La obra de Yosman Botero siempre ha orbitado entre paradojas. Desde los mismos lugares suplementarios de su obra, como los títulos de sus series Full of Emptiness (2013), Immaterial matter (2014) y Postcolombino (2016) se plantea una encrucijada tanto de la “supervivencia de las imágenes” del arte como de su capacidad comunicativa de la realidad: ya sea esta la experiencia del arte o la realidad social colombiana, o lo que sea que entendemos por “lo real”, tan cara a las propuestas (...) simulacionistas y posapropiacionistas de las décadas del setenta y ochenta. Y digo paradojas porque aquí se juega en los terrenos de una intención inexpresiva ante los procesos de creación de la imagen: Opie, Haring, Negret, Davies, Los Simpsons, Velásquez, o el conflicto colombiano, no son más que el mundo al que Yosman Botero se refiere; pero es un mundo sometido a los procesos de reproducción y mediación cultural, y reflejado en las imágenes. (shrink)

The complex world of thought and sensitivity in the sphere of contemporary art has entailed the revision and exclusion of disciplines aimed at providing a model to explain and conceptualize reality. Art history, as one such discipline, has had many of its contributions questioned from Gombrich’s epistemological reformulation to the postmodern discourses, which extol the death of the author, the post-structuralist idea of tradition as a textual phenomenon, and the declaration of the death of history as a consequence of the (...) hybridization of disciplines and of other bran- ches of human knowledge. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated that proposals as those by Julius von Schlosser and Giulio Carlo Argan enclose reflections and methodological aspects which can help us face the task of understanding and visualizing the mediating role of historians in the culture of sensitivity, and the art modulations that have resulted from the blows of history and that, in turn, have shaped both art and art history into what they are or can be to us today. (shrink)

Entre el arte y la literatura se han generado múltiples reflexiones que han sido estudiadas por la historia del arte, la teoría literaria y la estética, entre otros. Igualmente, podemos considerar una larga tradición de artistas y escritores que se han empeñado, por medio de ensayos, críticas y manifiestos, en considerar los ámbitos y lugares de competencia de cada forma artística, así como sus lugares de similitud y diferencia en una larga tradición de préstamos interartísticos entre la palabra y la (...) imagen. En el seno de esta discusión, se quiere analizar el diálogo disciplinar entre la literatura y el arte que se da en torno a la figura del pintor post impresionista Paul Gauguin y el escritor Mario Vargas Llosa. Para ello, reflexionamos a partir de una de las obras fundamentales del pintor francés, que tiene su correspondencia y complementariedad en la obra literaria del escritor peruano. De esta manera, se presenta una revisión de una fuente literaria que propone no solo una alusión temática a la obra del pintor, sino que se enmarca bajo coordenadas estéticas, que superan los armazones de las teorías o historias meramente literarias. (shrink)

The main discourses on art during the nineteenth century defined the artist as a spirit that should express their unbridled creativity, and overall that had the strength to express its total personal autonomy from institutional processes of culture. Thus, Manet’s work A bar at the Folies—Bergere contains substantial elements that express and help us to understand both the role of the artist, as the crisis of meaning in the work of modern art and problematic public sphere, treated by Haberma's as (...) the field of social life in which we can develop our public opinion, and that is determined by common sense and rational consensus. In this sense, this article leverages how A bar at the Folies—Bergere questions the social representation of not only the public but the legitimizing institutions that support an artistic truth, to point to an x—ray that presents the structure and the gap between the public and artists, between artistic expression and cultural significance, and thus presents the cultural crisis warned by artists. (shrink)

Si no me falla la memoria, fue el dibujante Álvaro Barrios quien afirmó que el trabajo del artista contemporáneo colombiano se desarrolla según una agenda de trabajo. Si miramos algunos fenómenos del arte último en Colombia, podemos señalar que su agenda está determinada por el intento de comprensión de los procesos de la violencia en el país, a partir de una amplia gama de aproximaciones al concepto de memoria que ha tenido resonancia en las disciplinas humanísticas, las investigaciones académicas, el (...) uso político del concepto por parte de la legislación estatal, y una gran diversidad de eventos artísticos. Desde el ámbito del arte, exposiciones como Destierro y reparación (2008), Tapices de Mampuján (2010), La guerra que no hemos visto (2009) o La piel de la memoria (2011), han discutido sobre la violencia en Colombia desde la aproximación a los procesos de comprensión de la memoria y nuestro pasado reciente. Así, la imbricación de violencia y memoria se manifiesta en la visión del pasado y en los efectos que este puede desplegar sobre el presente, en tanto se ha considerado, incluso, a la memoria como una instancia de reconciliación social. (shrink)

