Durante buena parte de los últimos 500 años, católicos y protestantes han vivido ajenos unos de otros, cuando no llenos de mutua hostilidad. No obstante, un cambio profundo se operó con el Concilio Vaticano II. El pensador latinoamericano contemporáneo Alberto Methol Ferré considera que la Iglesia católica se había colocado, inicialmente, a la defensiva frente a dos grandes desafíos de la Modernidad –la Reforma y la Ilustración–, pero modificó su postura a partir del Vaticano II, asumiendo lo más valioso de (...) ambas tradiciones. En este artículo se analizará la tesis de Methol Ferré para el caso de la Reforma Protestante, en especial en los temas referidos a la Iglesia y el bautismo, el laicado y al sacerdocio común de los fieles. (shrink)

Patients with strokes to the Anterior Communicating Artery pose an important challenge to rehabilitation teams due to a particular mix of cognitive and behavioral impairments. These deficits often compromise engagement with rehabilitation, learning and generalization. The goal of this article is to describe the long-term presentation of a patient with an ACoA stroke as well as her rehabilitation needs and the many challenges experienced by the rehabilitation team when attempting to facilitate functional, vocational and psychosocial recovery. Based on this case, (...) and the existing literature, a neuropsychological rehabilitation framework to understand and address the specific problems and needs of this population is proposed. This framework demands rehabilitation teams to consider: the slow pattern of recovery of this population, the interaction between cognitive and behavioral impairments, the relevance of physical and social environments, the value of personal projects and the need to include psychological and relational interventions. (shrink)

A partir de uma revisão crítica da literatura, estuda-se um desafio do anarquismo filosófico à teoria da autoridade jurídica de J. Raz: seguir uma ordem de que se discorda seria irracional, pois equivaleria a agir contra o que se considera mais justificado. Utilizando referências atinentes à teoria da decisão e à epistemologia, além de exemplos sobre ferramentas de auxílio à tomada de decisão do cotidiano (como experts e programas), esboçamos duas possíveis respostas, que correspondem a duas concepções instrumentais distintas de (...) autoridade: numa, é justificável para o agente colocar-se numa situação que o leve a agir de forma inconsistente com suas crenças – a ideia de “submeter-se à autoridade”, afim a uma “confiança cega”; noutra, utilizando a teoria dos “pontos-cegos”, delineiam-se restrições que uma teoria da racionalidade impõe à teoria da autoridade. (shrink)

Utopian Moments is an edited volume of essays with an exceptionally wide reach, covering 250 years of the utopian canon, from More's archetype to Le Guin's The Dispossessed. The editors, Miguel A. Ramiro Avilés and J. C. Davis, clearly favor the classics, or what Lyman Tower Sargent, in his contribution, calls "exemplars of the mainstream of utopian writing". All the usual suspects are here—Campanella, Bacon, Harrington, Fourier, Owen, Bellamy, Wells, and others—plus a few "wild cards" thrown in to keep (...) things interesting. True, similar projects have been done before. Claeys's excellent Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature and Claeys and Sargent's comprehensive Utopian Reader... (shrink)

Since Leibniz's time, Cartesian mental causation has been criticized for violating the conservation of energy and momentum. Many dualist responses clearly fail. But conservation laws have important neglected features generally undermining the objection. Conservation is _local_, holding first not for the universe, but for everywhere separately. The energy in any volume changes only due to what flows through the boundaries. Constant total energy holds if the global summing-up of local conservation laws converges; it probably doesn't in reality. Energy conservation holds (...) if there is symmetry, the sameness of the laws over time. Thus, if there are time-places where symmetries fail due to nonphysical influence, conservation laws fail there and then, while holding elsewhere, such as refrigerators and stars. Noether's converse first theorem shows that conservation laws imply symmetries. Thus conservation trivially nearly entails the causal closure of the physical. But expecting conservation to hold in the brain simply assumes the falsehood of Cartesianism. Hence Leibniz's objection begs the question. Empirical neuroscience is another matter. So is Einstein's General Relativity: far from providing a loophole, General Relativity makes mental causation _harder_. (shrink)

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians should embrace a (...) pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe seminal work of David Marr, popularized in his classic work Vision, continues to exert a major influence on both cognitive science and philosophy. The interpretation of his work also co...

