The concept of indiscernibility in a structure is analysed with the aim of emphasizing that in asserting that two objects are indiscernible, it is useful to consider these objects as members of (the domain of) a structure. A case for this usefulness is presented by examining the consequences of this view to the philosophical discussion on identity and indiscernibility in quantum theory.

da Costa’s conception of being modifies that of Quine to incorporate relativization to non-classical logics. A naturalistic view of this conception is discussed. This view tries to extend to logic some ideas of Maddy’s naturalism concerning mathematics.

A Doutrina Espírita, codificada na França no século XIX, tem entre seus principais postulados a crença em um Deus único, na imortalidade da alma, na pluralidade dos mundos habitados, na comunicabilidade entre espíritos e na reencarnação. De leves pancadas a mesas girantes, nos salões parisienses, o fenômeno, nos primeiros momentos, era recebido com incredulidade ou frivolidade por aqueles que participavam das reuniões. Até o estudo realizado pelo pedagogo Hippolyte-Léon Denizard Rivail, não se imaginava que tais eventos sofressem ação direta de (...) Espíritos. O professor Rivail, sob o pseudônimo de Allan Kardec, foi o principal organizador, sistematizador e codificador da Doutrina Espírita. Orientado pelos Espíritos, publicou vários livros sobre o Espiritismo, entre eles O Livro dos Espíritos, que é alvo deste estudo. A codificação espírita surge em um período histórico em que o pensamento filosófico e científico encontravam-se profundamente influenciados por ideais do racionalismo e do positivismo, bem como pelo modelo evolucionista. A palavra evolução, tomada do fascínio que exercia no século XIX, devido à ideia de modernidade, é central para o espiritismo. O objetivo desta investigação está em pesquisar o sentido de evolução apresentado nas obras codificadas por Allan Kardec, em especial, no Livro dos Espíritos, e como esta compreensão pode contribuir para o diálogo inter-religioso. Parte da hipótese que, para a Doutrina Espírita, a evolução é central na vida do ser humano na medida em que possibilita modificações do comportamento humano. Evoluir implica num convite para sair de si para buscar o próximo. O pluralismo religioso desafia as pessoas e as religiões a viver a responsabilidade de entender o outro e suas crenças como um atributo de liberdade e de escolha. Neste horizonte de evolução, o diálogo inter-religioso torna-se princípio essencial para o avanço espiritual. Representa um incremento à nossa habilidade de escutar e compartilhar. O método de abordagem deste estudo foi o hipotético-dedutivo e da pesquisa bibliográfica, por meio da consulta de livros e textos psicografados. Por meio da codificação espírita, em especial, no Livro dos Espíritos, buscar-se-á, no sentido de evolução, um fator que pode favorecer um entendimento das alteridades e de cosmovisões religiosas, abrindo caminhos para variados diálogos. Por fim, pode afirmar que a codificação, por seu conteúdo universalista, pelo processo de regeneração moral do ser humano e de abertura às religiões, pode contribuir, com grandes ganhos, para construções de diálogos inter-religiosos. (shrink)

Este texto já apareceu em 2018 na Revista Dobra N° 2. Resumo : Manuel António Pina chamava-lhe isto porque não sabia o nome d'isto. Já eu venho escolhendo a precária, transitória e possivelmente redundante designação de “ritmo vital”. Escolher este nome não resulta de uma tentativa de definição, é antes uma decisão operatória que permite avançar e descolar a atenção do isto, para o gesto de contacto com esse isto – ritmo vital –, e a sua relação com a experiência (...) estética e com a criação artística. Neste - Esthétique – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Columbia University Press's multivolume _Prison Notebooks_ is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, _Quaderni del Carcere_, this comprehensive translation presents the intellectual as he ought to be read and understood, with critical notes that clarify Gramsci's history, culture, and sources; an index of names; and a contextualization of the thinker's ideas against his earlier writings and letters. This set includes notebooks 1 through 8 with (...) all attendant notes and materials and is an indispensible resource for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Il sansimonismo, sistema culturale della civiltà tecnologica, di A. Cattabiani.--Nota dell'Editore.--Introduzione.--Beniamino Constant.--I San-Simoniani.--Appendice: L'utopismo di Carlo Fourier.

