Hermes es un dios de la mitología griega que fascina por sus ambivalencias y ambigüedades. Sin tener un lugar en el panteón griego, siendo un intermediario entre el Olimpo y la Tierra, es un patrono de quienes comparten su condición nómade. Es el dios de los mercaderes, de los viajantes, de los traductores y comunicadores... y es también patrono de los ladrones. Que el dios del lenguaje y de la mediación sea también el "dios de los ladrones" muestra algo que (...) es propio del lenguaje: su desapropiación. No pertenece a nadie y pertenece a todos, migra de unas manos a las otras. En este juego de robos, comercios, intercambios, deudas y ofertas, el lenguaje muestra su ambivalencia como espacio de comunión y de conflicto. En él se produce la disputa por los sentidos del mundo. (shrink)

Heidegger's affirmation is categorical: “… the thinking expressed in Being and Time is against humanism”. Heidegger's thesis is not only categorical, it is also polemical. He maintains that the humanist conception does not grasp man's essence, and it is for this reason that he is opposed to humanism, which is a doctrine that “has not thought profoundly enough of man's humanitas.

Originally published in English in 1980, Rhetoric as Philosophy has been out of print for some time. The reviews of that English edition attest to the importance of Ernesto Grassi’s work. By going back to the Italian humanist tradition and aspects of earlier Greek and Latin thought, Ernesto Grassi develops a conception of rhetoric as the basis of philosophy. Grassi explores the sense in which the first principles of rational thought come from the metaphorical power of the (...) word. He finds the basis for his conception in the last great thinker of the Italian humanist tradition, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). He concentrates on Vico’s understanding of imagination and the sense of human ingenuity contained in metaphor. For Grassi, rhetorical activity is the essence and inner life of thought when connected to the metaphorical power of the word. (shrink)

By going back to the Italian humanist tradition and aspects of earlier Greek and Latin thought Ernesto Grassi develops a conception of rhetoric as the basis of philosophical thought. In the development of modern philosophy since Descartes and Locke rhetoric has been seen as superfluous to knowledge. Rhetoric has been commonly understood as the speech that plays on the emotions the use of thought and words to persuade, rather than their use as the basis to seek knowledge. How does (...) the mind generate the principles upon which rational thought is based? Rational thinking exploits the logical power of the word, but logic never enlightens us on the nature of its own starting points. Grassi explores the sense in which the first principles of rational thought come from the metaphorical power of the word. He finds the basis for his conception in the last thinker of the Italian humanist tradition, Giambattista Vice, in Vice's understanding of imagination and the sense of human ingenuity contained in the metaphor. Professor Grassi connects rhetoric with the power of language to bring the starting points for thought into being. This power of speech is at the basis of the philosophical and rational search for truth. (shrink)

Con ocasión del centenario del nacimiento de Ernesto Grassi, nacido en Milán el 2 de mayo de 1902, Cuadernos sobre Vico publica a continuación el primer texto donde Grassi interpreta en 1940 el De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, ya dentro de la línea de la tradición del humanismo retórico, a cuyo rescate y estudio dedicaría el autor italo-germano buena parte de su vida. En la reveladora claridad de las páginas de Ernesto Grassi en torno a La crítica (...) de Vico a la supremacía del saber - para nosotros la parte más importante de este amplio trabajo sobre El comienzo del pensamiento moderno. De la pasión y la experiencia de lo originario, publicado en la capital alemana por el editor Helmut Küpper en el año 1940-, el lector de Cuadernos sobre Vico podrá descubrir inmediatamente ese singular humus viquiano que durante más de medio siglo propició la radical circunstancia especulativa y el pensamiento del autor de Vico y el humanismo. Ensayos sobre Vico, Heidegger y la retórica .La dirección de Cuadernos sobre Vico agradece al prof. Emilio Hidalgo-Serna la autorización para publicar la traducción de este importante ensayo de Grassi, inédito hasta ahora en español.On the centenary of Ernesto Grassi's birth, born in Milan on May 2 1902, Cuadernos sobre Vico publishes in Spanish the first text where Grassi interprets De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, already inside the line of the tradition of the rhetorical humanism, that he rescue and study. In the rewatching clarity of Ernesto Grassi's pages concerning Vico's critique to the supremacy of to knowledge -for us the most important part of this wide work The beginning of the modern thought, published in Germany for the editor Helmut Küpper in the year 1940-, the reader of Cuadernos sobre Vico will be able to discover immediately this singular humus vichian that during more than half a century caused the radical speculative circumstance and the thought of the author of Vico and the Humanism. Essays on Vico, Heidegger and the Rhetoric.The Editors of Cuadernos sobre Vico are grateful to prof. Emilio Hidalgo-Serna by the authorization to publish the translation in Spanish of Grassi's essay. (shrink)

