The theories about the origins of humanity contain, for the most part, a strange contradiction. For one thing, we acknowledge that the human mind is basically different from animal intelligence; indeed, there are few writers who question the revolutionary nature of the change that has occurred in the psychic makeup of living beings as a consequence of the advent of conceptual thought, of conscious reflection, and of objective knowledge of the world. “Human intelligence,” writes Le Roy, “presents a completely original, (...) distinctive feature; there is something exceptional and unique about it that is not to be found anywhere else,” while Durkheim observes: “Man is not merely an animal with a few additional attributes, but quite another thing.” “Although the Infusoria are linked to the monkey by a whole series of intermediate stages, the monkey is separated from man by a hiatus,” insists Claparède, and, finally, a writer who is not a scholar expressed the following common-sense judgment on the subject: “We would know exactly what man is if we could accurately assess that insurmountable wall that separates the most ‘intelligent’ animal from the most primitive pygmy.”. (shrink)

The truly great social drama of mankind has not been the oppression of the minorities by the majorities. This form of tyranny affects by definition only small groups of human beings, and if it has often assumed violent forms, it has nevertheless retained over the centuries its episodic character—excepting the case of the Jewish people.

ABSTRACTWe discuss the thesis of universality of geometric notions and offer critical reflections on the concept of “natural geometry” employed by Spelke and others. Promoting interdisciplinary wor...

This paper examines and defends the view that the immediate objects of visual perception, or what are often called sense data, are parts of the facing surfaces of physical objects-the naturalized sense data (NSD) theory. Occasionally defended in the literature on the philosophy of perception, most famously by G. E. Moore (1918-1919), it has not proved popular and indeed was abandoned by Moore himself. The contemporary situation in the philosophy of perception seems ripe for a revaluation of the NSD theory. (...) however. The NSD theory allows us to accommodate the very real shortcomings in uncritical direct realism without postulating the existence of non-physical sense data in a way that has seemed to many incompatible with any robust form of philosophical naturalism.The argument to establish the NSD theory proceeds in two stages. In §II I argue against the direct realist that we perceive three-dimensional material objects in virtue of perceiving parts of their surfaces. The argument for this conclusion involves clearly distinguishing (in § I) between two notions that have tended to be run together in discussions of perception---namely, immediate perception and direct perception. In §III I argue against the sense-datum theorist that those parts of the surfaces of those objects are not themselves perceived in virtue of the perception of anything else. (shrink)

This paper aims to outline an analysis and interpretation of the process that led to First-Order Logic and its consolidation as a core system of modern logic. We begin with an historical overview of landmarks along the road to modern logic, and proceed to a philosophical discussion casting doubt on the possibility of a purely rational justification of the actual delimitation of First-Order-Logic. On this basis, we advance the thesis that a certain historical tradition was essential to the emergence of (...) modern logic; this traditional context is analyzed as consisting in some guiding principles and, particularly, a set of exemplares (i.e., paradigmatic instances). Then, we proceed to interpret the historical course of development reviewed in section 1, which can broadly be described as a two-phased movement of expansion and then restriction of the scope of logical theory. We shall try to pinpoint ambivalencies in the process, and the main motives for subsequent changes. Among the latter, one may emphasize the spirit of modern axiomatics, the situation of foundational insecurity in the 1920s, the resulting desire to find systems well-behaved from a proof-theoretical point of view, and the metatheoretical results of the 1930s. Not surprisingly, the mathematical and, more specifically, the foundational context in which Firs-Order-Logic matured will be seen to have played a primary role in its shaping. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the innovative way of doing critical philosophy that María del Rosario Acosta López proposes in her aesthetics of resistance and grammars of the unheard. The paper examines the contributions of two sets of conversations with Acosta López’s critical philosophy. In the first place, staging a dialogue between Acosta López and Black feminist philosophy, the article offers a defence of reconceptualizing philosophy in the 21st Century through a dialogue with the voices and perspectives of the excluded and silenced—a (...) reconceptualization that reimagines the critical role of philosophy. In the second place, the paper calls attention to the crucial significance of Acosta López’s aesthetics of resistance for contemporary debates in contemporary political epistemology, putting in conversation her grammars of the unheard with my epistemology of resist- ance and María Lugones’s concept of complex communication. This second conversation also underscores a new way of understanding the critical and transformative function of philosophy by centering the voices and perspectives of the excluded and silenced. (shrink)

