RésuméIntroductionLa motivation est. un thème crucial et répandu en médecine. Que. ce soit pour un scénario clinique ou chirurgical, l’acceptation de prendre une pilule ou de se rendre à une consultation est. essentielle au succès du traitement médical. La “décennie du cerveau” a fourni aux praticiens des données neuroscientifiques substantielles sur le comportement humain, a aidé à expliquer pourquoi les gens font ce qu’ils font et a créé le concept de “cerveau motivé”. Les résultats de la psychologie empirique ont stratifié (...) la motivation en étapes de changement, qui sont devenues plus complexes au fil des décennies. Cette recherche vise à améliorer la compréhension de la façon dont les gens prennent des décisions concernant leur santé et comment mieux comprendre les stratégies et les techniques pour les aider à résoudre les problèmes d’ambivalence de manière efficace et ciblée.MéthodesNous établissons un dialogue avec la phénoménologie de la volonté de Ricoeur afin de comprendre le sens de ces découvertes scientifiques. À partir de la phénoménologie husserlienne, Paul Ricoeur a développé sa pensée en s’éloignant de l’idéalisme transcendantal en émancipant les structures intentionnelles de la volonté du domaine de la perception. Résultats: En introduisant les concepts de volontaire et d’involontaire, Ricoeur s’est. écarté du dualisme cartésien, qui fait du corps un corps d’objet, cible de vicissitudes naturelles. Le nouveau dualisme entre volontaire et involontaire est. traité par référence à ce que Ricoeur a appelé le mystère central de l’existence incarnée, qui considère l’homme “double dans l’humanité, simple dans lavitalité”. Cette dualité permet de considérer le cerveau comme l’organe naturel du comportement dans le corps humain et d’utiliser la psychologie empirique comme moyen d’échapper aux subjectivations superficielles des concepts.ConclusionLa simplicité (ou unité) d’existence invite la médecine à repenser certaines de ses hypothèses philosophiques, de telle sorte que les patients puissent être considérés comme des sujets autonomes avec des projets de vie d’auteur. L’anthropologie ricourienne a un impact éthique profond sur la manière dont la médecine devrait utiliser la technologie, ce qui découle de résultats de psychologie empirique. L’utilisation de ces nouvelles connaissances doit également faire l’objet d’une inspection minutieuse, car elle modifie le rôle social de la science médicale. (shrink)

The extended evolutionary synthesis intends to offer a new framework for understanding evolution based mainly on empirical and theoretical findings of current studies, including heredity and evolutionary developmental biology. In this essay, we present and develop the following objections about the terminology associated with the EES literature: despite using the term "extension," EES protagonists claim new evolutionary processes, reformulate conceptual networks, and modify central assumptions of the evolutionary synthesis. Therefore, the difference between ES and EES should not be described in (...) terms of a set-subset relationship ; despite using the term "synthesis," the EES leads, at least in the short term, to a pluralism of approaches in evolutionary biology. Thus, we argue that the EES should not be described as a synthesis, but as a broad and plural interpretative framework encompassing different approaches. These objections are not directed to the proposed changes, but to the interpretation of these changes as a mere expansion of the previous evolutionary framework, as well as to the interpretation of the EES as a synthesis. Based on these objections, we seek to present some explanations for the use of the term "extended synthesis" among its protagonists. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

La fe como elevación del conocer personal. Con el método del abandono del límite mental, Polo descubrió el acceso a la realidad trans-inmanente o trans-operativa del ser humano, alcanzando así el entendimiento agente aristotélico o conocer personal como el conocimiento superior del ser humano. Dicho conocimiento no encuentra en sí su tema, lo cual lo abre para que trascendiéndose lo busque fuera de sí. El acto de fe debe consistir en la iluminación de dicho conocer por el cual percibe en (...) Cristo su tema o réplica, quien a su vez es réplica del Padre. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is a paradoxical phenomenon. I here examine two of the most widespread ways of dealing with the paradoxical nature of forgiveness. One of these ways, emblematized by Aurel Kolnai, seeks to resolve the paradox by appealing to the idea of repentance. Somehow, if a wrongdoer repents, then forgiving her is no longer paradoxical. I argue that this influential position faces more problems than it solves. The other way to approach the paradox, exemplified here by the (...) work of Jacques Derrida, is just too obscure to be by itself helpful. Yet, I argue that what I take to be its spirit is on the right track. I recommend distinguishing between the definition and the justification of forgiveness, and also between forgiveness understood as a mental phenomenon and an overt, communicative act. These distinctions are not given their due in the specialized literature, and I expose the nefarious consequences of this neglect. By focusing on forgiveness as a mental phenomenon I seek to analyze the root of the talk of paradoxes which surrounds the discussion of forgiveness. Finally, I present an analysis of forgiveness as a pure mental phenomenon, and argue that this analysis is the most important step in understanding forgiveness in any other sense. While my analysis reveals interesting aspects of forgiveness, it reveals, too, that forgiveness is not quite as paradoxical after all. (shrink)

