Cuerpo físico y cuerpo vivido no deben interpretarse como dos realidades separadas, sino que representan dos aspectos distintos de la misma experiencia corporal descrita en términos fenomenológicos. La experiencia de la corporalidad puede seguir dos direcciones: a) la primera es una dirección ascendente, que implica el desarrollo de las posibilidades de movimiento, acción y expresión del cuerpo en toda su plenitud; b) el otro camino o dirección, en contraste con el anterior, toma una senda descendente, y se halla estrechamente relacionado (...) con la experiencia del dolor, de la limitación, de la resistencia corporal que es experimentada como oposición a la propia voluntad: es el cuerpo vulnerable. Aquí reaparece un nuevo dualismo: el cuerpo poético de la expresión frente al cuerpo vulnerable de la enfermedad y el dolor. Mi contribución trata de cuestionar la idea de que el cuerpo poético de la expresión artística y el cuerpo vulnerable de la vejez, de la discapacidad o de la enfermedad, pertenezcan a esferas completamente separadas. Con este propósito, se intenta poner de relieve los múltiples puntos de intersección entre ambas perspectivas, al tiempo que se sostiene que tales intersecciones pueden llegar a ser interesantes puntos de partida de la investigación interdisciplinar. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show how the development of a phenomenology of the lived body is of special interest for a philosophical elucidation of the illness that takes charge of the patient's perspective in its specific theoretical relevance. Starting from a critique of the Cartesian paradigm of the body-machine and the consequent de-emphasis of the personal experience of the disease, it will be shown how the phenomenological perspective allows us to account for the constituent elements of the (...) illness experienced in the first person, such as alteration or disintegration of the link I-body-world-others. Finally, the question of the physical, emotional, and cognitive response to the disease and the way in which phenomenological reflections on the disease converge in a reflection on identity, vulnerability, and recognition will be addressed. (shrink)

In the context of the end of life, many authors point out how the experience of identity is crucial for the well-being of patients with advanced disease. They define this identity in terms of autonomy, control, or dependence, associating these concepts with the sense of personal dignity. From the perspective of the phenomenology of embodiment, Kay Toombs and other authors have investigated the ways disease can impact on the subjective world of patients and have stressed that a consideration of this (...) personal world can promote understanding and recognition of their experience. Based on the findings of qualitative studies of the perception of dignity and autonomy in patients at the end of life, this analysis assesses concepts such as being-in-the-world in illness, embodiment, lived body versus objective body or the gaze of the other from a Toombsian phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

El propósito del siguiente artículo consiste en elucidar algunos aspectos de la dinámica intersubjetiva de la expresión y el reconocimiento del dolor ajeno. Para ello se ha acudido a la noción artística de encarnación, presente en la tradición teatral moderna del realismo psicológico, en contraposición con su reinterpretación contemporánea en el arte de acción o performance. Mientras que en el primer caso la encarnación escénica del dolor remite a la encarnación de un personaje doliente, que implica un proceso de descorporización, (...) la encarnación performativa del dolor puede definirse, a la inversa, como un proceso de corporización de la vulnerabilidad. De la descripción y contraste de ambas propuestas dramáticas surgen interesantes consideraciones acerca de los posibles desajustes o desconexiones en el circuito intersubjetivo del dolor, así como también una comprensión de la retórica del dolor como estrategia de comunicación en la sociedad hipertecnológica. (shrink)

Aunque no suela aplicarse a Gabriel Marcel el título de “primer fenomenólogo francés”, su original estilo de reflexión y su personalidad filosófica supuso un importante estímulo para la joven generación de filósofos que inició su andadura en Francia alrededor de 1930, como es el caso de Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Paul Ricoeur o Emmanuel Levinas. En este artículo se pone de manifiesto cómo la crítica al objetivismo es uno de los puntos en los que la continuidad entre Marcel y (...) Merleau-Ponty y el papel inspirador del primero sobre el segundo se hace patente. La crítica a la “conciencia espectadora” y al “pensamiento de sobrevuelo” tiene un papel determinante en la posición de Merleau-Ponty ante el paradigma cartesiano y en la particular selección e interpretación que realiza de los textos de Husserl. Marcel y Merleau-Ponty, en el fondo, comparten la intuición antropológica fundamental de que el ser humano, ser personal de carne y hueso, participa y comunica interiormente, en su mismo ser y precisamente en virtud de su encarnación, con aquella realidad que intenta pensar. (shrink)