This article studies the differences between traditional financial intermediaries (commercial banks, savings banks and cooperative banks) and ethical banks based on property rights, in which the owner decides the ideology, principles, standards and objectives of the organisation. In ethical banking, affinity centres on positive social and ethical values. The article consequendy focuses on an index proposed both to differentiate ethical banks from other types of banks, and also to pinpoint the differences between the various ethical banks themselves.This is the Radical (...) Affinity Index (RAI), which groups banks together in terms of their stance on ethical commitment, concentrating on ethical ideology and principles (information transparency, placement of assets, guarantees and participation) and using a sample of 114 European banks. The evidence shows that transparency of information and placement of assets are factors that differentiate ethical banks from other financial intermediaries.Guarantees and participation are characteristics specific to ethical banks; these variables, however, do not offer clear evidence to our analysis. (shrink)

The logic TM is the result of adding the mingle axiom, M to Ticket Entailment logic, T. In the present study, it is proved that TM has the variable-sharing property . Ternary relational semantics for TM is provided. Finally, an interesting extension of TM with the vsp is briefly discussed.

A simple, bivalent semantics is defined for Łukasiewicz’s 4-valued modal logic Łm4. It is shown that according to this semantics, the essential presupposition underlying Łm4 is the following: A is a theorem iff A is true conforming to both the reductionist and possibilist theses defined as follows: rt: the value of modal formulas is equivalent to the value of their respective argument iff A is true, etc.); pt: everything is possible. This presupposition highlights and explains all oddities arising in Łm4.

Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis is a sympathetic critique of Freud's work, tracing its political content and context from his early writings on hysteria to his late essays on civilization and religion. Brunner's central claim is that politics is a pervasive and essential component of all of Freud's discourse, since Freud viewed both the psyche and society primarily as constellations of power and domination. Brunner shows that when read politically, Freud's discourse can be seen to unite mechanics and meaning (...) into a plausible, fruitful and internally consistent theory of the mind, therapy, family and society. Part one deals with the medical and political background of Freud's work. It explains how Freud postulated mental principles that were the same for all races and nations. The second part is concerned with the logic and language of Freud's theory of the mind. Brunner also details how Freud introduced dynamics of dominance and subjugation into the very core of the psyche. Part three addresses dynamics of power in the clinical setting, which Freud forged out of a curious blend of authoritarian and liberal elements. Brunner focuses on how this setting creates an arena for verbal politics. He also examines various social factors that influenced the therapeutic practice of psychoanalysis, such as class, gender and education. Part four explores Freud's analysis of the family and large-scale social institutions. Though Brunner is critical of the authoritarian bias in Freud's social theory, he suggests that it provides a useful vocabulary to unmask hidden psychological aspects of domination and subjection. (shrink)

This article analyses the nature of mental imagery in metaphoric thought as envisaged by the contemporary theory of metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics (Lakoff, Cambridge University Press, 1993). Our study of metaphor in the field of marine biology draws on two crucial aspects of mental imagery, namely dynamicity and pervasiveness. Image metaphors and behaviour-based metaphors have generally been regarded as two different types of resemblance metaphor. In our view, the dynamicity of certain mental images highlights inherent similarities between these two types (...) of metaphor, and makes the differences between them more apparent than real. For this reason, we propose a more refined description of resemblance metaphors in terms of the static or dynamic nature of the mental images underlying them. Our study also underlines the fact that mental images permeate all classes of metaphor, and that the pervasiveness and dynamicity of mental images affords insights into both resemblance metaphors and non-resemblance metaphors. (shrink)

The current economic crisis is forcing us to reflect on where we have gone wrong in recent years. In the search for responsibilities some have looked to Business Schools and Administration Departments. It is surprising that this situation has come about despite the fact that Business Ethics and Social Corporate Responsibility have been taught in business schools for years. Without wanting to place all the blame on higher education institutions, but from a critical perspective and assuming responsibility, we believe it (...) is necessary to reflect rigorously on how to train leaders for the future and how we can best educate responsible Managers. In this article our objective is to reflect on the two factors which influence the training of responsible Managers: management discourse theory and the ethos of the institutions training future Managers. The central point of our article will be to argue for the need to develop an institutional ethos in Administration Faculties and business schools which is consistent with the responsibility discourse we propose and with the aim of providing high quality technical and moral training. Our central argument is that institutional ethos has enormous educational power and that the moral climate of an institution has a major influence on students' ideas, values and behaviours. The second argument for this main point is that corporate ethos can be managed and modulated. It is a process of cultural change which requires time and the setting up of specific initiatives to achieve the organisation that we want. (shrink)

The existence of structures with non-trivial authomorphisms (such as the automorphism of the field of complex numbers onto itself that swaps the two roots of – 1) has been held by Burgess and others to pose a serious difficulty for mathematical structuralism. This paper proposes a model-theoretic solution to the problem. It suggests that mathematical structuralists identify the “position” of an n-tuple in a mathematical structure with the type of that n-tuple in the expansion of the structure that has a (...) name for every element in it. (shrink)