Este presente artigo visa buscar os pressupostos da dupla reflexão de Climacus para melhor compreender a sua crítica ao pensamento dialético-especulativo. É tendo em mente que a dupla reflexão retoma os conceitos do trágico e do cômico, da seriedade e do gracejo – ainda que sobre uma nova perspectiva– que compreenderemos a importância dessa comunicação para a linguagem indireta, que tem por objetivo comunicar uma contradição absoluta.

On raconte qu'après la désignation comme Premier consul, Napoléon montra à des invités La Science de la législation de Gaetano Filangieri, le "jeune homme qui est notre maître à tous". Presque au même moment, ces volumes se trouvaient aussi sur le bureau de Benjamin Constant. La fortune et la circulation de cette oeuvre au sein de l'Europe des Lumières et du XIXe siècle sont l'objet de cet ouvrage, qui décrit les débats qu'elle a alimentés afin de comprendre pourquoi les hommes (...) de lettres et les politiques continuèrent à s'intéresser à ce classique de la pensée républicaine du XVIIIe siècle pour se fondre dans la nouvelle Europe du XIXe siècle."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

An influential view in cognitive science is that computation in cognitive systems is semantic, conceptually depending on representation: to compute is to manipulate representations. I argue that accepting the non-semantic teleomechanistic view of computation lays the ground for a promising alternative strategy, in which computation helps to explain and naturalise representation, rather than the other way around. I show that this computation-based approach to representation presents six decisive advantages over the semantic view. I claim that it can improve the two (...) most influential current theories of representation, teleosemantics and structural representation, by providing them with precious tools to tackle some of their main shortcomings. In addition, the computation-based approach opens up interesting new theoretical paths for the project of naturalising representation, in which teleology plays a role in individuating computations, but not representations. (shrink)

In Subversive Spinoza , Antonio Negri spells out the philosophical credo that inspired his radical renewal of Marxism and his compelling analysis of the modern state and the global economy by means of an inspiring reading of the challenging metaphysics of the seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza. For Negri, Spinoza's philosophy has never been more relevant than it is today to debates over individuality and community, democracy and resistance, modernity and postmodernity.

Philosophers have disagreed on the composition of force for decades. The main divergence concerns the fundamental question: given a certain motion that is observable, which force or forces are present in it, component or resultant forces? The present paper focuses on the conditions for dealing with this problem. I will argue that we are not able to infer force from the observation of a motion, as required by the problem. I will further argue that the validity of the Newtonian algorithm (...) is not a sufficient condition for that inference because the Gaussian algorithm, which is equally valid, differs from the former with regard to the forces present in motions. Under these circumstances, I will make recourse to an experiment available in physics in which the force present in a motion is measured. Thus, we obtain a numerical value for this force. This result, playing the role of a counterexample, clarifies the composition of force issue significantly. (shrink)

The principle of conservation of energy tells us that ‘energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only transformed’. The validity of the principle is without question. The problem is the concept. Contemporary physicists have asserted that we do not know what energy is. We find, however, 19th century physicists, contemporary physicists and historians of science who converge on the point: Mayer and Joule discovered energy. Therefore, we do not know what energy is, but we know these authors discovered it. (...) What did they then discover? What can we learn from this with regard to the energy concept problem? To deal with this issue, I will distinguish between what the authors did experimentally and what they said about the phenomena. This method of analysis makes the difference in relation to historical works on the subject. In a second step, I will consider the introduction of the energy concept, which is from 1850s, and the reification of the energy in 1880s. Finally, I will address the energy conservation principle and the concept of energy conveyed by this principle in contemporary textbooks. As we shall see, the conservation of a magnitude that we call energy nowadays was discovered by Mayer and Joule; an indestructible and transformable entity was not. Adopting the original conservation principle would be enough to avoid the energy concept problem. (shrink)

