When Jacques Lacan coined the term "méconnaisance" or "misrecognition," he was referring to the way in which a maturing subject comes to understand his or her encounter with his or her own reflection in the mirror—a psycho-developmental period also known as The Mirror Stage; this encounter, as Lacan theorized, leads to the emergence of an idealized projection of who the subject is. This "Ideal I" that emerges from this encounter with the virtual Other, that is nonetheless the Self, produces both (...) a recognition and a misrecognition of this "I".On the one hand, it produces a recognition of the Self as a coherent body in which this "I" is located. On the other hand, it takes us to a misrecognition of the... (shrink)

Este ensayo aborda uno de los debates más álgidos del feminismo contemporáneo, a saber, la disputa entre quienes abogan por el reconocimiento de las identidades trans mediante la autodeterminación del género y quienes sostienen que esto último representa una amenaza para los marcos jurídicos imperantes. En este texto reconstruyo ambas concepciones empleando las herramientas de la metafísica analítica y los estudios de género. Distingo así entre la identidad materialmente fundamentada y la identidad nomenclatural autoadscriptiva. El objetivo central, más allá de (...) ofrecer esta caracterización, es examinar cuál de estas concepciones es más compatible con una concepción de la justicia que ponga en el centro las libertades de los individuos. (shrink)

Introducción al dosier: Debates Filosóficos sobre el cuerpo sexuado: identidades trans, sujetos políticos e inclusión.

This paper addresses the role of time scales in conceptualizing biological hierarchies. So far, the concept of hierarchies in philosophy of science has been dominated by the idea of composition and parthood, respectively. However, this view does not exhaust the diversity of hierarchical descriptions in the biosciences. Therefore, we highlight a type of hierarchy usually overlooked by philosophers of science. It distinguishes processes based on the different time scales (i.e. rates, frequencies, and rhythms) on which they occur. These time scale (...) hierarchies often are connected with assumptions defended in process ontology. Due to their ability to describe interlevel dynamics of various kinds, we call these hierarchies ‘dynamic hierarchies.’ In order to highlight and discuss their organization, explanatory roles, and epistemic virtues we focus on dynamic hierarchies in developmental biology and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). In these fields, dynamic hierarchies offer crucial complementary information to descriptions of compositional hierarchies. (shrink)

Building on the groundbreaking research of Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism, Edward Kelly and Paul Marshall gather a cohort of leading scholars to address the most recent advances in the psychology of consciousness.

This article addresses one of the crucial metaphysical presuppositions of the contemporary problem of evil: the belief that evil is that which a good thing must eliminate, or to be more precise, that evil is that which God must eliminate. The first part analyzes J. L. Mackie’s atheological argument in “Evil and Omnipotence.” The second part analyzes the reasons why Saint Anselm rejected the claim that God must eliminate evil in his De Casu Diaboli. The article’s goal is not just (...) raise crucial questions with respect to contemporary approaches to evil. It is also to reflect with Saint Anselm upon one of the genuine aporiai posed by existing evils: how does one remove them? (shrink)

One of the primary concerns of the Consolatio is to draw out many of the paradoxical conclusions concerning the relation between creation and God that stem from the premises of classical creationist metaphysics, and attempt to solve them. Once one accepts that God does exist, is omnipotent, omniscient, and simple, it becomes viciously difficult to explain: (1) how anything contrary to God’s will—evil—can exist; (2) how any cause can act independently of God’s will—human freedom; and (3) how “independent causes” can (...) relate to God through their own agency—human prayer. This naturally begs the question: why should we accept the premises of classical creationist metaphysics? This paper addresses this question by analyzing and defending two of the central premises of Boethius’s version of classical creationist metaphysics as they are addressed in Consolatio III,10: (a) that God exists, and (b) that God is simple. (shrink)

This paper regards the plausibility of rejecting the scholastic claim that the “good” is a transcendental property of being—that ens et bonum convertuntur—onthe basis of two claims: (1) Stephen Cahn’s claim that evil worlds created by an evil God are intrinsically plausible—i.e., that it is plausible to think of evil as a positive and instantiable property; and (2) the claim that “evil is a primitive”—that is, that evil is a primary or basic ontological property. It argues that if an “ontological (...) primitive” must be a property which has no basic constituents other than itself—or whose definition cannot invoke concepts or constituents other than the primitive itself—evil itself cannot be considered a primitive. Nor can it be considered a positive property. (shrink)

