: The author seeks an explanation for Merleau-Ponty's expression "the body understands", to which a real value is applied: the objects of the world have a signification that the body grasps by way of perception. The analysis focuses on Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of perception and on notes from two of his courses, Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression and La nature. In these works, there is a constant allusion to the I can as an underlying and grounding mode with (...) regard to the I think. The French philosopher thus grants a central role to movement that demonstrates the interweaving of the body with the world. Resumo: O autor busca uma explicação para a expressão "o corpo conhece", de Merleau-Ponty, à qual atribui um valor real: os objetos do mundo têm uma significação que o corpo apreende por meio da percepção. A análise se concentra na Fenomenologia da percepção e nas notas de dois cursos: O mundo sensível e o mundo da expressão e A natureza. Há uma constante alusão ao eu posso como um modo subjacente e fundamental em relação ao eu penso. Daí, o filósofo francês conferir um papel central ao movimento que demonstra o entrelaçamento do corpo com o mundo. (shrink)

Habit and Embodiment in Merleau-PontyIntroductionMerleau-Ponty (French phenomenological philosopher, born in 1908 and deceased in 1961) refers to habit in various passages of his Phenomenology of Perception as a relevant issue in his philosophical and phenomenological position. Through his exploration of this issue he explains both the pre-reflexive character that our original linkage with the world has, as well as the kind of “understanding” that our body develops with regard to the world. These two characteristics of human existence bear a close (...) relation with the vision of an embodied mind sustained by Gallagher and Zahavi in their work The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. Merleau-Ponty uses concepts like those of the lived or own body and of lived space in order to emphasize, from a first-person perspective, the co-penetration that exists between subject and world.Gallagher and Zahavi have regained the experience of phenomenology, especially that of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, to contribute to the development of the cognitive sciences. Via the phenomenological approach to the reality of habit, a new understanding of the body becomes possible for us, such that it becomes characterized “as subject, as experiencer, as agent”, and at the same time we can understand “the way the body structures our experience” (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008). Additionally, the idea of a pre-reflexive understanding is conceived of by these authors... (shrink)

Este artículo presenta los vínculos entre el pensamiento de Edith Stein y Simone Weil, ambas destacadas filósofas del siglo XX, respecto a la concepción de la ciencia y técnica moderna. La tesis que guiará nuestro trabajo es que las dos pensadoras recuperan la concepción de la ciencia como contemplación del orden del mundo. Esta perspectiva permite cambiar la mirada fisicalista con respecto a la naturaleza y detener los daños que la excesiva intervención de la técnica ha provocado en la naturaleza. (...) De este modo, la ciencia se transforma en puente que conduce al Creador. En el trabajo, se analizan los conceptos de finalidad; la consideración del espacio y la geometría como integradores de la realidad; la percepción como origen del conocimiento y la dimensión trascendente de la ciencia. Cada uno de estos aspectos es analizado desde la óptica del orden intrínseco de las cosas y de la persona dado por el Creador. (shrink)

El conocimiento es una actividad de la persona que, paradójicamente, presenta un carácter cercano y, a la vez, misterioso. Por una parte es nuestro vínculo habitual con el mundo, pero, por otra, no siempre logramos comprender su significado. La visión, a veces frecuente, del conocimiento como una copia interna del mundo exterior, ha llevado a algunos filósofos, por ejemplo Rorty, a criticar explicaciones basadas en Aristóteles y Tomás de Aquino. Esta obra busca superar esta crítica, mostrando que la comprensión del (...) conocimiento como un acto perfectivo de la persona rompe con el prejuicio que entiende el conocimiento al modo de una reduplicación del mundo en una esfera interior o mental. El libro constituye, tanto por su temática como por su método expositivo, un valioso aporte para los estudiosos de la filosofía y también para aquellos que, interesados en el tema, miran con recelo el lenguaje técnico de esta disciplina. La autora se ha esmerado por presentar un texto que resulte ágil y accesible también a un público amplio y no necesariamente especialista en filosofía. (shrink)

El artículo se propone rehabilitar el concepto tomasiano de representación cognoscitiva que es fuertemente criticado en su versión post cartesiana. Con este objetivo se contextualiza la representación en el marco más amplio de otras características que Tomás de Aquino atribuye al conocimiento humano, concretamente las de inmanencia e intencionalidad. El análisis de estos atributos del conocimiento permite establecer el ámbito propio del acto cognoscitivo, diferenciándolo de una condición física o natural This article aims at recovering Aquinas’ concept of cognitive representation (...) which is strongly criticized in its post-cartesian sense. For this purpose, representation is contextualized in the wider frame of other characteristics that Thomas Aquinas attributes to human knowledge, i.e. that of immanence and intentionality. The analysis of these features allows to establish the proper scope of the cognitive act and to differentiate it from a physical or natural condition. (shrink)