This book provides a solution to the problem with the energy concept. This problem manifests itself in the fact that physicists clearly diverge regarding the question of what energy is. Some define it but others state that we do not know what it is. Although this is a problem for physicists who need to explain the concept, it is not a problem for physics that can be solved by laboratory means. Penetrating into the origin of the notion of energy, this (...) book offers a clear idea of what was discovered and what was invented to interpret the findings. Following the development of the concept, it provides an explanation of the trends in contemporary textbooks. The author's repetition, in his "History and Philosophy of Physics Laboratory", of Joule’s famous experiment – the paddle wheel experiment – with a calorimeter as originally used by Joule and with a calorimeter as proposed in textbooks, is presented, yielding new insight into the phenomenon. Thus, science teachers and students will benefit from reading the book as well as historians, philosophers, students of the history and philosophy of science, and all who are interested in knowing about what it is that we call energy. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci (1891--1937) was one of the most original political thinkers in Western Marxism and an exceptional intellectual. Arrested and imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926, Gramsci died before fully regaining his freedom, yet he wrote extensive letters while incarcerated, rich with insight into the physical and psychological tortures of prison. In meticulous detail, Gramsci records how political prisoners, himself included, contend with the fear of illness and death and the rules and regulations that threaten to efface (...) their individuality. Forming an incomparable link between Gramsci's intellectual passion and his emotional vulnerability, _Letters from Prison_ shows a man reconstructing his life while being separated from it, struggling to recapture the primary relationships that once defined his identity. Frank Rosengarten divides more than four hundred Gramsci letters into two companion volumes, complete with a chronology of the thinker's crucial life experiences, biographical notes on his correspondents, and a bibliography of works cited in his letters. (shrink)

. 1. Introduĉão histórica ao pensamento jurídico, épocas medieval e moderna --.

This article addresses an open problem in the area of cognitive systems and architectures: namely the problem of handling (in terms of processing and reasoning capabilities) complex knowledge structures that can be at least plausibly comparable, both in terms of size and of typology of the encoded information, to the knowledge that humans process daily for executing everyday activities. Handling a huge amount of knowledge, and selectively retrieve it according to the needs emerging in different situational scenarios, is an important (...) aspect of human intelligence. For this task, in fact, humans adopt a wide range of heuristics (Gigerenzer & Todd) due to their “bounded rationality” (Simon, 1957). In this perspective, one of the requirements that should be considered for the design, the realization and the evaluation of intelligent cognitively-inspired systems should be rep- resented by their ability of heuristically identify and retrieve, from the general knowledge stored in their artificial Long Term Memory (LTM), that one which is synthetically and contextually relevant. This requirement, however, is often neglected. Currently, artificial cognitive systems and architectures are not able, de facto, to deal with complex knowledge structures that can be even slightly comparable to the knowledge heuris- tically managed by humans. In this paper I will argue that this is not only a technological problem but also an epistemological one and I will briefly sketch a proposal for a possible solution. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin e um setor da Teologia da Libertação, em especial aquele que se articula em torno à Escola do DEI, tem diversas convergências na crítica do capitalismo como religião. Esta proposição desafia pressupostos modernos das teorias da religião exigindo uma revisão conceitual que permita compreender melhor o poder de legitimação/fascínio ou questionamento da economia política capitalista. Neste artigo procuramos refletir sobre esta revisão da teoria da religião e propor uma abordagem que relaciona Benjamin e a teologia da libertação. Para (...) isso, propomos exemplificar os desafios teórico-práticos desta relação e percorrer alguns estudos que re-situam os conflitos epistemológicos e políticos da religião com a modernidade. Em seguida, buscamos elementos de Benjamin e da Escola do DEI que fornecem instrumental analítico potente para a crítica do fetichismo capitalista como religião cotidiana. Por fim, sintetizamos a tarefa fundante de pensar, a partir da vida das vítimas, um necessário discernimento de deuses que permitem des-ocultar a razão mítico-teológica que caracteriza o espírito do fetiche. (shrink)

