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This book symposium comprises a précis of Nuno Venturinha’s Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology together with four critical commentaries on different aspects of the book by Marcelo Carvalho, João Vergílio Gallerani Cuter, Marcos Silva and Darlei Dall’Agnol, and the author’s replies.

This book approaches classic epistemological problems from a contextualist perspective. The author takes as his point of departure the fact that we are situated beings, more specifically that every single moment in our lives is already given within the framework of a specific context in the midst of which we understand ourselves and what surrounds us. In the process of his investigation, the author explores, in a fresh way, the works of key thinkers in epistemology. These include Bernard Bolzano, René (...) Descartes, Gottlob Frege, Edmund Husserl, Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein, but also contemporary authors such as Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose, David Lewis, Duncan Pritchard, Ernest Sosa and Charles Travis. Some of the topics covered are attributions of knowledge, the correspondence theory of truth, objectivity and subjectivity, possible worlds, primary and secondary evidence, scepticism, transcendentalism and relativism. The book also introduces a new contextualist thought-experiment for dealing with moral questions. Contextualism has received a great deal of attention in contemporary epistemology. It has the potential to resolve a number of issues that traditional epistemological approaches cannot address. In particular, a contextualist view opens the way to an understanding of those cognitive processes that require situational information to be fully grasped. However, contextualism poses serious difficulties in regard to epistemic invariance. This book offers readers an innovative approach to some fundamental questions in this field. (shrink)

Criticisms of the “container” model of pregnancy picturing female and embryo as separate entities multiply in various philosophical and scientific contexts during the last decades. In this paper, we examine how this model underlies received views of pregnancy in evolutionary biology, in the characterization of the transition from oviparity to viviparity in mammals and in the selectionist explanations of pregnancy as an evolutionary strategy. In contrast, recent evo-devo studies on eutherian reproduction, including the role of inflammation and new maternal cell (...) types, gather evidence in favor of considering pregnancy as an evolved relational novelty. Our thesis is that from this perspective we can identify the emergence of a newhistoricalindividual in evolution. In evo-devo, historical units are conceptualized as evolved entities which fulfill two main criteria, their continuous persistence and their non-exchangeability. As pregnancy can be individuated in this way, we contend that pregnant females are historical individuals. We argue that historical individuality differs from, and coexists with, other views of biological individuality as applied to pregnancy (the physiological, the evolutionary and the ecological one), but brings forward an important new insight which might help dissolve misguided conceptions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we deal with Hobbes’s elucidation of the political conflict caused by rebellious groups. First of all, we attempt to prove that groups are important characters in Hobbesian antagonisms. Secondly, it will be argued that the isomorphic structure that underlies all associations is vital to account for these disputes. To wit, the fact that minor corporate bodies are ‘similar’ vis à vis the State leaves a lengthy flank open to rebellion, since this homology may encourage their leaders (...) to compare themselves with the sovereign and to challenge his or her power. Whereas the inclusion of this trait may seem at face value paradoxical to Hobbes’s absolute order project, we shall contend that it is actually a way of ascribing responsibility to the leaders of rebellious groups. Furthermore, as a subsidiary hypothesis, it will be claimed that the centrality of the theory of represented corporations is a result of Hobbes’s aim to erase, not rebellion as such, but only its tumultuous setup. (shrink)

This article seeks to clarify the concepts of risk and uncertainty, restricting its focus to environmental problems and to three strands of reflection. Firstly, I suggest that we should apply the label riscophrenia to the tendency to envisage most environmental problems excessively in terms of probabilistic risk, erecting the concept to a core dogma of certainty based on the image it offers of safety and control of the random. Looking at the most serious environmental problems of the twenty-first century through (...) the prism of "animal spirits" is above all an exercise which shows that unpredictability and uncertainties are constituent elements of human existence and social life. Secondly, I argue that the assessment of uncertainty has political and normative implications. I hold that uncertainty may make it possible to invoke precautionary, not just preventive, measures, and that alternative "contextualised" research strategies, open to a variety of points of view, are possible. Lastly, I claim that the language of risk and its excessive application is generally laden with a type of ambiguity which tends not to emphasize society's current problems, and so facilitates the continuation rather than the questioning of our society's dominant technocratic and technological model. (shrink)

