In diesem Buch geht es um die faszinierende Fähigkeit der menschlichen Sprache, mit Hilfe winziger (mikrosemantischer) Morpheme als Hilfsmittel komplizierte logische (mathematische) Bedeutungen auszudrücken. Sprachen markieren Bedeutungen mit identischen Schlussfolgerungen, indem sie identische Partikel verwenden, und diese Partikel schleichen sich so in eine Vielzahl von Ausdrücken ein. Aufgrund ihrer Multitasking-Fähigkeit, scheinbar disparate Bedeutungen auszudrücken, werden sie als Superpartikel bezeichnet. Diese Partikel sind perfekte Fenster in die Verzahnung mehrerer grammatischerModule und die Art der Interaktion dieser Module im Laufe der Zeit. Fest (...) verankert in dem Modul, in dem die grammatischen Knochen gebaut und zusammengesetzt werden (enge Morphosyntax), erhalten Superpartikel je nach der Struktur, in der sie vorkommen, unterschiedliche Interpretationen (im begrifflich-intentionalen Modul - Semantik). Darüber hinaus sind einige der Interpretationen, die diese Partikel auslösen, inferentiell und gehören nach der Standardrechnung in den Bereich der Pragmatik. Wie können solch winzige Partikel, die selten länger als eine Silbe sind, so mächtige und übergreifende Wirkungen im intermodularen grammatischen Raum haben? Dies ist der platonische Hintergrund, vor dem dieses Buch steht. Dieses Buch ist eine Übersetzung einer englischen Originalausgabe. Die Übersetzung wurde mit Hilfe von künstlicher Intelligenz (maschinelle Übersetzung durch den Dienst DeepL.com) erstellt. Eine anschließende menschliche Überarbeitung erfolgte vor allem in Bezug auf den Inhalt, so dass sich das Buch stilistisch anders liest als eine herkömmliche Übersetzung. (shrink)

Although the analogy between macroscopic machines and biological molecular devices plays an important role in the conceptual framework of both neo-mechanistic accounts and nanotechnology, it has recently been claimed that certain complex molecular devices cannot be considered machines since they are subject to physicochemical forces that are different from those of macroscopic machines. However, the structural and physicochemical conditions that allow both macroscopic machines and microscopic devices to work and perform new functions, through a combination of elemental functional parts, have (...) not yet been examined. In order to fill this void, this paper has a threefold aim: first, to clarify the structural and organisational conditions of macroscopic machines and microscopic devices; second, to determine whether the machine-like analogy fits nanoscale devices; and third, to assess whether the machine-like analogy is appropriate for describing the behaviour of some biological macromolecules. Finally, the paper gives an account of ‘machine’ which, while acknowledging the physicochemical and organisational differences between man-made machines and biological microscopic devices, nevertheless identifies a common conceptual core that allows us to consider the latter ‘machines’. (shrink)

El artículo explora las posiciones discursivas valorativas multimodales, es decir, que integran el modo verbal y el de la imagen por medio de ensambles, en un corpus conformado por ocho pósteres académicos del curso Biología Celular de una universidad estatal chilena, realizados por estudiantes de primer año entre 2016 y 2019. De cada cohorte, se seleccionaron los dos afiches que obtuvieron la calificación más alta. El objetivo es identificar, a través del marco conceptual de la Lingüística Sistémico Funcional (LSF) (Halliday, (...) 2004, 2014; Martin y White, 2005) y de la Semiótica Social (Kress y van Leeuwen, 2006; Martin, 2010, 2017; Unsworth, 2021), cómo se codifican los significados interpersonales multimodales en el corpus. A partir del análisis, se aporta evidencia para la caracterización de este género académico desde la perspectiva de las posiciones valorativas verbales del texto que se ensamblan con los recursos visuales para configurar el espacio semántico. Los resultados muestran juicios evocados a agentes elididos que dan cuenta de valoración, como una estrategia discursiva de los estudiantes frente a temas controversiales de la ciencia, tales como utilización de células madre y experimentación con animales. Los hallazgos también evidencian la necesidad de incluir un abordaje multimodal en procesos pedagógicos que consideren la literacidad de las ciencias en el género póster académico, ya que los significados verbales se ensamblan con los visuales para marcar posiciones valorativas. Finalmente, se proponen sugerencias para que los estudiantes adquieran las estrategias valorativas adecuadas al discurso académico científico. (shrink)