Resumen El artículo parte del supuesto que Merleau-Ponty realiza en su filosofía una formulación y caracterización del conocimiento humano. Se explican cuatro notas que dan cuenta, no exhaustiva, de los rasgos centrales de su pensamiento gnoseológico. La característica principal, de la que se desprenden las otras tres notas, es la primacía de la percepción. La segunda nota, que dice relación con la opacidad del conocimiento, se explica tomando una expresión de Bech: “el pensamiento de la no-coincidencia”. La tercera nota corresponde (...) a la interrogación radical y la cuarta se expone a través del concepto de no-filosofía.The article starts from the assumption that Merleau-Ponty, in hisphilosophy, formulates and characteriges human knowledge. Four traits are explained, each of which gives account, in a non-exhaustive way, of hisgnoseological thinking centralfeatures. The main feature, from which emerge the other three, is the primay of perception. The second feature, which is related to the opaaty of knowledge, is explained by Bech ’s expression of “the thought of non-coincidence”. The third feature corresponds to radical interrogation and the fourth is explained through the concept of non-philosophy. (shrink)

People often signal their membership in groups through their clothes, hairstyle, posture, and dialect. Most existing evolutionary models argue that markers label group members so individuals can preferentially interact with those in their group. Here we ask why people mark ethnic differences when interethnic interaction is routine, necessary, and peaceful. We asked research participants from three ethnic groups in southwestern Madagascar to sort photos of unfamiliar people by ethnicity, and by with whom they would prefer or not prefer to cooperate, (...) in a wage labor vignette. Results indicate that southwestern Malagasy reliably send and detect ethnic signals; they signal less in the marketplace, a primary site of interethnic coordination and cooperation; and they do not prefer co-ethnics as cooperation partners in novel circumstances. Results from a cultural knowledge survey and calculations of cultural FST suggest that these ethnic groups have relatively little cultural differentiation. We concur with Moya and Boyd that ethnicity is unlikely to be a singular social phenomenon. The current functions of ethnic divisions and marking may be different from those at the moment of ethnogenesis. Group identities may persist without group conflict or differentiation. (shrink)

Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) a free (...) and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

Current treatments of practical rationality understand reasons as considerations counting in favor of or against some practical option, treating the positive and the negative case as symmetrical. Typically the focus is on examples of positive reasons. However, I want to shift the spotlight to negative reasons, as making a tighter or more direct link to rationality — and ultimately to morality, which is what much of the current interest in reasons is meant to clarify. Recognizing a positive/negative asymmetry in normative (...) force will let us reconcile the view of moral or other requirements as based on reasons with the denial that reasons as such, even all-thingsconsidered reasons, yield requirements — or as I like to put it, rationally compel. (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently either too vaguely expressed – “true statements correspond to the way things are in the world,” or implausible – “true statements mirror raw, mind-independent reality.” I address this problem by developing features and roles that ought to characterize what I call ldquo;modest” correspondence theories. Of special importance is the role of correspondence in directing our responses to cases of suspected non-factuality; lack of straightforward correspondence shows the need for, and guides us in our choice of, various (...) kinds of reconstrual projects. This, I argue, is in contrast to the approaches suggested by deflationism and coherence, and thus modest correspondence theories are appropriately distinct from rivals. (shrink)

We investigated the role of honour concerns in mediating the effect of nationality and gender on the reported intensity of anger and shame in reaction to insult vignettes. Spain, an honour culture, and The Netherlands, where honour is of less central significance, were selected for comparison. A total of 260 (125 Dutch, 135 Spanish) persons participated in the research. Participants completed a measure of honour concerns and answered questions about emotional reactions of anger and shame to vignettes depicting insults in (...) which type of threat was manipulated. It was found that Spanish participants responded especially intensely to insults that threaten family honour, and that this effect of nationality on emotional reactions to threats to family honour was mediated by individual differences in concern for family honour. (shrink)

A recent special issue in the Journal of Business Ethics gathered together a variety of papers addressing the challenges of putting virtue ethics into practice :563–565, 2013). The editors prefaced their outline of the various papers with the assertion that exploring the practical dimension of virtue ethics can help business leaders discover their proper place in working for a better world, as individuals and within the family, the business community and society in general :563–565, 2013). Scholars are yet to explore (...) the role of virtuous organisational leaders in the pursuit of Eudaimonia. This paper is a qualitative study which considered company directors’ self-understandings in light of a virtue ethics conceptual framework. The aim of the study is to explore whether virtue ethics rather than deontology and consequentialism is a better vehicle for expressing directors’ self-understandings about their ideals and role. (shrink)

A collection of lectures which focussed on the small, constant aggressions of racism.