La comprensión aristotélica de la prudencia constituye un antecedente fundamental para entender el giro hermenéutico de la fenomenología heideggeriana. Se examina cómo la interpretación fenomenológica de Heidegger sobre esta virtud dianoética puede entenderse si se consideran a cuatro aspectos: la prioridad de la praxis respecto de los saberes teóricos, el reconocimiento de un horizonte de verdad más amplio que la verdad proposicional del logos apophantikos, el valor del instante kairológico en el que discurre la acción humana y el anticipo de (...) la temporalidad y, cómo no, la importancia de la finitud, la libertad y la autenticidad del existir fáctico del hombre. (shrink)

La relación que Ricoeur establece entre lo bueno, lo justo y la convicción permite postular un círculo hermenéutico —semejante al que Heidegger propone en su ontología fundamental, y que Gadamer complementa en Verdad y método— en la filosofía práctica, conformado por tres momentos: lo bueno, lo justo y su aplicación al contexto que lo demanda. Con su “pequeña ética”, mediada por esta reformulación, Ricoeur pretende terciar en la discusión entre la ética de la argumentación de Habermas y el comunitarismo e (...) historicismo de C. Taylor, A. MacIntyre y H.-G. Gadamer. (shrink)

Let L be a commutative residuated lattice and let f : Lk → L a function. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for f to be compatible with respect to every congruence on L. We use this characterization of compatible functions in order to prove that the variety of commutative residuated lattices is locally affine complete. Then, we find conditions on a not necessarily polynomial function P(x, y) in L that imply that the function x ↦ min{y є L (...) | P(x, y) ⪯ y} is compatible when defined. In particular, Pn(x, y) = yn → x, for natural number n, defines a family, Sn, of compatible functions on some commutative residuated lattices. We show through examples that S1> and S2, defined respectively from P1 and P2, are independent as operations over this variety; i.e. neither S1 is definable as a polynomial in the language of L enriched with S2 nor S2 in that enriched with S1. (shrink)

Reason and Nature investigates the norms of reason--the standards which contribute to determining whether beliefs, inferences, and actions are rational. Nine philosophers and two psychologists discuss what kinds of things these norms are, how they can be situated within the natural world, and what role they play in the psychological explanation of belief and action. Current work in the theory of rationality is subject to very diverse influences ranging from experimental and theoretical psychology, through philosophy of logic and language, to (...) metaethics and the theory of practical reasoning; this range is well represented here. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Culture has been at the core of many recent developments in the social sciences, particularly after the so-called ‘linguistic turn’. This has also been seeping into discussions about the relation between culture and politics. The present paper proposes a specific theoretical approach in this respect. It mobilizes Castoriadis’s concept of the ‘imaginary’, as well as those of ‘collective subjectivity’ and ‘social creativity’. It also makes use of the rich case of ‘populism’, more generally, and Peronism, more specifically, so as to (...) make clear its workings in a sociological strategy that unfolds in both the theoretical and the empirically-oriented domains. The paper offers an alternative to Alexander’s and Laclau’s approaches to culture and politics. (shrink)

Going from cognitive theory to neural data to ACT‐R models, the authors relate brain activity in a lexical ambiguity priming task to brain processes that resolve ambiguity in word meanings. These detailed data were tested and found compatible to the results of an ACT‐R computational model of reinforcement learning (RL). The model confirms and extends the behavioral findings to provide a RL account of individual differences in lexical ambiguity resolution.

This paper provides a detailed analysis of how, according to Kant, the moral badness of some third parties’ actions can be established with certainty (by anyone, not only by the agent’s own conscience or by God). This account helps clarify why Kant affirms that some forms of wrongdoing (of which there are a “multitude of woeful examples”) can be demonstrated to be immoral, while excluding the possibility of proving the moral goodness of any action. The paper concludes by arguing that (...) the possible certainty of judgements imputing immorality to actions of others is not rational but rather moral. (shrink)

Since Grice introduced the distinction between what is said and implicature, the literature shows a widespread interest in the delimitation of these notions. In this paper, I will identify and specify the criteria with which Grice distinctly determines the factors of the speaker’s meaning and I will use these criteria to compare the Gricean minimalist notion of what is said with the Relevance theoretic notion of explicature. In drawing this comparison, I aim to make it clear that the two approaches (...) have different commitments and motivations. Finally, taking these commitments into account, I will argue that the philosophical notion of saying fits harmlessly in the cognitive account of linguistic communication by Relevance Theory and thus it can coexist with the notion of explicature. (shrink)