Both physiological and evolutionary criteria of biological individuality are underpinned by the idea that an individual is a functionally integrated whole. However, a precise account of functional integration has not been provided so far, and current notions are not developed in the details, especially in the case of composite systems. To address this issue, this paper focuses on the organisational dimension of two representative associations of prokaryotes: biofilms and the endosymbiosis between prokaryotes. Some critical voices have been raised against the (...) thesis that biofilms are biological individuals. Nevertheless, it has not been investigated which structural and functional obstacles may prevent them from being fully integrated physiological or evolutionary units. By contrast, the endosymbiotic association of different species of prokaryotes has the potential for achieving a different type of physiological integration based on a common boundary and interlocked functions. This type of association had made it possible, under specific conditions, to evolve endosymbionts into fully integrated organelles. This paper therefore has three aims: first, to analyse the organisational conditions and the physiological mechanisms that enable integration in prokaryotic associations; second, to discuss the organisational differences between biofilms and prokaryotic endosymbiosis and the types of integration they achieve; finally, to provide a more precise account of functional integration based on these case studies. (shrink)

During the last decades the question of defining life has gained increased interest but, at the same time, the difficulty in reaching consensus on a possible answer has led many to skeptical positions. This, in turn, has raised a wider debate about why defining life is so hard and controversial. Such a debate introduces additional aspects to be considered, like the role and nature of a definition of life itself. In this paper, we will focus on those aspects, arguing that (...) progress can be made if we conceive definitions of life as open heuristic tools that contribute to develop specific research strategies in the biological sciences and, more generally, to increase our understanding of life’s complexity. In contrast with pragmatic or operationalist approaches, we will defend that definitions of life comprise a set of ontological assumptions, together with an inherent unifying vocation, so they should be subject to comparison and critical assessment, closely related to the success or failure of the corresponding research programs, but also to the success or failure in establishing well-grounded interconnections among the latter. We consider that the search for a more coherent, integrated and generalized theory of biology cannot be pursued without keeping an empirical standpoint, and the exercise of defining life should not be taken as an obstacle but as a valuable instrument to achieve that goal. (shrink)

This paper analyses the place of sortition in the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière. The idea of sortition is linked to a philosophical reflection on arithmetic equality and geometric equality. Thus, starting from an important work of Cornelius Castoriadis in this sense, we will analyze below the relationship of Rancière’s political philosophy with equality. Finally we will analyze the sortition and the place it occupies in his work. Bernard Manin’s work on ancient democracies and systems of representative government will help (...) us contextualize Rancière’s proposals on the use of random selection in politics. (shrink)

Agreement technologies refer to a novel paradigm for the construction of distributed intelligent systems, where autonomous software agents negotiate to reach agreements on behalf of their human users. Smart Cities are a key application domain for agreement technologies. While several proofs of concept and prototypes exist, such systems are still far from ready for being deployed in the real-world. In this paper we focus on a novel method for managing elements of smart road infrastructures of the future, namely the case (...) of auction-based road intersections. We show that, even though the key technological elements for such methods are already available, there are multiple non-technical issues that need to be tackled before they can be applied in practice. For this purpose, we analyse legal and ethical implications of auction-based road intersections in the context of international regulations and from the standpoint of the Spanish legislation. From this exercise, we extract a set of required modifications, of both technical and legal nature, which need to be addressed so as to pave the way for the potential real-world deployment of such systems in a future that may not be too far away. (shrink)

The text is part of the investigative concerns from the authors with regard to the dialogue between literature and science teaching. It starts from several theoretical approaches around the general didactics, university or superior didactics, science’s didactics and for last, literature’s didactics. This is largely due to our search which is focused in articulate the university didactics with science and literature’s didactics, meanwhile, we pretend to answer to the questions ¿How are the specific didactics of science and literature going to (...) contribute to the university didactics and how is the last one going to contribute to these specific didactics? ¿Is it the dialogue between science and literature possible? The paper has been made in middle education, in Educative Institution José Miguel de Restrepo y Puerta, from Copacabana and also in university education, in the academic unities of Dietetics and Nutrition School, Agricultural Sciences and Medicine, from the University of Antioquia. Finally, the partial results indicate: i) the necessity of general Didactics as a discipline focused on teaching and learning processes to ask itself for its internal problems and establish relations with specific didactics. (shrink)

Quality of Life Reach in Medical Care Alcance da qualidade de vida no atendimento médico The term quality of life has increasingly widespread use in biomedical practice, especially in end-of-life situations. Experience shows that the expression is often used with very different —and sometimes conflicting— scopes. The present article presents the results of a literature review that show diverse positions, while delimitating the subject. The analysis compares the terms “quality of life,” “human dignity,” and “value of human life.” Para citar (...) este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Páez G, López-Gabeiras MP, Moreno-D’Anna M. Alcance de la “calidad de vida” en atención médica. Pers Bioet. 2020;24:14-27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2020.24.1.2 Recibido: 06/11/2019 Aceptado: 04/03/2020 Publicado: 07/05/2020. (shrink)

This article studies how people leave eating disorders. The article is based on a study of how the labor market influences eating disorders. We present conflicts in which workers are involved. Finally, we propose policies to combat lines, in the labor market against the disease.