David Boonin, The Problem of Punishment. There are two reasons why David Boonin's recent book, The Problem of Punishment,1 offers me a unique oppor...

Este trabajo surge de un diálogo interdisciplinario entre dos tesis doctorales, una de educación y otra de filosofía, que comparten un interés sobre formas emancipadoras y democráticas de pensar con otros y otras en la escuela pública latinoamericana. Desde una perspectiva crítica propia de la filosofía de la educación latinoamericana realizamos un análisis epistemológico sobre las distintas formas de habitar la pregunta dentro de una práctica filosófica con niños y niñas. Tomamos como objeto de estudio una experiencia específica de comunidad (...) de indagación realizada en 2022 en el sur de Mendoza, Argentina. Entramamos herramientas teóricas de Walter Kohan, Paulo Freire y Jacques Rancière con la intención de visibilizar diversas formas de habitar la producción de saberes dentro de dicha comunidad. Proponemos dos nudos problemáticos: por un lado, el orden explicador/embrutecedor a partir de Rancière y, por el otro,la pregunta como afirmación vital a partir de Kohan y Freire. Trabajamos una serie de disonancias en torno a la circulación y a la potencia de la pregunta en la escuela y la educación pública. Finalmente proponemos una síntesis de estas problemáticas en la postulación de una “pregunta niña” como potencia epistémica emancipadora que supone una intimidad con los otros y otras, con las cosas y el mundo abierta desde una igualdad política e intelectual radical. (shrink)

An atmosfere of fear seems to surround western culture in the last two or three decades. From it stems a new kind of fear, imaginarially expressed in the fear of collapse event. In this paper, we chart some manifestations of the new fear of collapse in the sphere of cinema and of intelectual academic writings. In the first case, with the emergence of collapse and zombie movies in cultural industry productions; in the second one, in the emergence of civilizational collapse (...) as a theme for historians, systems and complexity cientists, ecologists, peak-oil theorists, economists, social scientists etc. Some possible explanatory hipothesis for the emergency of this fenomenon are conjectured. (shrink)

The age-old debate about what constitutes just punishment has become deadlocked. Retributivists continue to privilege desert over all else, and consequentialists continue to privilege punishment's expected positive consequences, such as deterrence or rehabilitation, over all else. In this important intervention into the debate, Leo Zaibert argues that despite some obvious differences, these traditional positions are structurally very similar, and that the deadlock between them stems from the fact they both oversimplify the problem of punishment. Proponents of these positions pay (...) insufficient attention to the conflicts of values that punishment, even when justified, generates. Mobilizing recent developments in moral philosophy, Zaibert offers a properly pluralistic justification of punishment that is necessarily more complex than its traditional counterparts. An understanding of this complexity should promote a more cautious approach to inflicting punishment on individual wrongdoers and to developing punitive policies and institutions. (shrink)

For much of the first fifty years of its existence, analytic philosophy shunned discussions of normativity and ethics. Ethical statements were considered as pseudo-propositions, or as expressions of pro- or con-attitudes of minor theoretical significance. Nowadays, in contrast, prominent analytic philosophers pay close attention to normative problems. Here we focus our attention on the work of Searle, at the same time drawing out an important connection between Searle’s work and that of two other seminal figures in this development: H.L.A. Hart (...) and John Rawls. We show that all three thinkers tend to assume that there is but one type of normativity within the realm of social institutions – roughly, the sort of normativity that is involved in following the results of chess – and that they thereby neglect features that are of crucial significance for an adequate understanding of social reality. (shrink)

