J. Monserrat constituye el representante más significativo y consistente del paradigma emergentista en nuestro entorno cultural, defendiendo un emergentismo humanista, que ha ido profundizando desde el nivel de los engramas neuronales hasta adherirse a las tesis de la neurología cuántica de Penrose y Hameroff. A lo largo de este artículo se presentan los principales planteamientos defendidos por J. Monserrat, dentro del horizonte del amplio paradigma del emergentismo sistémico, advirtiéndose como dicho paradigma le permite defender de un modo más (...) adecuado un modelo antropológico humanista y creyente. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Should we regard Jennifer Lackey’s ‘Creationist Teacher’ as understanding evolution, even though she does not, given her religious convictions, believe its central claims? We think this question raises a range of important and unexplored questions about the relationship between understanding, factivity and belief. Our aim will be to diagnose this case in a principled way, and in doing so, to make some progress toward appreciating what objectual understanding—i.e., understanding a subject matter or body of information—demands of us. Here is the (...) plan. After some ground clearing in §1, §2 outlines and motivates a plausible working model—moderate factivity—for characterising the sense in which objectual understanding should be regarded as factive. §3 shows how the datum that we can understand false theories can, despite initial suggestions to the contrary, be assimilated straightforwardly within the moderate factivity model. §4 highlights how the inverse kind of case to that explored in §3—viz., a variant of Lackey’s creationist teacher case—poses special problems for moderate factivity. With reference to recent work on moral understanding by Hills, §5 proposes a solution to the problem, and §6 attempts to diagnose why it is that we might originally have been led to draw the wrong conclusion. (shrink)

El universo que conocemos es un producto de la mente humana. En la experiencia fenomenológica primordial, que el hombre tiene de si mismo, se imponen dos hechos fenomenológicos: la experiencia de un mundo estable de objetos y la experiencia de un mundo de campos de realidad. El ejercicio de la razón, que le viene dada al hombre evolutivamente, lleva a preguntar cuáles son las causas reales que producen esos dos mundos. Igualmente, cuál es la verdad última del universo. La ciencia (...) moderna produce un conocimiento racional (científico) que ofrece la base para responder esas preguntas. La mecánica clásica explica qué es y cómo se produce un mundo macroscópico de objetos estables. La mecánica cuántica qué son y cómo se producen los campos de realidad, a los que accede el hombre desde su psique humana. Todo ello nos lleva a entender que el universo tiene una ontología (un modo de ser real) holístico. El hombre, ya por su auto-experiencia primordial, pero también por los resultados de la ciencia, queda abierto al conocimiento del holismo cósmico. La naturaleza holística del universo es la clave para abordar las preguntas en torno a su verdad última. El holismo sigue haciendo posible la hipótesis atea de un universo sin Dios. Pero también es verdad que, más allá del reduccionismo decimonónico, el holismo hace hoy mucho más verosímil la hipótesis de la existencia de Dios. A modo de sugerencia, el artículo concluye con una referencia a la imagen de Dios, y de la creación del universo en Dios, según el discurso alegórico de la kabala judía. (shrink)

The facts and inferences exposed in this writing, and the arguments that support it, allow us to conclude that the «extension of the mind», opened during the evolutionary process, since always and today accelerated by the work of human intervention, in no case authorizes us to consider that the «extension of mind» has changed human nature, as we have always known it. Therefore, there is no justification to speak of transhumanism, as if a new man, a «transhuman», had appeared at (...) the moment of the Singularity, whose nature had undergone substantial changes in relation to the usual human nature. For this reason, we consider that we should continue speaking of an «extensive humanism». No more. (shrink)

Como alternativa a los múltiples acercamientos y estudios sobre la filosofía de Nishida Kitarõ, en este trabajo se quiere presentar un avance de investigación sobre una cuestión normalmente obviada en las interpretaciones de la obra del filósofo. Se querrá mostrar cómo una mirada atenta a la idea de símbolo y las menciones a la poesía simbolista en la obra de Nishida ofrecen una clave plausible para una mejor comprensión de su sistema de la autoconciencia en obras como Intuición y reflexiónen (...) la autoconciencia o Los problemas de la conciencia. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThis paper discusses how our bad reading habits are starting to influence how we write. This short abstract and the picture next to it summarize the arguments in this paper. Just kidding, they do not. One really needs to read the paper for that.

The example of the bees, as they appear in Plato’s Phaedo, taken up again in Aristotle’s Politics and in Hobbes’ commentary contained in Leviathan, shows the potential of the phenomenological reading of examples as a method of understanding the basis on which philosophical thought is determined. Sign and communication are peculiar to gregarious and political animal life. In seeking to embody the Aristotelian concept of lógos in the context of a living community, as the basis for interaction and co-existence, we (...) must be sure that our interpretation does not reduce it to what, according to Aristotle, is simply animal behaviour. The Platonic sequence “ass, wolf, bee, god” situates the model of political life between a life in injustice and a life in wisdom. The Aristotelian variationdetermines the lógos on what is just and what is unjust as a natural increment in lucidity, compared with the mere exercising of gregariousness and sociability. Hobbes’ inversion of the Aristotelian example considers a natural reality in the light of the distortions that complicate and make it impossible. Hobbes thus shifts human politics towards artificiality that renders it viable. In each case, the example holds up a different mirror to the same reality. (shrink)

