This article studies natural food packaging as enabling artifacts of the traditional material culture of Antioquia in Colombia. For this purpose, we consider artifacts as objective nodes that combine design and use intentions, functions, materials, histories, artifactual lineages, and cooperative relationships that stabilize ritualized practices of a human group. We take the example of natural packaging as artifacts that enablers and stabilizers of traditional cooking and food preparation practices. Natural packaging materials are here assumed to be leaves having some favorable (...) property to contain a food product. After providing a theoretical reflection, we analyze the data collected from fieldwork we conducted in two towns in Antioquia, Colombia (Santa Fe de Antioquia and Amagá), as well as from an interview with an expert in the field. Finally, we show that it is possible to postulate an analysis under a relational ontological description of a traditional practice with conceptual categories of the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The attachment to the ancestral worship among Africans combines the respect for the dead who are now near the Great One, and the power they have after death over earthly problems. They have control over a lot of earthly elements, and at the same time they are now able to fight the evil spirits which send evil spells on the living. I have heard of a Lenje prayer to the ancestors, which runs as follows: 'You our ancestors who were so (...) good while you were with us. You were kind to us. Help us to have rain. Speak to the High One, the Great Spirit, to send us rain'. (shrink)

Es posible apreciar una serie de factores que han debilitado al contexto democrático, específicamente, la actividad legislativa, que encuentra diversos desafíos que se suman a la problematización del estudio. Es en el contexto de Parlamento Abierto que la participación ciudadana cobra relevancia científica en el marco de la teoría de la democracia representativa. Mediante metodología mixta se responderá la siguiente pregunta de investigación: ¿cómo se generan espacios democratizados en la actividad legislativa del Parlamento Abierto? Este artículo es una primera aproximación (...) a una investigación doctoral en curso, cuyos resultados y conclusiones serán presentados en un próximo congreso del CUICIID. (shrink)

Culture has traditionally been considered as a set of knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, norms, and morals, acquired by a human being as a member of a group. Some anthropologists interpret this as a set of abstract representations, such as information or knowledge, while others interpret it as behavioral control mechanisms. These views assume that the contents of a particular culture must be processed by the minds of individuals, either in a direct way or by resorting to learned mental structures in (...) processes of symbolic socialization. Some critics suggest a problem with these perspectives since they do not provide a convincing explanation of the enculturation process beyond metaphorical images of transfer or internalization of symbolic cultural contents through linguistic transmission. The new embodied theories of cognition, especially enactivism, could give new ideas about what enculturation processes are like, through the concept of participatory sense-making in material culture environments. In this essay, we discuss how an enactive vision of culture could be, and what advantages it would have, as well as the challenges and weaknesses in explaining the culture and its learning processes. (shrink)

Obesity is a worldwide epidemic associated with severe health and psychological wellbeing impairments expressed by an increased prevalence of affective disorders. Emotional dysfunction is important due to its effect on social performance. The aim of the present narrative review is to provide a general overview of human research exploring emotional information processing in overweight and obese people. Evidence suggests that obesity is associated with an attenuation of emotional experience, contradictory findings about emotion recognition, and scarce research about automatic emotional information (...) processing. Finally, we made some concluding considerations for future research on emotional information processing in overweight and obese people. (shrink)

The concept of a “chemical speciation”, as defined by in the year 2000, is grounded in an empiricist semantics. It is a static concept, as it is associated with the ontological category of the chemical state of the distribution of chemical species in a system and is further restricted to chemical species of a single element as it excludes chemical species with more complex chemical systemic subunits, such as molecular species, crystals, or nanoparticles. In this work, we propose a new (...) definition of “chemical speciation” based on a semantics of meaning, applying Mario Bunge’s philosophical system. Chemical speciation is the distribution of chemical systemic subunits amongst defined chemical species in a system. Additionally, we propose two dynamic concepts associated with chemical speciation: chemical species transformation and chemical species evolution. These concepts aim to account for the chemical changes that explain both the diversity of chemical species sharing common systemic subunits and the historical emergence of new modes of chemical speciation. These modes, in turn, explain the appearance of new systemic chemical subunits and novel substantial properties. Our definitions have the advantage of being consistent with general theories of the evolution of matter, such Assembly Theory. Additionally, at the chemical level, this approach encompasses broader systemic chemical subunits beyond elemental particles, allowing for the chemical speciation of families of molecules, crystals, nanoparticles, etc. Finally, our proposal offers the advantage of overcoming the issue of arbitrariness in choosing the reference systemic chemical subunit by linking this choice to the concepts of substantial property, and function. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Acosta, José de (1539–1600) Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1810–84) Bello, Andrés (1781–1865) Bilbao, Francisco (1823–65) Bolkvar, Simón (1783–1830) Casas, Bartolomé de las (1484–1566) Caso, Antonio (1883–1946) Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la (1651–95) da Costa, Newton Carneiro Affonso (b. 1929) Dussel, Enrique (b. 1934) Frondizi, Risieri (1910–83) Gaos, José (1900–69) González Prada, Manuel (1848–1918) Gracia, Jorge J. E. (b. 1942) Haya de la Torre, Victor Raúl (1895–1979) Hostos, Eugenio Marka de (1839–1903) Ingenieros, José (1877–1925) Korn, Alejandro (...) (1860–1936) Lastarria, José Victorino (1817–88) Lemos, Miguel (1854–1917) Mariátegui, José Carlos (1895–1930) Martk, José (1853–95) Méndez Sierra, Justo (1848–1912) Mora, José Maria Luis (1794–1850) Miró Quesada, Francisco (b. 1918) Rabossi, Eduardo (1930–2005) Ramos, Samuel (1897–1959) Rodó, José Enrique (1872–1917) Romero, Francisco (1891–1962) Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1499–1590) Salazar Bondy, Augusto (1925–74) Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1811–88) Ofelia Schutte (b. 1945) Sepslveda, Juan Ginés de (ca. 1494–1573) Torretti, Roberto (b. 1930) Vasconcelos, José (1882–1959) Vaz Ferreira, Carlos (1872–1958) Villoro, Luis (b. 1922) Vitoria, Francisco de (ca. 1483–1546) Zea Aguilar, Leopoldo (1912–2004) Acknowledgment Further Reading. (shrink)