Using the guise of a simple supper of commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of a charismatic Protestant pastor, who had gathered around him a community of devoted disciples in a small village in Norway, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen shows us a banquet in which, through the food prepared with the eye of an artist, the senses are awakened for the first time to a kind of experience where what is corporal and what is spiritual cease to (...) be at odds with each other. Thus, a reconciliation of a lost unity between the body and the soul, matter and spirit, is celebrated and achieved. From this first step, with which the fundamental internal fragmentation is overcome, the other levels of unity (unity with others, with the cosmos, and with God) occur in a chain sequence, so to speak. As in all religious situations, there occurs here the coming together of two orders that seem unreconciliable: the temporal and the eternal, the limited and the infinite, the profane and the sacred. The mediator between both orders is Babette, who takes on a genuine sacerdotal function. However, there is an unexpected inversion, and paradoxically what is profane and mundane comes to the rescue of what is spiritual and sacred. (shrink)

This book is the first monograph fully devoted to analyzing the philosophical aspects of affordances. The concept of affordance, coined and developed in the field of ecological psychology, describes the possibilities for action available in the environment. This work offers a systematic approach to the key philosophical features of affordances, such as their ontological characterization, their relation to normative practices, and the idea of agency that follows from viewing affordances as key objects of perception, while also proposing an innovative philosophical (...) characterization of affordances as dispositional properties. The Philosophy of Affordances analyzes the implications that a proper understanding of affordances has for the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, and aims to intensify the dialogue between philosophy and ecological psychology in which each discipline benefits from the tools and insights of the other. (shrink)

Resumen La lingüística abarca una amplia gama de fenómenos que evolucionan a la misma velocidad que las lenguas lo hacen. Algunos fenómenos lingüísticos como la atrición han sido confundidos con otros fenómenos y han recibido nombres distintos en el transcurso de la historia debido al contacto entre varias lenguas. Por ese motivo, un estudio sobre dicho fenómeno se estima oportuno. Esto engloba la elección de la palabra atrición como traducción de attrition, su definición, las circunstancias que deben producirse para que (...) surja, los tipos de atrición que pueden darse y una comparación de la atrición lingüística con otros fenómenos lingüísticos. Esta exploración concluye con el hecho de que la atrición es el término apropiado, ya que delimita este fenómeno lingüístico que, aunque no es un fenómeno nuevo, sí es cada vez más actual debido a las migraciones y a la globalización. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single post-cognitivist research framework if we highlight the common pragmatist assumptions of both approaches. These pragmatist assumptions or starting points are shared by ecological psychology and the enactive approach independently of being historically related to pragmatism, and they are based on the idea of organic coordination, which states that the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities of an organism are explained by appealing to the (...) history of interactions of that organism with its environment. It is argued that the idea of behavioral or organic coordination within the enactive approach gives rise to the sensorimotor abilities of the organism, while the ecological approach emphasizes the coordination at a higher-level between organism and environment through the agent’s exploratory behavior for perceiving affordances. As such, these two different processes of organic coordination can be integrated in a post-cognitivist research framework, which will be based on two levels of analysis: the subpersonal one and the personal one. If this proposal is on the right track, this may be a promising first step for offering a systematized and consistent post-cognitivist approach to cognition that retain the full potential of both enactivism and ecological psychology. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in healthcare. While the literature to date has focused primarily on individual healthcare practitioners who object to participation in morally controversial procedures, in this article we consider a different albeit related issue, namely, whether publicly funded healthcare institutions should be required to provide morally controversial services such as abortions, emergency contraception, voluntary sterilizations, and voluntary euthanasia. Substantive debates about institutional responsibility have remained largely at the level of (...) first-order ethical debate over medical practices which institutions have refused to offer; in this article, we argue that more fundamental questions about the metaphysics of institutions provide a neglected avenue for understanding the basis of institutional conscientious objection. To do so, we articulate a metaphysical model of institutional conscience, and consider three well-known arguments for undermining institutional conscientious objection in light of this model. We show how our metaphysical analysis of institutions creates difficulties for justifying sanctions on institutions that conscientiously object. Thus, we argue, questions about the metaphysics of institutions are deserving of serious attention from both critics and defenders of institutional conscientious objection. (shrink)

