SummaryThe European demand for platina in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could not be met by the Spanish authorities who only authorized limited exports of the mineral, approximately 267 kg between 1750 and 1804. The lack of an adequate commercial structure generated direct trade between Latin America and Europe, particularly England. This article is an attempt to analyse and to quantify the three European sources of platina: exports from Spain, shipments of platina consigned by European travellers, and direct (...) trade. The reasons for the latter are studied, exemplified by the Wollaston case, and legal and direct trade are compared. (shrink)

This work seeks to contribute to the construction of a Postmodern Global Political Economy, applying to the study of the world economy a renovated version of the systemic analysis whose characteristics are picked up in a synthetic way. The main contribution of this work consists on the applicatio..

This article examines the future of social security in emerging economies, exploring the key challenges facing these countries and proposing potential solutions. Financial sustainability, universal coverage and equity are some of the main obstacles that must be overcome to ensure a robust and fair social security system. Through a literature review and case analysis, proposals are presented to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of these systems in the context of emerging economies.

El artículo estudia la tercera y última confrontación con el Tratado de la libertad de Schelling que Heidegger sostuvo en 1941. El objetivo consiste en explicar el contexto del problema del acabamiento de la metafísica del idealismo alemán, para analizar la posición que tiene Heidegger de las nociones de diferencia y voluntad forjadas por la filosofía tardía de Schelling; de esta manera, a partir del abismo de la voluntad se muestra la intersección entre la filosofía de la libertad de Schelling (...) y la ontología del evento de Heidegger. (shrink)

Thomistic ontology -- Ontological morality and human rights -- The war of the philosophers -- The modern way -- Pope Leo XIII and his legacy -- The survival of tradition.

The emergence of organic, metabolic, cognitive and cultural codes points us to the need for a new kind of explanatory causality, and a different kind of bio-logic— one dependent on, but different from, the deterministic logic derived from mechanical causality, and one which can account for the increase in semiotic freedom which is evident in the biological hierarchy. Building upon previous work (Bruni 2003), in this article I provide a stipulative definition of semiotic freedom and its relation to causality in (...) biological and cognitive systems. To do so, I will first discuss the close relation that triadic causality and semiotic freedom have to the notions of teleology and emergence, and how the latter two are interrelated in living systems. I pinpoint some of the reservations that these notions have encountered in the history of science (including evolutionary biology and cognitive science), but stress also their necessity in the study of any given biological and cognitive system. I draw a distinction between horizontal and vertical emergence in order to arrive at a notion of ‘second order emergence’ that affords us a more viable definition of semiotic freedom. I will then attempt to show that all of these concepts are of paramount importance when we come to study processes of sensing, perception andcognition at any level of a living system. Accordingly, these ideas are part of a framework-in-development to research the scale of thresholds of semiotic freedom, by assuming a top-down approach i.e., by starting from the highest levels of semiotic freedom and cognitive processes, and exploring how those processes disaggregate into lesser degrees of freedom. I thus hope to bridge the gap between those levels from above. (shrink)

A presente discussão pretende relacionar a temática da literatura de Lourenço Mutarelli, a filosofia de Deleuze e Guattari com o princípio pluralista. A proposta consiste em sinalizar os elementos convergentes nas obras de Mutarelli com a proposta teológica pluralista. Para tanto analisará as obras: O Natimorto; Nada me faltará e O cheiro do ralo visando evidenciar as tônicas teológicas que nela existem e apresenta-las numa proposta de libertação comprometida com a vida e com a emancipação humana.