Applied ontology is the attempt to put to use the rigorous tools of philosophical ontology in the development of category systems which can be of use in the formalization and systematization of knowledge of a given domain. In what follows we shall sketch some elements of the ontology of legal and socio-political institutions, paying attention especially to the normativity involved in such institutions. We shall see that there is more than one type of normativity, but that this fact that has (...) often been ignored in standard attempts by philosophers to build ontologies of legal and other socio-political entities. In order to provide a sound system of categories for legal and socio-political institutions and entities, however, the manifold of normativity needs to be addressed. The classical examples of normative statements have been moral propositions; they do not merely describe states of affairs; they tell us how states of affairs ought to be. The distinction between how things are and how they ought to be is the basis of the distinction between fact and value. Analytic philosophers for a long time shunned discussions of normativity and ethics. They considered ethical statements as pseudo-propositions, or as expressions of pro- or con-attitudes of no theoretical significance.1 Nowadays, in contrast, prominent analytic philosophers discuss normative problems and there are important books written by such philosophers on topics such as law and justice. Here we pay attention to three seminal thinkers in this development: H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, and John R. Searle in concerning ourselves especially with the way in which they deal with the issue of normativity. Hart is, within the context of recent analytic philosophy, the most important philosopher of law, Rawls the most.. (shrink)

One question in moral psychology concerns the role of emotions to motivate moral action. This question has recently become more urgent, because it is now clearer that cognitive developmental theories cannot offer a complete explanation of moral functioning. This paper suggests that emotion, as is typically understood in psychology, cannot be seen as the basis for an acceptable explanation of moral behaviour and motivation. However, it is argued that it is possible to understand emotions as embedded in agentic processes, and (...) regulated by conscious concerns. So understood, emotions acquire an important role in the person's moral life. These conclusions are reached through an extensive review of psychological and philosophical conceptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Punishment is a phenomenon which occurs in many contexts. Discussions of punishment assume punishment is criminal punishment carried out by the State. This book contains an account of punishment which overcomes the difficulties of competing accounts and treats punishment comprehensibly to better understand how it differs from similar phenomena, discussing its justification fruitfully.

Este artículo trata sobre la postura práctica de Aquino ante dos grandes dificultades filosóficas actuales que se encuentran en la base del debate ético contemporáneo. Como son la Is-ought thesis de Hume y la síntesis radical de Moore, la Open question. La posible solución tomista se puede encontrar en la triple función del intelecto humano, teórico y práctico a la vez: a) Aprehender las nociones ontológicas e intelectas ens, verum y bonum; b) Formular los primeros principios teóricos y prácticos; c) (...) E imperar que se haga el bien ontológico e intelecto y se evite lo contrario. (shrink)

This article concerns Aquinas’s practical doctrine on two philosophical difficulties underlying much contemporary ethical debate. One is Hume’s Is-ought thesis and the other is its radical consequence, Moore’s Open-question argument. These ethical paradoxes appear to have their roots in epistemological scepticism and in a deficient anthropology. Possible response to them can be found in that Aquinas’s human intellect (essentially theoretical and practical at the same time) naturally performs three main operations: 1º) To apprehend the intellecta and universal notions ens, verum (...) and bonum. 2º) To formulate the first theoretical and practical principles. 3º) To order that the intellectum and universal good be done and the opposite avoided. Thomistic philosophical response to both predicaments will not be exclusively ethical, but will harmonically embrace ontology, anthropology and epistemology. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationships between American phenomenology of music and conventional studies of musical analysis. The temporality of experience is a central topic in the phenomenology of music: recent research in USA has focused on musical time-consciousness (Schutz and Smith) or on analytical applications (Clifton, Lochhead, Ferrara). Many methods of musical analysis, like phenomenological methods, are concerned to study subjective temporal structures: Schenkerian and post-Schenkerian scholars (Salzer, Meyer, Narmour, Lewin) have elaborated specific systems for the explanation of musical form (...) on a experiential basis. Apart from any comparison with the different approaches, phenomenological analysis appears to be fundamental for the analytical interpretation of music. (shrink)

Linda Radzick's new book, _The Ethics of Social Punishment_, contains an important discussion of punishment outside the context of the state. By way of celebrating this fine and welcome book, I try to probe some analytical contours concerning punishment seen from the general perspective on which Radzick and I agree. I suggest altogether abandoning the idea that (non-state) punishment needs to be inflicted by an authority. Furthermore, I insist on an account of retributivism that resists the usual accusations of barbarism (...) and bloodthirstiness. (shrink)

