The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Colonies, Commerce and Constitutional Law: Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria and Other Writings on Spain and Spanish America. Edited by Philip Schofield, lxv + 468 pp., £60.00.

I propose a few epistemological and methodological reflexions to account for intercultural daily communication. These reflexions emerged during a sociological research in Mendoza, Argentina, with Huarpes Indigenous students at the University of Cuyo. I observed that Indigenous people became quasi ethnographers of diverse environments. To make intelligible their classmates’ behavior, and to account for their own behavior, Huarpes follow, in diverse environments and interactions, public rules of meaning. The objective of this paper is twofold: (a) to stress the methodological scope (...) of ordinary communication and ordinary reasoning in order to study understanding between people from different groups and categories, and (b) to contest a kind of pessimist standpoint in social sciences and philosophy according to which the use of ordinary language reduces possibilities for understanding. Interviews, participant observation in natural situations, and a review of literature about language and understanding are the basis of this paper. (shrink)

Este trabajo indaga las resemantizaciones del mito de Venus en tres poetas latinoamericanos: Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío y José Lezama Lima teniendo en cuenta la intertextualidad y las poéticas correspondientes. This paper analyses the Venus myth appropiation into the poetry of Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío and José Lezama Lima considering their poetry and intertextuality.

Este trabajo indaga las resemantizaciones del mito de Venus en tres poetas latinoamericanos: Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío y José Lezama Lima teniendo en cuenta la intertextualidad y las poéticas correspondientes. This paper analyses the Venus myth appropiation into the poetry of Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío and José Lezama Lima considering their poetry and intertextuality.

Este trabajo indaga las resemantizaciones del mito de Venus en tres poetas latinoamericanos: Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío y José Lezama Lima teniendo en cuenta la intertextualidad y las poéticas correspondientes. This paper analyses the Venus myth appropiation into the poetry of Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío and José Lezama Lima considering their poetry and intertextuality.

