There is a long tradition of reading Spinoza as committed, perhaps unwillingly, to the non-reality of finite modes. While acknowledging that Spinoza does seem to rely on the reality of modes in certain places, Michael Della Rocca has called attention to what he labels an “idealist strand.” As a concluding remark in “Steps Toward Eleaticism in Spinoza's Philosophy of Action,” he claims that faced with these two conflicting strands, which are genuinely to be found in the text, it is better (...) to note both rather than artificially imposing a unity on the text. In this paper, I suggest that one need not admit two conflicting strands in Spinoza, on the one hand, nor arbitrarily disregard one strand, on the other. Rather, I argue for a unified view that diagnoses what gives rise to both seemingly conflicting strands. The key to this enterprise is recognizing that finite modes, paradoxically seeming perhaps at first, are not wholly finite. That is, a finite mode is determined by the totality of finite modes—wherein lies its finite aspect, but at the same time, and equally, partially actively determines this totality—wherein lies its infinite aspect. (shrink)

This paper seeks to analyse an under-discussed kind of self-control, namely the control of thoughts and sensations. I distinguish first-order control from second-order control and argue that their central forms are intentional concentration and intentional mindfulness respectively. These correspond to two forms of meditation, concentration meditation and mindfulness meditation, which have been regarded as central both in the traditions in which the practices arose and in the scientific literature on meditation. I analyse them in terms of their characteristic intentions, distinguish (...) them from concentration and mindfulness in general, and examine the relations between them. Concentration involves keeping the mind focused on a single object, while mindfulness requires noticing whatever mental states occupy the focus of one’s consciousness. In the course of the investigation I examine the role of phenomenology and volition in the activity of meditating, and how they change as meditative capacities develop. (shrink)

Any serious attempt to understand Spinoza's metaphysics requires an understanding of Spinoza's theory of attributes. It might seem a simple task to understand what attributes are since Spinoza prov...

ABSTRACTIn this study, we developed a cognitive bias modification procedure that targets inferential style, and tested its effect on hope, mood, and self-esteem. Participants were randomly assigned to training conditions intended to encourage either a negative or a positive inferential style. Participants’ inferences for their failure on a cognitive challenge were congruent with their training condition. Moreover, compared to participants in the positive training condition, those in the negative condition reported less hope and exhibited lower mood and self-esteem following the (...) failure. Finally, the training affected mood and self-esteem indirectly via its effect on participants’ inferences for their failure. These findings provide support for the causal role of inferential style in depressed affect. (shrink)

This special issue examines the diverse realities created by the intersection of emerging technologies, new scientific knowledge, and the human being. It engages with two key questions: how is the human being shaped and constructed in new ways through advances in science and technology? and how might these new ways of imagining the subject shape present and future human rights law and practice? The papers examine a variety of scientific technologies—personalized medicine and organ transplant, mitochondrial DNA replacement, and scaffolds and (...) regenerative medicine—and their implications for our conceptualization of the human subject. Each is then followed by a commentary that both brings to light new dimensions of the original paper and presents a new theoretical take on the topic. Together these papers offer a serious challenge to the vision of the human subject at the root of human rights law. Instead of the autonomous, rational, unique, and physically discrete individual who owns herself and her body, the subject that emerges from the human technology assemblage has physically porous boundaries and a relational self. This depiction of the human being as a relational subject enmeshed in her technoscientific environment requires that we reconceptualize human rights law and practice. (shrink)

In the first half of Part 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza presents his directions for mitigating the passions through reason. He touts his account of the power of reason over the passions as ground-breaking and unique, while positioning himself squarely within the traditional debate of akrasia, or weakness of will. Spinoza claims he is the first to identify the affects through their characteristic effects, and demonstrate the way these effects can be countered by the mind’s activity. It follows that Spinoza’s (...) claim for originality can be explained in (at least) two ways: first, passions themselves have been misunderstood, and second, previous philosophers have misunderstood the relationship between reason and the passions. In the first part of this paper, I place Spinoza’s discussion of the passions and reason’s power over them in a historical context. Next, I present Spinoza’s definition of the affects, and his directions for ‘destroying’ the passions. In the third section I point to the differences between my interpretation and that of recent commentators. Finally, I discuss the way in which Spinoza’s directions for mitigating the passions serve as the psychological basis for his moral theory. (shrink)

