Analysis of medieval philosophy by scholar of Chihuahua.

Mereology deals with the study of the relations between wholes and parts. In this work we will discuss different developments and open problems related to the formulation of a quantum mereology. In particular, we will discuss different advances in the development of formal systems aimed to describe the whole-parts relationship in the context of quantum theory.

This chapter explores Michel Foucault's contribution to a critical assessment of modern and contemporary psychiatric practice. It focuses firstly on the History of Madness : the social, political, cultural, epistemological construction of the object "psychiatric patient" and "psychiatric pathology"; the gradual historical shift from "madness" to "psychiatric pathology" and its social and epistemological consequences; the horizons and limits of the romantic task Foucault assumes on this basis ; the critique Jacques Derrida formulated about this project, and particularly about Foucault's reading (...) of Descartes. Secondly, it examines Foucault's course on Psychiatric Power, focusing on the sociopolitical consequences of this medicalization process: i.e., the construction of the object "psychiatric patient" as "disciplinated bodies", and the general context of this anthropological metamorphosis Foucault studied in his books Discipline and Punish, The Will to Knowledge, and in his course Naissance de la biopolitique. (shrink)

During the last two decades, a sharp re-reading of St. Paul’s letters allowed several thinkers to embed a messianic element in their political philosophy. In these readings, the messianic refusal of the world and its laws is understood through the suspensive act of ‘subtraction’ – a movement of withdrawal which nonetheless proved too often ineffective when translated in political practice. -/- After having analysed Agamben’s declension of Subtraction in terms of ‘inoperativity’, this article focuses on the notion of Parousia as (...) a key element to understand his anti-utopian account of messianic time. In contrast with Agamben’s reading, Bloch’s interpretation of the Pauline Parousia envisages the messianic event as infra-historical, but at the same time opened to ultimate (meta-historical) purposes. Bloch’s messianic call – I argue – takes the form of mediation, a correction of subtraction towards the direction of a more committed political engagement. I conclude suggesting that the concrete implementations of this mediation perform their emancipatory function in so far as they assume the character of practical ethics, with the attention directed to the underprivileged and marginalised. (shrink)

In this paper, a phenomenological perspective on capitalism is given: it is considered as the economic expression of onto-theology. Capitalism is based on egotism, whose principles are private ownership (correlative of intentionality) and free market (correlative of liberty). The current crisis is the symptom of a disease, that is a lack of ethics, an indiscriminate pursuit of egotism. A moral revolution is here proposed as a remedy. The aim is not to destroy capitalism, but to save it with the introduction (...) of an ethical attitude, based on original responsibility and uniqueness (Levinas), as well as on bi-directional respect (Ricoeur). (shrink)

No sermão pelo bom sucesso das armas de Portugal contra as da Holanda, Vieira explana todos os seus dotes de prosador invulgar, teólogo eminente, jurista incontornável, humanista convicto e, acima de tudo, patriota assumido. O presente trabalho pretende, sobretudo, relevar o poder argumentative do orador, seguindo de perto as considerações de Chaïm Perelman sobre a Retórica como "discurso que visa convencer ou persuadir". Simultaneamente, desta-cam-se os голоl ou valores universais patenteados no texto de Vieira e que constituem a base da (...) teoria da argumentação de Oswald Ducrot. \\\ In the "Sermon for the good success of the Portuguese army against Holland's", Vieira displays all his gifts as an uncommon writer, an excellent theologian, a non negligeable jurist, a convinced humanist, and, above all, a wholehearted patriot. This essay is an attempt to put in evidence the preacher's argumentative power, on the basis of Chaïm Perelman's considerations on Rethoric as "a speech that aims to convince or persuade". At the same time, we emphasize, as displayed in Vieira's text, the "topoi", or universal values, that are the basis of Oswald Ducrot's argumentation theory. (shrink)

The paper discusses a posthuman reading of Merleau-Ponty’s later works and an application of the concept of flesh to the digital dimension. Whereas, in the Phenomenology of Perception, the world and other beings are seen from an egological and human perspective, in The Visible and the Invisible this perspective is reshaped. Human body is made of the same stuff of other bodies, and they constitute a common being, the flesh of the world. Merleau-Ponty sets out a path through flat ontology (...) and posthumanism, opposing human perspective as a privileged one. His posthuman turn passes through the concepts of reversibility and divergence. Humans are made of the same stuff as non-humans, so they reverse into one another, but, on the other hand, they are not reduced to an undifferentiated entity, because of their divergence. Merleau-Ponty’s problematizing perspective is here actualized and applied to the hybridization between human bodies and digital protheses. (shrink)

The history of the relationship between pragmatism and psychoanalysis is both complex and fragmentary. On the pragmatist side, the engagement with Sigmund Freud’s thought – and with the psychoanalytic tradition more generally – tends to be cursory, nonlinear, and at times slightly adversarial. For instance, William James notoriously rejects the unconscious as a concept and develops a different theory of the subconscious. Similarly, Charles S. Peirce frequently refers to the unconscious dimens...

