My essay is devoted to the very early and attractive understanding of the lived body in Ortega y Gasset’s thought. I focus especially on the text “Vitality, Soul, Spirit” of 1925, which can be considered a proto-phenomenological approach to the issue of embodiment. Ortega identifies “vitality” with “the intrabody” and makes the latter the founding dimension of subjectivity, at the basis of the affective sphere (“soul”) and at the basis of the intellectual and volitional sphere (“spirit”). In a manner very (...) close to Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts, he also shows how the body is the only reality of which there is simultaneously external perception, as if it were just another thing in the world that everyone else can see, and internal perception, which only the self can have and feel. The study also points out, however, the two major difficulties that I detect in Ortega’s precocious attempt. A first doubt concerns the too sharp stratification of vitality, soul and spirit, as can be seen in the analysis of the experiences of pain and of mobility. A second doubt concerns the ontological hesitations surrounding Ortega’s position, which is torn between a coherent phenomenological perspective and a vitalist position in which my body is only an emanation of the lifestream of the universe. (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)

Pegaso Zorokin es una novela experimental que fue publicada en 2012 en cinco volúmenes de la revista digital [Radiador] Magazine. Está compuesta por veintitrés capítulos sin aparente conexión entre ellos. Esta estructura complica una lectura global y pone en crisis la idea de novela. Sin embargo, es posible encontrar continuidad dentro de los fragmentos si se atiende a los puentes hipertextuales dentro del texto. Estas conexiones logran la unidad buscada. La conformación de la novela es muy similar a la de (...) cualquier red social digital. El objetivo de este artículo es explicar este funcionamiento dinámico. El trabajo analítico fue realizado bajo un método semiótico que involucra los conceptos semiósfera y persona semiótica de Yuri Lotman; hipertextualidad de Gerard Genette y propagabilidad de Gabrielle Marino. El análisis fue aplicado a tres de las cinco entregas de la novela de Arana, demostrando que el texto está compuesto por una red interna cohesionadora. (shrink)

Social struggles have led to the legal recognition of the rights of LGTBI+ people in some countries. Even so, violence against LGTBI+ people is a social problem throughout the world, and has resulted in the vulnerability and victimization of the members of this group. In Spain, no research has been published to date that analyzes this problem in the university context. Considering the scarcity of studies on the identification of this type of violence in Spain, the main objective of this (...) study was to identify violence against LGBTI+ people in Catalan universities. We administered a battery of questions to a sample of 571 university students from six universities in Catalonia (77.8% women) between 17 and 55 years old (M = 21.0; SD = 3.96). Of the 12 situations of violence presented, psychological violence was identified as the most common type. Within our sample, 61.0% reported either being aware of or having experienced some type of violence related to the university context and motivated by the sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression of the victim. The results also show that these types of violence in the university context are rarely reported, especially when they do not include physical violence. This study highlights a previously unreported problem and identifies future research avenues in university contexts. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that in order to avoid some of the difficulties to which the contemporary discussion on the transcendental arguments has led we must discriminate different ways of understanding the sceptic’s challenge that Kant faces in the Critique of Pure Reason. In the first part, I expound a dilemma into which the Kantian epistemology could fall if we accept the characterization of the transcendental arguments as anti-sceptic arguments. In the second part, I present three ways of understanding (...) the sceptic’s challenge and the different strategies that could be developed to answer it correctly. (shrink)

In this article, we outline a simple and intuitively appealing procedure to derive default priors. The main idea is to regard the choice of such a prior as a formal Bayesian decision problem. We also discuss Jeffreys prior and more generally the reference prior of Bernardo (J R Stat Soc B 41:113–147, 1979) from this standpoint.

RESUMEN Este artículo examina la estética suprematista en relación con teorías políticas contemporáneas sobre la revolución y la transformación social. El punto de partida del suprematismo es la destrucción de la realidad objetiva como acto liberador. Aunque diversos autores contemporáneos del campo de la teoría política conciben el arte tcomo producción de sentimientos que actúan como puntos de partida de la acción y el compromiso. Ambas perspectivas se entrelazan en el concepto de 'revolución': la liberación de la representación totalitaria y (...) la creación de una nueva sociedad. ABSTRACT This article discusses suprematist aesthetics in relation to contemporary political theories of revolution and radical social transformation. The starting point of suprematism is the destruction of objective representation of reality, and this is understood as liberation. However, many contemporary authors in the field of political theory understand art as production of feelings which are, in turn, the starting point of action and engagement. Both perspectives are interwoven in the concept of 'revolution': the liberation from totalitarian representation and the creation of a new society. (shrink)

This article reads some familiar examples of contemporary visual arts, such as Cindy Sherman, Mona Hatoum, Robert Gober, John Miller, Eva Hesse, Orlan and Robert Mapplethorpe, by engaging with diff...