Defines the concepts, problems, principles, and theories that are used in modern philosophy.

Using the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur as an interpretive matrix, this article suggests that critical theologies may be understood as an instantiation of the concrete unity of past and present in religious symbol. The intransigence of debates between critical and counter-critical theologies is thus disclosed as an inability to account for and remain within the past-future dynamic in religious symbol. Ricoeur’s Freud and Philosophy provides the philosophical terminology for unpacking the simultaneously archaeological and teleological character of symbol. The article then (...) turns to Ricoeur’s accounts of metaphor and narrative to make the following observations: Reflecting the metaphorical capacity of language, critical theologies occur as a juxtaposition of known and unknown, here understood as a juxtaposition of past and present in religious expression; The inherently tensive character in critical theology gives way to a dialogical trajectory. Critical theologians engender Ricoeur’s reference to the pluralism of ontology in the ‘metaphorical is’; and Critical theology represents the very human capacity to create a new future out of a meaningless past by narrating the stories of the marginalized. These Ricoeurian themes are highlighted by examples drawn from the theologies of James Cone, Jürgen Moltmann, Mario Aguilar, David Tracy, and Johann Baptist Metz. (shrink)

Against certain positivistic and neopositivistic strictures still rooted in our society, Agazzi argues that knowing the invisible is possible, not just in science, but also in metaphysics, in morals, in aesthetics, and in other areas, including, in a sense, religion. The book also examines many examples of such knowledge, surveying not only the great classics of philosophy, but various immortal masterpieces of art, music and literature. It is not just a treatise in epistemology, but a book of philosophy in the (...) most complete and traditional sense, for it discusses knowledge not only for its own sake, but also as a guide to culture, morality, happiness and to the sense of life. Thus, it also provides some important suggestions on how to face our time of crisis and an uncertain future. Despite Agazzi’s proverbial rigor and clarity, his project is so momentous and demanding that I discuss certain points which might deserve further explication and argumentation. (shrink)

The notion of a hypothesis being deployed essentially in the derivation of a novel prediction plays a key role in the deployment realist reply to Laudan’s and Lyon’s attacks to the No Miracle Argument. However Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, urging deployment realists to abandon this requirement altogether and accept as true all the assumptions actually deployed in novel predictions. But since many false assumptions were actually deployed in novel predictions, he concludes that the “no miracle argument” and deployment (...) realism fail. I reply that the essentiality condition is required by Occam’s razor, and a “no miracle argument” deprived of that condition is a straw man. While Lyons’ criticisms of Psillos’ formalization of essentiality may be well taken, I suggest that there is a simpler formulation which escapes those criticisms and is enough to deal with the supposed counterexamples to the No Miracle Argument and deployment realism: a hypothesis is essential when it does not have a proper part (in Yablo’s sense) from which the prediction could also be derived. I then show how this condition rescues deployment realism from Lyons’ purported historical counterexamples. Essentiality in this sense cannot be detected prospectively, but this is just what we should expect, and far from causing problems for deployment realists, this frees them from unreasonable obligations. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine Hegel’s formulation of aesthetics during the years between the Gymnasium in Stuttgart and the sojourn in Frankfurt. In this period Hegel’s thought was primarily focused on moral, political and religious problems. By following a particular route through the juvenile texts, it is possible how- ever to examine a group of meditations concerning the theme of beauty, the status of ancient Greece and the role of sensibility in the process of aesthetic education of man.

Neuroeconomics is a science pledged to tracing the neurobiological correlates involved in decision-making, especially in the case of economic decisions. Despite representing a recent research field that is still identifying its research objects, tools and methods, its epistemological scope and scientific relevance have already been openly questioned by several authors. Among these critics, the most influential names in the debate have been those of Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer, who claim that the data on neural activity cannot find place in (...) economic models, which should on the contrary be solely based on the data produced by choices. This paper aims at countering the gloomy and unsubstantiated claims of these two authors and those who believe that neuroscience cannot provide new and useful insights to the established knowledge of standard economics. The main point stressed here is that this perception is the product of a general misunderstanding of the advances made by neuroscience, which are incidentally of crucial importance. (shrink)

This text was published in n. 1/1987 of «Filosofia politica». We thank the authors, the director of the journal and the editor il Mulino for giving permission to republish it.