We propose a new interpretation of the equation E=mc² in special relativity by generalizing ideas of ontological emergence to fundamental physics. This allows us to propose that mass, as a property, can be considered to emerge from energy, using a well-known definition of weak ontological emergence. Einstein’s famous equation gains in this way a clearer philosophical interpretation, one that avoids the problems of previous attempts, and is fully consistent with the kinematic properties of special relativity, while yielding fresh insights concerning (...) the nature of mass. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Levinas’ concept of ipseity and on its change between the 1960’s and the 1970’s, arguing that this change implies the undoing of the subject. In Totality and Infinity (1961), ipseity is considered as the deep core of the I, whereas, in Otherwise Than Being (1974), it is the other person inside the self. Levinas also theorizes another kind of other-in-the-same, which is illeity, the trace of God inside the human soul. It is shown that illeity is (...) not problematic for the subject, since it does not cause its undoing. Furthermore, it is argued that ipseity, in Otherwise Than Being, is not a mere opening to alterity, but a source of alienation. Finally, it is shown that Levinas starts to change his mind on ipseity in 1968 (“Substitution”), however this modification becomes clear only in 1970 (“No Identity”). (shrink)

From the Introduction: "William James and Gilles Deleuze gave two specific definitions of their own ways of thinking: James used the expression “radical empiricism”, whereas Deleuze wrote about “transcendental empiricism”. In both cases, empiricism is brought out as the main feature of their perspective on reality. I will show that both authors share an empiricist background, regarding especially the concept of “pure experience”. [...] Furthermore, I will bring out that Deleuze, even if he shares the same starting point of James’s (...) philosophy, shifts the axis of repetition according to difference: he develops his perspective on pure experience through a redefinition of the transcendental.". (shrink)

La obra del cantautor vallenato Máximo Jiménez se mantiene más vigente que nunca. Sus canciones poseen un valor testimonial y literario que aporta a la construcción de un relato plural de Colombia y que, por lo mismo, también permite cuestionar las narrativas hegemónicas de nuestra mitología nacional en torno al conflicto político, en la medida en que concreta la voluntad colectiva del campesinado por recordar y hacer memoria de sus procesos organizativos como agremiación, así como también de hacer frente a (...) problemáticas tales como la reforma agraria, la violencia política, el gamonalismo, la inercia y el abandono estatal y la desigual tenencia de tierras, especialmente en los departamentos de Córdoba y Sucre, a partir de finales de la década del sesenta, en el marco de las reivindicaciones de la agremiación conocida como la Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC). De forma contraria a lo que aseguran algunos pensadores, como Walter Ong sobre las culturas orales, la música de Máximo Jiménez se sitúa de forma crítica y con honda sensibilidad histórica frente a la política colombiana y sus prácticas de poder, así como también frente al panorama geopolítico e internacional de la época. En esa medida, el presente trabajo realiza un análisis sociocrítico de las canciones de Máximo Jiménez, particularmente, focalizando su manera de comprender la noción de ‘Pueblo’ y en la manera en que sus canciones establecen una relación entre sus textos y los hechos sociales que le circundan. (shrink)

Plato's political thought gave rise to a number of concepts and issues - such as the idea of a normative theory, the philosophical foundation of politics, the philosopher-kings, the standard of utopian theory - which have played a significant role on Western political and philosophical thought. -/- This volume aspires to bring out Plato's concept of efficacy in a normative theory. -/- By efficacy, the author means the way in which the theory conceives of its practical realization. If in the (...) Republic this issue is particularly problematic, in the Laws, instead, the claim of realizability becomes the main concern. -/- By defining the concept of efficacy and going through the main works of Plato, this conceptual and textual analysis aims to shed a new light on Plato's political thought, which is neither a utopia, nor a short term political program, but the first normative theory encompassing a theory of efficacy. (shrink)

In previous works, an ontology of properties for quantum mechanics has been proposed, according to which quantum systems are bundles of properties with no principle of individuality. The aim of the present article is to show that, since quasi-set theory is particularly suited for dealing with aggregates of items that do not belong to the traditional category of individual, it supplies an adequate meta-language to speak of the proposed ontology of properties and its structure.

