One of the most remarkable implications of psychological medicine in the transition from the 18th to the 19th century was the advent of a new way of looking at the human being and new tools for analysing not only behaviour and individual experience, but also historical events, collective behavioural patterns or complex cultural achievements. Unsurprisingly, the deployment of this gaze could not advance without there being a series of disputes and controversies about its reach and the limits to its indiscriminate (...) application. Focusing on the figure of French alienist Alexandre Brierre de Boismont and on the controversial cases of hallucinations and suicide, this article addresses the conflicts generated by the use of certain emblematic concepts and categories present in French psychological medicine throughout the central decades of the 19th-century, as well as the essentially ambivalent relationship of the psychopathological point of view with the criticism of a culture that was made responsible, then, as now, for a great number of psychological disorders and illnesses. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation, based on the social systems theory of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, of the recent paradigmatic shift of mental health care from an asylum-based model to a community-oriented network of services. The observed shift is described as the development of psychiatry as a function system of modern society and whose operative goal has moved from the medical and social management of a lower and marginalized group to the specialized medical and psychological care of the whole population. (...) From this theoretical viewpoint, the wider deployment of the modern social order as a functionally differentiated system may be considered to be a consistent driving force for this process; it has made asylum psychiatry overly incompatible with prevailing social values (particularly with the normative and regulative principle of inclusion of all individuals in the different functional spheres of society and with the common patterns of participation in modern function systems) and has, in turn, required the availability of psychiatric care for a growing number of individuals. After presenting this account, some major challenges for the future of mental health care provision, such as the overburdening of services or the overt exclusion of a significant group of potential users, are identified and briefly discussed. (shrink)

This article offers a comprehensive critical review of the most popular theoretical accounts on the recent processes of deinstitutionalization and reform of mental health services and their possible underlying factors, focusing in the sharp contrast between the straightforward ideas and models maintained by mainstream psychiatry and the different interpretations delivered by authors coming from the social sciences or applying conceptual tools stemming from diverse social theories. Since all these appraisals tend to illuminate only some aspects of the process while obscuring (...) others, or do not fit at all with some important points of the actual changes, it is concluded that the quest for an adequate explanation is far from having been completed. Finally, some methodological and conceptual strategies for a renewed theoretical understanding of these significant transformations are also briefly discussed, including a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the facts, the consideration of the shifting social values and needs involved in mental health care provision and the historical analysis of deinstitutionalization policies within the framework of the broader social and cultural trends of the decades following World War II. (shrink)

This paper offers a panoramic assessment of the significant changes experienced by psychiatric care in Western Europe and North America in the course of the last decades of deinstitutionalization and reform. Drawing on different comparative studies and an own review of relevant data and reports, the main transformations in the mental health field are analyzed around seven major topics: the expanding scope of psychiatry; the decline and metamorphosis of the asylum; the introduction of alternative and diversified forms of care; the (...) new challenges posed by chronic mental illness; the emergence of modern psychopharmacology; the deployment of subspecialization; and the new forms of coercion implemented with community mental health practices. Following a renewed diagnosis on the essential features of the reformed mental health systems based on the pattern of social inclusion inherent to the new devices and philosophies of care, some major challenges for the future such as the overburdening of services or the overt exclusion of a significant part of potential users are also identified and briefly discussed. (shrink)

Part novella, part philosophy, Clara was Schelling's most popular work during his lifetime, and appears here in English for the first time.

The author reviews two adaptations of Anthem as a graphic novel and a third book, The Age of Selfishness, that combines a biography of Rand with an account of the financial crisis of the early twenty-first century and her putative responsibility for it. The graphic novels are both enjoyable versions of Rand's thought-provoking science-fiction novella, to different degrees; the nonfiction book is filled with distortions, polemic, and caricature.

The Belgian author J.-H. Rosny aîné is a relative unknown. A contemporary of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, he wrote a number of science fiction stories, as well as naturalistic ones, all in French. Despite being something of a celebrity in his day, he has received scant attention from the anglophone world—a smattering of translations and a couple of Ph.D. dissertations that "tend to dismiss Rosny's 'scientific' novels and disparage SF". With this new volume, Chatelain and Slusser aim to (...) set a foundation for, and secure an interest in, Rosny as a subject of study and to argue for his import in the history of sf. The work contains a lengthy introduction, copious notes, and a useful... (shrink)

