In this meta-essay, the author, a visionary inspired by cybernetics, probes the causes of intelligence in our world, with some old questions revealing surprising answers. He advocates a humanistic social order that he calls sapiocracy and, in a ‘Buberian Dialogue’, outlines his comprehensive vision of a world with artificial intelligence, which is redefined as an ‘infosomatic presence’. The publication’s innovative form of a coherent collection of essays serves the holistic and synthetic purpose of profiling cross-discourse similarities against their differences. The (...) authentic language used in the publication is due to the author’s natural lecturing style, which he calls ‘wording by thinking’. (shrink)

Para explorar las diferencias significativas entre estos dos pensadores, la primera parte de este articulo considerará sus ideas ontológicas. Comenzando con su preocupación común por la multiplicidad, exploraremos el movimiento fundacional de Deleuze hacia diferentes tipos de multiplicidad. La crítica de Badiou a este enfoque estará relacionada con su defensa de los recursos abstractos de la teoría de conjuntos en oposición a las síntesis concretas con las que Deleuze busca comenzar. La segunda parte de este documento explorará las consecuencias de (...) los compromisos ontológicos de Deleuze cuando se trata de la ética del acontecimiento exigido por Badiou. El compromiso de Deleuze con el estoicismo proporcionará el escenario para su explicación de cómo ocurren los acontecimientos y representa una fuente de pensamiento y actividad. En la tercera y última parte se buscará evaluar la explicación de Deleuze sobre el papel de los acontecimientos en situaciones particulares y en las actividades de los sujetos que responden a estos. Esto nos permitirá sacar conclusiones sobre la crítica de Badiou a Deleuze y la capacidad de Deleuze para resistir estas críticas. Argumentaré que Deleuze comparte con Badiou la preocupación de mantener una visión clara del tema como una figura comprometida en la búsqueda de proyectos nuevos e inauditos que responden al llamado de los acontecimientos. (shrink)

Even though disquotationalism is not correct as it is usually formulated, a deep insight lies behind it. Specifically, it can be argued that, modulo implicit commitment to reflection principles, all there is to the notion of truth is given by a simple, natural collection of truth-biconditionals.

This collection highlights the new trend away from rationalism and toward empiricism in the epistemology of modality. Accordingly, the book represents a wide range of positions on the empirical sources of modal knowledge. Readers will find an introduction that surveys the field and provides a brief overview of the work, which progresses from empirically-sensitive rationalist accounts to fully empiricist accounts of modal knowledge. Early chapters focus on challenges to rationalist theories, essence-based approaches to modal knowledge, and the prospects for naturalizing (...) modal epistemology. The middle chapters present positive accounts that reject rationalism, but which stop short of advocating exclusive appeal to empirical sources of modal knowledge. The final chapters mark a transition toward exclusive reliance on empirical sources of modal knowledge. They explore ways of making similarity-based, analogical, inductive, and abductive arguments for modal claims based on empirical information. Modal epistemology is coming into its own as a field, and this book has the potential to anchor a new research agenda. (shrink)

We combine two recent probabilistic approaches to natural language understanding, exploring the formal pragmatics of communication on a noisy channel. We first extend a model of rational communication between a speaker and listener, to allow for the possibility that messages are corrupted by noise. In this model, common knowledge of a noisy channel leads to the use and correct understanding of sentence fragments. A further extension of the model, which allows the speaker to intentionally reduce the noise rate on a (...) word, is used to model prosodic emphasis. We show that the model derives several well-known changes in meaning associated with prosodic emphasis. Our results show that nominal amounts of actual noise can be leveraged for communicative purposes. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Human life is infused with different kinds of normativity (e.g. instrumental, epistemic, conventional, moral). Different theorists have proposed vastly differing views on how to conceptualize the different kinds of normativity. Whereas social domain theorists have asserted that moral, conventional, and personal kinds of normativity constitute distinct thematic domains and are viewed as such even by young children, other theorists have denied that moral and nonmoral kinds of normativity are thematically distinguishable. The current paper proposes a third approach that may show (...) a way out of the controversy. Instead of viewing normative issues as belonging to one or more distinct thematic domains, it would be more accurate, both philosophically and psychologically speaking, to recognize that any given action may be grounded in multiple, non-exclusive reasons for action. Moral, conventional, and personal reasons for action may be defined in terms of what one believes one can respectively justify to all rational interlocutors, particular social partners, and oneself. The three kinds of reasons for action may accordingly be visualized as dimensions of normativity that together comprise a three-dimensional coordinate “space of reasons.” To illustrate the dimensions approach, 16 examples are given of actions whose values vary independently on each of the three dimensions. (shrink)

El presente ensayo explora el itinerario de la crítica que Nietzsche ejerció sobre el arte de Wagner en tres pasos. Primero, se trata de reconocer la juvenil admiración del filósofo por la ópera wagneriana entendida como un renacimiento del drama musical antiguo. Luego, se explora el tránsito hacia su desilusión en la clave de la influencia de Schopenhauer sobre Wagner. Finalmente, el ensayo remata en la crítica madura de Nietzsche sobre Wagner, donde se advierten los prolegómenos decimonónicos de la transformación (...) general del arte en espectáculo en el sentido contemporáneo. (shrink)