Background: Psychedelics are known for their powerful mental effects due to the activation of 5HT-2A receptors in the brain. During the 1950s and 1960s, research was conducted on these molecules until their criminalization. However, their clinical investigation as therapeutic tools for psychiatric disorders has revived the deontological ethics surrounding this subject. Questions arise as research on their therapeutic outcome becomes a reality. We aim to explore deontological ethics to understand the implications of psychedelics for the clinician, patient, and society. Results: (...) A total of 42 articles were considered for this review. Methods: A methodological search of psychedelic studies from 2017 to 2022 was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, EBSCOhost, and ScienceDirect to address the deontological ethics of clinical psychedelic use. Conclusion: Psychedelics need to be culturally contextualized, epistemic harm minimized and represented to ensure informed consent. Open data and commissions are needed to ensure safe and equal distribution. (shrink)

Boffa non-well-founded set theory allows for several distinct sets equal to their respective singletons, the so-called ‘Quine atoms’. Rieger contends that this theory cannot be a faithful description of set-theoretic reality. He argues that, even after granting that there are non-well-founded sets, ‘the extensional nature of sets’ precludes numerically distinct Quine atoms. In this paper we uncover important similarities between Rieger’s argument and how non-rigid structures are conceived within mathematical structuralism. This opens the way for an objection against Rieger, whilst (...) affording the theoretical resources for a defence of Boffa set theory as a faithful description of set-theoretic reality. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop the notion of ‘therapy of desire’ as a hermeneutic key for understanding Kierkegaard’s view of desire. First, I develop the notion of ‘therapy of desire’ as it has appeared in the secondary literature on Kierkegaard and Augustine, particularly in Lee C. Barrett. In my reading, I underscore how a ‘therapy of desire’ implies that the desire can be ‘healed’ and that the desirer has ‘agency’ over his/her desires. Second, I conduct a textual analysis of Kierkegaard’s (...) discourse on Lk 22:15, which deals with the desire for the Eucharist. In employing the notion of ‘therapy of desire’ as a hermeneutic key to interpret it, I characterize Kierkegaard’s view of desire as a lack of satisfaction and verify how the ideas of ‘agency’ and ‘healing’ appear in Kierkegaard’s text. Finally, I show how the characterization of desire as a constant lack of satisfaction that consists in a gift from God, that implies the possibility of undertaking a healing process and that underscores the agency of the desirer, differs from some Lutheran ideas, namely the relationship between grace and deeds and the understanding of original sin. (shrink)

Aristotle’s influence on D’Arcy Thompson was praised by Thompson himself and has been recognized by others in various respects, including the aesthetic and normative dimensions of biology, and the multicausal explanation of living forms. This article focuses on the relatedness of organic forms, one of the core problems addressed by both Aristotle’s History of Animals (HA), and the renowned chapter of Thompson’s On Growth and Form (G&F), “On the Theory of Transformations, or the Comparison of Related Forms.” We contend that, (...) far from being an incidental inspiration stemming from Thompson’s classicist background, his translation of HA played a pivotal role in developing his theory of transformations. Furthermore, we argue that Thompson’s interpretation of the Aristotelian method of comparison challenges the prevailing view of Aristotle as the founder of “typological essentialism,” and is a key episode in the revision of this narrative. Thompson understood that the method Aristotle used in HA to compare animal forms is better comprehended as a “method of transformations,” leading to a morphological arrangement of animal diversity, as opposed to a taxonomical classification. Finally, we examine how this approach to the relatedness of forms lay the foundation for a causal understanding of parts and their interconnections. Although Aristotle and Thompson emphasized distinct types of causes, we contend that they both differ in a fundamental sense from the one introduced by Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which was formulated as a solution to the species problem rather than the form problem. We conclude that Thompson’s interpretation of Aristotle’s approach to form comparison has not only impacted contemporary scholarship on Aristotle’s biology, but revitalized a perspective that has regained significance due to the resurgence of the problem of form in evo-devo. (shrink)

Gaston Bouthol founded a particular sociology known as polemology. Skeptical about the pacifism and critic of the juridical illusion of the international regulation of the peace-phenomenon, he studied the war-phenomenon without moralising prejudices. Polemology, that involves a critic of culture, is focused on the social function of war, known as the most important institution of destruction. The study of major wars enabled him to raise an hypothesis that foresees the periodicity of wars.