En el Nuevo Testamento griego, el término "kalós" (hermoso, bello) aparece 99 veces y el término "agathós" (bueno), 104. Casi con la misma frecuencia. Se ha traducido y se traduce "kalós" por bueno, lo cual no es exacto. Parece importante retener que Cristo hubiera utilizado tantas veces el concepto de belleza o hermosura, y que invitara al hombre a hacer obras hermosas, a realizar la belleza en su vida. Por eso, según el título de este libro (de 285 págs.), se (...) trata de la belleza no solo que corresponde a la persona de Cristo, sino también la que él comunica a las demás personas, la que se refiere a nosotros por ser obras suyas. Jesús habla de obras "kalá" (hermosas), de frutos "kaloùs" (hermosos) o de corazón "kalê kaì agathê" (hermoso y bueno). La Antigüedad griega también hablaba del hombre "kalòkagathós". Es verdad que todo lo bello es bueno, y viceversa, pero hay que matizar. El propio Jesús se autodenomina "kalós", hermoso, al hablar de sí mismo en el Evangelio diciendo que es el pastor bello. Una palabra clave del presente libro es “razonar”. Los Evangelios son muy escuetos, dicen solo lo imprescindible, fueron vertidos además en otro idioma distinto del que habló Jesús. Hay aspectos que no son comprendidos si no se tiene en cuenta lo razonable. Para comprender el Evangelio no basta con atender al estricto dato teológico contenido en sus textos, tan condensados, sino que es preciso hacer al mismo tiempo una sutil labor filosófica que permita descubrir lo que implícitamente se contiene en ellos. Esta necesaria tarea —liberada de todo fundamentalismo— muestra lo que es más razonable para saber quién y cómo es Cristo. Por ello el libro lleva como subtítulo "Una comprensión filosófica del Evangelio". Y lo hace sirviéndose principalmente de la filosofía de Marías y Ortega, lo cual —a pesar de ser el instrumento intelectual que mejor permite comprender el Cristianismo— no se había realizado todavía. Gracias a ese método, lo primero que se comprende es precisamente la extraordinaria belleza de Cristo y la que comunica a sus discípulos y a quien se hace su servidor, llamado por San Pablo "kalòs", hermoso. Circula la idea, incluso en algunos ambientes católicos, de que la razón y, por supuesto, la filosofía no son aptas para comprender el Evangelio. Este libro, más filosófico que teológico, reivindica el insoslayable papel de la razón, de la filosofía, de lo razonable, para comprender los Evangelios, y debe leerse como un "ensayo de Cristología según la razón vital". Sus consideraciones están hechas a la luz de la razón. No de la razón abstracta, propia del racionalismo, que poco o nada tiene que ver con ella, sino de la razón vital; de la razón sin más. De la razón que conduce a la fe; de la fe que conduce a la razón. El dato histórico, irrefragable, de los cuatro Evangelios postulaba que se estudiara iluminándolo con la razón, sin la cual la fe queda mutilada y coja, abstracta, sin luz propia. Pero la razón había sido frecuentemente vista en ámbitos clericales con malos ojos, con cierta sospecha, sin darse cuenta de que, si es auténtica —y no algo reduccionista—, ilumina, clarifica, disipa las tinieblas. Especialmente porque, en última instancia, la razón procede del Logos, Cristo, la Luz, la Razón por antonomasia, fuente y origen de ella. En el Prólogo de San Juan se unen la razón y la vida; se trata no de una razón abstracta, sino vital. El "Lógos" es entonces la Razón vital. Lejos de ser enemiga de la vida, como sostenían los irracionalistas, la razón es una función vital. Quien recibe al "Lógos" con fe fundada en el amor debe esforzarse por intentar entenderlo con la razón, por buscar su inteligencia. El "Lógos", Cristo, ilumina a quien lo recibe para que se produzca esa comprensión. Los griegos definían al hombre como "zôon lógon échon", el viviente que tiene logos, que tiene razón. Cristo se presenta como el Logos, la Vida ("Zoé") que ha creado a su imagen y semejanza a ese viviente que tiene logos. Luego la razón no se debe subestimar o despreciar, es algo divino; Dios, fuente y origen de toda razón, la Razón misma, desea ser comprendido mediante ella, depositada en cada hombre. «Si la Sabiduría es Dios, el verdadero filósofo es el que ama a Dios», escribe San Agustín. Porque el filósofo es el que ama la Sabiduría, Dios. Jesús dice que «la Sabiduría se ha justificado por sus obras», que «la Sabiduría se ha justificado por todos sus hijos». Los hijos de la Sabiduría, de Cristo, la aman, la justifican, la acreditan, la razonan porque son filósofos. Y la filosofía, el amor a la Sabiduría, es absolutamente necesaria e imprescindible para comprender a Cristo y su Evangelio, que siempre enseña lo razonable. (shrink)

The notion of individualised evidence holds the key to solve the puzzle of statistical evidence, but there’s still no consensus on how exactly to define it. To make progress on the problem, epistemologists have proposed various accounts of individualised evidence in terms of causal or modal anti-luck conditions on knowledge like appropriate causation, sensitivity and safety. In this paper, I show that each of these fails as satisfactory anti-luck condition, and that such failure lends abductive support to the following conclusion: (...) once the familiar anti-luck intuition on knowledge is extended to individualised evidence, no single causal or modal anti-luck condition on knowledge can succeed as the right anti-luck condition on individualised evidence. This conclusion casts serious doubts on the fruitfulness of the move from anti-luck conditions on knowledge to anti-luck conditions on individualised evidence. I expand on these doubts and point out further aspects where epistemology and the law come apart: epistemic anti- luck conditions on knowledge do not adequately characterise the legal notion of individualised evidence. (shrink)

