He aquí la primera monografía en castellano dedicada a una milenaria tradición religiosa poco conocida fuera de la India: el jainismo. Agustín Pániker, experto en la materia, analiza tanto su historia, su filosofía, la mitología, sus instituciones, los aspectos sociales, su relación con otras religiones, como sus prácticas fundamentales. Esta tradición es de enorme importancia para conocer la espiritualidad índica ya que es responsable de enseñanzas tan vitales como la "no-violencia", el vegetarianismo o la doctrina del karma, algunos de los (...) valores y presupuestos que tanto el hinduismo como el budismo hicieron suyos y, en el siglo XX, fueron universalizados por Gandhi. (shrink)

I propose a way of thinking aboout content, and a related way of thinking about ontological commitment. (This is part of a series of four closely related papers. The other three are ‘On Specifying Truth-Conditions’, ‘An Actualist’s Guide to Quantifying In’ and ‘An Account of Possibility’.).

I propose a way of thinking about content, and a related way of thinking about ontological commitment.

Autistic individuals are commonly said – and also consider themselves – to be excessively literalist, in the sense that they tend to prefer literal interpretations of words and utterances. This literalist bias seems to be fairly specific to autism and still lacks a convincing explanation. In this paper we explore a novel hypothesis that has the potential to account for the literalist bias in autism. We argue that literalism results from an atypical functioning of the predictive system: specifically, an atypical (...) balance between predictions and error signals in language processing may make individuals more uncertain about their own predictions. Such uncertainty is then often resolved by resorting to the safest interpretation, that is, the literal one. We start by reviewing existing explanations of other autistic traits that appeal to predictive processing. We then apply these insights to language, by showing that predictions play a key role in everyday comprehension and that a low level of confidence in one’s own predictions is likely to escalate comprehension difficulties. Finally, we take a deeper look at non-literal uses of language by discussing the case of metaphors, to illustrate how a predictive processing account offers a promising explanation of the literalist bias in autism. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the meaning of lexical words, i.e., words that contribute with content to the meaning of sentences. This debate has coincided with a renewal in the study of polysemy, which has taken place in the psycholinguistics camp mainly. There is already a fruitful interbreeding between two lines of research: the theoretical study of lexical word meaning, on the one hand, and the models of polysemy psycholinguists present, on the other. In this paper I aim at (...) deepening on this ongoing interbreeding, examine what is said about polysemy, particularly in the psycholinguistics literature, and then show how what we seem to know about the representation and storage of polysemous senses affects the models that we have about lexical word meaning. (shrink)

La Didáctica General es la disciplina pedagógica que estudia la enseñanza para el conocimiento y la formación, a través de la comunicación educativa. Los manuales y textos de referencia de la disciplina no suelen reparar en temáticas radicales, esto es, esenciales para la educación y no demandadas. Una de ellas es la dualidad en marcos didácticos, entendida en nuestro contexto como un hábito de la razón humana que, bien perjudica, bien dificulta la evolución personal, social y educativa. El objetivo es (...) triple: por un lado, avanzar en la definición de la dualidad como un problema formativo que incide directamente en la enseñanza, el aprendizaje y la formación o deformación relativa. Por otro, es indagar en fundamentos aplicables, prácticos, de una enseñanza educadora que lo afronte en el proceso evolutivo del ego a la conciencia. El tercero es contribuir al salto en el reconocimiento epistemológico de un problema desatendido o ignorado a un asunto de primera magnitud pedagógica. La metodología es el ensayo pedagógico, realizado desde el enfoque radical e inclusivo aplicado, en esta ocasión, a constructos claves de la Didáctica General. Los resultados se desprenden desde el principio y durante todo el proceso, desde contenidos organizados en epígrafes sucesivos que pueden ser centros de interés didácticos y educativos. La conclusión más importante es que la superación de dualidades puede ser un camino válido para una enseñanza orientada a una formación con base en la conciencia, en cualquier contexto didáctico, informal o formal. En un plano más amplio y aplicable, se constata que la Didáctica General con orientación radical se puede fortalecer epistemológica, investigativa y profesionalmente. (shrink)