Antonio Negri, one of the world's leading scholars on Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and his contemporary legacy, offers a straightforward explanation of the philosopher's elaborate arguments and a persuasive case for his ongoing relevance. Responding to a resurgent interest in Spinoza's thought and its potential application to contemporary global issues, Negri demonstrates the thinker's special value to politics, philosophy, and related disciplines. Negri's work is both a return to and an advancement of his initial affirmation of Spinozian thought in _The (...) Savage Anomaly_. He further defends his understanding of the philosopher as a proto-postmodernist, or a thinker who is just now, with the advent of the postmodern, becoming contemporary. Negri also connects Spinoza's theories to recent trends in political philosophy, particularly the reengagement with Carl Schmitt's "political theology," and the history of philosophy, including the argument that Spinoza belongs to a "radical enlightenment." By positioning Spinoza as a contemporary revolutionary intellectual, Negri addresses and effectively defeats twentieth-century critiques of the thinker waged by Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

This paper presents an ontological perspective that enables evaluating the effectiveness of business models from an integrative worldview. Different groups’ fragmented and reductionist views on this topic create a dichotomy that makes it difficult to compare and analyze them in practice. Such groups use different values for some components, which may result in neglecting others and their interrelationship. This study discusses a functional characteristic of business models that academia still needs to address. It explores new frontiers in the field, such (...) as business models for networks, sustainability, and their practical evaluation. To achieve an integrative ontology and avoid focusing on specific constructs or systems at the expense of others, we draw upon the theory of worldviews from Wilhelm Dilthey, reformational philosophy, and Herman Dooyeweerd’s theory of modal aspects. Society should move beyond dualistic thinking and embrace practical and applicable solutions. To help companies develop effective models, we introduce a new business model framework based on an integrative worldview that enables comparisons and evaluations of companies in practice. Creating competitive advantages and value appropriations synergizes with essential aspects of reformational philosophy. Analyzing and interrelating such elements are fundamental to understanding the real applied value of business models. (shrink)

This selection of papers is concerned with the history of linguistics in Spain, dealing with the evolution of linguistic ideas from the Middle Ages and the European context of the linguistic debates in Spain to the 20th century, concluding with Malkiel's appraisal of Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1869-1968). The volume includes papers on Antonio Nebrija and Sanctius, probably the best-known grammarians of the Iberian peninsula, but - as the other papers suggest - there is much more to be known about (...) the Spanish linguistic traditions. The papers in this volume were previously published in Historiographia Linguistica XI:1/2 (1984). (shrink)

O último livro escrito por Nietzsche, Ecce homo: como alguém se torna o que se é, é uma de suas obras mais controversas, tendo sido tomada como sinal de prepotência, como autoexposição egocêntrica e como prenúncio do colapso que interrompeu sua trajetória intelectual em janeiro de 1889. As controvérsias foram alimentadas, em parte, pela peculiar narrativa encontrada no livro – ele conta a si sua vida e obra em tom elogioso e hiperbólico –, em parte, pelo fato de que a (...) tardia publicação de Ecce homo, ocorrida apenas em 1908, favoreceu o contraste com o apócrifo A vontade de poder – reunião de anotações publicada em 1901 como ‘obra principal’ de Nietzsche. Nosso propósito neste artigo é refletir sobre as possíveis contribuições do teor ‘autobiográfico’ e ‘autocrítico’ de Ecce homo para o caminho de pensamento do filósofo alemão. Nossa hipótese é que a narrativa experimentada no livro possui uma íntima relação com temas precedentes da obra nietzschiana e com a tarefa da transvaloração de todos os valores. Por meio de uma autoencenação, da colocação de um certo ‘Nietzsche’ em cena, o filósofo avança em sua crítica à metafísica – e à sua versão popular, a moral cristã – enquanto realça a mundanidade de sua perspectiva, seu caráter contingente e seu condicionamento pelas “pequenas coisas”, decisão que nos parece carregar uma relevante dimensão filosófica: Nietzsche assume a parcialidade e explicita o interesse envolvido em sua tomada de posição no seio da cultura. (shrink)