Malgré le nombre et la valeur des traductions, et malgré maintes études parues au cours des dernières années, le nom de Schelling est encore largement inconnu en France, et sa philosophie méconnue. Or, il s'agit d'un génie philosophique de premier ordre. Xavier Tilliette a entrepris de raconter une vie qui éclaire singulièrement une œuvre " en devenir ", épousant toujours le mouvement de l'existence. Schelling, éternel commençant, s'il n'a pu achever son grand projet des Ages du monde, a parcouru (...) dans leur diversité les âges de la vie, " de la belle aube au triste soir ", traversant la Révolution, l'Empire, le romantisme, la Restauration et 1848, pour finir dans un oubli relatif et dans l'isolement. (shrink)

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In (...) this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. (shrink)

In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity. First, we offer an account of normativity and provide some examples of how it is understood in the specialized literature. Affordances, we claim, lack correctness criteria and, hence, the possibility of error is not among their necessary conditions. For this reason we will oppose Chemero’s normative theory of affordances. Finally, we will show that there is a (...) way in which taking advantage of affordances could be considered as possessing a normative character, but only when they are evaluated within the framework of social normative standards in particular situations. This reinforces our claim that affordances, per se, lack normativity and can only be taken to be rule-governed in relation to established normative practices. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the evolutionary role of affordances, that is, the possibilities for action available in our environments. There are two allegedly competing views for explaining the evolutionary role of affordances: the first is based on natural selection; the second is based on niche construction. According to the first, affordances are resources that exert selection pressure. The second view claims that affordances are ecological inheritances in the organism’s niche that are the product of a previous alteration of the (...) environment. While there seems to be a mutually exclusive definition of affordances in each of these views, I argue in this paper that the views are not competing but, rather, complementary. In this sense, affordances play the role of either resources or ecological inheritances depending on the temporal stage of the evolutionary process. I make this argument by analyzing how natural selection and niche construction affect each other even when they function independently from each other. In this light, if these two evolutionary mechanisms exert their power in parallel but at two different stages in the evolutionary history of a given econiche, then there is room to claim that affordances can be understood as both resources and ecological inheritances. This dual aspect of affordances shows their evolutionary role. (shrink)

This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not factual. We highlight a problematic assumption shared by the two most influential trends in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science, reductionism and enactivism. Our intentional, normative explanations are referential, descriptive or factual. Underneath this assumption lies the idea that only facts can make true or false our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of (...) reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy. Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are complementary approaches whose engagement will help us explain the organism-environment interaction at the cognitive level. The Extended Synthesis, through niche construction theory, can explain the organism-environment interaction at an evolutionary level because niche construction is a process guided by information. We believe that the best account that defines information at this level is the one offered by biosemiotics and, within all kinds of biosemiotic information available, we believe that (...) ecological information is the best candidate for making sense of the organism-environment relation at the cognitive level. This entanglement of biosemiotics, ecological information and the Extended Synthesis is promising for understanding the multidimensional character of the organism-environment reciprocity as well as the relation between evolution, cognition, and meaning. (shrink)

In this work, Xavier Lakshmanan argues for a textual linguistic approach to Christian theology. The book takes its shape in conversation with Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical thought, demonstrating how Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy can inform the way Christians interpret and appropriate biblical narratives without delimiting the potential of the text or eroding the distinctiveness of its language. The text can be appropriated in ways that address the fundamental questions of life. New meanings are constantly generated from the same text in order (...) to describe and redescribe existence, and form human identity. The self is linked inseparably with narrative; every interpretation of narrative is at the same time a reinterpretation of the self and of its possibilities. In such interpretative processes, the reader interprets the text and the text interprets the reader at the same time through an interactive reading. Accordingly, the aim of interpreting the narratives is to open up the world of the text in front of the text and in front of the reader. Here what the text uncovers is the «textual» structure of existence itself. The reality that unfolds through language discloses the possibilities of existence, and in this way the text creates a future. A revised identity emerges against the horizon of that future to give a coherent and dynamic account of the self against a horizon of hope. (shrink)

A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play (...) a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them. (shrink)

Este nuevo volumen de las obras de Xavier Zubiri recoge de forma íntegra tres cursos, que hasta ahora se encontraban inéditos, o de los que sólo se conocían algunos fragmentos. Se trata de los cursos que Zubiri impartió sobre “El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones” (Madrid, 1965), “El problema de Dios en la historia de las religiones” (Barcelona, 1965), y “El hombre y el problema de Dios” (Madrid, 1968). Las religiones y su historia constituyen uno de (...) los grandes intereses de Xavier Zubiri como filósofo. A diferencia de otros planteamientos, que abordan lo religioso a partir de la vivencia de lo sagrado, o del discurso sobre lo divino, Zubiri entendió que el tratamiento filosófico de la religión debe partir de un hecho más elemental, que él llamaba “religación”. La religación sería un dato básico e ineludible, inseparable de la aprehensión primordial de la realidad, que nos constituye como humanos. Para Zubiri, las religiones, su diversidad, y su historia, serían más bien la plasmación ulterior de ese hecho radical. Al análisis de ese hecho, y al estudio de su despliegue histórico, incluyendo el cristianismo, están dedicados estos tres importantes cursos. Su lectura nos pone en contacto directo con el surgimiento de una de las filosofías más originales de nuestro tiempo. (Fuente: Alianza). (shrink)