Despite the substantial appeal of the safety condition, Kelp (J Philos Res 34:21–31, 2009; Am Philos Q 53:27–37; Good Thinking. A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology, Routledge, London, 2018) has raised a difficult challenge for safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge. By combining Gettier-style fake barn cases with epistemic Frankfurt cases, he concludes that no formulation of safety can be strong enough to predict ignorance in the former and weak enough to accommodate knowledge in the latter. In this note, my contribution is two-fold. (...) Firstly, I take up Kelp’s challenge and I show that, once properly understood, safety successfully rises to it. Secondly, I draw a more general lesson on the safety condition: a satisfactory solution to Kelp’s challenge calls for a revision of the standard formulation of safety, which must be indexed to both methods and environments. My conclusion will be that an environment-relative version of safety not only meets Kelp’s challenge, but it also advances our understanding of the safety condition on knowledge. (shrink)

In Mossio & Taraborelli (2008) we challenged the assumption according to which the ecological and sensorimotor approaches are mere conceptual variations on the same enactive theme. We showed, on the contrary, that they endorse substantially different notions of an 'action-dependent perceptual invariant' and we submitted that this distinction has interesting theoretical and empirical implications. This dissimilarity between ecological and sensorimotor theories stems, in our view, from a more fundamental divergence on the nature of perceptual information. Since Gibson's work, the ecological (...) approach has adopted a fundamentally realist stance, according to which this information is 'picked up', 'revealed', 'encountered' and 'exploited' by the organism (as a range of affordances) but not 'constituted' by the activity of the organism. In contrast, sensorimotor approaches take an explicit interactivist position, which sees the perceiver's motor activity as a determinant of perceptual information itself. Pascal & O'Regan (2008) suggest that our analysis of the relationship between ecological, sensorimotor and enactive theories would benefit from a further distinction. The original enactive approach (Varela et al. 1991; Maturana, 2002; Thompson, 2007), they argue, should not be lumped together with contemporary sensorimotor approaches to perception: whereas sensorimotor theories endorse an externalist view of perception, according to which 'perception can only be understood as a form of interaction of the organism with the environment', the original enactive approach by Varela and collaborators would have strong 'idealist underpinnings'. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has witnessed a substantial opposition between two competing approaches to capturing the notion of non-accidentality in the analysis of knowledge: the explanationist and the modalist. According to the latest advocates of the former, S knows that p if and only if S believes that p because p is true. According to champions of the latter, S knows that p if and only if S's belief that p is true in a relevant set of possible worlds. Because Bogardus and (...) Perrin's explanationism promises to deliver a plausible analysis of knowledge without any need for modal notions, it is an elegant proposal with prima facie appeal. However, such version of explanationism ultimately does not live up to its promises: in this paper, I raise some objections to their explanationist analysis of knowledge while showing that modalism is in much better shape than they think. In particular, I argue that their explanationist condition generates the wrong results in Gettier cases and fake-barn cases. I also offer and defend a novel version of modalism: I introduce a refined safety condition which is shown to successfully handle the same Gettier cases that beset Bogardus and Perrin's version of explanationism. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the explanationist's initial ambition to provide an analysis of knowledge without modal notions. The upshot will be that even if the prospects for such analysis remain dim, our money should be on the modalist, not the explanationist. (shrink)

Behavioural spillovers refer to the influence that a given intervention targeting behaviour 1 exerts on a subsequent, non-targeted, behaviour 2, which may or may not be in the same domain (health, finance etc.) as one another. So, a nudge to exercise more, for example, could lead people to eat more or less, or possibly even to give more or less to charity depending on the nature of the spillover. But what if spillovers also operate backwards; that is, if the expectation (...) of behaviour 1 influences behaviour 0 that precedes it? For example, a person may form an intention to exercise prompted by a policy intervention but overeat at present as a result. We define such a possibility as a "spillunder". In the proposed article, we critically review the few papers that we have identified through a narrative literature review which have demonstrated spillunder effects to date, and we propose a conceptual framework. Based on evidence about the human mind and behaviour from psychology and economics, we argue that spillunder effects may be more common than the limited empirical findings suggest. We propose six representative mechanisms through which the prospect of behaviour 1 may impact behaviour 0: executive functions, moral licensing and moral cleansing, emotion regulation, energization, construal level, and savouring and dread. We further discuss the policy and practical implications of spillunder effects and examine methodological issues that need to be considered when empirically testing these effects. As with our earlier paper on spillovers, we aim to motivate other behavioural scientists to research behavioural spillunders more systematically and extensively, and to prompt decision makers to consider these effects when designing behavioural interventions. (shrink)

