This paper explores the endeavours of José Celestino Mutis before and during his directorship of the Royal Botanical Expedition to the New Kingdom of Granada. Firstly, it will consider various aspects of Mutis’ activities as a naturalist and entrepreneur, in particular his efforts to promote the identification and commercial exploitation of three natural products associated with the Viceroyalty of New Granada: quina, cinnamon, and tea. Secondly, the paper will focus on the complex dynamics of the expedition’s artistic workshop, whose outcome (...) was the monumental compilation of botanical illustrations known as the Flora de Bogotá. The overall aim is to offer a reflection on the challenges posed by the practices of accumulation and management in the context of a scientific expedition inspired by the new policies of the reformist movement in Spain and designed to make profit out of the nature of the New World and its knowledge. (shrink)

¿Por qué democracia? Referencia a los derechos humanos y a la ciudadanía. Why democracy? Reference to human rights and citizenship. Bozo de Carmona, Ana Julia Libertad de expresión y "libertad cómica". Free speech and "comical liberty".Calvo González, José La justicia según J. Finnis. Justice according to John Finnis. Hocevar G., Mayda G. El lenguaje sagrado y su escritura. The sacred language and its writing. Lizaola, Julieta Del carácter coactivo de la μετηνεστασζ en Tucídides. On cornening to compelling nature of Thucydides' (...) μετηνεστασζ. Meabe, Joaquín E. Apuntes para una filosofía crítica de la historia regional. Notes for a critical philosophy concern to the regional history. Mora García, José Pascual Competencia política partidista en los textos de Simón Bolívar . The defender political competition in the Simon Bolivar’s writings . Ortiz Palanques, Marco Fundamentación socio-jurídica de los procesos normativos. Social and juridical reasoning about the normatives changes. Pavó Acosta, Rolando Filosofía y psicopatología en Karl Jaspers: los entramados de la existencia. Philosophy and psychopathology in Karl Jaspers: the studworks of the existence. Portuondo Pajón, Gladys L. La doctrina platónica del alma en la «república». The platonic doctrine of the soul in the «republic» dialogue. Suzzarini, Andrés Una aproximación a la concepción romana del derecho. An estimate study to the roman concept of law. Terán Pimentel, Milagros Interdisciplinares Lo dionisíaco y lo apolíneo en Don Juan Tenorio. The dionysiac and the apolline in Don Juan Tenorio. Pérez Lo Presti, Alirio. (shrink)

Review of Juan Pimentel. 2017. The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium. An Essay in Natural History.

It is well known that Emmanuel Levinas places the ‘other’ at the heart of his phenomenology, as an agency the relation toward which constitutes subjectivity. As such, the Levinasian other is deprived of violence, and it is identified with the figures of the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. The only resistance the other could muster against the violence directed at him/ her, argues Levinas, is what he terms as the resistance of lack of resistance. This article aims at questioning (...) this premise. Is the other indeed deprived of any violence? The readings of Derrida, Sartre, Foucault, Agamben, Freud, and Lacan can prove otherwise: either the other is equipped with contingent violence, in accordance with its intentions, as Derrida argues; or it is equipped with a priori violence, administered through the gaze, as Sartre shows. The violence of the other is linked to the violence of identity, as that which alienates the self from itself by depriving it of its fluctuating heterogeneity, whatever name it assumes. (shrink)

Resumo : O artigo examina as contribuições do pensamento social de Maurice Blondel para a promoção de uma paz duradoura entre as nações. A partir da crítica blondeliana dos totalitarismos e dos regimes liberais, elencamos certas características da ação humana histórica e concreta, individual e social, que fundamentam uma concepção social e política favorável à pluralidade das culturas e à colaboração entre os povos. Como critério crítico e forma normal de promover a busca imanente do bem, da verdade e da (...) justiça, defende-se a transcendência real do espírito humano. Finalmente, elencamse alguns princípios normativos que deveriam compor toda formação e educação pessoal e social apta a promover a paz e o sentimento de humanidade. Palavras-chave: Ação. Totalitarismo. Liberalismo. Pluralidade. Unidade. Imanência. Transcendência. Paz.: This article examines the contributions of the social thought of Maurice Blondel for the promotion of a lasting peace among nations. Drawing from the Blondelian criticism of totalitarian systems and of liberal regimes, we list certain characteristics of historic and concrete human action, both individual and social. Those features frame a social and political view which is favorable to the plurality of cultures and fosters collaboration among peoples. The article argues that the real transcendence of the human spirit is the critical criterion and the normal path to promote the immanent search of good, truth and justice. Finally, we list some normative principles that should inform all formation programs, and personal and social ducation as well, in order for them to be apt to promote peace and a sense of common humanity. Keywords : Action. Totalitarian system.Liberalism. Plurality. Unity. Immanence.Transcendence. Peace. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