Desde su descolonización en los años sesenta, África ha sido entendida en el imaginario global como un lugar de conflictos armados, inestabilidad política y pobreza. Sin embargo, durante las últimas décadas, el continente ha atravesado un importante proceso de estabilización, democratización y pacificación. Desde el liderazgo de Mandela en África en la década de 1990 hasta la creación y consolidación de la Unión Africana (UA) desde 2002, los esfuerzos pacificadores han transformado radicalmente el continente. En este proceso han participado numerosos (...) actores internacionales, continentales y regionales como las Naciones Unidas (ONU), la UA y organizaciones regionales como la Comunidad para el Desarrollo del África Meridional (SADC), que, en conjunto, han implementado diferentes enfoques para la consolidación de la paz en el continente. Uno de ellos es la puesta en marcha de una activa iniciativa de "Diplomacia Preventiva" destinada a hacer frente a las tensiones antes de que se conviertan en conflictos armados. Algunos de los ejemplos más importantes son la disputa entre Malawi y Tanzania por la demarcación de las fronteras nacionales en el lago Malawi y la participación continental en la resolución de las crisis políticas de Lesoto y Gambia. Este capítulo destaca los esfuerzos para prevenir los conflictos en África, a nivel estatal y desde las organizaciones regionales. También se analiza la forma en que África se ha convertido en un punto de referencia en las iniciativas internacionales de diplomacia preventiva, al tiempo que se asumen las carencias y dificultades a las que todavía se enfrenta el aparato de consolidación de la paz del continente. (shrink)

En mi opinión, uno de los grandes problemas de la academia colombiana consiste en que hay una profunda ignorancia acerca de lo que están haciendo nuestros colegas en otras universidades. Desconocemos su trabajo y, en el peor de los casos, no lo tomamos como punto de referencia porque, a priori, no lo consideramos bueno. En no pocas ocasiones, la bibliografía que acompaña los syllabus de los cursos que dictamos no contiene artículos o libros de filósofos colombianos que, sin importar su (...) calidad, deberíamos incluir. No sólo deberíamos incluirlos para saber qué están produciendo nuestros colegas, sino también porque criticarlos, mostrar sus puntos débiles y fuertes, es lo que debe hacer la academia y lo que genera un conocimiento vigoroso y robusto... (shrink)

Some of the fundamental activities of the software development process are related to the discipline of Requirements Engineering. Their objectives are to discover, analyze, document, and verify the system’s requirements. The requirements are the conditions or capabilities that software needs to have or fulfill to meet its users’ needs, and problems in its identification can mean the failure of a software project. This study is part of the research that is being developed to propose a model based on Know­ledge Organization (...) Systems to be used in the Requirements engineering process. This article aims to present the results of an analysis on a set of Know­ledge Organization Systems to identify whether they are likely to be applied in the Requirements engineering process and identify at which stage of this process each one of them can be implemented. The Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed were the authority files, gazetteers, glossaries, subject headings, classification systems, thesauri, semantic networks, and ontologies. Based on the results obtained, it was possible to conclude that the Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed can be used in the Requirements engineering process and, consequently, contribute to increasing the software requirements’ quality. (shrink)

This work explores the concept of urban guerrilla, which was promoted and innovated by National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros, in Uruguay. After a thorough review of the “David Cámpora” Archive of Armed Struggle –located at the University of the Republic– and in–depth interviews with prominent Tupamaro members, this article analyzes the evolution of this particular revolutionary project. These pages address issues such as the factors that influenced the adoption of the urban guerrilla approach and the consequences and demands, internal and (...) external, that accompanied it. It also presents the influences, tensions and contradictions that have arisen regarding the use of violence, the dispute against the State or the adaptation to circumstances that have changed drastically in less than a decade – from a quality of democracy unparalleled in the region, to a dictatorial regime of military imprint. All of the above, without losing sight of the exceptional geopolitical dimension that the Latin American continent went through, and especially the Southern Cone, in the 60s and 70s of the last 20th century. (shrink)

Pere Alberch played a pivotal role in shaping the field of evolutionary developmental biology during the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas initially his contributions were sidelined by the empirical advancements of the molecular revolution in developmental and evolutionary biology, his theoretical insights have left a lasting impact on the discipline. This article provides a comprehensive review of the legacy and evolvability of Alberch's ideas in contemporary evo-devo, which included the study of morphogenesis as the proper level of developmental causation, the interplay (...) between developmental constraints and natural selection, the epistemic role of teratologies, the origin of evolutionary novelties and the concept of evolvability. (shrink)

This text consists of replies to commentaries by Michael Williams, Duncan Pritchard and Javier González de Prado on my book Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology.

