance cues present in the image. We present several observations which, by dissociating accommodation from distance of the seen object and by suppressing the optic effects of accommodation on (...) the visual image itself, show that this interpretation is incorrect, and that in fact the size correction of the visual image is a function of the central effort of accommodation, not of the distance of the seen object. (shrink)

Two experiments compared “Red-Green” dichromats’ empirical and metacognized capacities to discriminate basic color categories and to use the corresponding basic color terms. A first experiment used a 102-related-colors set for a pointing task to identify all the stimuli that could be named with each BCT by each R-G dichromat type. In a second experiment, a group of R-G dichromats estimated their difficulty discriminating BCCs-BCTs in a verbal task. The strong coincidences between the results derived from the pointing and the verbal (...) tasks indicated that R-G dichromats have very accurate metacognition about their capacities and limitations in the use of BCTs. Multidimensional scaling solutions derived from both tasks were very similar: BCTs in R-G dichromats were properly represented in 2D MDS solutions that clearly show one chromatic dimension and one achromatic dimension. Important concordances were found between protanopes and deuteranopes. None of these dichromats showed substantial difficulty discriminating the Red-Green pair. So, to name them “R-G” dichromats is misleading considering their empirical capacities and their metacognition. Further reasons to propose the use of the alternative denomination “Brown-Green” dichromats are also discussed. We found some relevant differences between the “Brown-Green” dichromats’ empirical and self-reported difficulties using BCTs. Their metacognition can be considered a “caricature” of their practical difficulties. This caricature omits some difficulties including their problems differentiating “white” and “black” from other BCTs, while they overestimate their limitations in differentiating the most difficult pairs. Individual differences scaling analyses indicated that the metacognition regarding the use of BCTs in “Brown-Green” dichromats, especially deuteranopes, is driven slightly more by the chromatic dimension and driven slightly less by the achromatic dimension, than their practical use of BCTs. We discuss the relevance of our results in the framework of the debate between the linguistic relativity hypothesis and the universal evolution theories. (shrink)

Este escrito pretende abordar lo que el psicoanálisis ha denominado el discurso del amo, como discurso del inconsciente, realizando un giro del discurso del amo propuesto por Hegel que lo plantea como deseo de reconocimiento a lo que Lacan propone como reconocimiento del deseo, en tanto que el sujeto es un efecto del lenguaje y por tanto sujeto deseante.

This paper deals mainly with Marx's conception of politics. My contention is that in Marx's works two basic and opposed conceptions of politics coexist. On the one hand we find a negative, instrumental and realist conception that sees politics as nothing but domination of one class over another and the State as the main instrument of that domination. On the other, we find a positive conception that understands politics as community self-rule. I trace the conceptual origins of these two conceptions (...) to three basic concepts: "alienation", "emancipation" and "species-being". These notions provide the foundations of Marx's conception of politics and enable us to understand its shortcomings. It is basically a contradictory and utopian conception which seriously disregards both the positive traits of actual politics and individual freedoms. /// El tema central de este trabajo es la concepción de la política de Marx. En el artículo sostengo que es posible encontrar dos concepciones básicas de la política en los escritos de Marx: por un lado, una concepción negativa, instrumental y realista que la concibe como la dominación de una clase sobre otra, y al Estado como el instrumento principal de tal dominatión; por el otro, una concepción positiva que entiende la política como el autogobierno de una comunidad. Estas concepciones están basadas en tres conceptos fundamentales de la obra de Marx: "enajenación", "emancipación" y "ser de la especie", los cuales nos permiten entender los errores de la concepción general de la política de Marx. Se trata de una concepción contradictoria y utópica, que no entiende ni las características positivas de la política efectiva, ni la importancia de las libertades individuales. (shrink)