Resumo Este artigo procura apresentar e discutir tentativas recentes em filosofia social de analisar e interpretar o capitalismo, a partir de uma perspectiva praxeológica. O practice turn em teoria social procurou superar o dualismo entre agência e estrutura, ou entre ação e sistema, por meio da noção de prática social. Seria possível então interpretar o capitalismo como um tipo especifico de prática social? Para tentar encaminhar essa questão, explicita-se brevemente, em um primeiro momento, em que consiste o practice turn em (...) teoria social. Num segundo momento, analisa-se e se discute a proposta de Rahel Jaeggi de conceber a economia como uma rede de práticas sociais. Em seguida, expõe-se e se avalia a tentativa de Christian Lotz em ver, no dinheiro, a chave para compreender aquilo que ele chama de esquema capitalista. Por fim, conclui-se, chamando a atenção para os potenciais e desafios ligados ao empreendimento de interpretar o capitalismo em função de uma teoria da prática, sugerindo que um aprofundamento na análise da imaginação especificamente capitalista, vinculando-a com a típica plasticidade e diversidade do capitalismo, possa ajudar a avançar nesse campo.This paper aims to present and discuss recent attempts in social philosophy to analyze and interpret capitalism from a praxeological perspective. The practice turn in social theory sought to overcome the dualism between agency and structure, or between action and system, through the notion of social practice. Is it then possible to interpret capitalism as a specific type of social practice? To try to address this question, I briefly introduce, in a first moment, the practice turn in social theory. In a second moment, I analyze and discuss Rahel Jaeggi’s proposal to conceive the economy as a network of social practices. I then explain and evaluate Christian Lotz’s attempt to see money as the key to understanding what he names as “the capitalist schema”. Finally, I conclude by drawing attention to the potentials and challenges of interpreting capitalism as a social practice, suggesting that a deeper analysis of specifically capitalist imagination, linking it with the typical plasticity and diversity of capitalism, may help to move forward in this field. (shrink)

La mia collaborazione con Massimo Campanini si è sviluppata su comuni interessi per i classici del pensiero islamico ma con competenze assai diverse, essendo io più orientato a studiare gli effetti e gli sviluppi che essi produssero sul pensiero occidentale medievale e moderno attraverso una pratica di traduzioni spesso creative per imprecisione – l’inverso dell’operazione che essi stessi avevano fatto rispetto a Platone e Aristotele. Averroè-Ibn Rushd è già un bell’esempio di deformazione del nome, ma proprio la formazione della sua (...) opera e i modi in cui è stata trasmessa al mondo ebraico e cristiano sono singolari testimonianze degli esiti ambigui del processo traduttivo. Cerchiamo infatti di mostrare come la lettura del _De substantia orbis_ abbia stimolato sia nel Medioevo che nel Rinascimento non solo il rifiuto del creazionismo ma anche posizioni panteistiche, mentre la famosa tesi dell’intelletto materiale unico contenuta nel _Commentarium Magnum_ al _De anima_ aristotelico ha stimolato molteplici varianti del monopsichismo, da Spinoza a Marx e alla più recente letteratura post-strutturalista. My collaboration with Massimo Campanini developed around our common interests in the classics of Islamic thought, but with very different approaches, since I am more oriented towards studying the effects and developments they produced on medieval and modern Western thought through a practice of translation that was often creative in terms of inaccuracy – so the opposite of what had been done with respect to Plato and Aristotle. The same Averroes-Ibn Rushd is a fine example of name distortion, and the very formation of his work and the ways in which it was transmitted to the Jewish and Christian world are singular testimonies to the ambiguous outcomes of this translation process. I try to show how the reading of _De substantia orbis_ in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance stimulated not only the rejection of creationism but also pantheistic beliefs, while the famous thesis on the material intellect exposed in the _Commentarium Magnum_ to Aristotle’s _De anima_ stimulated many variants of monopsychism, from Spinoza to Marx and the more recent post-structuralist literature. (shrink)

Cartography represents monsters at the borders of the known world. Those monsters are evoked by politics in order to denounce the dangers of revolution : the many-headed hydra which represents the nightmares of the dominant classes and that must be detroyed or subjugated. Heretics, sauvages, rebel slaves, the industrial proletariat and finally the precarious workers, whose anomaly is exploited to produce profit. But the ultimate cold monster, the Leviathan, is indeed the State….

Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance of the organisms that produce them. In this paper we analyze and compare these two (...) accounts of organization and argue that understanding biological organisms as cohesively integrated systems benefits from insights from both. To bring together the two accounts, we focus on the notions of control and regulation as bridge concepts. We start from a characterization of biological mechanisms in terms of constraints and focus on a specific type of mechanism, control mechanisms, that operate on other mechanisms on the basis of measurements of variables in the system and its environment. Control mechanisms are characterized by their own set of constraints that enable them to sense conditions, convey signals, and effect changes on constraints in the controlled mechanism. They thereby allow living organisms to adapt to internal and external variations and to coordinate their parts in such a manner as to maintain viability. Because living organisms contain a vast number of control mechanisms, a central challenge is to understand how they are themselves organized. With the support of examples from both unicellular and multicellular systems we argue that control mechanisms are organized heterarchically, and we discuss how this type of control architecture can, without invoking top-down and centralized forms of organizations, succeed in coordinating internal activities of organisms. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has recently defended the view that no one can ever deserve to suffer. Were this view correct, its implications for the thorny problem of the justification of punishment would be extraordinary: age-old debates between consequentialists and retributivists would simply vanish, as punishment would only—and simply—be justifiable along Benthamite utilitarian lines. I here suggest that Parfit’s view is linked to uncharacteristically weak arguments, and that it ought to be rejected.

Personal positions and voices of a patient diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and the therapist during long-term psychotherapy were studied aiming to find differences in the patterns formed in these aspects of subjectivity according to the level of elaboration of the change episodes achieved by the patient. This case study considered a stage of qualitative analysis where change episodes of the patient were traced through the Change Episodes Model. Later, through the Model of Analysis of Discursive Positioning in Psychotherapy, the (...) voices and personal positions of the patient and her therapist were identified in each of the change episodes. In the stage of quantitative analysis, dynamic patterns in the voices and personal positions were established, accounting for hypothetical attractors using the Space State Grid technique in each of the three different levels of subjective elaboration that constitute the change episodes. The results established differentiated dynamic patterns in the change episodes, coherent with the patient’s change process, and formation of propositive/reflective specific patterns as the patient evolved in the three different levels of subjective elaboration. The above suggests that a subjective transformation process is displayed, and this is manifested in the different voices and personal positions that emerged as the change episodes evolve. The identified dynamic patterns can be considered nonlinear and emergent subjective exchanges between the patient and the therapist throughout the psychotherapy. (shrink)

Living organisms act as integrated wholes to maintain themselves. Individual actions can each be explained by characterizing the mechanisms that perform the activity. But these alone do not explain how various activities are coordinated and performed versatilely. We argue that this depends on a specific type of mechanism, a control mechanism. We develop an account of control by examining several extensively studied control mechanisms operative in the bacterium E. coli. On our analysis, what distinguishes a control mechanism from other mechanisms (...) is that it relies on measuring one or more variables, which results in setting constraints in the control mechanism that determine its action on flexible constraints in other mechanisms. In the most basic arrangement, the measurement process directly determines the action of the control mechanism, but in more complex arrangements signals mediate between measurements and effectors. This opens the possibility of multiple responses to the same measurement and responses based on multiple measurements. It also allows crosstalk, resulting in networks of control mechanisms. Such networks integrate the behaviors of the organism but also present a challenge in tailoring responses to particular measurements. We discuss how integrated activity can still result in differential, versatile, responses. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper aims at examining the way in which Rahel Jaeggi’s conception of forms of life as inert bundles of practices is connected to the problem of the possibility of an immanent critique of life forms, that is, of a kind of analysis that is both internal and transformative. In the first part, my contention will be that understanding practices in terms of conventions makes it difficult to admit of internal criticisms of them. Jaeggi’s account of immanent critique, as (...) argued in the second part, tries to differentiate practices from social conventions by maintaining that transformations of life forms can be seen as the result of episodes of crises ignited by the inability to cope with “second order” problems. I maintain that, unless one is willing to postulate something like an absolute telos dictating the historical sequence that forms of life must follow, the way in which forms of life solve second order problems displays some conventional features preventing any quick assimilation to the paradigm of immanent critique. This circumstance, as argued in the third section of my presentation, poses an obstacle to Jaeggi’s project of an immanent critique of life forms. (shrink)