This paper explores the view that, on Mumford’s account of the purist, to the degree that the purist adopts an aesthetic perspective, he or she doesn’t watch the sport in question, and to the degree that he or she does watch the sport, there is a loss of aesthetic appreciation. The idea that spectators oscillate between partisanship and purism means that the purist is unable to avoid either the Scylla of not actually watching the sport, or the Charybdis of loss (...) of aesthetic appreciation at any given point. Ultimately there seems to be both a sport-shaped hole and an aesthetic-shaped hole in Mumford’s account of the purist. It is argued that oscillation is incapable of dealing with the problem precisely because it is disjunctive in nature and entails the spectator either watching sport from an aesthetic perspective or from a partisan perspective at any given time. An alternative conception of the aesthetic is considered that offers one way of dissolving the purist’s dilemma. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the conceptual relationship between rationality and progress as applied to scientific development. The concept of methodology is used in the sense of a model of scientific change. It is argued, as against e.g. recent discussion by Larry Laudan, that progress implies rationality. The notion of rationality useful for this conception of scientific development includes instrumental rationality, butalso the idea of rational paradigm-shift, which is analysed in terms of changes of conceptual frameworks. The key idea is the (...) posibility of a rational reconstruction of series of conceptual frameworks, where the shift from one framework to its successor may be reconstructed as rational in the sense of there being reasons in the successor for accepting the change, and thus the whole series being rational. (shrink)

The present essay approaches two different conceptions of Enlightenment and modernity. The first part considers Michel Foucault’s understanding of modernity as an “attitude” or “critical ethos” belonging to that age, that necessarily questions that which we have come to be in various contingent processes ; the second part considers Jürgen Habermas’s proposal, which invites us to understand modernity as an “unfinished project”, as a certain potential or rational ideal that is still to be carried out. Towards the end of the (...) essay both stances are confronted, whereby an attempt is made to engage elements retrieved from each in a productive dialogue, and to raise some criticisms and observations regarding the sociohistorical conceptions of each author. (shrink)

Los estudios sobre la constitución de la noción y el término «metafísica» han sido poco abordados por la historia de la filosofía, y sobre todo, por la tradición filosófica misma. Este trabajo, sobre la base de lo realizado por Pérez Fernández (1975), es una parte de una serie de publicaciones que pretende arrojar luz sobre este proceso. Concretamente, aquí se narra brevemente cómo el término «metafísica» fue mudando gradualmente su uso y grafía en la tradición latina. Sugeriré que Boecio usa (...) las locuciones theologia y μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ en dos sentidos, la primera la emplea para referirse al tema que es propio de los libros metafísicos de Aristóteles (i.e. teología filosófica), en tanto que la segunda locución la usa en un sentido bibliográfico. De este uso daría cuenta Abelardo en sus obras, que plausiblemente influyeron más tarde en la constitución definitiva del término en la Escuela de Toledo. Se incluyen imágenes de manuscritos para ilustrar lo apuntado. (shrink)

Zeami Motokiyo 世阿弥 元清 (1363–1443) gilt als Schöpfer des klassischen Nō-Theaters und war nicht nur ein herausragender Darsteller, sondern auch Autor vieler Stücke, die noch heute aufgeführt werden. Neben diesen Stücken hat Zeami aber auch theoretische Traktate zur Übungspraxis des Nō-Theaters verfasst, die über viele Jahrhunderte hinweg geheim überliefert wurden und als Anweisungen für seine Nachfolger gedacht waren. In diesen Traktaten reflektiert Zeami auf seine Kunst und stellt sie als einen Übungsweg nach buddhistischem Vorbild dar, als eine ästhetische, aber auch (...) spirituelle Praxis, einen Lebensweg (道 dō, michi), der auf die Verkörperung grundlegender Prinzipien abzielt. Im Folgenden möchte ich vor allem anhand dieser theoretischen Schriften nachvollziehen, welche Rolle der Ausdruck „von-selbst-so“ (自然 jinen, chin. zìrán) bzw. „von selbst“ (onozukara), der heutzutage als Übersetzung für den europäischen Natur-Begriff verwendet wird, in Zeamis Konzeption der leiblichen Übungspraxis spielt und dies mit Stellen aus anderen Schriften vergleichen. Zunächst werde ich aber in knapper Weise zurückverfolgen, was leibliche Praxis vor dem Hintergrund des Daoismus und des Zen-Buddhismus im Kontext der japanischen Übungswege bzw. Wegkünste bedeutet. (shrink)

La “Navidad Negra” de 1822, en San Juan de Pasto, es un sangriento y oscuro episodio de la historia de la guerra independencia de Colombia que tiñe de deliberada crueldad la mítica figura del _Libertador_, Simón Bolívar, construida como referente moral y político de las nacientes repúblicas andinas durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. La _intolerable estética_ de la violencia desplegada por el ejército republicano en la Campaña del Sur contra sus propios compatriotas, incompatible con la ética de la (...) guerra defendida públicamente por el Libertador, ha sido negada y omitida por gran parte de la historiografía oficial. Este artículo analiza en profundidad la contradicción entre el juicio ético y el estético sobre la crueldad de la figura épica, cuando ésta aparece como irrefutable voluntad de sufrimiento del enemigo inerme, y el papel de la negación y el olvido como mecanismos de preservación de la función política del mito del héroe. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the notion of the other as it emerges in ethics and in the so called politics of difference. The author confronts this notion with social-ontological and dialogistic thematizations of otherness. On that basis a radical revision of what ‚difference‘ means is claimed to be neccessary in ethical and political respect.