En el siguiente trabajo analizaremos el estatuto de la cosa en dos trabajos fundamentales de la Kehre heideggeriana: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (1935-1936), Das Ding (1951) y Die Frage nach der Technik (1953).A partir de interpretar sus caracterizaciones ontológicas de las cosas, los entes intramundanos en las relaciones respectivas del Dasein, buscaremos cotejar las bases comprensivas desde las que articula estas elaboraciones. Con ello nos proponemos demostrar de qué modo dichas bases se articulan en un concepto de alteridad, una modalidad (...) de relación corporal y habitar del Dasein, respecto de las respectivas elaboraciones en la analítica de Sein und Zeit. (shrink)

El escrito, adentrándose en la teoría allagmática de Gilbert Simondon, tiene como objetivo provocarle al concepto de cosmopolitismo variantes ontológicas, epistemológicas y éticas. Se piensa, dichas variantes, al romper con los primados sustancialitas que sitúan el principio de individuación como algo consumado, idean un horizonte de sentido que se muestra capaz de expresar al cosmopolitismo, no como un ideal regulativo, sino como un proceso. De este modo, pensar al cosmopolitismo como un proceso, reclama asumir los movimientos ontológicos, epistemológicos y éticos, (...) no como abstracciones, sino como devenires-límite que reclaman examinar cómo es que nos creamos. Por lo anterior, en el escrito se afirma junto a Simondon: el cosmopolitismo pensado a la luz de la allagmática involucra la producción de movimientos capaces de afirmar disímiles modos de existencia. El cosmopolitismo es un proceso siempre por hacer y por afirmar en el que nos jugamos la posibilidad de expresar una vida digna. (shrink)

Maslow’s Human Motivation extended Theory, in its late version, proposed transcendence as one of the highest levels, inclusive or holistic in the Human consciousness. Through Meaning Theory, Victor Frankl and Paul Wong suggested that self-transcendence is a fundamental expression of our spiritual nature and a distinctive concept. However, it is not clear whether at present, with an extensive offer of individualistic currents, transcending involves a personal issue or is rather a collective issue, related to community and culture. The objective of (...) this research is to determine if seeking personal transcendence and seeking collective transcendence are two differentiable categories, and if there is a priority among them, which would suggest an extension of the Theory. With the participation of 402 business students in Mexico, and with the help of a structured equation model, it was determined that there is a significant difference between orientation toward “I transcend” and the orientation toward “I help others transcend.” The results obtained from the selected sample indicate that individual transcendence and collective transcendence are distinguishable categories. In addition, it was found that young people prefer to seek a personal meaning rather than a collective one, which suggest that dimension of collective transcendence is prior to personal transcendence. These findings can be used to design job profiles for positions that require staff development, and it can serve as a positive pattern for life education and society. (shrink)

En este artículo comenzamos exponiendo los problemas éticos que pueden surgir en los xenotrasplantes desde distintas perspectivas normativas. Tras esto, elaboramos una breve retrospectiva histórica acerca de los xenotrasplantes. Después, recogemos los principales datos científicos, algunos estudios sobre la opinión pública, el marco legal y las respuestas de diferentes comités éticos acerca de los xenotrasplantes. Finalmente, defenderemos la impermisibilidad de los xenotrasplantes desde una perspectiva principialista que incluye a animales no humanos.

Nos ocupamos aquí de cómo se produce y comprende la publicidad del espacio público y de cómo dicha producción y comprensión repercute normativa y performativamente sobre los usuarios de aquel. El enfoque que hemos escogido pretende comentar estos aspectos con la ayuda de las etnografías que se han venido realizando en los últimos tiempos sobre el cruising, por cuanto esta actividad, que implica una apropiación furtiva de determinados espacios públicos para el desarrollo de actividades sexuales anónimas entre hombres, ofrece un (...) observatorio privilegiado del desfase entre el espacio público como dispositivo performativo y los agentes, que no siempre son meramente moldeados por tales dispositivos. Encontramos en esta práctica una ventana privilegiada para el análisis de la forma en que lo público y lo privado son construidos espacial y conceptualmente en la dialéctica entre marcos morales y prácticas subjetivas. (shrink)

Este artículo expone los resultados de una investigación que examina el estado de abandono teórico en que se encuentra la cuestión del desarrollo, a partir de las críticas hechas desde los enfoques neoliberal y ecologista. Aborda luego el análisis de la actual crisis del desarrollo en el mundo, para poner luego en discusión las distintas respuestas y propuestas que se han planteado frente a la crisis del desarrollo y los problemas que genera: el "dejar hacer al mercado", la tesis del (...) "crecimiento cero", el control demográfico, el concepto del desarrollo sustentable, etc., evidenciando sus respectivos aportes y sus insuficiencias. Redefine finalmente el concepto de desarrollo entendiéndolo como transformación y perfeccionamiento de la economía en el tiempo, y aborda la posibilidad de desplegar en el futuro la economía de solidaridad. (shrink)