Here is an account of logical consequence inspired by Bolzano and Tarski. Logical validity is a property of arguments. An argument is a pair of a set of interpreted sentences (the premises) and an interpreted sentence (the conclusion). Whether an argument is logically valid depends only on its logical form. The logical form of an argument is fixed by the syntax of its constituent sentences, the meanings of their logical constituents and the syntactic differences between their non-logical constituents, treated as (...) variables. A constituent of a sentence is logical just if it is formal in meaning, in the sense roughly that its application is invariant under permutations of individuals.1 Thus ‘=’ is a logical constant because no permutation maps two individuals to one or one to two; ‘∈’ is not a logical constant because some permutations interchange the null set and its singleton. Truth functions, the usual quantifiers and bound variables also count as logical constants. An argument is logically valid if and only if the conclusion is true under every assignment of semantic values to variables (including all non-logical expressions) under which all its premises are true. A sentence is logically true if and only if the argument with no premises of which it is the conclusion is logically valid, that is, if and only if the sentence is true under every assignment of semantic values to variables. An interpretation assigns values to all variables. (shrink)

Este artículo investiga dos problemas principales en los conocidos argumentos de San Agustín en pro de la certeza, contra los escépticos. En realidad, son más bien dos niveles de una misma cuestión "metodológica": la interioridad del conocimiento y la reflexión, como vía de certeza. Conclusión principal de este estudio es que ambas dimensiones son correlativas: la reflexión supone interioridad, N la interioridad exige reflexión, como ría de certeza. La última parte del artículo examina la doctrina agustiniana de la reflexión, en (...) el contexto de su "filosofía del espíritu". La presente investigación intenta mostrar en este punto que, de hecho, San Agustín tematiza o supone, a lo largo de su obra tres grandes modos de reflexión, correspondientes a otros tantos modos de autoconocimiento del alma: el noticial, el cogitativo y el fenomenológico. (shrink)

Distensión de la finitud y belleza son paralelas en Agustín, su deducción y su calificación estética. Ontología de lo finito es, por ello, a la vez, discurso estético en tres grandes dimensiones: a) fundación y estructura de lo finito; b) sucesión temporal ; c) devenir histórico . Podríamos, sin reduccionismo alguno, interpretar su doctrina estética como >?.Distension of the finiteness and beauty are parallel in St. Augustine, its deduction and its aesthetic qualification. Ontology of finiteness is therefore, at the same (...) time, aesthetic thought in three dimensions: a) foundation and structure of the finetenesss; b) temporal succession ; c) historic becoming . Could we, with no reduction, interpret his aesthetic doctrine as >? (shrink)

LUND, A. & ZUKERFELD, M. (2020). Corporate Capitalism’s Use of Openness: Profit for Free? London: Palgrave Macmillan.

The renewed interest in concepts and their role in psychological theorizing is partially motivated by Machery’s claim that concepts are so heterogeneous that they have no explanatory role. Against this, pluralism argues that there is multiplicity of different concepts for any given category, while hybridism argues that a concept is constituted by a rich common representation. This article aims to advance the understanding of the hybrid view of concepts. First, we examine the main arguments against hybrid concepts and conclude that, (...) even if not successful, they challenge hybridism to find a robust criterion for concept individuation and to show an explanatory advantage for hybrid concepts. Then we propose such a criterion of individuation, which we will call ‘functional stable coactivation’. Finally, we examine the prospects of hybridism to understand what is involved in recent approaches to categorization and meaning extraction. 1 The Heterogeneity of Conceptual Representations2 Two Challenges for Hybrid Concepts: Individuation and Explanation2.1 The coordination criterion2.2 Concepts as constituents of thoughts3 Individuating Hybrids: Functional Stable Coactivation4 The Explanatory Power of Hybrid Concepts4.1 Categorization4.2 Meaning extraction4.2.1 Linguistic comprehension and rich lexical entries4.2.2 Polysemy and hybrid concepts5 Conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of what determines the content of our conscious episodes of thinking, considering recent claims that phenomenal character individuates thought contents. We present one prominent way for defenders of phenomenal intentionality to develop that view and then examine ‘sensory inner speech views’, which provide an alternative way of accounting for thought-content determinacy. We argue that such views fare well with inner speech thinking but have problems accounting for unsymbolized thinking. Within this dialectic, we present (...) an account of the nature of unsymbolized thinking that accords with and can be seen as a continuation of the activity of inner speech, while offering a way of explaining thought-content determinacy in terms of linguistic structures and representations. (shrink)