Eric Voegelin's Political Readings fills a critical void by providing a original approach to studying the work of Eric Voegelin, one of the major political philosophers of the twenty first century. Across six chapters a group of experts guide the reader from classical to modern times presenting six political philosophers who have had an impact on the life and philosophical production of Eric Voegelin. Philosophers examined include Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Hobbes, Weber and Kelsen. Through this innovative structure the chapters (...) collectively illustrate how Voegelin was an exceptional thinker through his engagement with political philosophers both modern and antique. The plurality of unique, academic perspectives and voices enriches our understanding of Voegelin's own thought while also encouraging a re-think of ancient and modern thinkers, and the transformation and continuity between these. Designed for students and scholars alike, Eric Voegelin's Political Readings will appeal to all those with an interest in Voegelin as well as readers familiar with classical and modern political philosophers. (shrink)

The overflow of scientific literature stimulates poor reading habits which can aggravate science's reproducibility crisis. Thus, solving the reproducibility crisis demands not only methodological changes, but also changes in our relationship with the scientific literature, especially our reading habits. Importantly, this does not mean reading more, it means reading better.

Protagoras, of all the ancient philosophers, has perhaps attracted the most interest in modern times. His saying ‘Man is the measure of all things’ caused Schiller to adopt him as the patron of the Oxford pragmatists, and has generally earned him the title of the first humanist. Yet the exact delineation of his philosophcal position remains a baffling task. Neumann, writing on Die Problematik des ‘Homo-mensura’ Satzes in 1938,2 concludes that no certainty whatever can be reached on the meaning of (...) the dictum, since ‘man’, ‘measure’, and ‘things’ are all ambiguous, nor can we tell which of the three is the predicate. The time is past when it was believed that a man's philosophy could be understood apart from the events of his life and the circumstances of his age: yet in the case of Protagoras the historical method of approach has hardly been attempted, although the impact of environment was perhaps more decisive in the formation of philosophical concepts in the Greek world than anywhere else. The reality about which the Greek philosopher spoke had three aspects: it was either the one universe of physics, or the political unity, or God. For example, the book of Heracleitus Περ φσεως was divided into three chapters or logoi, About the Whole, a political, and a theological. Neither physics nor theology supplies from its own subject-matter the form in which this reality was described. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a wealth of studies investigating how memories are allocated in the hippocampus. Some of those studies showed that it is possible to manipulate the identity of neurons recruited to represent a given memory without affecting the memory's behavioral expression. Those findings raised questions about how the hippocampus represents memories, with some researchers arguing that hippocampal neurons do not represent fixed stimuli. Herein, an alternative hypothesis is argued. Neurons in high‐order brain regions can be tuned (...) to multiple dimensions, forming complex, abstract representations. It is argued that such complex receptive fields allow those neurons to show some flexibility in their responses while still representing relatively fixed sets of stimuli. Moreover, it is pointed out that changes induced by artificial manipulation of cell assemblies are not completely redundant—the observed behavioral redundancy does not imply cognitive redundancy, as different, but similar, memories may induce the same behavior. (shrink)

Esta investigación analiza la presencia del discurso eurocéntrico en los manuales de Historia del Arte de Bachillerato desde una dimensión sociogenética. La muestra se compone de ejemplares pertenecientes a editoriales españolas de alcance nacional (Anaya, ECIR, Ediciones Ruiz, SM, Teide y Vicens Vives) en una cronología que comprende los distintos periodos por los que ha atravesado la materia entre 1953 y 2006. El estudio deriva de la aplicación de un guion de análisis documental que contempla, entre sus variables, la construcción (...) de identidades. Los resultados muestran la presencia y resistencia sociohistórica del discurso eurocéntrico en los manuales de Historia del Arte analizados, tendiéndose con ello a la construcción, reproducción y esencialización de identidades etnocéntricas. De este modo, para ahondar en la formación de una ciudadanía crítica, se hace necesario replantear los enfoques y las finalidades que fundamentan el relato de la Historia del Arte escolar en recursos como el que nos ocupa en este trabajo. (shrink)

Hobbes redefines his conception of liberty in the Leviathan as the absence of external impediments to motion. Power, on the other hand, refers to the body’s intrinsic dimension, that is, to the faculties possessed by each individual. There thus appears to be a clear distinction between liberty and power in Hobbes’ political philosophy. Taking into consideration Hobbes’ Latin works, however, in which he uses two different terms to refer to power: at times potestas and others potentia, such a distinction may (...) need to be revisited. As we will argue, there is a marked relation between liberty and power when considering human sociability. In this way, the aim of the article is to discuss Hobbes’ conception of power, through the pages of the Leviathan and De Homine, trying to clarify its complex, even ambiguous relation with his conception of liberty. (shrink)

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

In this article I try to refute the so-called "libertarian" theory of free will, and to examine how our conclusion ought to modify our common attitudes of praise and blame. In attacking the libertarian view, I shall try to show that it cannot be consistently stated. That is, my dscussion will be an "analytic-philosophic" one. I shall neglect what I think is in practice an equally powerful method of attack on the libertarian: a challenge to state his theory in such (...) a way that it will fit in the modern biology and psychology, which are becoming increasingly physicalistic. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.