The appeal of the moral principle according to which we should treat like cases alike is so great that it verges on the axiomatic, or on the platitudinous. Recently, however, the principle has been challenged in deeply interesting ways. These ways are interesting because they do not invite skepticism about morality at large, but about the specific claim that what is good (or bad) for an agent in a given situation must be good (or bad) for any other similarly situated (...) agent. I here assess the post-challenge viability of the principle. In a sense, the principle survives, but this is neither an unqualified victory nor an inspiring result. The examination of these matters contains an important (and under-investigated) lesson about the nature of moral experience. (shrink)

Si de la manne tombait du ciel, quelle en serait la juste distribution? Dans une perspective de justice sociale rawlsienne, une telle question théologique paraît vaine, puisqu’elle se situe hors du cadre de la distribution équitable des résultats de la coopération entre des citoyens. Pour autant, deux des plus grands critiques de Rawls, Robert Nozick, du côté libertarien, et Gerald Cohen, du côté socialiste, introduisent le scénario hypothétique de la manne céleste dans leurs objections respectives au principe de différence. Ils (...) le font de manière opposée, le premier pour contester, le second pour accentuer l’égalitarisme de ce principe. Dans cet article, nous nous proposons d’analyser la nature de ces deux objections à la lumière de l’expérience de pensée qu’elles introduisent, afin de comprendre le prolongement donné à ces objections et le sens de la réponse que Rawls leur adresse. (shrink)

Biological regulation is what allows an organism to handle the effects of a perturbation, modulating its own constitutive dynamics in response to particular changes in internal and external conditions. With the central focus of analysis on the case of minimal living systems, we argue that regulation consists in a specific form of second-order control, exerted over the core regime of production and maintenance of the components that actually put together the organism. The main argument is that regulation requires a distinctive (...) architecture of functional relationships, and specifically the action of a dedicated subsystem whose activity is dynamically decoupled from that of the constitutive regime. We distinguish between two major ways in which control mechanisms contribute to the maintenance of a biological organisation in response to internal and external perturbations: dynamic stability and regulation. Based on this distinction an explicit definition and a set of organisational requirements for regulation are provided, and thoroughly illustrated through the examples of bacterial chemotaxis and the lac-operon. The analysis enables us to mark out the differences between regulation and closely related concepts such as feedback, robustness and homeostasis. (shrink)

Despite numerous and increasing attempts to define what life is, there is no consensus on necessary and sufficient conditions for life. Accordingly, some scholars have questioned the value of definitions of life and encouraged scientists and philosophers alike to discard the project. As an alternative to this pessimistic conclusion, we argue that critically rethinking the nature and uses of definitions can provide new insights into the epistemic roles of definitions of life for different research practices. This paper examines the possible (...) contributions of definitions of life in scientific domains where such definitions are used most (e.g., Synthetic Biology, Origins of Life, Alife, and Astrobiology). Rather than as classificatory tools for demarcation of natural kinds, we highlight the pragmatic utility of what we call operational definitions that serve as theoretical and epistemic tools in scientific practice. In particular, we examine contexts where definitions integrate criteria for life into theoretical models that involve or enable observable operations. We show how these definitions of life play important roles in influencing research agendas and evaluating results, and we argue that to discard the project of defining life is neither sufficiently motivated, nor possible without dismissing important theoretical and practical research. (shrink)

Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I discuss (...) ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)

According to the mythical-religious literature time is determined by the eternal nature of divinity or origin of all things. From this adagio, theological literature is provoked and studies on the eternal nature of divinity suggest that if the universe was created the image of its creator the first must also be eternal. Therefore the question arises: how to shape that which by nature is formless, infinite, namely eternity? To answer this question the following paper develops a brief history about the (...) Judeo-Christian tradition on the problem of time and its relationship with eternity and also tries to prepare at the end one logical answer to the question about the form of eternity. (shrink)

This article explains how Aquinas understood: a) apprehension of the first intellectual concepts: ens, verum et bonum simpliciter (Ens is understood metaphysically as composed of human nature and the act of being, ordered according to the bonum); b) establishment of the first and the second practical commandments in a genuinely human or rational person; c) ethics and natural law as essentially derived from ontology. Therefore, natural law only makes sense from a metaphysical point of view, not merely a physical or (...) material one. (shrink)