PurposeTo use the power of knowledge acquisition and machine learning in the development of a collaborative computer classification system based on the features of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).MethodsA vocabulary was acquired from four AMD experts who examined 100 ophthalmoscopic images. The vocabulary was analyzed, hierarchically structured, and incorporated into a collaborative computer classification system called IDOCS. Using this system, three of the experts examined images from a second set of digital images compiled from more than 1000 patients with AMD. Images (...) were annotated, and features were identified and defined. Decision trees, a machine learning method, were trained on the data collected and used to extract patterns. Interrelationships between the data from the different clinicians were investigated.ResultsSix drusen classes in the structured vocabulary were largely sufficient to describe all the identified features. The decision trees classified the data with 76.86% to 88.5% accuracy and distilled patterns in the form of hierarchical trees composed of 5 to 15 nodes. Experts were largely consistent in their characterization of soft, and to a lesser extent, hard drusen, but diverge in definition of other drusen. Size and crystalline morphology were the main determinants of drusen type across all experts.ConclusionsMachine learning is a powerful tool for the characterization of disease phenotypes. The creation of a defined feature set for AMD will facilitate the development of an IDOCS-based classification system. (shrink)

This paper is an extended discussion of Robert Ulanowicz’s critique of mechanistic and reductionistic metaphysics of science. He proposes “process ecology” as an alternative. In this paper I discuss four sets of question coming out of Ulanowicz’s proposal. First, I argue that universality remains one of the hallmarks of the scientific enterprise even with his new process metaphysics. I then discuss the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the interpretation of the history of the universe. I question Ulanowicz’s use of the (...) terms “random” and “chance” in his definition of process. Finally, I discuss what difference a relational and process metaphysics might make in addressing the political and practical problems in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

With reference to recently proposed theoretical models accounting for reduction in terms of a unified dynamics governing all physical processes, we analyze the problem of working out a worldview accommodating our knowledge about natural phenomena. We stress the relevant conceptual differences between the considered models and standard quantum mechanics. In spite of the fact that both theories describe systems within a genuine Hilbert space framework, the peculiar features of the spontaneous reduction models limit drastically the states which are dynamically stable. (...) This fact by itself allows one to work out an interpretation of the formalism which makes it possible to give a satisfactory description of the world in terms of the values taken by an appropriately defined mass density function in ordinary configuration space. A topology based on this function and which is radically different from the one characterizing the Hilbert space is introduced, and in terms of it the idea of similarity of macroscopic situations is precisely defined. Finally, the formalism and the interpretation are shown to yield a natural criterion for establishing the psychophysical parallelism. The conclusion is that, within the considered theories and at the nonrelativistic level, one can satisfy all sensible requirements for a completely satisfactory macro-objective description of reality. (shrink)

When engaging with magic, we are moved by seemingly impossible events that contradict what we believe to be possible in the real world. We are surprised, curious, and baffled when we cannot explain how the magic we are witnessing is possible. We generally understand the events to be illusions. But how is it possible to be moved by something we know to be unreal? This problem is related to the paradox of fiction in aesthetics. Here, we introduce the problem in (...) the domain of theatrical magic, discuss possible solutions, and present a tentative account that allows us to accommodate inconsistent, seemingly incompatible beliefs at different representational levels in the viewers’ mind. (shrink)

RESUMENEn el presente trabajo queremos mostrar cómo en Gabriel Marcel la existencia tan sólo puede ser reconocida a partir de la condición encarnada del hombre. Para ello, contrapondremos primeramente la existencia a la objetividad, gracias a las nociones capitales de presencia y de participación. En segundo lugar, mostraremos cómo el cuerpo propio es fundamento de nuestro ser en el mundo. Por último, veremos porqué la encarnación es el dato central de la reflexión metafísica, en tanto que gracias a ella puedo (...) yo acceder a lo ontológico.PALABRAS CLAVES MARCEL, EXISTENCIA, OBJETIVIDAD, ENCARNACIÓN, METAFÍSICAABSTRACTIn this paper we would like to show how existence can only be recognized from man’s incarnate condition. In order to accomplish this task, we will have to contrast, in the first place, existence to objectivity, thanks to the capital notions of presence and participation. In the second place, we will show how the body-qua-mine is the foundation of our being in the world. Finally, we will focus on why incarnation is the central datum of metaphysical reflection, for thanks to it we may access ontological dimension.KEYWORDSMARCEL, EXISTENCE, OBJECTIVITY, INCARNATION, METAPHYSICS. (shrink)