A partir de reflexiones propuestas por Joseph Roth, Walter Benjamin, Sigfried Kracauer y Claudio Guillén, se presenta el concepto de “ciudad blanca” ligado a la frontera y la centralidad para concluir que la “ciudad blanca” es desfocalizada y periférica, invadida y rebelde, modelo (sueño o proyecto) e infierno (pesadilla o caos). El concepto se aplica al examen de cuatro ciu- dades “blancas” a propósito de secuencias significativas de cuatro films: Los olvidados (1950) de Luis Buñuel, Pizza, birra, faso (1998) de (...) Bruno Stagnaro e Israel Adrián Caetano, Dans la ville blanche (1983) de Alain Tanner y Biutiful (2010) de Alejandro González Iñárritu. (shrink)

Resumen: Analizo y critico las principales objeciones que Carlos Blanco plantea, en Las fronteras del pensamiento, contra las 5 vías de Tomás de Aquino. Mi objetivo es mostrar que dichas objeciones fallan, lo cual nos va a permitir traer, a la literatura en español, ciertas discusiones del mundo filosófico anglosajón. Palabras clave: 5 vías, Tomás de Aquino, Tomismo, Existencia de Dios, Filosofía de la religión Abstract: I analyze and critique Carlos Blanco’s main objections against Aquinas’s 5 ways, to be found (...) in his latest book, Las fronteras del pensamiento. My aim is to show how these objections miss the mark. This will allow us to bring into the Spanish literature some discussions that have taken place in the English-speaking world. Kewyords: 5 ways, Thomas Aquinas, Thomism, God’s existence, Philosophy of religion. (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)

En este trabajo repaso la concepción del cuerpo de Nietzsche y de Butler, intentando mostrar cómo cada una nos ayuda a superar un error de la modernidad. Nietzsche nos permite recuperar el cuerpo y contrarrestar el dualismo cartesiano, que lo valora tan poco, convirtiéndolo en una mera máquina. La obra de Judith Butler, por otro lado, especialmente Precarious Life y Frames of War, nos sirve para hacer frente al individualismo, al poner sobre la mesa la socialidad del cuerpo, el modo (...) en que nuestro cuerpo habla de los otros y está expuesto a los otros. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

It is not possible to talk about bioethics without recognizing the plurality inherent in it. In this sense, the notion of person is important due to its multiplicity of possible interpretations depending on its cultural context. This fact is highlighted in the case of organ transplantation in Japan. While there are many critiques against this procedure from scholars in various fields, those that deal with the problem of brain death are especially problematic. This is because the definition of person that (...) is invoked in such debates does not seem to coincide with how the notion of person has been understood in the Japanese tradition. Hence, investigating the Japanese concept of ningen could be helpful in not only partially clarifying some of the attitudes that exist in Japan towards the notion of brain death, but also to illustrate the need to recognize the plurality of views in modern bioethics. (shrink)

This article is devoted to give reasons against the naturalization of logic, in a sense which entails a revision of this science. The paper criticizes each historical important attempt to revise logical laws – intuitionism, quantum logic, alternative logics – and also it tries to argue that the explanation problem of quantum mechanics has nothing to do with a naturalization of logic.

Our object in this paper is to study the antecedents, contents, implications, and impact of a not well-known or appreciated paper by EHRENFEST in 1911 on the essential nature of the different quantum hypotheses in radiation theory. After a careful analysis of EHRENFEST’s notebooks, correspondence, and publications, we conclude that the essential points of EHRENFEST’s paper were not perceived to a large extent, and hence that its implications were not considered thoroughly. Specifically, we show that EHRENFEST contributed significantly to the (...) clarifications of the differences between PLANCK’s and EINSTEIN’s respective quantum hypotheses, as well as to those of the concepts ‘‘discontinuity,’’ ‘‘quantization,’’ and ‘‘corpuscularity.’’. (shrink)

I discuss in detail the contents of the adiabatic hypothesis, formulated by Ehrenfest in 1916. I focus especially on the paper he published in 1916 and 1917 in three different journals. I briefly review its precedents and thoroughly analyze its reception until 1918, including Burgers’s developments and Bohr’s assimilation of them into his own theory. I show that until 1918 the adiabatic hypothesis did not play an important role in the development of quantum theory.

Basadas en un modelo matemático muy simple del razonamiento de sentido común, se presentan algunas reflexiones acerca de lo que podría ser pensar y razonar sin especular. Es decir, si razonar sólo fuese deducir y abducir pero sin inducir.

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.

We analyze the evolution of EHRENFEST's thought since he proved the necessity of quanta in 1911 until the formulation of his adiabatic hypothesis in 1914. We argue that his research contributed significantly to the solution of critical problems in quantum physics and led to a rigorous definition of the range of validity of BOLTZMANN's principle.