The aim of this article is to examine how the notion of biological autonomy may be linked to other notions of autonomy usual in philosophical discussions. Starting in the 70s, the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela developed a theory of life as autopoiesis which gives rise to a new conception of autonomy: biological autonomy. The development of this concept implies the recovery of the notion of the organism in a scientific context in which biology and philosophy of biology (...) are focused on the study of the gene by Molecular Biology and evolution by natural selection, by the so called Modern Synthesis. Here we try to show some implications of the concept of life as autonomy for current biology and how this concept can be related to other more usual ones in philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I argue the need for a reflexive use of photographic images in research, mainly in the publication and dissemination phase and specifically when the topic investigated relates to issues of visibility, in this case racism and understandings of beauty. This analysis draws on my work on contemporary practices of racism in Mexico, where personal photographs were used as research tools in life-story interviews, creating a sense of shared intimacy. Inspired by Barthes' refusal in Camera Lucida (2000) to (...) reproduce a photograph of his mother, in this article I focus on the dynamics between seeing and looking and suggest that `looking emotionally' at both participants' accounts and their photographic images, is a way to address the complexities of the gaze and discuss the specificity of different `ways of looking'. The notion of `looking emotionally' refers to an engagement, of researchers and audiences of research, with participants' lived emotional experiences that explicitly confronts the historical and social legacies of the visible. Here, photographs are understood not only as illustrative platforms from where experiences are organized, but also as `traps' that both inform and ensnare (Gell, 1999). As such, the argument aims to problematize the intimate relationship between gaze and photographic image in a context where racism is constrained to the visible, both in its reproduction and also in its pressing ongoing critique. (shrink)

Homo academicus propone una reflexión epistemológica de interés para investigaciones similares y para la práctica sociológica en general. En segundo lugar, propone un mapa del mundo universitario francés, de las diferentes formas de capital que lo configuran y de los diversos tipos de carrera académica. Más allá del origen nacional de su análisis, Bourdieu insiste en el valor del modelo. En tercer lugar, Bourdieu ofrece una explicación de un acontecimiento histórico que trasciende la universidad, pero en el que ésta jugó (...) un papel de primer orden. Mayo del 68 muestra cómo un acontecimiento histórico desestabiliza parcialmente el orden social existente. Este artículo interroga Homo academicus desde un punto de vista epistemológico, estructural e histórico. (shrink)

The work of the Paduan Aristotelian philosopher Iacopo Zabarella (1533–1589) has attracted the attention of historians of philosophy mainly for his contributions to logic, scientific methodology and because of his possible influence on Galileo. At the same time, Zabarella's views on Aristotelian psychology have been little studied so far; even those historians of Renaissance philosophy who have discussed them, have based their analysis mainly on the psychological essays included in Zabarella's De rebus naturalibus , but have avoided Zabarella's commentary on (...) Aristotle's De anima . This has led to an inaccurate, but widespread, understanding of Zabarella's views. The intention of this article is to provide a systematic analysis of Zabarella's arguments about the (im)mortality of the soul in the context of Aristotelian psychology. Zabarella's view that the soul is mortal according to Aristotle is remarkable for his time, while his elaboration of this position is far more comprehensive than that of Pietro Pomponazzi, the other significant Renaissance thinker who shared the same view. (shrink)

Introduction -- Plato -- Aristotle -- The rise of modernity -- Immanuel Kant -- Romanticism and historicism -- Phenomenology and hermeneutics -- Philosophes and philosophers -- Analytic philosophy -- Conclusion.

One of the key behavioral effects of attractiveness is increased visual attention to attractive people. This effect is often explained in terms of evolutionary adaptations, such as attractiveness being an indicator of good health. Other factors could influence this effect. In the present study, we explored the modulating role of sexual orientation on the effects of attractiveness on exploratory visual behavior. Heterosexual and homosexual men and women viewed natural-looking scenes that depicted either two women or two men who varied systematically (...) in levels of attractiveness (based on a pre-study). Participants’ eye movements and attractiveness ratings towards the faces of the depicted people were recorded. The results showed that although attractiveness had the largest influence on participants’ behaviors, participants’ sexual orientations strongly modulated the effects. With the exception of homosexual women, all participant groups looked longer and more often at attractive faces that corresponded with their sexual orientations. Interestingly, heterosexual and homosexual men and homosexual women looked longer and more often at the less attractive face of their non-preferred sex than the less attractive face of their preferred sex, evidence that less attractive faces of the preferred sex might have an aversive character. These findings provide evidence for the important role that sexual orientation plays in guiding visual exploratory behavior and evaluations of the attractiveness of others. (shrink)

In the philosophy and psychology of perception there exists a long-standing debate about the detachability of the visual from the conceptual contents of perception. The article analyses the implications of this dilemma for the attribution of aesthetic properties independent of the classification of aesthetic objects and the possibility of aesthetic formalism.