However broad or vague the notion of connexivity may be, it seems to be similar to the notion of relevance even when relevance and connexive logics have been shown to be incompatible to one another. Relevance logics can be examined by suggesting syntactic relevance principles and inspecting if the theorems of a logic abide to them. In this paper we want to suggest that a similar strategy can be employed with connexive logics. To do so, we will suggest some properties (...) that seem to be hinted at in Nelson’s work. Following this strategy will ideally shed some light over the notion of content and will also help make a clear comparison between relevance and connexive logics. (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

¿Por qué democracia? Referencia a los derechos humanos y a la ciudadanía. Why democracy? Reference to human rights and citizenship. Bozo de Carmona, Ana Julia Libertad de expresión y "libertad cómica". Free speech and "comical liberty".Calvo González, José La justicia según J. Finnis. Justice according to John Finnis. Hocevar G., Mayda G. El lenguaje sagrado y su escritura. The sacred language and its writing. Lizaola, Julieta Del carácter coactivo de la μετηνεστασζ en Tucídides. On cornening to compelling nature of Thucydides' (...) μετηνεστασζ. Meabe, Joaquín E. Apuntes para una filosofía crítica de la historia regional. Notes for a critical philosophy concern to the regional history. Mora García, José Pascual Competencia política partidista en los textos de Simón Bolívar . The defender political competition in the Simon Bolivar’s writings . Ortiz Palanques, Marco Fundamentación socio-jurídica de los procesos normativos. Social and juridical reasoning about the normatives changes. Pavó Acosta, Rolando Filosofía y psicopatología en Karl Jaspers: los entramados de la existencia. Philosophy and psychopathology in Karl Jaspers: the studworks of the existence. Portuondo Pajón, Gladys L. La doctrina platónica del alma en la «república». The platonic doctrine of the soul in the «republic» dialogue. Suzzarini, Andrés Una aproximación a la concepción romana del derecho. An estimate study to the roman concept of law. Terán Pimentel, Milagros Interdisciplinares Lo dionisíaco y lo apolíneo en Don Juan Tenorio. The dionysiac and the apolline in Don Juan Tenorio. Pérez Lo Presti, Alirio. (shrink)

O artigo examina as contribuições do pensamento social de Maurice Blondel para a promoção de uma paz duradoura entre as nações. A partir da crítica blondeliana dos totalitarismos e dos regimes liberais, elencamos certas características da ação humana histórica e concreta, individual e social, que fundamentam uma concepção social e política favorável à pluralidade das culturas e à colaboração entre os povos. Como critério crítico e forma normal de promover a busca imanente do bem, da verdade e da justiça, defende-se (...) a transcendência real do espírito humano. Finalmente, elencamse alguns princípios normativos que deveriam compor toda formação e educação pessoal e social apta a promover a paz e o sentimento de humanidade.This article examines the contributions of the social thought of Maurice Blondel for the promotion of a lasting peace among nations. Drawing from the Blondelian criticism of totalitarian systems and of liberal regimes, we list certain characteristics of historic and concrete human action, both individual and social. Those features frame a social and political view which is favorable to the plurality of cultures and fosters collaboration among peoples. The article argues that the real transcendence of the human spirit is the critical criterion and the normal path to promote the immanent search of good, truth and justice. Finally, we list some normative principles that should inform all formation programs, and personal and social education as well, in order for them to be apt to promote peace and a sense of common humanity. (shrink)

O DIREITO ENTRE O ESTADO E O ESTADO DE DIREITO: REVISITANDO A TEORIA DO DIREITO E DO ESTADO DE LEÓN DUGUIT.

El presente artículo pretende indagar en algunos tópicos relativos a las ideas de Marx y a las de Horkheimer presentes en la obra Teología de lo político de Clodovis Boff. En este análisis se observa una referencia explícita a la ideas del padre del marxismo donde Boff se acompaña con Marx, va más allá de Marx e incluso va contra Marx. Por otro lado, es posible identificar tres afinidades electivas que permiten suponer que la interpretación que Boff realiza del marxismo (...) deviene del padre de la teoría crítica, Max Horkheimer. The article below investigates topics related to Marx's and Horhkheimer's ideas as exposed in Theology of the Political by Clodovis Boff. The analysis shows a direct reference from Boff to the father of Marxism's ideas, going along, beyond and even against Marx. On the other hand, it is possible to identify three elective affinities that make us believe that his interpretation of Marx has its origin in the father of Critical Theory's ideas, Max Horkheimer. (shrink)

O artigo examina a questão do ideológico nos discurssos de Locke e Rousseau, e conclui que os critérios de leitura de um e de outro,originários da própria natureza destes,não devem ser unívocos porque as respectivas subjetividades são marcadas por práticas historicamente diferentes.

