When examining the current form that modern society has acquired, it is hard to overlook the emergence of a systemic dimension that has become far removed from its social-symbolic roots. This systemic dimension is the result of a process of functional differentiation and simultaneous growth that has led to the gradual formation of social systems that, alongside their coordinating effect, give rise to multiple conflicts or crises. But how are the crises of modern societies to be understood in light of (...) this logic of functional differentiation and internal growth? The purpose of this article is to postulate one particular form of crisis, which will be understood as the result of a consubstantial tendency towards systemic growth. The trend takes the form of a concentration of the performances of social systems that recreates modern schemes of stratification, homogenizes the diversity of options and selections of these systems and, by becoming caught up in thoughtless patterns of growth, produces critical scenarios. (shrink)

Resumen: En un contexto en que la pregunta por lo humano parece divagar entre su desaparición bajo las críticas anti y post-humanistas y su reactivación justamente como respuesta a un entorno de alta incertidumbre y complejidad, la interrogante por los inicios de aquella relación entre sociología y ser humano se torna del todo importante. A partir de un análisis del núcleo fundamental de algunos de los más importantes clásicos de la sociología, se persigue a continuación desentrañar la postura original que (...) la sociología tomó con respecto a éste, así como dilucidar los motivos que la explican. En ese marco, se sostiene la tesis de que la sociología clásica habría desarrollado un intento de destierro del ser humano; un destierro que a pesar de estar afincado en su desarrollo teórico-conceptual, se ve complementado por su raigambre socio-institucional. La lectura es ya en ese entonces clara: inmersa en una incipiente lucha por reconocimiento científico, el cariz filosófico de la pregunta por lo humano se erige como un obstáculo para una cientificidad que solo puede terminar de alcanzarse a través de su exclusión.: In a context where the question about the human being seems to move between its disappearance under anti- and posthumanist critiques, and its reactivation as an answer to an environment of high uncertainty and complexity, the question about the origins of the relations between sociology and the human being becomes especially relevant. Based on a revision of the fundamental core of some of the more important classics of sociology, this article tries to reconstruct sociology’s original position regarding the human being, as well as elucidating the reasons that explain it. Within this framework, it is argued that classical sociology developed an attempt to displace the human being; a displacement that despite relying on its theoretical-conceptual development, it is complemented by its socio-institutional roots. This interpretation was already clear at that time: immersed in an incipient struggle for its scientific recognition, the philosophical tenor of the question about the human erects as an obstacle against the scientificity that can only be reached through its exclusion. (shrink)

The Aymara of the Andes use absolute (cardinal) frames of reference for describing the relative position of ordinary objects. However, rather than encoding them in available absolute lexemes, they do it in lexemes that are intrinsic to the body: nayra (“front”) and qhipa (“back”), denoting east and west, respectively. Why? We use different but complementary ethnographic methods to investigate the nature of this encoding: (a) linguistic expressions and speech–gesture co-production, (b) linguistic patterns in the distinct regional Spanish-based variety Castellano Andino (...) (CA), (c) metaphorical extensions of CA’s spatial patterns to temporal ones, and (d) layouts of traditional houses. Findings indicate that, following fundamental principles of Aymara cosmology, people, objects, and land—as a whole—are conceived as having an implicit canonical orientation facing east, a primary landmark determined by the sunrise. The above bodily based lexicalizations are thus linguistic manifestations of a broader macro-cultural worldview and its psycho-cognitive reality. (shrink)

In his Vermischte Bemerkungen 43, Wittgenstein notices that he was also influenced by Oswald Spengler. The paper deals with the question of in which way Spengler influenced Wittgenstein’s late works and if it really was influence or only a coincidence of ideas. It is put forward that Spengler’s rather unknown philosophy of language influenced Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, especially the concepts of family resemblance, antiessentialism, and language-game (Sprachspiel). A picture of the famous Neapolitan gesture of “negation” which motivated Wittgenstein to (...) give up the picture theory of language is also shown with an example taken from Andrea de Jorio, La mimica degli antichi investigala nel gestire napoletano, Napoli 1832. (shrink)

Libertarian philosopher Michael Huemer has argued recently that there is a prima facie right to immigrate, and, moreover, that concerns people have about the effects of immigration are not strong enough to neutralize or override this prima facie right. In this paper, I focus on one particular concern that Huemer deems insufficiently strong to neutralize or override the prima facie right to immigrate, namely, the concern that unrestricted immigration poses a threat to one’s culture. I argue that Huemer fails to (...) show that the concern is insufficiently strong. (shrink)