L'ouvrage Quelles doctrines constitutionnelles pour quel(s) droit(s) constitutionel(s) réuni les contributions des plus éminents spécialistes du droit constitutionnel français, mais aussi étrangers, dans le but de dresser un état des lieux scientifiques de cette discipline : qu'est-ce le droit constitutionnel aujourd'hui? Quellle est son utilité? Et quelles sont ses méthodes, ses évolutuons? Les différentes contributions ici proposées se penchent sur la possible formalisation (ou pas) d'une discipline scientifique autour d'une ou différentes écoles, ainsi que les évolutions qui travaillent les objets, (...) ou encore les domaines politiques et juridiques, mais aussi économiques, sociaux et culturels qu'il se propose d'appréhender. Cet ouvrage se révèle donc un outil précieux pour tous les juristes, mais plus largement, pour tous les citoyens qui s'intéressent aux questions de l'organisation constitutionnelle du Pouvoir au sein des Etats modernes. (shrink)

En un diálogo continuo con la tradición filosófica, Zubiri va página a página describiendo el acto de la intelección humana y desmontando el cúmulo de hipótesis y teorías que subyacen al llamado «problema del conocimiento». Zubiri consigue descubrir, mediante el recurso a un procedimiento puramente descriptivo, en qué consiste el acto humano por excelencia, la intelección. La intelección humana, dice Zubiri, no es una síntesis trascendental, sino algo más simple a la vez que más radical, la mera actualización de lo (...) real en la inteligencia sentiente. (shrink)

Features of threatening cues and the associated context influence the perceived imminence of threat and the defensive responses evoked. To provide additional knowledge about how the directionality of a threat (i.e. directed-towards or away from the viewer) might impact defensive responses in humans, participants were shown pictures of a man carrying a gun (threat) or nonlethal object (neutral) directed-away from or towards the participant. Cardiac and electrodermal responses were collected. Compared to neutral images, threatening images depicting a gun directed-towards the (...) participant induced sustained bradycardia and an increased electrodermal response, interpreted as immobility under attack. This defensive immobility reaction is evoked by high perceived threat and inescapable situations and indicates intense action preparation. Pictures of guns directed-away from the participant induced shorter bradycardia and no significant modulation of the electrodermal response compared to neutral pictures, which might be consistent with the perception of a less threatening situation. The results show that the directionality of threat stimuli is a key factor that prompts different patterns of defensive responses. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a criticism, inspired by Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, of the enactivist account of perception and action. We start by setting up a non-descriptivist naturalism regarding the mind and continue by defining enactivism and exploring its more attractive theoretical features. We then proceed to analyse its proposal to understand normativity non-socially. We argue that such a thesis is ultimately committed to the problematic idea that normative practices can be understood as private and factual. Finally, we offer a (...) characterization of normativity as an essentially social phenomenon and apply our criticisms to other approaches that share commitments with enactivism. (shrink)

