El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en analizar el trasfondo de las matemáticas empleadas por Aristóteles en el libro V de la _Ética a Nicómaco_ con el propósito de esclarecer las nociones de aritmética y geometría en relación con la justicia y la ética. Expongo brevemente la concepción de algunos estudiosos de Aristóteles que proponen una incompatibilidad radical entre ambos modelos matemáticos, y a partir de ello indico por qué esa lectura es equivocada. Finalmente, defiendo una interpretación integracionista, especialmente a (...) partir de la comprensión de la virtud como _enérgeia_ y _entelécheia_. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la comisión de un crimen, testigos o víctimas, expuestos al habla del agresor pueden ser llamados, en forma posterior, a reconocer la voz de quien se sospecha es el autor del delito, con el fin de establecer si ellos la reconocerían como la voz del delincuente. Un ejemplo de esta situación, donde se vio involucrado el testimonio de testigos auditivos, fue durante el proceso del caso de Emilio Berkhoff, el joven universitario que fue declarado culpable de los delitos (...) de porte ilegal de armas y municiones y condenado a cinco años y un día de cárcel. El caso no estuvo exento de cierta controversia debido a las declaraciones públicas del imputado sobre supuestas violaciones al debido proceso. En este trabajo se revisa el procedimiento ocupado para la recolección de la evidencia auditiva a la luz de los criterios más ampliamente compartidos sobre la materia.: During the commission of a crime, witnesses or victims, exposed to the speech of the aggressor can be called, later, to recognize the voice of the person suspected of being the perpetrator of the crime, in order to establish whether they would recognize it as the voice of the offender. An example of this situation, where the testimony of hearing witnesses was involved, was during the case of Emilio Berkhoff, the young university student who was found guilty of the crimes of illegal bearing of arms and ammunition and sentenced to five years and one day in jail. The case was not exempt from some controversy due to the public statements of the accused about alleged violations of due process. In this paper we review the procedure used to collect the auditory evidence in light of the most widely shared criteria on the subject. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es describir la situación actual y las proyecciones de la comparación forense de la voz en Chile, a la luz de los estándares internacionales que se enfocan en la producción de evidencia confiable, que pueda ser utilizada en los tribunales de justicia. Para ello, en principio, se dan a conocer los fundamentos científicos que caracterizan esta rama de las ciencias forenses y, luego, sobre esa base se analiza y comenta la situación de Chile y (...) sus proyecciones, tanto en la práctica como en la investigación forense. Abstract: The objective of this work is to describe the current situation and the projections of forensic voice comparison in Chile, in the light of international standards that focus on the production of reliable evidence that can be used in the courts of justice. To do this, first, the scientific foundations that characterize this branch of forensic sciences are disclosed and, then, on that basis, the situation in Chile and its projections are analyzed and discussed, both in practice and in the forensic research. (shrink)

Raffaella De Rosa discusses the theory of sensory perception, especially color perception, offered by Ren Descartes. She offers a detailed overview of the recent literature on the topic and provides a new reading of Descartes' theory; she also raises questions of great interest in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Leibniz’s role en current political and social thought is complex. On the one hand, he represents the last great synthesis built on the idea of the World as a creation of God and man as his cooperator in history. However his notion of contingency can help to explain some of the problems facing social sciences today in so far as he understandsthis concept not only from an ontological but also from an epistemological point of view. To this one should add (...) that criticisms of classical and modern philosophy such as those of Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt leave intact the need of reason to organise society and we can see in Leibniz use of reason a forerunner of public choice postions. In sum, his vision of reason is very much alive though in new contexts. (shrink)

Raffaella De Rosa discusses the theory of sensory perception, especially color perception, offered by René Descartes. She offers a detailed overview of the recent literature on the topic and provides a new reading of Descartes' theory; she also raises questions of great interest in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

The paper proposes a reflection on mathematical beauty, considering the possibility of aesthetic qualities for formal language. Through a concise overview of the way this question is understood by some famous scientists and mathematicians, we turn our attention to Gian-Carlo Rota’s theoretical proposal: his reflections as a mathematician and philosopher offer a perspective, of phenomenological matrix, fruitful for looking at the question. Rota’s contribution allows us to focus on the role of competence, acquired through effort, sedimentation and habit of repetition, (...) in cultivating the potential to recognise the aesthetic quality of formal language. Finally, we draw on some contributions from Gestalt theory, closely connected to twentieth-century phenomenology for chronological and conceptual reasons, applying the idea of gestalt wholeness to the mathematical product and proposing some reflections that may help to clarify some of the dynamics underlying the attribution of qualities of beauty to formulas or the detection of its lack. (shrink)

Book Information What's Within. Nativism Reconsidered. What's Within. Nativism Reconsidered F. Cowie New York/Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 xvii + 334 Hardback US$35.00 By F. Cowie. Oxford University Press. New York/Oxford. Pp. xvii + 334. Hardback:US$35.00.