El libro de Alex Ibarra, Filosofía chilena. La tradición analítica en el periodo de la institucionalización de la filosofía, plantea la discusión sobre las líneas filosóficas, demostrando la existencia de cierta tradición analítica en Chile. A partir de allí, reflexionamos en torno a los procesos de constitución del campo de la filosofía en Chile como una historia atravesada por la necesidad de préstamos y cruces que impiden una delimitación clara de sus límites, lo que tornaría necesaria la atención a ciertas (...) políticas de la lectura que el libro soslaya. La productividad de la filosofía producida en Chile surgiría gracias -y no pese- a su inscripción en sus tiempos y espacios, a partir de recepciones cuya ausencia de retraso no impide el gesto de cierto re-trazo de lo leído. Alex Ibarra's exposition in his book Filosofía chilena. La tradición analítica en el periodo de la institucionalización de la filosofía, places the discussion on the philosophical traditions, showing the existence of a certain kind of analytical tradition in Chile. From there, we expose the processes of constitution of the field in Chile as a history crossed by the need of importations and intersections that contest the clear delimitation of its boundaries, what makes necessary the attention of the politics of readings that the book avoid. The productivity of the philosophic production in Chile, arises thanks to -but not in spite of- its inscription in its age/times and spaces, coming from its receptions and its differences. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es analizar la perspectiva de Hannah Arendt sobre el problema de la originalidad e incomprensibilidad del horror de los regímenes totalitarios, utilizando los testimonios de Primo Levi en Si esto es un hombre y Los hundidos y los salvados. Arendt considera que los campos de concentración y exterminio son la institución central de los regímenes totalitarios, en los cuales se intenta destruir la humanidad de las víctimas a través de prácticas de terror que no solo (...) acaban con su cuerpo, sino con su espíritu. Así, los testimonios de los sobrevivientes se convierten en las piezas clave para comprender la esencia y los ideales de estos sistemas políticos. De ahí que la memoria salte a la escena política para develar la verdad de este tipo de acontecimientos políticos y, a su vez, plantee una serie de problemas cuando se intenta definir su estatus investigativo. (shrink)

Political concepts are fundamentally polemical. Their supposed neutrality is solely a vain intellectual supposition. This paper pay attention to the XIX century's Politics through three political concepts: the representation, medieval notion wich the liberal genius transformed to fight the Ancien Régime; the association, socialist and traditionalist alternative to the revolutionary individualism; and finally the participation, based on the originary political community return's myth.

Histone variants are specialized histones which replace their canonical counterparts in specific nucleosomes. Together with histone post‐translational modifications and DNA methylation, they contribute to the epigenome. Histone variants are incorporated at specific locations by the concerted action of histone chaperones and ATP‐dependent chromatin remodelers. Recent studies have shown that the histone chaperone FACT plays key roles in preventing pervasive incorporation of two histone variants: H2A.Z and CenH3/CENP‐A. In addition, Spt6, another histone chaperone, was also shown to be important for appropriate (...) H2A.Z localization. FACT and Spt6 are both associated with elongating RNA polymerase II. Based on these two examples, we propose that the establishment and maintenance of histone variant genomic distributions depend on a transcription‐coupled epigenome editing (or surveillance) function of histone chaperones. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays of a philosophical nature on the subject of technology, introducing authors from the Portuguese-speaking community, namely from Portugal itself, Africa and Brazil. Their contributions detail a unique perspective on technology, placing this important topic within the historical, ideological and social contexts of their countries, all of which share a common language. The shared history of these countries and the cultural and economic specificities of each one have stimulated singular insights into these thinkers’ reflections. (...) The essays are thematically diverse. Among the topics covered are technogenic knowledge, visions of technology, risks and uncertainties, mediatization, digitalization, and datafication, engineering practice and ethics, alternative technoscientific strategies, ontotechnologies of the body, virtual and archive. The contributions also explore other themes that are more closely related to the semi-peripheral world, such as technological dependence and the incorporation of Western technology into the social structure of ancestral communities. This book appeals to students and researchers and provides a voice to authors whose work are not usually available in English-language publications. It serves as an ideal guide for all those who seek rigorous and geographically widespread knowledge regarding thinking on technology in several Portuguese-speaking countries. (shrink)