Analizaremos algunos rasgos del proceso de transformación económica y social que tuvo lugar en al-Andalus entre los siglos X y XII, en el marco de la «revolución económica» de la Europa plenomedieval, tomando como caso de estudio la región oriental de la península ibérica. El proceso debió de arrancar con un despegue demográfico y con el aumento de la productividad agrícola, en este caso derivado de los progresos técnicos asociados a la llamada «revolución verde» islámica de los siglos VIII al (...) X. El incremento creciente de los beneficios derivados del campo y el interés por aprovecharlos seguramente impulsó la coacción de las élites urbanas sobre las comunidades campesinas para arrebatarles las tierras más rentables. También pudo ocasionar la colonización de áreas rurales menos favorecidas, que hasta ese momento habían permanecido incultas, por parte de esos grupos acomodados que buscaban expandir los cultivos comerciales, así como por familias de campesinos desposeídos de las mejores tierras. Los cambios en el mundo rural influyeron en el crecimiento de las ciudades debido a la inmigración de la población del campo, presionada y desplazada, que se incorporaba como proletariado urbano ante el incremento en la demanda de manufacturas y bienes de consumo por parte de los terratenientes enriquecidos que habitaban esas ciudades. (shrink)

Nearly 30 years have passed since Donald Davidson first presented his ar- gument against the possibility of psychophysical laws in “Mental Events”. The argument applies to intentional rather than phenomenal properties, so whenever I refer to mental properties and to psychophysical laws it should be understood that I mean intentional properties and laws relating them to physical properties. No consensus has emerged over what the argument actually is, and the subsequent versions of it presented by Davidson show significant differences. But (...) many have been inclined to agree with the spirit of the argument and with its conclusion. (shrink)

Models of set theory are constructed where the non-stationary ideal on PΩ1λ is presaturated. The initial model has a Woodin cardinal. Using the Lévy collapse the Woodin cardinal becomes λ+ in the final model. These models provide new information about the consistency strength of a presaturated ideal onPΩ1λ for λ greater than Ω1.

Since the 1980s, there has been a significant increase in the number of studies concerning Andalusian rural settlements linked to irrigated agriculture, both related to large suburban green belts and to small hydraulic systems. In the vast areas where water is scarce, the settlement apparently would have been concentrated in cities and fortified towns, leaving without population most of the dry lands between them. However, thanks to the intensive survey of one of these regions, La Mancha’s Southeastern area, we are (...) recording a dense rural settlement corresponding to a pattern unknown until now. It consists basically of small villages in plain, devoid of community defense elements, which must have been inhabited by humble peasants, judging by the modesty of the architecture and domestic goods. Surely they make use of the scanty natural resources, which have traditionally oriented the economy of the region towards livestock and rainfed agriculture. In particular, the studied settlement would be related to the demand of wool for the export oriented textile production of the region, within the framework of the commercial expansion of that period. Apparently, most of those villages could have appeared in the eleventh century, disappearing in the middle of the thirteenth century because of the Christian conquest. Their existence would be associated with a general context of population growth that pushed the competition between urban elites and peasants pursuing the privileged agricultural areas, as well as the colonization of less favorable production areas. (shrink)

El conjunto de tratados de agricultura que se elaboró en al-Andalus ha sido hasta ahora explotado como fuente para aspectos relacionados con la botánica y la historia de las técnicas agrícolas; sin embargo, se ha empleado poco para la obtención de información histórica, aspecto que hemos tratado de enfatizar en este trabajo. Con este objetivo, hemos intentado situar la eclosión de los libros de agricultura en su contexto histórico: el de la revolución económica y demográfica plenomedieval, uno de cuyos aspectos (...) más significativos fue la expansión agrícola impulsada por un estamento de terratenientes, muchos de ellos residentes en las ciudades, que puso en marcha una producción orientada básicamente al mercado. A este grupo social es al que creemos estaban destinados principalmente los libros geopónicos, pues tenía la necesidad y los recursos económicos e intelectuales para aprovecharlos, a diferencia de los pequeños propietarios y las comunidades gentilicias de campesinos que practicaban una agricultura destinada esencialmente al autoabastecimiento. Una vez que reconocemos los libros de agricultura como auténticos manuales de aquellos hacendados, se puede recuperar esa literatura como fuente histórica de primer orden con el fin de conocer el funcionamiento y la organización de ese tipo de propiedad fundiaria en esta fase de la historia de al-Andalus. (shrink)