El cálculo proposicional se basa proposiciones que son tautologías, antilogías y de tipo contingente, construidas con las operaciones de disyunción, conjunción, y negación, así como con el llamado condicional material para trasladar los enunciados condicionales. Con todo ello se obtiene una estructura de álgebra de Boole, que permite equiparar el cálculo proposicional al cálculo algebraico booleano. En parte, la simplificación conceptual que se obtiene resulta de ser el orden parcial del álgebra equivalente a la afirmación del condicional material. Además, con (...) tal metodología cabe ver qué partes del cálculo proposicional clásico pueden trasladarse, aun con limitaciones, a estructuras más débiles y, a la vez, más generales, como son los ortoretículos no booleanos o las álgebras de De Morgan.El cálculo proposicional trata con la deducción. Por ello, el artículo lo desarrolla a partir de un operador de consecuencias en el sentido de Tarski. Ampliado el modelo deductivo, es fácil ver otras consecuencias que las usualmente consideradas en los textos elementales; en particular, se analizan cuatro esquemas de razonamiento deductivo típicos y, entre ellos, se presta especial atención a los usuales Modus Ponens y Modus Tollens. En el caso de las estructuras algebraicas de conjuntos ‘borrosos’, ninguna es de álgebra de Boole ni siquiera de orto-retículo y sólo cabe trabajar, en algunos casos, con álgebras de De Morgan-Kleene. Por lo tanto el cálculo proposicional ‘fuzzy’ debe construirse de acuerdo con la estructura algebraica que corresponda en cada caso y una vez elegida como representación del condicional una función que verifique el Modus Ponens. (shrink)

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

In this article, we analyze the third of three papers, in which Einstein presented his quantum theory of the ideal gas of 1924–1925. Although it failed to attract the attention of Einstein’s contemporaries and although also today very few commentators refer to it, we argue for its significance in the context of Einstein’s quantum researches. It contains an attempt to extend and exhaust the characterization of the monatomic ideal gas without appealing to combinatorics. Its ambiguities illustrate Einstein’s confusion with his (...) initial success in extending Bose’s results and in realizing the consequences of what later came to be called Bose–Einstein statistics. We discuss Einstein’s motivation for writing a non-combinatorial paper, partly in response to criticism by his friend Ehrenfest, and we paraphrase its content. Its arguments are based on Einstein’s belief in the complete analogy between the thermodynamics of light quanta and of material particles and invoke considerations of adiabatic transformations as well as of dimensional analysis. These techniques were well known to Einstein from earlier work on Wien’s displacement law, Planck’s radiation theory and the specific heat of solids. We also investigate the possible role of Ehrenfest in the gestation of the theory. (shrink)

‘Reasoning’ can be considered a general concept that, upon speaking, is the ‘enraonar’, a Catalan word that should not be mistaken with ‘explain’ nor with ‘discuss’ which imply more detail, and cover different situations. This article is presented as an essay on the ancient ideal of ‘enraonar’. To that end, it is explained in what sense ‘enraonar’ and reason are one of the most complex phenomena thought has to deal with. Here it is argued that these natural phenomena require a (...) systematic and ‘scientific’ study, and that withoutthis knowledge computer science cannot simulate people’s every-day ‘enraonar’. (shrink)

Este artículo ahonda en las aportaciones en clave política de la filósofa española María Zambrano durante su juventud (1928–1939) en los albores de la Segunda República española y la posterior Guerra Civil para plantear un posible encaje de estas en el cuerpo teórico del liberalismo conservador. Con esa intención, contrastamos ambas referencias sirviéndonos de sus respectivas críticas del racionalismo e idealismo en cuanto disciplinas incapaces de tratar adecuadamente con la comunidad política entendida como realidad orgánica difícilmente reducible a un plan (...) general. El análisis de este rechazo se lleva a cabo en sus dos expresiones: como denuncia de la imposibilidad teórica que supone la tentativa racionalista de obtener una imagen completa de la realidad y como radical desconfianza en cuanto a la aplicación en el terreno práctico de los esquemas de la idealidad. (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)

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)

El objetivo de este trabajo es reconsiderar el punto de vista defendido por los pensadores que se pueden adscribir al famoso ‘Círculo de Viena’ sobre el significado y, especialmente, sobre los enunciados asignificativos. Para ello, procedemos usando la típica forma científica, heredera de la tradición del Círculo, de medir empíricamente los conceptos adquiridos. Además, proporcionamos algunas notas históricas, así como algunas reflexiones sobre el pensamiento de Karl Menger sobre la carencia de una geometría adecuada para el micromundo.