: Self-consciousness is considered in a framework comprising four dimensions which are theoretically defined and supported by clinical neuropsychological evidence. Self-monitoring is defined as the ability to reflect on one’s own behaviour, with supporting evidence for deficits in this capacity noted in anosognosia syndrome. Self-feeling is defined as the capacity to feel all sensations related to one’s own body, with supporting evidence from deficiencies occurring in alexithymia, psychosomatic states and Cotard’s delusion. Identity refers to the capacity to recognize an object (...) as identical to oneself, based on autobiographic memory; pathological conditions related to this dimension include delusions of identity and the Zelig syndrome. Ownership is the capacity to perceive the status of ones’ own body, and is clinically altered in somatoparaphrenia. All four dimensions are related to specific brain networks. Keywords: Self-Monitoring; Self-Feeling; Identity; Ownership; Neurocognitive Dimensions Le dimensioni neurocognitive dell’autocoscienza Riassunto: L’autocoscienza viene inquadrata in base a quattro dimensioni, determinate in via teorica e supportate da evidenze cliniche di carattere neuropsicologico. L’automonitoraggio è definito quale capacità di riflettere sul proprio comportamento ed è sostenuto da evidenze che derivano da quella sindrome denominata anosognosia. Il sentire il proprio sé è la capacità di avvertire tutte le sensazioni del corpo proprio ; questa dimensione è supportata da evidenze derivanti da condizioni cliniche quali l’alessitimia, le affezioni psicosomatiche e il delirio di Cotard. L’identità si riferisce alla capacità di riconoscere come identico a se stesso un oggetto, fondata sulla memoria autobiografica; le condizioni patologiche legate a questa dimensione sono il delirio di identità e la sindrome di Zelig. Il possesso di sé è la capacità di percepire lo stato del proprio corpo, condizione che risulta alterata nella somatoparafrenia. Tutte queste quattro dimensioni sono collegate a specifici network cerebrali. Parole chiave: Automonitoraggio; Sentimento di sé; Identità; Padronanza di sé; Dimensioni neurocognitive. (shrink)

Beccaria’s penal philosophy hinges on the doctrinal paradigm of liberty through law. Inconceivable in the absence of laws and unattainable in the presence of arbitrary powers, liberty is profiled as the legal situation of the person who may act, within the sphere of what is not forbidden and not bound, without suffering illicit interference from private individuals or organs of the state. Thus, the form of law becomes an essential matter in the construction of the political space suitable for free (...) living. In the analysis proposed in this article, the notion of “political liberty”–which Beccaria takes from Montesquieu–is declined in relation to the legal order, criminal law and the social contract. (shrink)

Feminist reflections on the sexual division of labour have given rise to a body of knowledge on the ethics of care from different disciplines, including philosophy, in which outstanding contributions to the topic have been formulated. This approach is applicable to the analysis of any phenomenon and particularly that of disasters. As various investigations have highlighted, the consequences on the population throughout all of a disaster’s phases (prevention, emergency, and reconstruction) require an analysis of differentiated vulnerabilities based on gender and (...) other identity categories, such as social class, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual identity, etc. The interrelation between all these variables gives rise to differentiated impacts that cannot be ignored in catastrophic contexts, where survival and sustaining life are at stake, so care becomes a central issue. Research on the topic has also identified that, along with the analysis of social vulnerability, we must consider the capacity for agency, both individual and collective, where care is once again of vital importance. Considering the gender approach and its multiple intersections is thus a fundamental theoretical-practical proposal for the study of disasters from philosophy, as it implies an unavoidable epistemic, ontological, and ethical reflection in the face of risk reduction. (shrink)