In this study, metrical clauses are used to analyze the critical reconstruction and rhetorical scheme of Tertullian’s treatise on prayer as a preliminary study to an edition of the work. In the first part, the description and frequency of the clauses of the De oratione is presented, followed by an analysis of some variants of the text from the metrical point of view, and then a study of the clauses in the biblical quotations and in the translation of the paternoster (...) offered by Tertullian. As a culmination of the Paper, the structure of the treatise is analyzed from the distribution of the most frequent metrical clauses. A final appendix contains the clauses of the treatise. (shrink)

This paper is about the integration between metrical clausulae and rhetorical structure. First, there is a comparison of Waszink’s results using the Zielinski method with Laurand’s system, and my findings on the same group of clausulae. Secondly, we analyze the concluding words of every book of Tertullian, to identify the more frequent clausulae, and the initial words, in which we can find often a cretic. Thirdly, we analyze the metrical prose of Tertullian’s De testimonio animae, to establish a rhetorical scheme (...) for the very first time. (shrink)

O presente artigo debruça-se sobre a tradução argentina do livro Who Sings the Nation-State? de Butler e Spivak. Colocando em questão a relação entre tradução e hino nacional para sublinhar o possível nacionalismo atinente a determinadas manifestações políticas, esse mesmo livro, não obstante a sua própria advertência sobre a necessidade de incli-nação para cantar o hino, “erra” a grafia de “Il [sic] pueblo unido jamás sera [sic] vencido” ao citá-lo. Entretanto, será esse o caso de um “erro” deliberado, de uma (...) contradição performativa? Com que incli-nação Butler terá citado essa canção? E o que poderia significar o fato de que, havendo suspeita de nacionalismo de um lado, de outro parece não haver, pois o tradutor da edição argentina “corrige” esses erros e, ao mesmo tempo, testemunha, em nota de rodapé, que estão “En español en el original”? Analisando esses impasses da tradução, o artigo pretende indicar a contundência política que há na tarefa do tradutor e nas formas com que a literatura infringe as gramáticas. (shrink)

O presente artigo aborda um acontecimento recente ao redor de um problema babélico e, por conseguinte, literário, com o intuito de esclarecer os limites e os poderes da tradução. Não apenas é sabido que a responsabilidade de um tradutor está ligada a critérios empregados em escolhas atinentes às palavras, respeitando ou não a plurívoca matiz de seus significados e, detrás disso, seu sentido, mas, também, o tradutor escolhe, ao traduzir, aquilo que não deve ser traduzido, aquilo que, em determinados contextos, (...) só é dito mantendo-se à distância. (shrink)

Political concepts are fundamentally polemical. Their supposed neutrality is solely a vain intellectual supposition. This paper pay attention to the XIX century's Politics through three political concepts: the representation, medieval notion wich the liberal genius transformed to fight the Ancien Régime; the association, socialist and traditionalist alternative to the revolutionary individualism; and finally the participation, based on the originary political community return's myth.

El artículo propone revisitar la “transición democrática” desandando la conceptualización que identifica dicho proceso como el paso de un régimen a otro, de uno autoritario a uno democrático. La propuesta de “mirar desde abajo” la democracia y la democratización, como algo que no fue dado sino que tuvo que ser hecho, supone la pregunta acerca de con qué materialidades sociales está hecha esa experiencia. Así, a partir de la recuperación de las ideas que sobre el tema se despliegan en el (...) libro Zona Sur, se propone una problematización del proceso de democratización que encarna en la acción colectiva popular, en lugares específicos. Desde esas premisas conceptuales, el texto aborda las continuidades y los cambios vinculados con el fin de la dictadura. Por otro lado, se problematizan los vínculos del movimiento popular con el de Derechos Humanos. Finalmente, se mencionan algunas posibilidades de establecer diálogos con el presente. (shrink)