Frente al interés por construir un discurso que dé cuenta del momento particular del arte contemporáneo, y que, además, pueda esclarecer y proponer diversas respuestas frente a los productos artísticos que se realizan en la difícil circunstancia actual, se han dirigido diferentes propuestas disciplinares que presentan análisis de la obra de arte y la experiencia que surge en su comprensión. La situación, que a veces se caracteriza por la impotencia de la teoría, la historia y la crítica del arte al (...) ocuparse del arte más reciente, proviene, entre otras razones, de un hecho evidente: nunca estas disciplinas habían tenido que entenderse con tal abundancia de prácticas, fenómenos artísticos, y declaraciones artísticas. Asimismo, las complejas formas vividas por el sistema internacional del arte ha planteado a la comprensión de estos fenómenos una serie de retos de fuerte impacto en la misma actividad de los artistas. Y uno de esos retos ha sido examinar la forma material, los soportes y lenguajes artísticos de obra de arte. (shrink)

Gombrich: la Historia del arte y las humanidades hace un estudio de la sobresaliente figura de Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), como un punto de encuentro común para el investigador y el alumno sobre el arte y sus relatos legitimadores en la tradición humanista. De esta manera, planteo el interés por pensar la Historia del arte para el presente, en el cual Gombrich se enfrena al problema del método de la Historia como una humanidad en el ámbito académico, tanto en el mundo (...) del pensamiento como en el mundo burocrático de las instituciones universitarias. (shrink)

Desde Platón el arte ha sido deslegitimado filosóficamente porque su elemento y su medio es la apariencia. De tal manera que, el ser y la verdad, según la antigua teoría, se encuentran en las ideas y no en las apariencias sensibles. Hegel está lejos de este platonismo en sus Lecciones sobre estética y, por el contrario, va a realizar una reivindicación de la apariencia en el arte. El interés de este artículo es indagar por la distinción entre apariencia que engaña, (...) vinculada al no–ser, y la apariencia necesaria de las obras de arte que, para Hegel, es la apariencia de la esencia. El artículo aprovecha tanto la oposición planteada por Hegel entre belleza natural–belleza espiritual, como el modo de ser del arte como ideal, para indicar que es la apariencia del arte una de las formas donde el espíritu se hace concreción, donde revela su conciencia activa, pensante, y puede manifestar sensiblemente las determinaciones e intereses más altos para su cultura. (shrink)

In the following article we explore one of the central philosophical problems of the philosophy of history: re ections on the new consciousness of historical time in the light of two lead-concepts of Modernity: secularization and experience. Regularly we use the term "philosophy of history" without realizing that a fundamental ambiguity arises in the concept of history itself. On the one hand, it indicates the story as such, as the development of processes, developments and events throughout history; on the other (...) hand , the same term is used to refer to the science that investigates by those claims and those conditions of possibility of why stories occur, how they can be completed, how they can be told and how they should be studied and why. Thus, it is necessary to consider the secularization and experience in the business of historical processes and the way we look, we report and interpret philosophically that activity, particularly in the nineteenth century. In other words, besides the study of historical problems, the philosophy of history is also presented as a discipline, with its own history and with a particular epistemological development. (shrink)

En medio de tanta charla irresponsable que inunda los diversos medios de comunicación y las tribunas gubernamentales sobre la educación, en el que se figura la viabilidad del país desde lo económico y no desde lo civilizado, recordé las “uvas verdes”, esa referencia que Gombrich utilizó en una de sus tantas conferencias sobre las humanidades. La fábula de Esopo da qué pensar sobre la valoración de las humanidades en la malla de las instituciones de educación superior. Los juicios despreciables que (...) aparecen bajo la forma de la innovación, a partir de indicadores y criterios de examinabilidad que promueve el gobierno, los ministerios y Colciencias, son solo una muestra de cómo esa charla fácil pretende circunscribir a las humanidades en el nuevo paraíso medible del ámbito académico. (shrink)

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ITS DISPLACEMENTS IN COLOMBIAN CONTEMPORARY ART. BOOK REVIEW: THE LIMITS OF THE INDEX. THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE AND CONTEMPORARY ART IN COLOMBIA BY EFREN GIRALDO.