Early Buddhist Metaphysics provides a philosophical account of the major doctrinal shift in the history of early Theravada tradition in India: the transition from the earliest stratum of Buddhist thought to the systematic and allegedly scholastic philosophy of the Pali Abhidhamma movement. Entwining comparative philosophy and Buddhology, the author probes the Abhidhamma's metaphysical transition in terms of the Aristotelian tradition and vis-à-vis modern philosophy, exploits Western philosophical literature from Plato to contemporary texts in the fields of philosophy of mind and (...) cultural criticism. (shrink)

The heated and unresolved debate in philosophy of history evoked by Hempel’s suggestion that the deductive-nomological model of explanation is equally applicable to the natural sciences and history, has unintentionally led to a distorted conception of what it is to explain in history. We argue that explanation in history, at its best, is contingent not on general laws, not even on consequentiality, but on labels as frames of meaning. These labels further serve as a basis for eliciting models which help (...) determine the fuller meaning of occurrences and processes in history. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper aims to unravel the ideological strategy that rises from the well-celebrated epistemic rigor of neoclassical economic thought. From the Economics Nobel Price Paul Krugman’s popularized connotation naming to "freshwater" economists as those fervent followers of the most orthodox academic creed, we will expose the logical inconsistency and empirical implausibility of such thought’s underlying assumptions: perfect competence and equilibrium’s approaching. From a critical analysis that will be conducted from each of those mentioned assumptions, we will argued (...) that the neoclassical thought is an ideological strategy subverting reality’s principles, overcoming "artificially" those relevant deficiencies and limitations of its theoretical approach. A lo largo de este trabajo se intenta desvelar la estrategia ideológica que emana del celebrado rigorismo epistémico del pensamiento neoclásico de economía. Desde la connotación popularizada por el Nobel Paul Krugman a los economistas de "agua dulce" como aquellos fervientes seguidores del credo académico más ortodoxo, expondremos la incoherencia lógica e imposibilidad empírica de los supuestos fundamentales de su pensamiento: competencia perfecta y aproximación al equilibrio. Desde un examen crítico que irá conduciéndose por cada uno de tales supuestos, resolveremos cómo el marco neoclásico no es más que una estrategia ideológica que subvirtiendo los principios de lo real consigue superar solo "artificialmente" las importantes deficiencias y limitaciones de su marco teórico. (shrink)

The late reflections of G.W. Leibniz on eternal return have often been dismissed as insignificant as regards his wider philosophy. This may be due to the prevalent championing of his optimistic views on the continual progress of humanity, which seem to contradict the notion of eternal return. Walter Benjamin and Gilles Deleuze both put forward concepts of eternal return that form part of their respective critiques of historical progress, yet these have rarely been read in conjunction with their views on (...) Leibniz. This article argues, first, that for Leibniz progress and return are not contradictory, and second, that Benjamin’s and Deleuze’s concepts of return were informed, in different ways, by their readings of Leibniz, and specifically by his conception of multiple worlds as the spatial equivalent of eternal return. In doing so I will shed light on the contribution of Leibniz’s philosophy not only to the progressive theories of history put forward during the Enlightenment, but also to the critique of these very visions. (shrink)