Podemos sugerir sin temor a equivocarnos que After Virtue significó un antes y un después para la investigación filosófica acerca de la moral y generó un renacido interés por la ética clásica, especialmente de las virtudes. Pero lejos de haber quedado en el pasado After Virtue es hoy bibliografía obligatoria para quien quiera comprender la ética contemporánea y sus estructuras sociales del orden moral. Es inviable estudiar las características de la ética actual sin un desarrollo histórico de sus raíces filosóficas: (...) que abarca a enemigos de la razón como Hume y Calvino, es continuada por los fundadores de la ilustración y que termina con la crítica letal de Nietzsche a todos los intentos modernos de enmascarar la voluntad de poder bajo formas contractuales o racionalistas de la moral. Además, para todo aquel que camina tras el pensamiento del filósofo Alasdair MacIntyre, esta obra contiene un esbozo y diseño intelectual de lo que serán sus obras posteriores. Por eso, a 40 años de su publicación decidimos evocar sus principales aportes, que mantienen solidez y vigencia a pesar de los años. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se aborda el proyecto político hobbesiano a la luz de las críticas realizadas por Kant en Teoría y praxis. Específicamente, se considera en detalle la objeción contra el Gobierno despótico, según la cual, el soberano sitúa la felicidad del pueblo como la principal finalidad del Estado y, por ello, acaba fomentando involuntariamente la rebelión. Al respecto, se sostendrá que el planteamiento de Hobbes en el Leviatán evade el foco de los reproches kantianos, justamente porque su particular (...) noción de felicidad impide que esta pueda ser constituida como el objetivo de la sociedad política. A su vez, se arguye que existe una sugestiva modificación terminológica con relación al De Cive, que lleva a considerar la posibilidad de que Hobbes haya prefigurado las críticas reseñadas. (shrink)

In this article, we will examine a hermeneutical problem raised in Chapter XI of Hobbes’s Leviathan. Namely: Why does the author refrain from describing the attack led by Brutus against Julius Caesar as the result of a conspiracy? Why instead of talking about the collective action of an organized group does he refer to a “multitude of actions performed by a multitude of men”? In order to unravel this paradox, we will analyze the category of “faction” developed by Hobbes. After (...) confirming that the republican conspiracy is easily explained by this concept and that it adapts poorly to that of an irregular crowd, we shall inquire if the key to this curious reading can be found in Hobbes’s sources. While Plutarch is unequivocal about the conspiratorial status of the group, Shakespeare does indeed problematize the matter. Correspondingly, we will argue that Hobbes may have taken into account Shakespeare’s treatment for his denial of the collective nature of the organized action against Caesar. (shrink)

This work intends to demonstrate the existence of limits that hinder the absolute authority of the sovereign in Hobbes’s political theory. Particularly, I will try to identify the concept of honor as the paradigm of this limitation. The field of the manifestations of worth — it will be argued — operates within a logic that runs parallel to that of the State. Moreover, it engenders authorities with high degree of autonomy. To be sure, the sovereign power can intervene in this (...) field by means of persuasion and coercion, but it will never be able to erase the resistances and limitations imposed by signs of honor. (shrink)

El siguiente monográfico sobre Perú acoge diferentes reflexiones y aportaciones de un total de nueve trabajos que buscan problematizar y arrojar luz sobre algunos aspectos que han acompañado al proceso de construcción democrática que el país ha venido experimentando desde 1980. Como otros escenarios de la región, la democracia se erige tras décadas convulsas para un sistema político cooptado por elites caudillistas, encono político, intromisión militar y condiciones estructurales irresolutas. Este conjunto de factores, inscritos en un contexto de guerra fría, (...) y al albor de la revolución cubana, inspiró movimientos guerrilleros a inicios de los sesenta, como el Ejército de Liberación Nacional o el Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Su escasa relevancia nada tendría que ver con la fuerza disruptiva que experimentaría el Partido Comunista del Perú - Sendero Luminoso. Un grupo armado de marcada impronta maoísta que, si bien hunde sus raíces en la ruptura sino-soviética de 1962, construye sus fundamentos ideológicos y sus bases revolucionarias durante la década de los setenta. (shrink)

In this article I draw upon the social ontologies developed by John Searle, Roy Bhaskar, Margaret Archer and Tony Lawson in order to distinguish between power and leadership. To do so, I distinguish the different organizing principles behind natural phenomena, collective phenomena and institutional phenomena, and argue that an understanding of those different organizing principles is essential to a clearer conceptualization of power and leadership. Natural power and cultural power, as I argue, depend upon the organizing principles of natural phenomena, (...) and differ depending on whether those organizing principles have been transformed by humans, in which case it becomes cultural power, or not, in which case it simply is natural power. Leadership emerges with the ability of making other humans share mental states through collective intentionality. Institutional power, in contrast, is connected to the creation of a deontology of rights and obligations that provide what Searle calls desire-independent reasons for action. (shrink)