¿En qué medida la actividad política de Leibniz se apoya en unos principios metafísicos? Para responder a esta pregunta debemos entender que en Leibniz se da una práctica, es decir una actividad donde los elementos propiamente filosóficos se entremezclan con una visión de la coyuntura que posibilita, exige y limita la acción política. La Metafísica leibniziana es afín a la práctica política del propio Leibniz. Esto se estudia en el articulo atendiendo a los conceptos de contingencia y de libertad, y (...) a las dos formas en que las verdades de hecho remiten a las verdades de razón: En tanto que manifestaciones de la sustancia y en tanto que hechos o acontecimientos que se ajustan a leyes. En la medida en que el pensamiento leibniziano se atiene a la sustancia se perfila un concepto de acción que se ajusta a una visión ejemplarista del hombre como imagen de Dios mientras que desde el segundo punto de vista Leibniz reformula la noción de Ley de la naturaleza como fundamento del derecho. Desde este punto de vista hay que valorar los tres grados de la justicia que Leibniz distingue. (shrink)

Descartes endorses the two prima facie inconsistent claims that sensory ideas are innate and caused in us by bodies. Most scholars believe that Claims A and B can be reconciled by appealing to the notion of occasional or triggering causation. I claim that this notion does not solve the theoretical problems it is introduced to solve and it generates additional difficulties. I argue that these difficulties result from conflating two questions that need to be kept distinct while inquiring about the (...) origin of ideas: the psychological question of the mechanisms by which we acquire ideas and the metaphysical question of how the content of these ideas is determined. I conclude by proposing a new way of reconciling Descartes's Claims A and B in light of this distinction. On my account, Descartes's very views on innateness explain why bodily states must be causes of sensory ideas. (shrink)

Descartes maintained that sensations of color and the like misrepresent the material world in normal circumstances. Some prominent scholars have argued that, to explain this Cartesian view, we must attribute to Descartes a causal account of sensory representation. I contend that neither the arguments motivating this reading nor the textual evidence offered in its support is sufficient to justify such attribution. Both textual and theoretical reasons point in the direction of an (at least partial) internalist account of Descartes' views on (...) sensory representation. (shrink)

This book aims to overturn the common view of materially false ideas , which is that Descartes’s discussion in Meditation Three generates confusion about his views on truth and falsehood and is irrelevant to the rest of the argument in the Meditations.After introducing MFIs and then criticizing previous interpretations, Wee provides her own account in chapter three. Since a proper understanding of why MFIs fail in their representational function allows Wee to revisit their role in the Meditations, this chapter occupies (...) a central place in the book. She attributes to Descartes two theories of representation, the “Accurate Causal Account” and the “Alternative Account” . According to ACP, “an idea represents truly only if the idea comes from the cause from which it purports to come, and the idea accurately represents that cause” . According to AA, an idea is true “if it represents a thing with objective being ” .Since Descartes, in Meditation Three, is “unable to determine the causes of his . . . ‘adventitious’ ideas, far less to determine whether his ideas accurately represent their causes” , the claim that MFIs “represent no-things as things” is to be explained in light of AA as follows: “Under AA, all ideas purport to. (shrink)

In the intellectual life of an architect, design and representation are inextricably connected terms, both in theoretical speculation and in operational practice. Indeed the drawn image is both a document of what is yet to be realized (and in this case it assumes a pre-figurative value), and a registration of what exists, in that way becoming an action purporting to document. In both cases, of course, the object – the building, already built or yet to build – will be or (...) is elsewhere, and it is made present to our eyes through drawing. The visionary action of Alberti’s lineamenti remains the focus of the designer’s entire operational life, but the new digital technologies pose unprecedented issues to the draftsman. One is autographism; yet another is the role that the illusory forms of mimetic rendition may take, relative to the objectivity of a concrete world that is increasingly removed from the field of knowledge and experience. The question remains open of how to allocate a strong linguistic identity to digital images: maybe they don’t dwell in the technological world – the same world that enables them to be realized – but, as proposed here, in the world of art. In this way, it might be possible to strengthen and to renew an old link between science and figurative expression, a link that lies, through the invention of perspective, at the very origins of the modern civilizations of the images. (shrink)