What if what is permissible and acceptable today is anathema tomorrow? There is a whole canon of scholarly ethics books written with the express purpose of telling you what is RIGHT and what is WRONG. This is not one such book. Juan Enriquez wants to make it easier for us to talk to one another, to prod one another, to understand and guide one another without an everlasting certainty of strict RIGHT v WRONG.

In this paper we prove that the free algebras in a subvariety equation image of the variety equation image of semi-Heyting algebras are directly decomposable if and only if equation image satisfies the Stone identity.

The founding operation of the American States involves a mediating mechanism that enables the connection between the ideals supporting it and the intent for its popularization among people. Such is the function assigned to the founding heroes, which is analyzed as a cultural operation that aims to enshrine these ideals, thereby eliding the violence contained in the formation of modern States.

In the international sphere, sovereignty and fundamental rights are often at odds, giving these rights little space for action and, in general, only after crisis has led to tragedy, and tragedy to disgrace. International Law, on the other hand, consistently succumbs to forms of domination and power, and its scope of action is often limited to certain codifications which are frequently suspended by political exception. Sixteenth century Dominican theologian, Francisco de Vitoria, established the principles for a Law of the people, (...) based on secular civil power that, while still exercising internal sovereignty, could defend and privilege the “rights of all men” over the exercise of power and private interest. This article focuses on this dispute to show Vitoria’s position, who long preceded the great declarations of human rights of the 18 th century, presenting an original doctrine within the framework of an emerging globalization and based on the defense of fundamental rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Price discrimination is the practice of charging different customers different prices for the same product. Many people consider price discrimination unfair, but economists argue that in many cases price discrimination is more likely to lead to greater welfare than is the uniform pricing alternative—sometimes for every party in the transaction. This article shows i) that there are many situations in which it is necessary to engage in differential pricing in order to make the provision of a product possible; and ii) (...) that in many such situations, the seller does not obtain an above-average rate of return. It concludes that price discrimination is not inherently unfair. The article also contends that even when conditions i) and/or ii) do not obtain, price discrimination is not necessarily unethical. In itself, the fact that some people get an even better deal than do others does not entail that the latter are wronged. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa has argued that if someone knows that p, then his belief that p is “safe”. and Timothy Williamson has agreed. In this paper I argue that safety, as defined by Sosa, is not a necessary condition on knowledge – that we can have unsafe knowledge. I present Sosa’s definition of safety and a counterexample to it as a necessary condition on knowledge. I also argue that Sosa’s most recent refinements to the notion of safety don’t help him to (...) avoid the counterexample. I consider three replies on behalf of the defender of safety, and find them all wanting. Finally, I offer a tentative diagnosis of my counterexample. (shrink)

Much has been said about intuitionistic and classical logical systems since Gentzen’s seminal work. Recently, Prawitz and others have been discussing how to put together Gentzen’s systems for classical and intuitionistic logic in a single unified system. We call Prawitz’ proposal the Ecumenical System, following the terminology introduced by Pereira and Rodriguez. In this work we present an Ecumenical sequent calculus, as opposed to the original natural deduction version, and state some proof theoretical properties of the system. We reason that (...) sequent calculi are more amenable to extensive investigation using the tools of proof theory, such as cut-elimination and rule invertibility, hence allowing a full analysis of the notion of Ecumenical entailment. We then present some extensions of the Ecumenical sequent system and show that interesting systems arise when restricting such calculi to specific fragments. This approach of a unified system enabling both classical and intuitionistic features sheds some light not only on the logics themselves, but also on their semantical interpretations as well as on the proof theoretical properties that can arise from combining logical systems. (shrink)