I do not wish to deal with all the domains in which the word time enters as if it were referring to an obvious aspect of the world or worlds that we human live. Indeed, the very fact that time can be made an issue of reflection shows us that what the word time connotes changes with the circumstances in which it is used. This situation alone, however, would not constitute a problem inviting us to enter in deep reflections if (...) we just accepted that the context defined the meaning of the word in each case. But we do not do that, and we ask the question what is time? as if we thought that the word time referred to some independent entity or dimension of nature that could be properly disclosed or described if we tried hard enough, even if we could not the final essence of it. I consider, however, that the question what is time? is adequate because it implies from the start the view that time can be properly treated as some kind of independent entity or dimension of nature. And I consider that such a view is fully inadequate because I think that all that we human beings talk about are relations that arises in our operation in language as a closed domain of recursive consensual coordinations of behaviors. Let me explain what I say with a few words about living, language, and cognition, and then answer the question what distinctions do we make or connote when we talk of time? (shrink)

A abordagem deste artigo trata de uma busca pelo sentido ontológico da vida humana em relação ao seu modo de ser e estar no mundo e com o mundo. Partindo de uma breve contextualização sobre a vastidão do cosmos, mostramos, direta e indiretamente, o paradoxal legado da ciência moderna que, de um lado, hoje evidencia nossa insignificância diante da infinitude do universo e, de outro, promoveu antinomias sociais por sua incansável busca pela dominação da natureza. O resultado desse processo é (...) um antropocentrismo desastroso em relação às questões ambientais. O ensaio, eminentemente teórico, promove um diálogo, a múltiplas vozes, na tentativa de angariar fundamentos éticos e epistemológicos para a Educação Ambiental. Trata-se de um estudo de metodologia bibliográfica. Destarte, em nossa abordagem, a filosofia figura com seu papel de buscar permanentemente pelo sentido e significado da vida, dos fenômenos humanos e não humanos. Defenderemos a tese de que é necessário e emergente o reconhecimento da esfera noológica da humanidade, pois se continuarmos a negligenciá-la incorreremos no risco de mantermos sufocado o lado demens do ser humano. Amparados pelas contribuições do pensador francês Edgar Morin, buscamos fundamentos filosóficos para a Educação Ambiental por querermos afirmá-la como campo de saberes e conhecimentos que promovem a busca pelo sentido da vida e a compreensão sobre a condição humana nacontemporaneidade. A ciência moderna promoveu a matematização e o desencantamento do mundo, fazendo com que o epíteto sapiens de nossa nomenclatura taxonômica ganhasse a companhia do epíteto degradandis. Para que seja possível a revitalização dos sentidos sobre a existência humana, é necessário que o epíteto sapiens seja acompanhado, metaforicamente, da desinência demens. Palavras-chave: Educação Ambiental. Ética. Epistemologia. Filosofia. (shrink)

Na medida em que o termo espiritualidade é em si mesmo ambíguo, o desafio específico da pesquisa em espiritualidade e saúde enquanto campo é definir de que maneiras o conceito ‘espiritualidade’ pode ser frutiferamente aplicado à saúde física e mental. Uma vez que a relatividade hermenêutica de um conceito humanístico tem de se relacionar com os resultados mensuráveis das ciências empíricas, algumas dificuldades inevitavelmente surgem. Isso não impediu, contudo, a formação de duas abordagens claramente definidas na pesquisa em espiritualidade e (...) saúde; uma a que poderíamos chamar hermenêutica-existencial e a outa mais relacionada às ciências da natureza. Por falharmos em distinguir essas opções, muitas das interações entre a ciência da religião ou os estudos da religião e a pesquisa em espiritualidade e saúde é prejudicada ao ponto da quase ausência de diálogo. Nosso intuito aqui é apresentar e conceituar as duas alternativas nos termos das ciências humanas. (shrink)

A contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia, this article examines the travelogue of Mirza Abu Taleb ibn Muhammed Isfahani, the Muslim Indo-Persian scholar, poet, and Lucknow nobleman who sympathized with the Irish during his travels to England and Ireland in 1799–1802. Translated from Persian to English by an Irish scholar working for the British East India Company, Charles Stewart, and published in London in two editions, The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan records the author's love for the (...) Irish and theirs for him. This mutual xenophilia, the article argues, is politically motivated by Abu Taleb's strong, but mostly tacit, reservations about the English, his imperial patrons. He realigns the relationship between metropole and colony by casting Ireland as the bridgehead of a glorious Islamic-Persianate culture that spread westward, a transcultural fantasy that takes two forms. First, the unconditional hospitality Abu Taleb experiences among his Irish and Anglo-Irish hosts leads him to imagine a linguistic-ethnic kinship between ancient Celts and Persians, recalled in the similarities he sees between a subimperial capital, Dublin, and an Indian Mughal city, Lucknow. Second, in his detailed account of a patriotic performance that he attended in Dublin of the British siege of Seringapatam in 1799, he identifies with the skeptical audience who, he assumes, are self-conscious about this propagandistic medium. (shrink)