The standard view of Cartesian sensations is that they present themselves as purely qualitative features of experience. Accordingly, Descartes view would be that in perceiving the color red, for example, we are merely experiencing the subjective feel of redness rather than seeming to perceive a property of bodies. In this paper, I establish that the argument and textual evidence offered in support of SV fail to prove that Descartes held this view. Indeed, I will argue that there are textual and (...) theoretical reasons for believing that Descartes held the negation of SV. Qualia aren't Descartes legacy. (shrink)

The old and recent debates on Cartesian essences have focused on the question of whether Descartes is a Platonist or a conceptualist about essences. I argue that this is a false dichotomy. An adequate account of Cartesian essences must accommodate and reconcile two central doctrines and texts in Descartes' philosophy. I will argue that recent conceptualist and Platonist interpretations neither accommodate these doctrines nor reconcile these texts. Such failures are not accidental since Descartes' doctrines of divine creation and simplicity render (...) it impossible for Descartes to be either a conceptualist or a Platonist. Failure to notice this fact explains why there has been no progress on this exegetical issue. (shrink)

Ortega enriqueció su concepción del concepto y la racionalidad desde fecha temprana, en Meditaciones del Quijote y Vieja y nueva política en el sentido de la afirmación de la vitalidad y la constitución de perspectiva, y el compromiso realista con el quehacer político.

It is a common view that Descartes' causal principle is to be understood in light of a similarity condition that accounts for how finite causes contribute to an explanation of their effects. This paper challenges this common view and offers a sui generis reading of Descartes' views on causation that has also the advantage of solving the two exegetical issues of whether Descartes thought of the body-to-mind relation in occasionalist or causal terms and of whether Descartes regarded sensory ideas innate (...) or caused by bodies. (shrink)

Alison Simmons, in Simmons (1999), argues that Descartes in Meditation Six offered a teleological account of sensory representation. According to Simmons, Descartes’ view is that the biological function of sensations explains both why sensations represent what they do (i.e., their referential content) and why they represent their objects the way they do (i.e., their presentational content). Moreover, Simmons claims that her account has several advantages over other currently available interpretations of Cartesian sensations. In this paper, I argue that Simmons’ teleological (...) account cannot be sustained for both theoretical and textual reasons and that it does not have the advantages it is claimed to have. (shrink)

O Autor confronta as noções de pecado com os anseios da nova Axiologia. Ressalta os pecados sociais e os da essência estrutural, concluindo serem os pecados um afastamento entre o como-é, e o como-poderia ou deveria ser. A medida do pecado é a Afirmação, síntese dos valores contidos em Deus.

Jesse Prinz has argued that a proxytype theory of concepts provides what he calls the 'intentionality' and 'cognitive content' desiderata better than any current competitor, and that the hybrid nature of proxytypes allows his theory to combine the informational component of informational atomism with the view that concepts are semantically structured entities. In response, I argue that the hybrid character of proxytypes, far from delivering the advantages Prinz claims, generates a threatening dilemma: either his theory is novel but fails to (...) deliver the intentionality and cognitive content desiderata, or it delivers these desiderata but is not novel. (shrink)

One of Ortega y Gasset's more important contributions was his theory and methodological use of the concept of perspective. Clearly he´s indebeted to Nietzsche on this issue, but it can also be surmised that Renan was also important in this issue at the time that Ortega was preparing Meditaciones del Quijote. The article compares Renan's criticism of Lamennais with Ortega's interpretation of Pío Baroja focusing not only on the paralelism of their criticisms of established and prominent personalities of their intelectual (...) community, but also on the underlying understanding of cultural practice. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the received view that the anti-nativist arguments of Book I of Locke’s Essay conclusively challenge nativism. I begin by reconstructing the chief argument of Book I and its corollary arguments. I call attention to their dependence on (what I label) “the Awareness Principle”, viz., the view that there are no ideas in the mind of which the mind either isn’t currently aware or hasn’t been aware in the past. I then argue that the arguments’ (...) dependence on this principle is question begging on two counts. Unless this principle is defended, Locke’s arguments beg the question against Descartes and Leibniz because their nativism implies the denial of the Awareness Principle. And even when Locke defended the principle, his arguments remain question begging because they presuppose the empiricism they aim to prove. The disclosure of the question-begging status of these arguments debunks a seemingly powerful way of attacking nativism. (shrink)

It is possible to describe certain basic principles that underlie Leibniz’s political activities. These principles do not literally determine the specific steps Leibniz takes, but play a much more decisive role than that due to mere metaphysical principles. They provide a general frame work for his activities and a point of reference towards which his reflections tend. Particular attention is paid here to the concept of perspective and its presence in Leibniz’s correspondence with Bossuet, Pellison and Madame de Brinon and (...) the way in which a theological dialogue enables Leibniz to develop his vision of reality. (shrink)