This important book proposes a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein. The authors deny the existence of a direct referential relationship between words and things. Rather, the link between language and world is a two-stage one, in which meaning is used and in which a natural language should be understood as fundamentally a collection of socially devised and maintained practices. Arguing against the philosophical mainstream descending from Frege and Russell to Quine, Davidson, (...) Dummett, McDowell, Evans, Putnam, Kripke and others, the authors demonstrate that discarding the notion of reference does not entail relativism or semantic nihilism. A provocative re-examination of the interrelations of language and social practice, this book will interest not only philosophers of language but also linguists, psycholinguists, students of communication and all those concerned with the nature and acquisition of human linguistic capacities. (shrink)

As a representative of the papacy Bellarmine was an extremely moderate one. In fact Sixtus V in 1590 had the first volume of his Disputations placed on the Index because it contained so cautious a theory of papal power, denying the Pope temporal hegemony. Bellarmine did not represent all that Hobbes required of him either. On the contrary, he proved the argument of those who championed the temporal powers of the Pope faulty. As a Jesuit he tended to maintain the (...) relative autonomy of the state, denying the temporal powers ascribed by radical papalists and Augustinians. Their argument was generally framed as a syllogism: Christ, who possessed direct temporal power as both God and man, exercised it on earth; the Pope is the vicar of Christ; therefore the Pope possesses and may exercise direct temporal jurisdiction. Bellarmine simply denied that Christ had exercised the temporal power, which as God, it is true, he possessed. Moreover, he drew up and circulated a list of patristic passages collected under the title De Regno Christi quale sit, to prove to the Pope the orthodoxy of his position. (shrink)

Asperger's syndrome is a pervasive developmental condition characterized by features of autism. As observed in clinical practice, individuals with Asperger's syndrome present an impairment related to inflexibility in their everyday routine, an immediate manner of experiencing and relating, and difficulties in estimating periods of time. Following a phenomenological perspective, this study is an attempt to examine these aforementioned aspects in terms of temporality. Thirteen participants with Asperger's syndrome, from 13 to 20 years old, were interviewed about their experience of periods (...) of time, personal history, their past, present and future; and their concept of time and finitude. After the interviews, it was possible to identify three general themes which emerged in the invariant aspects of their experience of time: factual experience of present and future dimensions, chronological time and the past experience. Moreover, participants' descriptions evidenced aspects of experience based on the specificity of lived facts and a sense of time specifically related to what was lived in the past. (shrink)

My comments focus on Proops’s treatment of the Paralogisms. I agree with many aspects of his discussion, including his views about the project of Rational Psychology and his analyses of how, exactly, the arguments of the Paralogisms are defective in form, but I disagree with his interpretation of the First Paralogism. I argue that the source of confusion that Kant diagnoses is not the grammatical distribution of ‘I’ as singular, but the fact that the I-representation is both empty and necessary (...) for cognition. (shrink)

How does Kant understand the representation of an empirical self? For Kant, the sources of the representation must be both a priori and a posteriori. Several scholars claim that the a priori part of the ‘self’ representation is supplied by the category of ‘substance,’ either a regular substance (Andrew Chignell), a minimal substance (Karl Ameriks) or a substance analog (Katharina Kraus). However, Kant opens the Paralogisms chapter by announcing that there is a thirteenth ‘transcendental’ concept or category: “We now come (...) to a concept that was not entered in the above general list of transcendental concepts, and that must yet be classed with them … This is the concept – or, if one prefers, the judgment – I think.” (A341/B399). I argue that it is the ‘I think’ that provides the a priori framework for the representation of the empirical self. (shrink)

"Justice according to Need" is an old socialist slogan and Marxism embraced an ancient theory of true and false needs. But Aristotle also formulated "justice according to need", although in different terms, where "need" is often translated as "demand".

A REALIDADE DAS SERRAS CENTRAIS POTIGUARES E A QUESTÃO DO DESENVOLVIMENTO REGIONAL SOB A PERSPECTIVA DO DIREITO, DESENVOLVIMENTO E SUSTENTABILIDADE.

O presente artigo apresenta resultados de uma pesquisa que enfocou a avaliação de desempenho (AD) como um instrumento de poder utilizado na gestão de pessoas. Realizou-se um estudo de caso que utilizou entrevistas individuais com 14 participantes, sendo 4 diretores e gerentes e 10 trabalhadores da área administrativa e operacional. Para análise dos dados, utilizou-se a análise gráfica do discurso de Lane (1985). A análise dos dados indicou que os participantes (diretoria) percebiam as políticas de gestão de pessoas permeadas pela (...) ideologia dominante como uma forma de garantir a competitividade da empresa no mercado. Já os trabalhadores a percebiam como a possibilidade para o desenvolvimento profissional e a promoção. Os dados sugerem que os resultados da AD eram utilizados na gestão de pessoas apenas quando sustentavam/confirmavam as práticas e decisões da diretoria relacionadas às políticas de pessoal. Assim, a AD pode ser considerada um instrumento de poder na gestão de pessoas, porém tendo seu uso limitado a fatores externos à técnica quando subsidia as ações dos diretores. (shrink)