The current international asylum regime recognizes only persecuted persons as rightful asylum applicants. The Geneva Convention and Protocol enumerate specific grounds upon which persecution is recognized. Claimants who cannot demonstrate a real risk of persecution based on one of the recognized grounds are unlikely to be granted asylum. This paper aims to relate real-world practices to normative theories, asking whether the Convention’s restricted preference towards persecuted persons is normatively justified. I intend to show that the justifications of the persecution criterion (...) also apply to grounds currently lacking recognition. My main concern will be persecution on the grounds of gender.The first section introduces the dominant standpoints in theories of asylum, which give different answers to the question of who should be granted asylum, based on different normative considerations. Humanitarian theories base their claims on the factual neediness of asylum-seekers, holding that whoever is in grave danger of harm or deprivation should be granted asylum. Political theories base their justifications on conceptions of legitimacy and membership, holding that whoever has been denied membership in their original state should be granted asylum. Under political theories, Matthew Price’s theory will be discussed, which provides a normative justification of the currently recognized persecution criterion. The second section provides a descriptive definition of persecution based on Kuosmanen, and evaluates the normative relevance of the different elements of this definition based on the theories presented previously. The third section is devoted to the examination of the normative justifiability of the nexus clause’s exclusive list of the bases upon which persons might be persecuted. The section argues that while the clause does not recognize that persecution might be based on gender, in fact many women experience harms based on gender that fulfil all the normatively relevant definitive conditions constituting persecution. The conclusion shows that although the current law’s preferences towards the persecuted are justifiable, the nexus clause’s limiting enumeration of grounds is not. This applies especially to the exclusion of gender as grounds for granting asylum.Article first published online: 21 DEC 2015. (shrink)

There is no other published work in English devoted to analyzing the political and intellectual dimensions of black Cuban women’s thought across the island’s history. This text is essential reading for students of Afro-Latin American studies, Caribbean history, or courses focussing on black women in the Atlantic region.

The term “Cartesianism” is commonly applied to a wide range of philosophical and scientific doctrines. The question of what constitutes the spirit or essence of Cartesianism – providing a common core for the works of Descartes, Arnauld, Rohault, La Forge, Régis, Spinoza, Le Grand or Malebranche, among others – has elicited a great variety of answers. Without attempting a comprehensive response to the question, I begin by presenting some main presuppositions and goals commonly attributed to Descartes and other Cartesian doctrines (...) – both by their proponents and opponents. A fundamental Cartesian postulate concerns the metaphysical dualism of body and mind. Thoughts (e.g., ideas, volitions and judgments) are regarded by Descartes as modifications of the mind, whereas extension, size, shape, motion or rest are modifications of matter. According to the Cartesian “way of ideas,” the mind is directly acquainted only with its own modifications, and the objects external to the mind are known only through the mediation of ideas. External reality is viewed as given independently of any individual subjective consciousness. Although Descartes was not the first to posit this view, he invested it with a new meaning in his novel conception of the human mind. Within this framework, the Cartesian subject has been viewed mainly as an observer – one who can only represent independent reality rather than constitute it. Some indication of this view may be found in the third part of the.. (shrink)

There are many aspects of the Ethics that seem to suggest, or perhaps even require the possibility of deducing finite modes from the infinite substance. Nonetheless, as many have noted even during Spinoza’s own time, it is far from clear that such a deduction can be successfully performed. In this chapter I argue that the expectation of a top-down deduction is unwarranted, and that interestingly enough, it is not only unwarranted with regard to Spinoza but with regard to Descartes as (...) well. I show this by pointing to the crucial role confusion plays for both, noting that our epistemic journey to clear and distinct or adequate knowledge begins with confusion, and that this trajectory is one of emending initially confused ideas. This shows that epistemically a bottom-up trajectory necessarily precedes a top-down one. My claim, however, goes beyond this point regarding the order of discovery. I argue that the state of confusion presupposes a plurality of finite modes, in Spinoza’s case, and substances and modes in Descartes’s. Confusion, I claim, amounts to an inadequate perception of an amalgam of ideas of a real plurality of things. Recognizing the metaphysical ground of confusion along with its central epistemic role brings to light the artificiality, and indeed ultimately the impossibility of a top-down deduction which is divorced from a preceding bottom-up analysis. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 3 Seiten: 334-357.