The notion of fitness is usually equated to reproductive success. However, this actualist approach presents some difficulties, mainly the explanatory circularity problem, which have lead philosophers of biology to offer alternative definitions in which fitness and reproductive success are distinguished. In this paper, we argue that none of these alternatives is satisfactory and, inspired by Mumford and Anjum’s dispositional theory of causation, we offer a definition of fitness as a causal dispositional property. We argue that, under this framework, the distinctiveness (...) that biologists usually attribute to fitness—namely, the fact that fitness is something different from both the physical traits of an organism and the number of offspring it leaves—can be explained, and the main problems associated with the concept of fitness can be solved. Firstly, we introduce Mumford and Anjum's dispositional theory of causation and present our definition of fitness as a causal disposition. We explain in detail each of the elements involved in our definition, namely: the relationship between fitness and the functional dispositions that compose it, the emergent character of fitness, and the context-sensitivity of fitness. Finally, we explain how fitness and realized fitness, as well as expected and realized fitness are distinguished in our approach to fitness as a causal disposition. (shrink)

A cidade nas práticas artísticas [The city in artistic practices] is the result of the work developed, of the presentations and the debates held within the cycle of seminars “The experience of the city between art and philosophy”, held between 3 March 2020 and 16 June 2021 (calendar dramatically compromised by the challenges of the COVID 19 pandemic), one of the main activities of the OBRA project — Fragmentation and Reconfiguration: experiencing the city between art and philosophy, based at IFILNOVA (...) — Philosophy Institute of NOVA, in Lisbon. The book is divided into five parts, relating to each of the artistic disciplines to which the seminars were dedicated – cinema, photography, sound arts, literature and architecture —, which are edited by the organizers responsible for each of them — respectively, Susana Viegas, Humberto Brito, Nuno Fonseca João Oliveira Duarte and Susana Ventura — and composed of the respective narrated accounts of each seminar and of short essays, some merely textual, others graphical or even photographic, which are either in-depth versions of the reflections and positions that were presented and debated by the participants and guests, or works that motivated and inspired the work of the seminars. The seminar cycle and the book now presented here intend to reflect on the role of artistic practices in the representation and reconfiguration of urban experience, trying to understand their different attempts to apprehend and express the fragmentation of aesthetic experience in modern and contemporary cities, as well as to evaluate their contribution to an eventual symbolic and imaginative reconfiguration of that experience. Each section tries, in its own way, to answer questions such as: How do these arts think and reinvent the city? What do they make us feel? And what is their social and political role? For reasons that are easy to understand, Lisbon was the starting point, but other cities were also part of the journey. (shrink)

In the field of cybernetic systems and more specifically in robotics, one of the fundamental objectives is the detection of anomalies in order to minimize loss of time. Following this idea, this paper proposes the implementation of a Hybrid Intelligent System in four steps to impute the missing values, by combining clustering and regression techniques, followed by balancing and classification tasks. This system applies regression models to each one of the clusters built on the instances of data set. Subsequently, a (...) variety of balancing techniques are applied to improve the classifier’s ability to discern whether it is in an error or a normal state. These techniques support to obtain better classification ratios in which a robot is close to error and allow us to bring the behavior back to a normal state. The experimentation is performed using a modern and public data set, which has been extracted from a component-based robotic system, in which different anomalies are induced by software in their components. (shrink)

The connections between Adam Smith and Catholic Social Teaching raise several questions. The principle of subsidiarity adopted in CST, according to which higher associations should not replace subordinate organizations on what the latter can do, seems to be in line with the idea that governmental intervention in the market sphere should be restricted to the minimum required, in line with what is typically seen as Smith’s view. But the principle of the common good would also recommend intervention from political authorities (...) in order to ensure that the common good is achieved. Here I shall argue that this question must be addressed taking into account another principle of CST, the principle of solidarity, and also the basic principle of CST, regarding human dignity. To do so, it is necessary to understand how the various principles of CST spring from the notion of imago Dei in CST, which is behind the notion of human dignity. This leads to a relational conception of human beings which can be fruitfully articulated with Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy. (shrink)