Est-ce un hasard si Jean-Marc Ferry, d'un côté du Rhin, Jürgen Habermas, de l'autre, entrouvrent aujourd'hui la porte de la République au discours religieux? Si la raison publique faite de liberté et d'égalité semblait suffire pour régir le champ économique et social de notre Modernité première, elle s'avère trop courte lorsqu'il s'agit de formuler la norme commune applicable aux fondamentaux de l'existence tels que la vie, le corps, l'amour, la mort... D'où l'appel de nos deux auteurs aux ressources de sens (...) qu'ont accumulées les religions et, singulièrement, le christianisme. Pour prendre cette requête au sérieux, il fallait revisiter les grands axes de la tradition chrétienne (création, faute, incarnation, salut, trinité, eucharistie) pour en dégager les enseignements qui enrichiraient la raison publique d'aujourd'hui. Mais la foi se laissera-t-elle ainsi arraisonner? Et la raison s'ouvrira-t-elle à ce discours qui vient de plus loin qu'elle? La partie est loin d'être gagnée. Xavier Dijon la mène avec grand talent. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: This commentary highlights some controversial aspects of enactivism and ecological psychology, specifically the notions of subjectivity and ecological information. I argue that, instead of choosing between them, both theories could complement each other at different levels of analysis in a single research framework for explaining cognition from a situated perspective.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce an approach for understanding social cognition that we call the normative approach to social cognition. Such an approach, which results from a systematization of previous arguments and ideas from authors such as Ryle, Dewey, or Wittgenstein, is an alternative to the classic model and the direct social perception model. In section 2, we evaluate the virtues and flaws of these two models. In section 3, we introduce the normative approach, according to (...) which human, socio-cognitive competences rely on a myriad of social norms and routines that mediate our social interactions in such a way that we can make sense of each other without taking into consideration their mental states. In sections 4 and 5, we find some common premises shared by the two prior models and offer some arguments against them. In section 6, we advance some possible arguments against our approach and offer some responses against them. (shrink)

Pourquoi Empédocle a-t-il recouru à la forme poétique pour exposer sa pensée? Empédocle réinterprète la langue, les techniques et la visée sociale des grands poèmes épiques et didactiques de la Grèce archaïque pour adapter les ressources à un projet dans lequel poésie et philosophie sont indissociables.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce an approach for understanding social cognition that we call the normative approach to social cognition. Such an approach, which results from a systematization of previous arguments and ideas from authors such as Ryle, Dewey, or Wittgenstein, is an alternative to the classic model and the direct social perception model. In section 2, we evaluate the virtues and flaws of these two models. In section 3, we introduce the normative approach, according to (...) which human, socio-cognitive competences rely on a myriad of social norms and routines that mediate our social interactions in such a way that we can make sense of each other without taking into consideration their mental states. In sections 4 and 5, we find some common premises shared by the two prior models and offer some arguments against them. In section 6, we advance some possible arguments against our approach and offer some responses against them. (shrink)

"Beau mystère que ce Mémorial l Que s'est-il exactement passé, ce 23 novembre 1653? Qu'a voulu dire Pascal avec ces phrases tronquées ou allusives? De quel Feu parle-t-il? De quelle certitude? De quelle séparation? A qui s'adresse-t-il? Les mots énigmatiques qu'il énonce, je pressens qu'ils sont la clef d'une vie. Je suis aussi curieux de les décortiquer que si j'avais retrouvé la bande sonore de l'Annonciation ou la vidéo de la chute de Paul de Tarse sur le chemin de Damas. (...) Mais au-delà de la curiosité vient l'aventure : la lecture de Pascal m'entraîne plus loin que je voudrais". Par le commentaire suivi qu'il fait du Mémorial en tant qu'écrivain et romancier, Xavier Patier nous offre une entrée personnelle et magnifique dans l'oeuvre et la pensée de Blaise Pascal. (shrink)

Context: Affordances are gaining momentum as a key object of study in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of mind. In The Philosophy of Affordances I propose a new way to understand ….

In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity. First, we offer an account of normativity and provide some examples of how it is understood in the specialized literature. Affordances, we claim, lack correctness criteria and, hence, the possibility of error is not among their necessary conditions. For this reason we will oppose Chemero’s normative theory of affordances. Finally, we will show that there is a (...) way in which taking advantage of affordances could be considered as possessing a normative character, but only when they are evaluated within the framework of social normative standards in particular situations. This reinforces our claim that affordances, per se, lack normativity and can only be taken to be rule-governed in relation to established normative practices. (shrink)

In the last years, we have attended to different attempts to extend the notion of affordance to include mental or cognitive actions. In short, the idea is that our capacity to perform some cognitive functions such as counting, imagining, mathematical reasoning, and so on, is preceded by our awareness of cognitive or mental affordances. In this paper, we analyze two of these attempts, Mental Affordance Hypothesis, and cognitive horizons, and conclude that they fail to deliver their promise. Our argument is (...) two-fold. First, we show that both proposals lack an explanation for how these affordances can be perceived or experienced by the individuals. Second, we argue, focusing on the examples provided by the authors, that the introduction of cognitive affordances is not justified on explanatory grounds. In other words, neither of these proposals offers a compelling justification for thinking that performing said “mental acts” requires the perception of mental or cognitive affordances. Hence, the existence of mental or cognitive affordances remains both scientifically mysterious and explanatorily unjustified. (shrink)