A plethora of normative conservation concepts have recently emerged, most of which are ill-defined: biological diversity, biological integrity, ecological restoration, ecological services, ecological rehabilitation, ecological sustainability, sustainable development, ecosystem health, ecosystem management, adaptive management, and keystone species are salient among them. These normative concepts can be organized and interpreted by reference to two new schools of conservation philosophy, compositionalism and functionalism. The former comprehends nature primarily by means of evolutionary ecology and considers Homo sapiens separate from nature. The latter comprehends (...) nature primarily by means of ecosystem ecology and considers Homo sapiens a part of nature. Biological diversity, biological integrity, and ecological restoration belong primarily in the compositionalist glossary; the rest belong primarily in the functionalist glossary. The former set are more appropriate norms for reserves, the latter for areas that are humanly inhabited and exploited. In contrast to the older schools of conservation philosophy, preservationism and resourcism, compositionalism and functionalism are complementary, not competitive and mutually exclusive. As the historically divergent ecological sciences—evolutionary ecology and ecosystem ecology—are increasingly synthesized, a more unified philosophy of conservation can be envisioned. (shrink)

Part intellectual autobiography and part exposition of complex yet contemporary economic ideas, this lively conversation with renowned scholar and public intellectual Kenneth J. Arrow focuses on economics and politics in light of history, current events, and philosophy as well. Reminding readers that economics is about redistribution and thus about how we treat each other, Arrow shows that the intersection of economics and ethics is of concern not just to economists but for the public more broadly. With a foreword by Amartya (...) Sen, this book highlights the belief that government can be a powerful force for good, and is particularly relevant in the current political climate and to the lay reader as well as the economist. (shrink)

Measurement realism, the view that measurement targets quantitative attributes and that not all attributes are quantitative, has come under attack both from metrologists and philosophers. In this paper, I take a close look at two influential arguments against measurement realism: the argument from obsolescence and the argument from coordination. I concede that these arguments do challenge the epistemological position traditionally taken by measurement realists, but argue that the metaphysical core of measurement realism survives the challenge posed by these arguments. This (...) metaphysical core is vital to maintaining a clear and ambitious standard for successful measurement. (shrink)

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George Berkeley’s (...) Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s _Spiritual Exercises_ envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call _Election_.

Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers and set the standard for similar explorations today. -/- In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in articles that extend his (...) legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. They also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the articles in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher. -/- . (shrink)

Background: The American Medical Association, the British Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Association have guidelines that specifically discourage physicians from self-prescribing or prescribing to family members, but only the BMA addresses informal prescription requests between colleagues. Objective: To examine the practices of paediatric providers regarding self-prescribing, curbsiding colleagues, and prescribing and refusing to prescribe to friends and family. Methods: 1086 paediatricians listed from the American Academy of Paediatrics 2007 web-based directory were surveyed. Results: 44% of eligible survey respondents returned (...) usable surveys. Almost half of respondents had prescribed for themselves. An equal number had informally requested a prescription from a colleague. Three-quarters stated they had been asked to prescribe a prescription drug for a first-degree or second-degree relative, and 51% had been asked by their spouse. Eighty-six per cent stated that they had refused to write a prescription on at least one occasion for a friend or family member. The following reasons “strongly influenced” their decision to refuse a prescription request: outside of provider’s expertise ; patient’s need for his or her own physician ; not medically indicated ; need for a physical examination. Conclusion: These data confirm that most physicians have engaged in self-prescribing or curbside requests for prescriptions. It can be argued that curbsiding is more morally problematic than self-prescribing because it implicates a third party, and should be discouraged regardless of whether the requester is a colleague, family member or friend. (shrink)

Humans have now amassed a sizable knowledge of widespread, nonconscious cognitive biases which affect our behavior, especially in social and economic contexts. I contend that a democratic government is uniquely justified in using knowledge of cognitive biases to promote pro-democratic behavior, conditionally justified in using it to accomplish ends traditionally within the scope of government authority, and unjustified in using it for any other purpose. I also contend that the government ought to redesign institutional infrastructure to avoid triggering cognitive biases (...) where it is not permitted intentionally to manipulate such biases and to optimize the effects of such biases where permissible. I shall use the United States of America as an example throughout, but my conclusions apply equally to any democracy which values the political autonomy of its populace. (shrink)