Des que Ramon Llull va morir fa més de set-cents anys, sempre ha estat present, d’una manera o altra, en la cultura occidental. Fi­lòsofs, teòlegs, historiadors o, fins i tot, arquitectes i científics han partit del seu pensament per a construir noves teories i proveir-se d’eines de treball. Malgrat això, com tot gran personatge, també ha tingut detractors que s’han oposat amb vehemència a la divul­gació dels seus llibres i han arribat a demanar-ne la prohibició. Les aportacions aplegades en El (...) llegat de Ramon Llull mostren vessants diferents tant de l’obra del pensador mallorquí com de la difusió del lul·lisme, en una visió que comprèn múltiples discipli­nes i que obre noves perspectives d’anàlisi. (shrink)

"É por uma gama de temas diversos, que mereceram o olhar cuidadoso desse historiador e filósofo que esta obra reserva aos leitores, interessados em compreender Foucault, seu pensamento e seu modo particular de (d)enunciar os modos cruéis de exercer o poder soberano ou as relações de poder, numa sociedade que ainda guarda muito do poder disciplinar e se abre, de forma extravagante, ao poder pelo controle, pois quem não se sente hoje controlado, vigiado para ser punido ou para ser protegido, (...) ainda que não se saiba bem do quê ou de quem? E Foucault ainda nos faz um convite: fazer da vida uma obra de arte... Apesar das regras que a regulam num determinado tempo-espaço, a arte prima pela incompletude, pelo não-todo, pelo prazer momentâneo, pela equivocidade e pela opacidade, convidando o tempo todo à criatividade, ao movimento, à transformação, ao novo... E é isso que esta obra pretende." Maria José Coracini (In Prefácio). (shrink)

El 1300 aniversario de la batalla de Covadonga es un buen momento para reflexionar sobre el sentido providencialista que los contemporáneos dieron a aquellos hechos. Además, el presente estudio analizará la influencia que tal interpretación, asumida a lo largo de los siglos por la historiografía principal, tuvo en la Historia de España, y su sustitución por nuevos paradigmas desde el siglo XVIII y, especialmente, desde mediados del siglo XIX.

The aim of this article is to elucidate the evolution of the concept of poverty in Rousseau’s reflections. This will be done through the analysis of three depictions of poverty taken from the philosopher’s texts. The goal is to demonstrate that, beyond the apparent ambiguity in the use of the term ‘poverty,’ Rousseau engages in a semantic play with multiple functions, highlighting the importance of this theme. Finally, it will be proposed how the status of poverty can be seen as (...) relative, showing how the meaning of the term evolves into new senses. (shrink)

In this paper we present a reconstruction of Hegel's critique of Kant. We try to show the congruence of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We argue that this congruence is to be found in Hegel's criticism of Kant's hylemorphism in his theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant's response to the distinction between matter and form in his theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always (...) takes place within a greater whole. He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel's appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, something resembling what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel's Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness in Sittlichkeit, a whole of social practices of mutual recognition. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within such a whole in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, it is necessary to recognise the status of Kantian Moralität as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous. (shrink)

A lo largo del siglo XX, y en especial a partir del desarrollo de la física cuántica y de la dinámica no lineal, los conceptos de incertidumbre, impredictibilidad e indeterminación han sido fuente de gran confusión, pese a sus distintos significados y aplicaciones. Un somero análisis de las teorías que los emplean permite distinguirlos con suficiente claridad.