The question posed by this text is: can we use Levinasian ethics in the field of literary studies? In order to provide the answer, Levinas?s attitude toward art will need to be analyzed. His work contains numerous scattered remarks about literature and other arts, but the most explicit statement on the relationship between art and ethics can be found in his essay?Reality and Its Shadow?. Since Levinas?s view on art in this essay is predominantly negative, it poses a significant problem (...) for the application of his theory in the field of literary studies. In order to overcome this difficulty, I use Blanchot?s reworking of Levinasian ethics, and open the possibility of a different relation between literature and ethics than the one originally suggested by Levinas. (shrink)

Art and ObjectsHARMANGRAHAM polity. 2020. pp. 204. £16.54.

This book examines the wide-ranging implications for historical research of the view that everything is physical and that no immaterial entities, forces, or phenomena exist. It presents the consequences of materialism for our understanding of the historical past, including the rejection of postmodernist perspectives on history.

Whatever we speak about enhancement as the, just, one array of the wide range of the bioethical fields, or as the kind of ideological and theoretical field, it is necessary to emphasize relevant ideological and theoretical distinctions between different approaches. Trying to give some fundamental shape to debate among them, as well within themselves, I specified three possible streams with more or less arbitrary boundaries. First one is transhumanistic stream , whose representatives openly promote the practice of genetic, prosthetic and (...) cognitive enhancement of human kind - transition from human to a post human society; bioconservative, whose representatives perceive a threat in the violation of human dignity, meddling in “God’s business” ( playing God ), and in changes to the nature of human beings; representatives of the “middle standpoint” consider that danger lies within the dialectic relation of “capitalism and medicine.” I present the tree ideological standpoints trying to building consistency through different ethical arguments. Discussing the relevant theoretical/ideological distinction between standpoints and their claims, I will argue that ideological distinction among standpoints is less relevant than contingency within their arguments. Such mutual contingence creates some similarity regarding epistemological and social issues. (shrink)

In recent decades, a number of authors have relied on the multiple realizability argument to reject methodological individualism. In this article, I argue that this strategy results in serious difficulties and makes it impossible to identify social entities and phenomena.

Authors who advocate historical anti-realism have often insisted that they do not claim that no past events happened or that the past did not happen. In this paper, I show that in spite of such protestations, the core arguments presented by Leon Goldstein, Paul Roth, Frank Ankersmit, and Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen preclude the possibility that the past or past events happened.

Since Darwin, Biology has been framed on the idea of evolution by natural selection, which has profoundly influenced the scientific and philosophical comprehension of biological phenomena and of our place in Nature. This book argues that contemporary biology should progress towards and revolve around an even more fundamental idea, that of autonomy. Biological autonomy describes living organisms as organised systems, which are able to self-produce and self-maintain as integrated entities, to establish their own goals and norms, and to promote the (...) conditions of their existence through their interactions with the environment. Topics covered in this book include organisation and biological emergence, organisms, agency, levels of autonomy, cognition, and a look at the historical dimension of autonomy. The current development of scientific investigations on autonomous organisation calls for a theoretical and philosophical analysis. This can contribute to the elaboration of an original understanding of life - including human life - on Earth, opening new perspectives and enabling fecund interactions with other existing theories and approaches. This book takes up the challenge. (shrink)

The paper presents a realist perspective on the recent exchange in the Journal of the Philosophy of History between Adrian Currie and Daniel Swaim on the one side and Paul Roth and Fons Dewulf on the other. The first part presents a critique of Currie and Swaim’s view that the past is not determinate and can be changed. The second part states a series of arguments against Roth’s view that events exist only under description. The third part discusses the ontological (...) problems that Roth’s irrealism about the past fails to address. (shrink)

The paper analyses possible contributions of philosophy and philosophers to architecture and architects’ work. During the twentieth century, a number of dominant positions in philosophy, such as the view that all thinking is verbal or that conceptual thinking determines the contents of perception, significantly limited the ground for productive intellectual interaction between architects and philosophers. With the demise of such positions in recent decades, one can hope that philosophy and philosophers could make genuine contributions to architectural theory.

This paper deals with the latent religious aspects of the tremendous impact that the Inter­net manifests in every single segment of contemporary culture. Through comparative research of the ways primordial, archetypal cognitive matrices migrated throughout different modalities of our thinking and behavior in the 20th and 21st centuries, the following research argues that deep religious longings might have been hidden (ignored, even abused) in the various ways the planetary informational network is exploited in our times. As a consequence, an alarming (...) need for philosophical and theological rethinking and re-inspiring of this prodigious, unprecedented and omnipresent social prosthesis is recognized. (shrink)