The strict limits imposed on this paper make it necessary to confine it to a schematic resume of problems the importance of which demands an extended and exhaustive treatment. For this reason the author feels constrained to treat only a few of the many problems which, when duly considered, are capable of producing a radical modification in the field of epistemology. Likewise, the author cannot arrive at any settled conclusion, since he is hindered by the extent and close reasoning of (...) Heidegger's work, his subtlety, and the fact that his work is not yet completed. The intellectual revolt in which Heidegger's existentialism consists is based in part on a critical restatement of the problem of being and, further, in a series of concepts, namely, the world, utility and presence, the duality of subject and object, ontology and knowledge, all subordinated to the most important and ultimately superior concept of existence. These concepts and their revision, as a point of departure for Heidegger's existentialism, owe their origin to phenomenology and philosophy of life (above all, Dilthey's). From the revision of the above-mentioned concepts, by distinguishing in each one of them what, by reason of its inaccuracy, is a source of confusion, there are derived possible changes which, in the view of the author of this paper, may be described as: (1) the subject-object correlation, (2) knowledge, (3) the intellectual function as ground of the possibility of knowledge, and (4) the categories. With regard to the first problem--that of the subject-object correlation--it must be said that if it does not really disappear in Heidegger, he has profoundly modified it, since he does not accept the view held by his predecessors in all the history of philosophy that in the subject-object correlation there are given: (a) the subject, (b) the object, (c) the act of knowledge, and (d) the categories as entities equipped with absolute independence and unique peculiarities. The old view cannot be true, because, says Heidegger, at the start human existence appears so interested in its own being that there is no extra-subjective being prior to the being of human existence. The extra-human, that which is not purely existential (as human existence alone is), is given as useful, whatever it be. Human existence is comprehension of its own being. This comprehension, at the same time that it establishes the being of human existence, also renders possible whatever else is given, in the manifestation of a what rather than in that of a how. Or it may be that the theoretical yields to a prior qualification and by the same basic principle in the constitution of the world, and this qualification is the pragmatic character of the total reality. In harmony with this, it follows, according to Heidegger, that it is impossible to locate subject and object on the same plane; this is already equivalent to locating existence (who) and reality (what) on the same plane. It means nothing to speak of a determination of the subject by the object or vice versa, since there is no way of proving that a predetermination of the subjective and the objective precedes the determination so as to render possible the determination and with it the correlation. And if this is impossible, the intellectual function which makes knowledge possible is annulled, and every pre-essence of forms or manifestations of theoretic nature, such as the nous, the Platonic ideas, the Aristotelian active intellect or the Kantian a priori--all are dissolved in the presence of Heidegger's thesis of the uniqueness of (human) existence and the world, inasmuch as it affirms that knowledge is merely a modality of being-in-the-world. Finally, with regard to the categories, the chief negation of Heidegger proceeds from the fact that, up to this time, the categories are considered sometimes as situated in the object, sometimes in the subject, and zppear to be valid for all being. Heidegger is opposed to this; he postulates categories for the existentials different from those which prevail for other entities. He does not accept a categorial structure which is closed within itself and incapable of alteration. Finally, for him, the categries are interpretative in contrast to the traditional view that they are entitative and to Kant's view that they are constitutive. (shrink)