This article is a close reading of two essays by Donna Haraway on feminist philosophy, the biophysical sciences, and critical social theory. Haraway's strong social constructionist approach to science is criticized by colleague Sandra Harding, resulting in an epistemological reconceptualization of objectivity by Haraway. Haraway's notion of “situated knowledges” provides a workable epistemology for all social and biophysical sciences, while inviting the reintegration of religions as critical conversation partners in an emancipatory hermeneutics of nature, culture, and technology.

El presente trabajo intenta introducir al lector en la problemática de la intersubjetividad desde la perspectiva fenomenológica-hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, atendiendo a la necesidad de las mediaciones simbólicas en el orden del reconocimiento. El fenómeno de la intersubjetividad será abordado aquí desde una perspectiva gnoseológica, ética, sociológica y hermenéutica, intentando desentrañar cómo es posible el reconocimiento mutuo entre subjetividades extrañas en un mundo común. Una reflexión sobre la intersubjetividad debe tener siempre presente la irreductibilidad de la persona como tal, reconocimiento (...) que es posible, en última instancia, por el amor y la caridad, el cual se manifiesta en la dinámica del intercambio de dones. Por otra parte, esta irreductibilidad de la persona supone el rechazo de la postulación de una tercera sustancia diferente del yo y del tú, que los subsumiera en su entidad, tal como parece suceder en el estructuralismo y en el hegelianismo. Es nuestra intención mostrar que se trata en Ricoeur de una fenomenología genética que rastrea lo extraño desde lo propio, teniendo como núcleo pivotante de su reflexión el homo capax que somos cada uno de nosotros y que actúa siempre en un mundo compartido (Lebenswelt). The present work pretends to be an introduction to the problem of intersubjectivity from the phenomenological and hermeneutical point of view of Paul Ricoeur. The phenomenon of intersubjectivity will be studied from a gnoseological, ethical, sociological and hermeneutical perspective, trying to disclose how a mutual acknowledgment between strange subjects in a common world can be possible. Meditation upon intersubjectivity must always attend on the irreductibility of persona as such, acknowledgment made possible by love and charity, and that reveals it sense in the espirit of giveness. In the other hand, the irreducitibility of persona implies rejecting the possibility of building a third substance, different from the I and the Thou, and which would submit them to its reality, as structuralism and hegelianism seems to propose. We intend to show that Ricoeur's position is one of a genetic phenomenology that search for the strange from the own, stating the homo capax that acts always in a shared world (Lebenswelt) as its central idea. (shrink)

Francisco Leocata propone una nueva reducción fenomenológica, que llama reducción vital, la cual nombra el centramiento del sujeto encarnado, la necesidad de sabernos traspasados por la historia y por los otros como punto de partida para la producción de conocimiento en el seno de nuestra experiencia de la vida. Esta reducción vital permite pensar al ser humano desde las diversas disciplinas científicas, en diálogo con la fenomenología y la metafísica. Si bien Leocata construye su fenomenología personalista sobre las bases de (...) la fenomenología trascendental de Edmund Husserl, en este trabajo queremos resaltar las posibilidades que se abren a partir de un diálogo más estrecho con Merleau-Ponty, quien ha subrayado el carácter interdisciplinar de la fenomenología. (shrink)

While previous research has suggested that adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse may be more prone to produce false memories, little is known about the consequences of childhood neglect on basic memory processes. For this reason, the authors investigated how a group of women with a history of childhood emotional neglect and diagnosed with recurrent Major Depressive Disorder performed on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm in comparison to control groups. The results indicated that women with MDD and CEN were actually (...) less prone to produce false memories relative to both women with MDD but no CEN and healthy women without MDD and any form of childhood maltreatment. These findings were explained in terms of the inability to extract/retrieve gist memories that support false recognition of critical lures, an explanation that seems to fit well with emerging MRI findings linking childhood neglect to reduced volume of brain regions associated to memory function. (shrink)