This chapter develops a schematic historical and political analysis of the rhetorical usages of social constructionism within specific social movement contexts. It is therefore an attempt to illuminate the essentialism/social constructionism debate, rather than to explore the social theoretical issues around constructivism itself. It is concerned with the power of such arguments to mobilize public support, and as instrumental interventions in the political process. -/- It is my suggestion that this very power consists in the ability of such discourse to (...) represent social reality in a way which individuals see as corresponding to personal experience, in the first instance, and to open up the space for dynamic social change, in the second. Social constructionism is a rhetorical strategy. Judgements are made by social actors in terms of their understanding of biographical experiences, the prospective political utility of the analysis offered, and the context in which they find themselves. Further, arguments appeal to two relevant constituencies: first, an indigenous community of interest, which I will explore further below, and second, the wider public including, critically, that section of the population with access to governmental power, notably legislators and other members of the ruling class. (shrink)

There are compelling reasons to believe that musical works are abstract. However, this hypothesis conflicts with the platitude that musical works are appreciated by means of audition: the things that enter our ear canals and make our eardrums vibrate must be concrete, so how can musical works be listened to if they are abstract? This question constitutes the audibility problem. In this paper, I assess Julian Dodd’s elaborate attempt to solve it, and contend that Dodd’s attempt is unsuccessful. Then I (...) discuss what I take to be the ideal response to the audibility problem, and show that it ultimately fails. I contend, consequently, that the project of construing musical works as audible is disheartening. Accordingly, in my last section, I will argue the audibility problem may be satisfactorily resolved without ascribing audibility to musical works. (shrink)

There are many important connections between epistemic justification and moral justification. A recent example of such connections is offered by Sosa’s AAA model for the normative evaluation of epistemic performances. In order to count as knowledge, a belief has to be Accurate in attaining the truth, the subject has to be Adroit or competent for such task, and the belief has to be Apt in the sense that the accuracy of the belief has to manifest the adroitness of the subject. (...) In addition, full knowledge would require full-aptness, which is obtained when the aim of aptness is achieved in an apt way. We have here a clear definition of the model. But the application of the model to particular performances is not so clear. Both the identification of a particular performance as a case of epistemic performance and the assessment of its aptness, or full-aptness, are strongly relative to intentional descriptions paying attention to contextual factors and personal aspects. Here is where we can find close proximity with ethics. An epistemic analog to the ethical problem of double effects appears. In our paper, we analyze that problem in detail, extracting some consequences. (shrink)

(2009). Transitions to democracy: the role of moral and citizenship education in Latin America. Journal of Moral Education: Vol. 38, Moral and Citizenship Education in Latin America: Towards Reconciliation, Community Development and Democracy, pp. 391-406.

Las nuevas tecnologías parecen estar cambiando radicalmente nuestro mundo. Analizamos aquí las condiciones para que esto sea así con relación a un grupo muy importante de fenómenos vinculados a las tecnologías computacionales y a las biotecnologías, que responden a denominaciones de uso ya muy extendido, en buena medida gracias a los medios de comunicación: realidad virtual, realidad aumentada, inteligencia artificial, humanidad mejorada e Internet de las cosas. Argumentamos que la inteligencia artificial ocupa entre ellos un lugar central y que la (...) constitución de un mundo realmente nuevo depende esencialmente de nuestras actitudes ante ella. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Haze’s brief argument for the falsity of the theory that instantial terms refer arbitrarily, proposed by Breckenridge and Magidor in 2012. In this paper, I characterise instantial terms and outline the theory of arbitrary reference; then I reconstruct Haze’s argument and contend that it fails in its purpose. Haze’s argument is supposed to be a _reductio ad absurdum:_ according to Haze, it proves that a contradiction follows from the most basic tenets of the theory (...) of arbitrary reference. I will argue, however, that the contradiction in question follows not from these tenets, but from the surreptitious use that Haze makes of a self-referential expression. I conclude, consequently, that Haze’s argument is nothing more than an illustration of the well-known fact that self-referential expressions produce paradoxical results. (shrink)

Aunque una filosofía de la esperanza pareciera ser una propuesta del todo contemporánea (Bloch, Fromm, Husserl, Laín, Marcel, Heidegger, Patočka, Stein), sus esbozos tuvieron lugar en el siglo VI a.n.e. El objetivo principal de esta investigación es exponer los ejercicios preliminares en torno a una filosofía de la esperanza en el marco de la controversia de Heráclito con Pitágoras. Desde un enfoque cualitativo, mediante el método histórico hermenéutico, se hizo un análisis de datos. Como muestra tomamos fuentes primarias sobre los (...) Versos dorados de Pitágoras y los Fragmentos de Heráclito y como secundarias las traducciones y comentarios más reconocidos. El instrumento utilizado fue las fichas de trabajo mixtas. Como resultado, se observa que la esperanza es un problema para el pueblo griego, que en los vv. 52-53 de los Versos dorados y en el fragmento 22B 18 DK se encuentra esbozada como problema filosófico, que este se comprende mejor a partir de la crítica de Heráclito a Pitágoras y en relación con otros fragmentos clave del pensamiento del Efesio. La investigación permite concluir que la esperanza no es un tema exclusivo de la teología ni propiamente contemporáneo, sino inicialmente de la filosofía, que encuentra en el debate de Heráclito con Pitágoras sus formulaciones preliminares y un contexto propicio para problematizarla en su comprensión habitual, repensarla a la luz del espíritu del tiempo y resignificarla como forma-de-vida. (shrink)

Este texto trabaja a partir de la poesía de José Manuel Arango. Dada la formación filosófica del poeta, se buscó en su obra una reflexión con respecto a las preguntas fundamentales al ser humano y que la filosofía ha intentado responder desde la antigüedad: qué idea del hombre, del mundo y de la existencia hay en su poesía, de tal forma que pudiera establecerse un puente entre la filosofía y la literatura; y derivada de esta última, pero igualmente importante, se (...) indagó por la reflexión estética que allí subyace, su concepción del arte, del artista y particularmente de la poesía. Y ambas preguntas tendieron, a su vez, a un fin común: encontrar la posibilidad de verdad que hay en su obra. (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’.).

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.

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)

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.