This paper regards the plausibility of rejecting the scholastic claim that the “good” is a transcendental property of being—that ens et bonum convertuntur—onthe basis of two claims: Stephen Cahn’s claim that evil worlds created by an evil God are intrinsically plausible—i.e., that it is plausible to think of evil as a positive and instantiable property; and the claim that “evil is a primitive”—that is, that evil is a primary or basic ontological property. It argues that if an “ontological primitive” must (...) be a property which has no basic constituents other than itself—or whose definition cannot invoke concepts or constituents other than the primitive itself—evil itself cannot be considered a primitive. Nor can it be considered a positive property. (shrink)

This article analyzes the claim that “deliberate denial [of genocide] is a form of aggression that ought to be regarded as a contribution to genocidal violence in its own right.” Its objective is to demonstrate that the claim is substantially correct: there are instances of genocide negation that are genocidal acts. The article suggests that one such instance is contained in a letter sent to Professor Robert Jay Lifton by Turkey's ambassador to the United States. The article is divided into (...) three parts. In the first part, it delineates and discusses the unexpected contents of the letter to Lifton. In the second, it primarily deals with three topics: lying, genocide, and Austinian performatives. In the third part, it takes the points made in the second part and applies them to the contents of the letter to Lifton, and demonstrates that the letter is an instance of genocide negation that is genocidal. (shrink)

If nations are sacred, then there is no warranting our having drawn the map of the Middle East to suit our needs rather than those of the peoples who populate those lands. If we have the right to draw world maps to suit our needs rather than those of the peoples who populate those lands, on the other hand, then there is no warranting the claim that nations are sacred. If patriotism is love of one’s nation, then patriotism’s being a (...) dangerous thing makes nations a dangerous thing. And if nations are a dangerous thing it would seem impossible to warrant the claim that they are sacred. But if nations are a sacred thing, then there would seem no warranting the claim that patriotism is a dangerous thing. If nations are things of the past, then there is no claiming that they are sacred, and if nations are sacred there is no claiming that they are things of the past. So the little church on Cedar Street begs us to ask terrible questions. Are we right in thinking that nations are a thing of the past? Or are they things to be protected, loved, and celebrated? Are nations sacred? (shrink)

Intellectual receptivity is both the prerequisite for objective human knowledge and the condition of possibility for all human knowledge. My arguments are cast in Thomistic terms. In the first part, I review the most important arguments with which Aquinas defends the receptivity of the human intellect, especially the argument from intellectual media and the argument from actualization. In the second part, I attempt to resolve the apparent contradictions involved in the claim that the intellect is receptive, contradictions that stem from (...) the fact that the intellect is an active potency (since its proper act is to reason) and receptivity is the act of a passive potency. In the final part,I argue that knowledge of the proper object of the human intellect (material singulars) is possible if and only if the human intellect is receptive. (shrink)

In Beyond Physicalism, an interdisciplinary group of physical scientists, behavioral and social scientists, and humanists from the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research argue that physicalism must be replaced by an expanded scientific naturalism that accommodates something spiritual at the heart of nature.

Special groups [M. Dickmann, F. Miraglia, Special Groups : Boolean-Theoretic Methods in the Theory of Quadratic Forms, Memoirs Amer. Math. Soc., vol. 689, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2000] are a first-order axiomatization of the theory of quadratic forms. In Section 2 we investigate reduced special groups which are a lattice under their natural representation partial order ; we show that this lattice property is preserved under most of the standard constructions on RSGs; in particular finite RSGs and RSGs of (...) finite chain length are lattice ordered. We prove that the lattice property fails for the RSGs of function fields of real algebraic varieties over a uniquely ordered field dense in its real closure, unless their stability index is 1 . We show that Open Problem 1 has a positive answer for the RSG of the field Q . In the final section we explore the meaning of Open Problem 1 for formally real fields, in terms of their orders and real valuations; we introduce the notion of “parameter-rank” of a positive-primitive first-order formula of the language for special groups. (shrink)

What value is this scholarly debate about the origins of Jaspers' phenomenology to psychiatric clinicians? For one thing, it might help kindle enough interest among scholars and clinicians in Jaspers' General Psychopathology to warrant its reprinting. This would expand the psychiatrist's appreciation of the relevance of philosophy to medical thinking and patient care. In the GP, Jaspers quotes Kant's opinion that "the psychiatrist's competence is really commensurate with how far his education and knowledge would qualify him to belong to the (...) philosophic faculty". (shrink)

The emergence of new obstetrical and neonatal technologies, as well as more aggressive clinical management, has significantly improved the survival of extremely low birth weight infants. This development has heightened concerns about the limits of viability. ELBW infants, weighing less than 1,000 grams and no larger than the palm of one's hand, are often described as of late twentieth century technology. Improved survivability of ELBW infants has provided opportunities for long-term follow-up. Information on their physical and emotional development contributes to (...) developing standards of practice regarding their care. (shrink)