Multi-word formation processes in Portuguese comprise root-compounding (e.g., toxicodependente ‘drug addict’, agridoce ‘sour sweet’), word-compounding (e.g., barco-casa ‘houseboat’, guarda-roupa ‘wardrobe’, cantora-atriz ‘singer/actress’), and blending (e.g., cartomente ‘lying fortune teller’ < cartomante ‘fortune teller’ + mente ‘he/she lies’, tristemunho ‘sad testimony’ < triste ‘sad’ + testemunho ‘testimony’, cantautor ‘singer and composer’ < cantor singer + autor ‘composer’). Compound structures have been quite thoroughly described by several authors (e.g., Villalva & Gonçalves 2015), whereas blending has garnered some controversial and even contradictory analyses. (...) Some authors claim that blends and compounds have similar structures, while others consider that they have completely different structures (e.g., Gries 2004b, Minussi & Nóbrega 2014). This paper focuses on the description and analysis of an annotated corpus of Portuguese blends, and on the presentation of experimental evidence that aims to assess the knowledge of these words by native young adult European and Brazilian Portuguese speakers.The first section is devoted to the presentation of Portuguese blends, namely regarding the status of their constituents and their linear relationships, grammatical structure, and the phonetic/prosodic relationship that holds between the blends and their base words. The second section focuses on the description of the Portuguese blend corpus. Although new coinages make this a never-ending work in progress, it is presently formed by (circa) 300 blends, collected in a variety of sources, from literary texts to political and social commenting, advertising, or even individual ad hoc instances. The information gathered in the corpus comprehends all the features considered in the analysis of the blends, presented in section 1, and it also provides data on attestation and frequency. The third section presents an analysis of a sub-corpus (184 forms), related to their linear structure, grammatical and prosodic relationships, and a cross-analysis that suggests that there is a strong link between headedness and cliphood. Finally, the fourth section offers a brief presentation of experimental work that suggests that clips facilitate the processing of blends, since the clipped word is more frequently used in replies to a familiarity test, and the same happens with reaction time values obtained in a lexical decision test. (shrink)

La finitud o infinitud del universo dividió a los antiguos filósofos alimentando un debate entrelazado con las sutilezas del propio concepto de infinito y la plausibilidad de su realización en el mundo físico. Mientras el siglo XIX dio los primeros pasos en el dominio formal del infinito matemático, la cuestión del tamaño del cosmos quedaba abierta en espera de mejor evidencia empírica. Al término del siglo XX los datos observacionales de la cosmología parecen decantarse por un volumen infinito, si bien (...) en muy pocas ocasiones se subrayan los delicados problemas físicos y metafísicos que tal opción comporta. A consecuencia de ello en este artículo se defenderá, desde una posición finitista que rechaza el infinito factual, la imposibilidad de un volumen tridimensional infinito para el cosmos y, por tanto, la necesidad de revisar este aspecto de nuestros actuales modelos cosmológicos. (shrink)

Julián Sanz del Río, fundador del movimiento filosófico del krausismo español, evolucionó políticamente desde el liberalismo moderado al progresista entre 1844 y 1854. Sus amigos moderados desconocían esta circunstancia, y se prestaron a ayudarlo, hasta que una recensión de dos libros franceses publicada en la Gaceta de Madrid, denunciada primero por la prensa tradicionalista por heterodoxia, y luego por los Obispos de Barcelona y Zamora, permitió conocer su verdaderos planteamientos políticos y su anticlericalismo.

We describe a solution to the redundancy problem related to that proposed in Feldman & Levin's target article. We suggest that the system may use a fixed mapping between commands organized at the level of degrees of freedom and commands to individual muscles. This proposal eliminates the need to maintain an explicit representation of musculoskeletalgeometry in planning movements.

What did the early Greek philosophers think about animals and their lives? How did they view plants? And, ultimately, what type of relationship did they envisage between all sorts of living beings? On these topics there is evidence of a prolonged investigation by several Presocratics. However, scholarship has paid little attention to these issues and to the surprisingly "modern" development they received in Presocratics' doctrines. This book fills this lacuna through a detailed (and largely unprecedented) analysis of the extant evidence. (...) The volume includes also the first extensive collection of the ancient sources pertaining to living beings and life in early Greek philosophy, organized chronologically and thematically. (shrink)

In this paper we will present the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s main reflections on the scientific enterprise, its relation to the metaphysical tradition, and how the German author drew on the nineteenth century cosmological discussion to develop a worldview that ultimately endorses a dynamic and more creative form of science, whose representations and values should not be separated from human interests.

On September 19th, 2005, an Spanish blogger wrote a post against blog nets. In that post he showed a kierkegaardian interpretation of blogging issue. It was the first time someone was using strictly philosophical categories in the blogosphere. On 2006, February, the 23rd, Rafael Herrera Guillén made a philosophical dramatization about this issue in a game of heteronyms.