The article suggests an ethical-anthropological reading of Thoughts, magna opera of the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, which was published after his death by his relatives and friends. Such a reading is presented in three moments: Firstly, an anthropological description aimed at answering the question ‘who is man?’; secondly, an analysis of Pascal’s erotic condition; and, finally, an ethical proposal as cura amoris. The main argument of the article is that every human being has a motivation in acting, that (...) of love and being loved. Thus, having a happy or unhappy life depends on the care for this erotic condition, and the latter is achieved through thought. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop the notions of particularism and generalism in argumentation theory. Generalism is the claim that to argue we need general rules that specify which data support which conclusions, while particularism denies it. The problem is that it is not always clear what these rules consist of, and in what sense argumentation depend on them. To clarify this, I will first introduce the discussion in moral philosophy and show how it has been adapted to (...) argumentation theory. Then I will distinguish some ways of understanding rules and contend that their alleged necessity might be supported in at least three ways. This will allow me to identify some variants of generalism and, on this basis, to outline what I consider to be the most promising reading of particularism. L’objectif de cet article est de développer les notions de particularisme et de généralisme en théorie de l’argu-mentation. Le généralisme est l’affirma-tion selon laquelle pour argumenter, nous avons besoin de règles générales qui pré-cisent quelles données soutiennent que-lles conclusions, alors que le particula-risme le nie. Le problème est qu’il n’est pas toujours clair en quoi consistent ces règles et dans quel sens l’argumentation en dépend. Pour clarifier cela, je com-mencerai par introduire la discussion en philosophie morale et montrerai com-ment elle a été adaptée à la théorie de l’argumentation. Ensuite, je distinguerai quelques façons de comprendre les règles et soutiendrai que leur prétendue nécessité pourrait être soutenue d’au moins trois façons. Cela me permettra d’identifier certaines variantes du géné-ralisme et, sur cette base, d’esquisser ce que je considère comme la lecture la plus prometteuse du particularisme. (shrink)

El presente estudio contiene algunas recientes indagaciones que continúan y se agregan a anteriores trabajos del autor sobre el problema de la recepción de Vico en la cultura hispánica del siglo XIX.The present study contains some recent investigations that continue to previous works of the author on the problem of the reception of Vico during the XIX Century in the Hispanic culture.

ABSTRACT The question of non-Western difference has come to feature prominently across the field of comparative rhetoric, where it is often presupposed that an irreducible difference separates Western from non-Western rhetorical and cultural production. It is on the basis of this presupposition that critics have established a politics of comparative inquiry, whereby restituting the pure consciousness of a non-Western subaltern subject is understood to subvert the hegemony of Western thought. But what exactly is the nature of this difference? In this (...) article I examine the recent turn toward Latin America in the field of comparative rhetoric to argue that this presupposition serves as a constitutive topos—that the object of Latin America is invented rhetorically in the very act of comparative inquiry—and that this presupposition yields a political impasse that the field has yet to think through. Drawing on recent work in Latin American studies, I argue for a rearticulated notion of subalternity as a methodological approach for dealing with this impasse. (shrink)

This paper offers a Spanish translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On intellect. Also one can find a short introduction to the text.

In this paper, we analyze the astronomical tables for 1340 by Immanuel ben Jacob Bonfils who flourished 1340–1365, based on four Hebrew manuscripts. We discuss the relation of these tables principally with those of al-Battānī, Abraham Bar Ḥiyya, and Levi ben Gerson, as well as with Bonfils’s better known tables, called Six Wings. An unusual feature of this set of tables is that there are two kinds of mean motion tables, one arranged for Julian years from 1340 to 1380, months, (...) days, hours, and minutes of an hour, and the other arranged in the Hebrew calendar for the times of conjunctions and oppositions of the Sun and the Moon only, with subtables for 19-year cycles, single years in a 19-year cycle, and months. The latter arrangement is found in Bonfils’s Six Wings for solar and lunar motions only, whereas in his Tables for 1340, this arrangement applies to all planets. Notably absent are tables for the trigonometric functions, etc., that are generally found in such sets of astronomical tables. (shrink)

Le chineo est une coutume héritée de l’époque coloniale selon laquelle un homme criollo s’introduit dans les communautés indigènes pour avoir des relations sexuelles avec leurs femmes. Parfois librement consenties, ces unions sont toutefois souvent réalisées avec violence. Les plaintes pour viols commencent à être davantage entendues par la justice argentine. L’analyse d’un procès tenu en 2007 souligne le rôle joué par des travaux anthropologiques et historiques dans l’argumentaire de l’un des juges.