Spinoza’s bold claim that there exists only a single infinite substance entails that finite things pose a deep challenge: How can Spinoza account for their finitude and their plurality? Taking finite bodies as a test case for finite modes in general I articulate the necessary conditions for the existence of finite things. The key to my argument is the recognition that Spinoza’s account of finite bodies reflects both Cartesian and Hobbesian influences. This recognition leads to the surprising realization there must (...) be more to finite bodies than their finitude, a claim that goes well beyond the basic substance-monism claim, namely, that anything that is, is in God. This leads to the conclusion, which may seem paradoxical, that finite bodies have both an infinite as well as a finite aspect to them. Finite bodies, I argue, both actively partially determine all the other finite bodies, thereby partially causing their existence insofar as they are finite, as well as are determined by the totality of other bodies. I articulate precisely what this infinite aspect is and how it is distinct from the general substance-monism dictum. (shrink)

Depression is associated with increased maintenance of negative affect (NA) and reduced – blunted and short-lived – maintenance of positive affect (PA). Studies have focused on factors associated with the maintenance of NA, specifically, the emotion regulation strategy of brooding and the capacity to hold negative affective experiences in working memory (WM). Despite its theoretical importance, less attention has been given to factors associated with the maintenance of PA in depression. This study aims to synthesise factors playing a role in (...) the maintenance of both NA and PA. Specifically, we used self-reported assessment of PA and NA regulation and performance-based measures of NA and PA processing in WM to predict depressive symptoms severity. Participants (N = 219) completed the Affective Maintenance Task (AMT, Mikels et al., Citation2008), which provided performance-based measures of PA and NA maintenance, and filled out questionnaires assessing brooding, positive rumination and depressive severity. Brooding, positive rumination and AMT-based measures of positive (but not negative) affective information processing were independently associated with depressive symptoms. We highlight the unique contributions of PA processing, as well as of self-reported emotion regulation strategies in understanding depression maintenance. (shrink)

Resumen: La imposibilidad del desarrollo para conciliar normativamente imparcialidad con pluralidad responde a un sesgo de carácter ontológico. Esta ruptura, que constituye la esencia misma de los estudios del desarrollo, supone aceptar que cualquier teoría del desarrollo que se precie se encuentra sustancialmente inacabada. De tal imposibilidad emerge, sin embargo, un perfeccionamiento que transcurre dialécticamente en términos de doble negación hegeliana por el cual las distintas teorías van perfeccionándose a partir de un mayor grado de concienciación normativa. Este perfeccionamiento alcanza (...) analíticamente un estado absoluto de desarrollo definido como libertad. Un concepto que perfecciona el presentado por Amartya Sen, facultado para reconciliar analíticamente el sesgo originario.: The impossibility of development to gather normatively impartiality and plurality makes itself to be ontologically incomplete. Nevertheless, the analytical that emerges in the very essence of development discipline implies to accept that any development theory is and will always be unfulfilled. Nevertheless, and beyond that substantive impossibility, an improvement occurs dialectically in terms of Hegelian double negation by which each theory is overcome by a higher grade of normative awareness by the following one. This improvement reaches analytically an absolute dimension of development as freedom. A concept that goes beyond such introduced by Amartya Sen, which it is well able of including all human determinations that ultimately allow to meet analytically those edges of the gap. (shrink)

The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 was a tragic illustration of the existential threat that the viral spread of disinformation poses in the age of social media and twenty-four-hour news. From climate change denialism to the frenzied conspiracy theories and racist mythologies that fuel antidemocratic white nationalist movements in the United States and abroad, What Would Cervantes Do? is a lucid meditation on the key role the humanities must play in dissecting and combatting all forms of (...) disinformation. David Castillo and William Egginton travel back to the early modern period, the first age of inflationary media, in search of historically tested strategies to overcome disinformation and shed light on our post-truth market. Through a series of critical conversations between cultural icons of the twenty-first century and those of the Spanish Golden Age, What Would Cervantes Do? provides a tour-de-force commentary on current politics and popular culture. Offering a diverse range of Cervantist comparative readings of contemporary cultural texts – movies, television shows, and infotainment – alongside ideas and issues from literary and cultural texts of early modern Spain, Castillo and Egginton present a new way of unpacking the logic of contemporary media. What Would Cervantes Do? is an urgent and timely self-help manual for literary scholars and humanists of all stripes, and a powerful toolkit for reality literacy. (shrink)