Una revisión somera de la teorí­a contemporánea de la democracia ofrece el siguiente panorama: por un lado, una valoración positiva de la forma efectiva de la democracia, es decir, la democracia liberal y representativa porque provee estabilidad, se respetan las libertades y tienen altos niveles de legitimidad; y, por el otro, una crí­tica de la democracia por ineficiente, representativa y no participativa y por liberal en oposición a social. El problema, evidentemente, es el siguiente: la democracia, ¿podrí­a ser como deberí­a (...) ser o sólo puede ser como de hecho es? Evidentemente, no se puede ofrecer a esta pregunta una respuesta definitiva y, en su lugar, se revisan los argumentos de aquellos autores que defienden a la democracia liberal y representativa como la única forma de gobierno posible en el mundo moderno con la intención de determinar si tienen o no razón, es decir, si la democracia representativa y liberal es, en efecto, la única forma de democracia posible. Dos ejemplos clásicos de esta tesis se encuentran en las obras de Publius y Alexis de Tocqueville."œThe conditions of a possible democracy: The Federalist and Tocqueville"A superficial review of the contemporary theory of democracy ofers the following panorama. On the one hand, a positive appraisal of the efective form of democracy, that is, liberal and representative democracy because it provides stability, freedom is respected and there are high levels of justice. On the other, a criticism of democracy for being ineficient, representative and non-participatory, and for being liberal in opposition to social. Obviously the problem is the following: could democracy be what it should be or can it only be de facto? Obviously a definite answer cannot be given to this question and, instead, the arguments of those authors who defend liberal and representative democracy as the only possible form of government in the modern world are revised with the intention of determining whether they are right or not, that is, if representative and liberal government is, in efect, the only form of possible government. Two classic examples of this thesis are found in the works of Publius and Alexis de Tocqueville. (shrink)

The answers to these two questions would have been obvious years ago: Human beings, of course, machines are instruments of human design! But now days when we speak so much of progress, science and technology as if progress, science and technology were in themselves values to be venerated, there are many people that think that machines as they become more and more complex and intelligent through human design, may in fact become alive so that they may supplant us as a (...) natural outcome of that very venerated progress and expansion of intelligence. Also many people seems to think that evolution is changing its nature so that technology is becoming the guiding force in the flow of the cosmic change in relation to us. I do not hold this view. I do not look at progress, science or technology as if they were values in themselves, nor do I think that biological or cosmic evolution is changing its nature or character. I think that the question that we human beings must face is that of what do we want to happen to us, not a question of knowledge or progress. The question that we must face is not about the relation of biology with technology, or about the relation between art and technology, nor about the relation between knowledge and reality, nor even about whether or not metadesign shapes our brains. I think that the question that we must face at this moment of our history is about our desires and about whether we want or not to be responsible of our desires. (shrink)

¿Cómo se rinde homenaje a un filósofo que a lo largo de su vida conjugó la academia y la filosofía con el rol de intelectual público? En el caso de Giannini, la respuesta es clara: estimulando la circulación de sus ideas, que junto a su vasta obra filosófica lograron configurar un discurso complejo y agudo acerca del Chile del último siglo. Y es precisamente parte de esa riqueza la que intentamos capturar en este libro que inaugura la colección Maestros y (...) maestras de la Chile, destinada a difundir el legado intelectual de quienes, como Humberto Giannini, no solo formaron a generaciones de jóvenes sino que a la vez aportaron a su disciplina y a la densificación de los discursos, asumiendo con propiedad que ‘lo público’ es inherente al quehacer de la Universidad de Chile. (shrink)

Here they are revised notions of the Western tradition that conform the discourse of poetic reason, and the way that Maria Zambrano assumed them. Her thought examines the possibilities of the words, either poetic or philosophical, to allow persons to get conscience. She attempts to unify both types of words using a notion of love as essential intent for dealing with the otherness, allowing, also, the human being conscious reflection on the affectivity. To achieve this, she revises culture to find (...) ideas and examples to support the poetic reason as loving and hopeful reflection and as a possibility of the humanity to know about its own feelings. (shrink)

Existe una opinión, que ha pasado a ser un lugar común. Y fue Platón el que la echó a rodar, irónicamente, primero a raíz de un percance que le ocurriera a Tales de Mileto; luego, con más reverencia, a raíz de los hábitos de su maestro Sócrates. Lo que Platón narra de Tales es que por estar contemplando el firmamento no vio lo que estaba delante de su nariz, y cayó en un pozo, con gran hilaridad de la servidumbre que (...) lo miraba. Y quién no recuerda al Sócrates que nos describe Platón: bajo la lluvia o la nieve, sin percatarse de ellas, sumido por largas horas en sus pensamientos, aparte, como tomando distancia para reencontrarse de un modo más productivo con los otros. (shrink)