This chapter contains sections titled: European Positivism Latin American Positivism Martí Rodó Vaz Ferreira Ingenieros References Further Reading.

Jose Marti contributed greatly to Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain with words as well as revolutionary action. Although he died before the formation of an independent republic, he has since been hailed as a heroic martyr inspiring Cuban republican traditions.

Argues that there are original positions to be found in the work of Latin American philosophers. This book brings the history of Latin American philosophy to an English-speaking audience through the prominent voices of Mauricio Beuchot, Horacio Cerutti-Guldberg, María Luisa Femenías, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Oscar R. Martí, León Olivé, Carlos Pereda, and Eduardo Rabossi. They argue that Spanish is not a philosophically irrelevant language and that there are original positions to be found in the work of Latin American (...) philosophers. Part I of the book looks at why the history of philosophy has not developed in Latin America. A range of theoretical issues are explored, each focusing on specific problems that have hindered the development of a solid history. Part II details the complex task of writing a history of philosophy for a region still haunted by the specter of colonialism. Arleen Salles is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Music, and Philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York. Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and the coeditor (with Jorge J. E. Gracia) of Latin American Philosophy for the 21st Century: The Human Condition, Values, and the Search for Identity. (shrink)

Social innovations are urgently needed as we confront complex social problems. As these social problems feature substantial interdependencies among multiple systems and actors, developing and implementing innovative solutions involve the re-negotiating of settled institutions or the building of new ones. In this introductory article, we introduce a stylized three-cycle model highlighting the institutional nature of social innovation efforts. The model conceptualizes social innovation processes as the product of agentic, relational, and situated dynamics in three interrelated cycles that operate at the (...) micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. The five papers included in this special issue address one or more of these cycles. We draw on these papers and the model to stimulate and offer guidance to future conversations on social innovations from an institutional theory perspective. (shrink)

This book brings the history of Latin American philosophy to an English-speaking audience through the prominent voices of Mauricio Beuchot, Horacio Cerutti-Guldberg, María Luisa Femenías, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Oscar R. Martí, León Olivé, Carlos Pereda, and Eduardo Rabossi. They argue that Spanish is not a philosophically irrelevant language and that there are original positions to be found in the work of Latin American philosophers.

The starting premise of this paper is that business models can transform social reality—sometimes to an extreme. Then, building on the concept of “grand challenges,” we argue that such transformations can be either positive or negative in nature —even in the case of business models designed to improve value not only economically but environmentally and socially as well. To further our understanding of the negative aspects, we introduced two conceptual categories of business model: those for oppression or depletion and exclusionary (...) ones. We further argue that bringing the notion of grand challenges center-stage highlights four elements that can contribute to emerging research and inform practice on transformational business models. These elements are: participatory forms of architecture; multivocal inscriptions; scaffolding; and proximity. They are central components of what we name transformational business models. (shrink)

The slime mould Physarum polycephalum has been used in developing unconventional computing devices for in which the slime mould played a role of a sensing, actuating, and computing device. These devices treated the slime mould as an active living substrate, yet it is a self-consistent living creature which evolved over millions of years and occupied most parts of the world, but in any case, that living entity did not own true cognition, just automated biochemical mechanisms. To “rehabilitate” slime mould from (...) the rank of a purely living electronics element to a “creature of thoughts” we are analyzing the cognitive potential of P. polycephalum. We base our theory of minimal cognition of the slime mould on a bottom-up approach, from the biological and biophysical nature of the slime mould and its regulatory systems using frameworks such as Lyon’s biogenic cognition, Muller, di Primio-Lengelerś modifiable pathways, Bateson's “patterns that connect” framework, Maturana's autopoietic network, or proto-consciousness and Morgan's Canon. (shrink)

En este trabajo se discute la interpretación de Isaiah Berlin de la filosofía política fichteana en términos de un organicismo. Esta interpretación muestra que las libertades individuales juegan un rol fundamental en la educación de los ciudadanos futuros en tanto que ésta es una tarea realizada por los padres y no por el Estado. Sin embargo, Fichte no defiende una idea de la libertad individual como no-interferencia, aun cuando las similitudes entre su teoría y la de Humboldt sugieran lo contrario. (...) Del mismo modo, Fichte no defendió tampoco la idea de la libertad como no-dominación, como revela la comparación con la teoría de Philip Pettit. Por el contrario, Fichte sostuvo que la educación de los futuros ciudadanos tiene sentido únicamente cuando las libertades individuales son consideradas como inextricablemente unidas con la propiedad. This paper discusses Isaiah Berlin’s interpretation of Fichtean political philosophy in terms of organicism. It shows that individual liberties play a fundamental role in the education of future citizens as a task performed by parents, not the state. However, Fichte did not defend an idea of individual liberty or non-interference, even if similarities between his theory and Humboldt’s suggest the contrary. At the same time, Fichte also did not espouse the idea of freedom as non-domination, as a comparison with Philip Pettit’s theory reveals. By contrast, Fichte posited that the education of future citizens makes sense only if individual liberties are considered inextricably linked to property. (shrink)