Brain processes and social processes are not as separated as many of our Social Psychology and Neuroscience departments. This paper discusses the potential contribution of social neuroscience to the development of a multi-level, dynamic, and context-sensitive approach to prejudice. Specifically, the authors review research on event related potentials during social bias, stereotypes, and social attitudes measurements, showing that electrophysiological methods are powerful tools for analyzing the temporal fine-dynamics of psychological processes involved in implicit and explicit prejudice. Meta-theoretical implications are drawn (...) regarding the social psychological modeling of social attitudes, and for the integration of social neuroscience into a multi-level account of cultural behavior. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to show that the subject-matter of ontology is richer than one might have thought. Our route will be indirect. We will argue that there are circumstances under which standard first-order regimentation is unacceptable, and that more appropriate varieties of regimentation lead to unexpected kinds of ontological commitment.

Modal logicism is the view that a metaphysical possibility is just a non-absurd way for the world to be. I argue that modal logicists should see metaphysical possibility as "open ended'': any given possibilities can be used to characterize further possibilities. I then develop a formal framework for modal languages that is a good fit for the modal logicist and show that it delivers some attractive results.

Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the phenomenon is still insufficiently examined. This paper analyzes (...) the main properties of unsymbolized thinking and advances an explanation of its origin. According to our analysis, unsymbolized thoughts appear as propositional states, that is, they are experienced as compositional conceptual phenomena, with semantic and syntactic features analogous to those of the contents of utterances. Based on this characterization, we hypothesize that UT is continuous with the activity of inner speech, in particular, it i... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend a conception of language that does not rely on linguistic meanings, and use it to address the Sorites and Liar paradoxes.

According to an increasing number of authors, the best, if not the only, argument in favour of physicalism is the so-called 'overdetermination argument'. This argument, if sound, establishes that all the entities that enter into causal interactions with the physical world are physical. One key premise in the overdetermination argument is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, said to be supported by contemporary physics. In this paper, I examine various ways in which physics may support the (...) principle, either as a methodological guide or as depending on some other laws and principles of physics. (shrink)

According to a model defended by some authors, dispositional concepts can be legitimately used in causal explanations, although such a use is not necessary. I argue, however, that there is a kind of use of dispositions in explanations that does not fall within this model: we will miss some explanations if we forsake dispositional concepts and explanations.

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 1, Page 41-55, March 2012.

Resumen: Este texto consiste básicamente en una presentación general de la corriente filosófica del nuevo realismo surgida en 2007 y en la que participan autores europeos y norteamericanos. Un punto en común de las diversas posiciones dentro de esta corriente es el deslinde crítico frente a la filosofía posmoderna y a la filosofía moderna en general. Explico esta crítica y sus implicaciones para la posibilidad de un restablecimiento en la filosofía contemporánea del pensamiento metafísico.: This text is basically an overview (...) of philosophical new realism which emerged in 2007 and involves European and American authors. A common point to the various positions within this current is a critical detachment from postmodern philosophy and modern philosophy in general. i explain this criticism and its implications for the possibility of a restoration in contemporary philosophy of metaphysical thought. (shrink)

Charles Travis has been forcefully arguing that meaning does not determine truth-conditions for more than two decades now. To this end, he has devised ingenious examples whereby different utterances of the same prima facie non-ambiguous and non-indexical expression type have different truth-conditions depending on the occasion on which they are delivered. However, Travis does not argue that meaning varies with circumstances; only that truth-conditions do. He assumes that meaning is a stable feature of both words and sentences. After surveying some (...) of the explanations that semanticists and pragmaticians have produced in order to account for Travis cases, I propose a view which differs substantially from all of them. I argue that the variability in the truth-conditions that an utterance type can have is due to meaning facts alone. To support my argument, I suggest that we think about the meanings of words (in particular, the meanings of nouns) as rich conceptual structures; so rich that the way in which a property concept applies to an object concept is not determined. (shrink)