Neoliberalism is fundamentally a mode of production of subjectivity which, as a political rationality, Michel Foucault and other authors inscribe in a history of governmentality, whose singularity is the establishment of a type of government tending to validate an economic way of seeing life, as an articulating principle of the disposition to the competence of the individual entrepreneur of himself. This implies that each individual establishes a type of relationship with himself as human capital that he must make profitable, for (...) which he counts on an industry and technologies of selfhelp tending to his permanent realization. (shrink)

Mechanistic frameworks of investigation and explanation dominate the cognitive, neural, and psychological sciences. In this dissertation, I argue that mechanistic frameworks cannot, in principle, explain some kinds of cognition. In its place, I argue that complexity science has methods and theories more appropriate for investigating and explaining some cognitive phenomena. -/- I begin with an examination of the term 'cognition.' I defend the idea that "cognition" has been a moving target of investigation in the relevant sciences. As such it is (...) not historically true that there has been a thoroughly entrenched and agreed upon conception of "cognition." Next, I take up mechanistic frameworks. Although 'mechanism' is an umbrella term for a set of loosely related characteristics, there are common features: linearity, localization, and component dominance. I then describe complexity science, with emphasis on its utilization of dynamical systems modeling. Next, I discuss two phenomena that typically fall under the purview of complexity science: nonlinearity and interaction dominance. -/- A complexity science framework guided by the theory of self-organized criticality and utilizing the methods of dynamical systems modeling can surmount a number of challenges that face mechanistic frameworks when investigating some kinds of cognition. The first challenge is epistemic and concerns the inadequacy of mechanistic frameworks to facilitate the comprehensibility of massive amounts of data across various scales and areas of inquiry. I argue that complexity science is more appropriate for making big data comprehensible when investigating cognition, particularly across disciplines. I demonstrate this via an approach called nested dynamical modeling (NDM). NDM can facilitate comprehensibility of large amounts of data obtained from various scales of investigation by eliminating irrelevant degrees of freedom of that system as relates to the target of investigation. -/- The second shortcoming concerns ontological blind spots within mechanistic frameworks. Cognitive phenomena like extended cognition often fail to meet most, if not all, of the criteria assumed by many mechanistic approaches, especially component dominance. I argue that research guided by the notion of interaction dominance allows for extended cognition to be a real, empirically supported phenomenon within complex systems frameworks. In this chapter I discuss some of my experimental work on extended cognitive systems. -/- The search for mechanisms can be a reasonable starting position when attempting to explain natural phenomena in the life sciences. However, too strict of an adherence to theoretical and methodological commitments such as linearity, localization, and component dominance can result in intractable epistemic challenges and ontological blind spots. Complexity science has theories and methods to overcome such challenges in the investigation of cognition. (shrink)

En este trabajo se presenta el documento de la Conferencia Episcopal Española sobre la Iniciación Cristiana, publicado en noviembre de 1998. Se destacan los aspectos más relevantes desde el punto de vista pastoral y se plantean algunas cuestiones aún por resolver.

El presente trabajo explora la conexión entre el argumento a favor de un universo infinito del filósofo y rabino barcelonés Hasdai Crescas (ca. 1340-1410) y el problema del espacio vacío. Mi objetivo es señalar de qué manera la refutación sistemática de los argumentos aristotélicos contra la existencia del vacío condujo a Crescas a sostener que el universo es infinito y que más allá de su circunferencia extrema se extiende un espacio vacío ilimitado. Puesto que los argumentos en contra del vacío (...) abordados por Crescas tienen que ver en su mayoría con la teoría aristotélica del movimiento natural, al rechazarlos, el filósofo y rabino catalán tuvo que considerar alternativas que lo aproximan de manera sorprendente a la física del Renacimiento y la Modernidad temprana. (shrink)

-- 2. Sujetos, referencia y reflexión.