Guidelines recommend a ‘do-not-resuscitate’ code status for inpatients in which cardiopulmonary resuscitation attempts are considered futile because of low probability of survival with good neurological outcome. We retrospectively assessed the prevalence of DNR code status and its association with presumed CPR futility defined by the Good Outcome Following Attempted Resuscitation score and the Clinical Frailty Scale in patients hospitalised in the Divisions of Internal Medicine and Traumatology/Orthopedics at the University Hospital of Basel between September 2018 and June 2019. The definition (...) of presumed CPR futility was met in 467 of 2889 patients. 866 patients had a DNR code status. In a regression model adjusted for age, gender, main diagnosis, nationality, language and religion, presumed CPR futility was associated with a higher likelihood of a DNR code status. In the subgroup of patients with presumed futile CPR, 144 of 467 had a full code status, which was independently associated with younger age, male gender, non-Christian religion and non-Swiss citizenship. We found a significant proportion of hospitalised patients to have a full code status despite the fact that CPR had to be considered futile according to an established definition. Whether these decisions were based on patient preferences or whether there was a lack of patient involvement in decision-making needs further investigation. (shrink)

El artículo presenta algunos de los diferentes modelos teórico-explicativos sobre las necesidades humanas; revisa el estado del arte en las publicaciones recientes, y evalúa críticamente las limitaciones y potenciales que ellas tienen, desde una mirada sistémica y fenoménica desde un enfoque centrado en la persona.

Experimental studies show that some corvids, apes, and rodents possess a common long-term memory system that allows them to take goal-directed actions on the basis of absent spatiotemporal contexts. In other words, evidence supports the hypothesis that Episodic Memory —far from being uniquely human— has evolved as a cross-species meaning making system. However, within this zoosemiotic breakthrough, neurocognitive studies now struggle characterizing the relations between teleological factors and phenomenological factors that would account for the episodic behavior displayed by these living (...) beings. Within such field, this paper identifies four epistemological gaps —the ‘Nagelian’, ‘de Waalian’, ‘Chomskyan’, and ‘semiotic’ gaps—, making a case for the need of a future biosemiotic model of Alloanimal Episodic Memory to come into the equation. As a whole, I conclude that experimental developments in AEM research, and philosophical advancements in biosemiotics could converge through the concept of semiosis. Introducing the latter would account for animal episodic agency as a causal influence and continuity between the above relations, outclassing the reductionist and Cartesian separation between ‘external’ bodily behavior and ‘internal’ computational operations. (shrink)

Obituary. Ruth Barcan Marcus' contributions to modal logic and to semantics are discussed.

Common knowledge of a proposition A can be characterized by the following infinitary conjunction: everybody knows A and everybody knows that everybody knows A and everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows A and so on. We present a survey of deductive systems for the logic of common knowledge. In particular, we present two different Hilbert-style axiomatizations and two infinitary cut-free sequent systems. Further we discuss the problem of syntactic cut-elimination for common knowledge. The paper concludes with a list (...) of open problems. (shrink)

This article deals with cultural theory in the version of Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky. Cultural theory is important for research in the area of political and policy science because this theory has the pretension of pinning down endogenous preference formation. Using Durkheim's dimensions, ‘social integration’ and ‘regulation of the actions of individuals’, cultural theory distinguishes five ways of life or cultures, namely individualism, hierarchy, egalitarianism, fatalism and autonomy. The statement that there are only five ways of life is, however, the (...) result of a selective interpretation of the dimension, ‘regulation of the actions of individuals’. A broad perspective on this dimension — including the ‘horizontal’ aspects of human relations — will lead to the conclusion that there is a sixth culture existent that has been neglected by current cultural theory. This sixth culture is essentially ‘mutualism-driven’. In this mutualist way of life, people hold highly specialized positions and are closely associated. The production of goods and services within this culture is based on cooperation and mutual adjustment. Power is widely spread, but not because equal rights and duties are considered a good thing. Knowledge and skills are primary in mutualist settings, and power follows knowledge and skills. (shrink)

The following Principle of Substitutivity holds for the former, but not for the latter sentence: (PS) The truth value of (the proposition expressed by) a sentence that contains an occurrence of t1 remains constant when t2 is substituted for t1, provided that t1 and t2 are codesignative singular terms. It is an undeniable fact that different sentences behave differently when it comes to which substitutions preserve their truth value. What is curious is that this fact has been presented by the (...) philosophical tradition as a puzzle. To be more precise, what is supposed to be puzzling is the breakdown of PS in some sentences. Meanwhile, it is assumed that everything is as it should be, that nothing needs to be explained when we observe that the substitution of 'the number of planets' for 'nine' in 'nine is greater than seven' guarantees the preservation of truth value, in spite of the fact that the subject matter of the former sentence and the subject matter of 'the number of planets is greater than seven' are radically different. The former sentence expresses a claim about numbers and their relationships, whereas the latter sentence makes an assertion about our solar system. (shrink)

John Hawthorne and David Manley (The Reference Book, OUP 2012) endorse a unified treatment of the semantics of four kinds of expressions that can be said to have referential uses: specific indefinite descriptions, definite descriptions, demonstratives and proper names. The semantic theory the authors propose treats all these expressions as having a quantificational structure that achieves uniqueness of application via the presence of covert material contributing to the restriction of the domain of quantification. I argue that there are reasons to (...) postulate disunity; reasons to set apart a class of purely referential expressions that do not just apply uniquely to an object via overt or covert restrictors, but that refer to it. (shrink)