Phenomenology is supposed to provide an intrinsic account of the possible types of conscious acts and of their relationship to each other. Husselr's enduring frame on this subject rests on the distinction between "objectifying acts" -representations- and "non-objectifying acts" -emotions and volitions-. But the sense of the dependence of every act on representations, suffered a deep change from Logical Investigations -the intentional reference of non-objectifying acts proceeds completely from cognitive reference- to Ideas -the peculiar emotional reference to values needs preferably (...) a doxic-objectifying modality-. Both theories remain, in the end, problematic. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is (...) a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle. (shrink)

Este artículo examina la compleja relación entre democracia y derechos fundamentales, argumentando que una perspectiva histórica de los derechos, que es indispensable, no necesariamente justifica su existencia en términos historicistas. Señala que la expansión y generalización de los derechos han planteado desafíospara definir un concepto unificado de derechos fundamentales. Además, critica la percepción romántica de que la democracia es suficiente para garantizar estos derechos, especialmente en un contexto de crisis de representación, corrupción y otros desafíos contemporáneos. El artículo también aborda (...) la disyuntiva entre democracia y capitalismo, especialmente en su forma neoliberal, argumentando que esta alianza ha sido problemática y ha contribuido a la erosión de los derechos sociales. Se destaca que, aunque las democracias pueden violar los derechos humanos, estas violaciones no son sistemáticas y hay mecanismos para denunciarlas y corregirlas. El autor sugiere que para entender los desafíos actuales en el discurso de los derechos, es crucial considerar su historia desde la Modernidad hasta el presente. (shrink)

This paper extracts some of the main theses in the philosophy of mathematics from my book, The Construction of Logical Space. I show that there are important limits to the availability of nominalistic paraphrase functions for mathematical languages, and suggest a way around the problem by developing a method for specifying nominalistic contents without corresponding nominalistic paraphrases. Although much of the material in this paper is drawn from the book — and from an earlier paper — I hope the present (...) discussion will earn its keep by motivating the ideas in a new way, and by suggesting further applications. (shrink)

Las Confesiones de San Agustín son una obra muy peculiar. Lectores e investigadores convienen en ello. No es fácil ‘definir’ ni comprender ese escrito. El presente estudio intenta una aproximación a su contenido mediante un examen de ciertos rasgos característicos de la obra que derivan de su propia singularidad. Y denunciamos también algunos impedimentos de comprensión y lectura. Confiemos en que esta mirada pueda ofrecer una guía inicial, pero orientadora, a la misma. Además, el estudio formal y temático revela una (...) dinámica interna, de su estructura misma, que va del relato autobiográfico a la reflexión , de lo narrativo al pensamiento. Este avance tendencial culmina al concluir el libro IX, donde la dimensión narrativa de la obra termina. Razón por la cual los libros X-XI alcanzan el vértice teorético de las Confesiones, con su investigación de la memoria y del tiempo. El presente estudio concluye con una breve exposición del problema agustiniano de la subjetividad o el yo, en la base de esos dos libros.t. Augustine’s Confessions is a very particular work. Readers and Scholarsagree upon it. Therefore, it’s ‘definition’ and understanding are not so easy. These paper tries to provide an approach to the contents of this difficult writing, by means of an examination of some main special traits, arising from the particular work’s kind. And we betray also some new difficulties for it’s reading and understanding. It is hoped that these brief look to the famous Augustinian writing could offer an initial but adviser guide to it. Moreover, the formal and thematic inquiry reveal an internal dynamics of it’s structure, which moves from the autobiographycal account to the reflection , from the story to the thinking. This aimed advance culminates at the end of the book IX, where the work’s narrative side concludes. That’s why the books X and XI reach the theoretical summit of the Confessions through their search for memory and time. Our paper ends with an exposition of the Augustinian inquiry on the human subiectivity, underlying both these books. (shrink)