En la historiografía nacional poco se ha estudiado el problema de la lectura y la confrontación del sentido del pasado en la historia de la revolución durante la tercera década del siglo xix. El objetivo de este artículo es reconstruir las prácticas lectoras a partir de las cuales se asumió una posición crítica y se construyó cierta opinión pública frente a la narración de los hechos del pasado republicano vinculado con los procesos de independencia en la Nueva Granada. Para ello, (...) se examina la defensa de José Fernández Madrid frente a los testimonios, narrativas y lo que llamaba la “desnaturalización de los hechos” en la naciente historia de Colombia, que se empezó a inventar después de los sucesos de Boyacá en 1819 y luego de sancionada la Constitución Política de 1821. Se quiere llamar la atención, por un lado, sobre los criterios de veracidad a los que eran sometidos los testimonios de los protagonistas de la Independencia al momento de ser confrontados con la interpretación, los documentos y las pruebas del lector; y, por otro, sobre los usos que hacían del pasado los republicanos ilustrados para justificar su “conducta política” y mantener el “buen nombre”, justo cuando se estaban inventando y legitimando los fundamentos políticos de la nueva República. En este sentido, se trata, desde el punto de vista metodológico, de avanzar en el campo de la historia de la lectura a partir de un análisis de las discusiones, defensas, comentarios y contestaciones del público lector, para legitimar su actitud crítica frente a las formas de desconocimiento suscitadas por la escritura de la historia. (shrink)

En este libro un equipo formado por especialistas españoles y extranjeros pasa revista a los principales aspectos del conocimiento del mundo físico. Los autores combinan la perspectiva científica con la filosófica, en un esfuerzo de diálogo interdisciplinar que quiere estar a la altura de los tiempos. Reflejan la variedad de puntos de vista de los cultivadores de la filosofía de la naturaleza, aunque com¬parten la misma fe en el futuro de la disciplina y en el papel que le corresponde para (...) corregir los desequilibrios de la cultura contemporánea. (shrink)

This is an interdisciplinary work product of reflection on the challenges today presented by a biological vision of the world regarding questions, concepts and notions of cosmology. Based on and in dialogue with the current state of biological research, this work deals with certain cosmological problems such as that between the living and the inert, the traditional division between the soul or the vital vegetative principle, sensitive or intellective; the problem of individuation and the concept of species, among others; the (...) solution found within classical philosophy in this paper takes into account the latest discoveries findings of modern biology. (shrink)

This paper presents an interpretation of the paradoxical decision of Abraham done by Søren A. Kierkegaard in his work Fear and Trembling as an ethics of silence. The main idea is to understand ethics not as moral standards or specific duties, but as the responsibility of becoming a single individual in time; singularity as the intimate and personal relationship with the calling of love. In such a way, that silence is the experience of the encounter with the paradox that being (...) human means to be singular in conditions that claim an universal and general transparent manifestation dependent of the dominant rational discourse.Then, silence becomes the fundamental ethical claim to become a human person, as spirit in time, where it becomes a time of trial and examination, a temporality, where the trial is the fidelity to love’s calling, the listening of the possibilities that are presented by the anxiety of the decision. These possibilities are not immanent to the world or to history, they call for a personal choice, always containing a space of revelation; therefore of listening to the interiority of the personal choice that for Kierkegaard is the passion of faith, communicated and lived in silence. Concluding that an ethics of silence by the image of Abraham implies to re-think the role of philosophy in relationship to faith, hope and love in time, as a silent thought. (shrink)

En algunos sectores crece la convicción de que la universidad es innecesaria y que puede ser remplazada por una serie de dispositivos perfectamente alineados a los intereses de la empresa. Se multiplican los expertos que anuncian la muerte de la universidad. Conviene reflexionar sobre los rasgos que tendría ese mundo sin universidades y destacar la necesidad de un espacio libre de condicionamientos políticos y económicos.

El presente trabajo expone las similitudes �o coincidencias� entre las obras filosóficas de Paul Ricoeur y Ludwig Wittgenstein. Se establece un marco de comparación entre las categorías memoria-habito y memoria-recuerdo (cuya oposición analiza Ricoeur desde una fenomenología de la memoria en su obra La Memoria, la historia, el olvido) y las categorías ver y ver aspectos (cuya oposición analiza Wittgenstein desde una filosofía del lenguaje en su obra Observaciones sobre la filosofía de la psicología). De estos pares de oposiciones se (...) extraen puntos de comparación que permiten entender la funcionalidad del trabajo historiográfico. (shrink)