It was questions about points on the real line that initiated the study of set theory. Points paved the way to point sets and these to ever more abstract sets. And there was more: Reflection on structural properties of point sets not only initiated the study of ordinary sets; it also supplied blueprints for defining extra-ordinary, “large” sets, transcending those provided by standard set theory. In return, the existence of such large sets turned out critical to settling open conjectures about (...) point sets.How to explain such action at a distance between the very large and the rather small? Rather than having an air of magic, could these results rest on deep structural similarities between the two superficially distant species of sets?In this essay I dissect one group of such two-way results. Their linchpin is the notion of measure.§1. Vitali's impossibility result. Our starting point is a problem in measure theory regarding the notion of “Lebesgue measure.” Before presenting the problem, I would like to review the notion of Lebesgue measure. Rather than listing its main properties, I would like to show how Lebesgue measure is born out of an attempt to generalize the notion of the length of an interval to arbitrary sets of reals. One tries to approximate arbitrary sets of reals by intervals, in the hope that the lengths of the intervals will induce a measure on these sets. (shrink)

This second installment in a chronologically arranged, three-part sequence continues the author's examination of Anglo-American literati who, in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, turned — in acts of combined xenophilia and xenophobia — to Russian literature and literary theory in order to escape the dominant influence of avant-garde movements in France. These Anglophone writers found in Russian exemplars a responsible, morally rigorous, and pragmatic, yet philosophically sophisticated, alternative to what they described as the amoral, superficial, and pretentious aestheticism of (...) French literary culture. Part 2 treats the poetry and criticism of the English “Movement” poet Donald Davie in light of his turn, in 1958, toward the example of Boris Pasternak as a way of escaping the influence of French Symbolist poetics and the post-Symbolist poetics of anglophone modernism. Although Davie understood that Pasternak was as much a modernist as T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound, he also argued that the Russian's poetry, unlike theirs, sought, on explicitly moral grounds, to maintain conventional syntax and purity of diction, with the result that Pasternak's verse communicates with the reader more as prose than as music does. (shrink)

This book offers a new way of approaching the place of the will in Descartes' mature epistemology and ethics. Departing from the widely accepted view, Noa Naaman-Zauderer suggests that Descartes regards the will, rather than the intellect, as the most significant mark of human rationality, both intellectual and practical. Through a close reading of Cartesian texts from the Meditations onward, she brings to light a deontological and non-consequentialist dimension of Descartes' later thinking, which credits the proper use of free will (...) with a constitutive, evaluative role. She shows that the right use of free will, to which Descartes assigns obligatory force, constitutes for him an end in its own right rather than merely a means for attaining any other end, however valuable. Her important study has significant implications for the unity of Descartes' thinking, and for the issue of responsibility, inviting scholars to reassess Descartes' philosophical legacy. (shrink)

Coping with assessment tests are known to generate anxiety frequently in the students who face them. In academic circumstances with the continued presence of emotional disturbance, high demand, and stress, emotional and physical fatigue, typical of burnout syndrome, and can be detected. Anxiety and burnout are related to each other and even more closely in high-stakes tests. One of these tests is the examination imposed in Spain for access to the university. The objective of this work is to analyze the (...) presence of anxiety and burnout and the relationship between them in students who face these tests, both during the confinement situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic and during the pandemic after the lockdown. For this purpose, we used a sample of 1,021 students with a mean age of 17.89. Of these, 866 were students who were taking the test, while the rest were university students who had passed it recently. Our results show high levels of anxiety and burnout in students who face the evaluation test during the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained over time and especially in comparison with students who had already taken the exam. The association between higher levels of anxiety and higher levels of burnout in the students who take these exams was also verified. These results link the relationship between these two variables more solidly and suggest the need to include address anxiety to reduce burnout levels in these students. The results are discussed with regard to prior evidence and their applications. (shrink)