Intuitively, we can conceive of the existence of a conscious state as a pure activity that does not necessarily require a body (or even a brain). This idea has found new support in certain recent theories that present the possibility of a totally disconnected and disembodied consciousness. Against this hypothesis, I argue that human experience is intrinsically embodied and embedded, though in a specific way. Using Sartre’s phenomenology of the body, I first analyze the concept of consciousness as intentionality and (...) a world-disclosing activity, thus explaining how conscious activity can only be expressed through a body that is spatiotemporally related to the world. Then, I argue that bodily consciousness does not necessarily imply the actual presence of an anatomical body but, rather, a process of spatialization and temporalization (hodological space and temporal synthesis) through the “spatiotemporal body”. Finally, I test my thesis by critiquing some cases of apparent disembodied/disconnected consciousness, i.e., dreams, out-of-body experiences, and the brain-in-a-vat scenario. (shrink)

Human cerebral organoids are three-dimensional biological cultures grown in the laboratory to mimic as closely as possible the cellular composition, structure, and function of the corresponding organ, the brain. For now, cerebral organoids lack blood vessels and other characteristics of the human brain, but are also capable of having coordinated electrical activity. They have been usefully employed for the study of several diseases and the development of the nervous system in unprecedented ways. Research on human cerebral organoids is proceeding at (...) a very fast pace and their complexity is bound to improve. This raises the question of whether cerebral organoids will also be able to develop the unique feature of the human brain, consciousness. If this is the case, some ethical issues would arise. In this article, we discuss the necessary neural correlates and constraints for the emergence of consciousness according to some of the most debated neuroscientific theories. Based on this, we consider what the moral status of a potentially conscious brain organoid might be, in light of ethical and ontological arguments. We conclude by proposing a precautionary principle and some leads for further investigation. In particular, we consider the outcomes of some very recent experiments as entities of a potential new kind. (shrink)

We discuss the mathematical structures that underlie quantum probabilities. More specifically, we explore possible connections between logic, geometry and probability theory. We propose an interpretation that generalizes the method developed by R. T. Cox to the quantum logical approach to physical theories. We stress the relevance of developing a geometrical interpretation of quantum mechanics.

O julgamento da ADPF 54 pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal teve como efeito a regulamentação do início da proteção constitucional à vida, silenciada na Constituição Federal de 1988 e na legislação ordinária. Todavia, a tramitação perante o Legislativo de Projeto de Lei prevendo a criminalização da interrupção da gravidez por diagnóstico de anencefalia fetal reacende as tensões acerca dos limites da atuação dos poderes Judiciário e Legislativo na concretização dos direitos fundamentais, as quais serão analisadas no presente trabalho à luz do (...) direito comparado, a fim de compreender como a regulamentação do direito à vida se estabeleceu em outros Estados Democráticos. (shrink)

[1] The rise of modern paganism.--v. 2. The science of freedom.

A música pode causar emoções fortes. Como havemos de compreender as respostas afetivas à música? Este artigo apresenta os principais enigmas filosóficos atinentes às emoções musicais. O problema principal diz respeito ao chamado "contágio": os ouvintes percebem a música como sendo expressiva de uma certa emoção (por exemplo, tristeza) e a música suscita neles essa mesma emoção. O contágio é desconcertante, pois entra em conflito com a principal teoria da emoção, de acordo com a qual as emoções são experiências de (...) valores (cognitivismo). Este artigo gira, sobretudo, em torno da apresentação crítica das várias respostas a este desafio ao cognitivismo. Apresenta, também, o paradoxo da música triste, isto é, a questão do motivo pelo qual apreciamos música triste. -/- Music can induce strong emotions. How are we to understand affective responses to music? This article presents the main philosophical puzzles pertaining to musical emotions. The chief problem concerns so-called "contagion": listeners perceive music as expressive of some emotion (say, sadness), and the music elicits the same emotion in them. Contagion is perplexing because it collides with the leading theory of emotion, according to which emotions are experiences of values (cognitivism). This article mostly revolves around the critical presentation of the various responses to this challenge to cognitivism. It also presents the paradox of sad music, i.e. the question of why we enjoy sad music. (shrink)

We discuss generalized pobabilistic models for which states not necessarily obey Kolmogorov's axioms of probability. We study the relationship between properties and probabilistic measures in this setting, and explore some possible interpretations of these measures.