Animal ethics has often been criticized for an overreliance on “ideal” or even “utopian” theorizing. In this article, I recognize this problem, but argue that the “nonideal theory” which critics have offered in response is still insufficient to make animal ethics action-guiding. I argue that in order for animal ethics to be action-guiding, it must consider agent-centered theories of change detailing how an ideally just human-animal coexistence can and should be brought about. I lay out desiderata that such a theory (...) of change should suffice so as to be helpful in guiding action. Specifically, a theory of change should determine (1) who needs to do what in order for ideal justice to be achieved in the long run, (2) who should be expected to refuse compliance and how they should be moved to comply, and (3) why specific intermediate steps are necessary. I show how previous “nonideal” contributions, though helpful in other ways, are insufficiently determinate on these points and I sketch a (still somewhat utopian) theory of change for one specific context. This brings animal ethics a crucial step closer to being action-guiding in the real world. (shrink)

In "My Own Life," Hume writes:1 During my retreat in France, first at Reims, but chiefly at La Fleche, in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In the end of 1738, I published my Treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country house, and was employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement of (...) his fortune. It is thus "chiefly" at La Flèche that Hume wrote one of the masterpieces of early modern philosophy. Hume's stay in France extended from July 1734 to August 1737. He spent a few weeks in Paris in the summer of 1734, hosted by Chevalier... (shrink)

We explore a notion of pseudofinite dimension, introduced by Hrushovski and Wagner, on an infinite ultraproduct of finite structures. Certain conditions on pseudofinite dimension are identified that guarantee simplicity or supersimplicity of the underlying theory, and that a drop in pseudofinite dimension is equivalent to forking. Under a suitable assumption, a measure-theoretic condition is shown to be equivalent to local stability. Many examples are explored, including vector spaces over finite fields viewed as 2-sorted finite structures, and homocyclic groups. Connections are (...) made to products of sets in finite groups, in particular to word maps, and a generalization of Tao's Algebraic Regularity Lemma is noted. (shrink)

Allen Newell (1973) once observed that psychology researchers were playing “twenty questions with nature,” carving up human cognition into hundreds of individual phenomena but shying away from the difficult task of integrating these phenomena with unifying theories. We argue that research on cognitive control has followed a similar path, and that the best approach toward unifying theories of cognitive control is that proposed by Newell, namely developing theories in computational cognitive architectures. Threaded cognition, a recent theory developed within the ACT-R (...) cognitive architecture, offers promise as a unifying theory of cognitive control that addresses multitasking phenomena for both laboratory and applied task domains. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop and motivate a novel formulation of the safety condition in terms of etiological proper function. After testing this condition against the most pressing objections to safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge in the literature, my conclusion will be the following: once safety is suitably understood in terms of etiological proper function, it stands a better chance as the right anti-Gettier condition on knowledge.

National, European, and international institutions should implement social policies to help the persons with disabilities. Strategic sectors include education, training, and work, with the equal protection of the laws. In addition, this essay is focused on another crucial “sector" that is part of the primary law, which include tourism along with public transportation and non-discrimination. In conclusion, legislators, and public institutions, as well as transport companies must comply the principles of accessibility, equality, and social justice for the social inclusion of (...) persons with disabilities. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has put a strain on the health system, as well as the social, economic, and cultural ones at the Global level. After the pandemic, the risk is that the process of inclusion of persons with disabilities is grinding to a halt. But the chance is to find new ideas. This paper will define a brief but significant framework of principles that should be taken into consideration in order to support strategies of inclusion of people with disabilities in (...) the fields of health care and cultural life, especially through the research. (shrink)

Recent programs aimed at the independent living of persons with disabilities, allow them to be costumers of sectors in which they have never had full access in the past. The Lisbon Treaty has distinctly recognized the existence of a community tourist area within the primary law, and CRPD has defined the principles of accessibility and accessible tourism as tools for the inclusion. In addition, tourism and transportation stakeholders must guarantee non-discriminatory services; they must approach persons with disabilities as every other (...) customer, by taking in consideration their needs and rights, especially when it comes to their accessibility, assistance, and information. Companies of transportation must cooperate with DPOs in order to define disability-related training procedures. (shrink)