O que se buscará com o seguinte artigo é recriar, e analisar, o trajeto filosófico que tem sua origem no conceito kantiano de Aufklärung, e cuja evolução nos levará até o conceito foucaultiano de “ontologia crítica”. Em 1784, Kant diria num artigo do jornal alemão Berlinische Monatsschrift que a Aufklärung seria uma saída da minoridade do homem, e por minoridade podemos entender o fato do homem não ser capaz de fazer uso do seu próprio entendimento, ficando assim dependente da razão (...) de tutores. A partir disto, Foucault, em 1984, diria que a originalidade desta resposta de Kant está exatamente em não propor um método ou uma doutrina, mas antes, em incitar uma ação: propriamente a ação de saída [Ausgang]. Assim, Foucault nos apresentaria sua “ontologia crítica”; que diferentemente da ontologia tradicional que busca capturar os acontecimentos numa doutrina, o papel da ontologia foucaultiana seria exatamente o de tornar o sujeito incapturável por qualquer doutrina que apreende os acontecimentos num SER exclusivo. O que Foucault faria, desta forma, seria levar o conceito de Kant mais além, propondo mesmo um trabalho infinito, não apenas mais para sair, mas para igualmente permanecer fora do estado de minoridade. (shrink)

Psychogenic non epileptic seizures (PNES) are clinical events of psychological nature. Video-electroencephalography monitoring (V-EEGM) is a valuable method for the diagnosis of PNES and may be combined with provocative tests to induce seizures. The use of placebo in provocative tests for the diagnosis of PNES is controversial because of associated deception, and contrasts with the use of truly decreasing epileptogenic threshold techniques such as hyperventilation and photo stimulation. We present a clinical case of a pregnant woman with a past history (...) of refractory epilepsy, admitted in the obstetric department due to unremitting seizures. In this clinical context, non-deceiving provocative tests such as hyperventilation and photo stimulation could be potentially harmful, nevertheless, the use of intravenous saline injection presented as a safer alternative to diagnose PNES and hence obviate an urgent caesarean. This case illustrates a disproportionate risk of causing harm when telling the truth, in comparison with the benefit of avoiding such risk, although deceiving the patient. This is a clinical example of how considerations concerning the use of placebo must be evaluated in an individual basis. (shrink)

Despite the application of 2.5 million tons ofpesticides worldwide, more than 40% of all potentialfood production is lost to insect, weed, and plantpathogen pests prior to harvest. After harvest, anadditional 20% of food is lost to another group ofpests. The use of pesticides for pest control resultsin an estimated 26 million human poisonings, with220,000 fatalities, annually worldwide. In the UnitedStates, the environmental and public health costs forthe recommended use of pesticides total approximately$9 billion/yr. Thus, there is a need for alternativenon-chemical (...) pest controls, and genetic engineering(biotechnology) might help with this need. Diseaseand insect pest resistance to various pests has beenslowly bred into crops for the past 12,000 years;current techniques in biotechnology now offeropportunities to further and more rapidly improve thenon-chemical control of disease and insect pests ofcrops. However, relying on a single factor, like theBacillus thuringiensis toxin that has beeninserted into corn and a few other crops for insectcontrol, leads to various environmental problems,including insect resistance and, in some cases, athreat to beneficial biological control insects andendangered insect species. A major environmental andeconomic cost associated with genetic engineeringapplications in agriculture relates to the use ofherbicide resistant crops (HRC). In general, HRCtechnology results in increased herbicide use but noincrease in crop yields. The heavy use of herbicidesin HRC technology pollutes the environment and canlead to weed control costs for farmers that may be2-fold greater than standard weed control costs. Therefore, pest control with both pesticides andbiotechnology can be improved for effective, safe,economical pest control. (shrink)

Understanding how people behave when facing hazardous situations, how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the risk taking (RT) decision making process and to what extent it is possible to modify their reactions externally, are questions that have long interested academics and society in general. In the spheres of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), the military, finance and sociology, this topic has multidisciplinary implications because we all constantly face risk taking situations. Researchers have hitherto assessed risk taking profiles by conducting questionnaires (...) prior to and after the presentation of stimuli; however, this can lead to the production of biased, non-realistic, risk taking profiles. This is due to the reflexive nature of choosing an answer in a questionnaire, which is remote from the reactive, emotional and impulsive decision making processes inherent to real, risky situations. One way to address this question is to exploit VR capabilities to generate immersive environments that recreate realistic seeming but simulated hazardous situations. We propose VR as the next-generation tool to study risk taking processes, taking advantage of the big four families of metrics which can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity: the real-world risks approach (high presence VR environments triggering real-world reactions), embodied interactions (more natural interactions eliciting natural behaviours), stealth assessment (unnoticed real-time assessments offering efficient behavioural metrics) and physiological real-time measurement (physiological signals avoiding subjective bias). Additionally, VR can provide an invaluable tool, after the assessment phase, to train in skills related to risk taking due to its transferability to real-world situations. (shrink)

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.