Autores como Lukács o Adorno, por solo mencionar algunos nombres del siglo XX, han visto en el ensayo uno de los géneros literarios fundamentales para la expresión y exposición de ideas, con el bemol de que el ensayo siempre está en conflicto con otras plataformas de conocimiento, como las del orden establecido por la institución y la academia. Desde una postura compartida, el ensayista y crítico Efrén Giraldo se ha preocupado por la reinvindicación del ensayo literario, como una fuente de (...) figuración de la realidad, en el ámbito intelectual colombiano. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 281-296.

Barcelona has become one of the most touristic cities in the world, with more than 18 million visitors per year, coming to a city with only 1.7 million inhabitants. The model of tourism is depredatory, destroying old neighborhoods and pushing Catalans out of the city. At the same time, people from the Global South come to the city, but in more precarious conditions. They find a city that does not welcome them and that puts them in the worst conditions. I (...) want to focus on two movies that present Barcelona as an ill city. On the one hand, we have Woody Allen’s Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona, a movie that shows the upper-class American tourism in a European city. On the other hand, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, also starred by Javier Bardem, shows us another story about Barcelona. This is a movie that pays attention to the bottom of the well, Spanish lower-class workers struggling shoulder to shoulder with lower class migrants, people who will never enjoy the life that Allen`s characters have. In this paper I want to show how film can represent illness in different ways. To do so, I first explain, very briefly, the Barcelona model, a model of inclusive, modern city that Vicky and Cristina enjoy. But, this model insofar as it includes people, it excludes them. I will show the construction of the City from 1888 to 1992/2004 and how it has created spaces of inclusion and exclusion. In the second part, I will analyze the right to housing and the housing crisis that is currently affecting the city. In this part, I want to focus both in the crisis and in the social mobilization that it has brought about. After constructing this context, I will analyze the two movies, as instruments to show/hide the diseases of the city. (shrink)

Minding Time: A Philosophical and Theoretical Approach to the Psychology of Time offers an innovative philosophical account of the most fundamental kinds of time representation.

En este artículo se presentan los resultados de la revisión de más de sesenta documetos sobre los estados oníricos en relación con la vigilia. En el texto se desarrollan tres puntos: primero, el surgimiento de las reflexiones sobre el estado onírico y sus connotaciones mitológicas, además de algunos datos filosóficos de la antigua Grecia. Segundo, se desarrolla una tematización del fenómeno de sueño o dormir, en la reflexión de la modernidad. Tercero, se elabora una aproximación a una fenomenología del dormir, (...) a partir de varios fenomenólogos reconocidos como Merelau-Ponty, Jean-Luc Nancy, Sartre, José Ortega y Gasset, Michel Henry, entre otros. Al final se exponen diecisiete conclusiones que dan cuenta de la reflexión, entre ellas tenemos el dormir como abandono del suejo de sí mismo, el sueño como un proceso no experiencial y, por tanto, teórico, y la permanencia de las emociones que emegen en los sueños y se prolongan a la vigilia. (shrink)

This article is a reading and direct analysis of two texts by Maurice Nédoncelle: La réciprocité des consciences and Vers une philosophie de l’amour et de la personne. I intend to make known in Spanish, firstly, the author’s doctrine of love, and, secondly, the metaphysical importance this notion has for the author, although this second aim can be the subject of further studies that delve into Nédoncelle’s personalist philosophical idea of love. The reading of these texts has led me to (...) present two questions of the philosophy of love. Firstly, what is the ontological constituent of love? Secondly, what is the most evident manifestation of personal love? Both questions will be treated predominantly from a theoretical rather than practical perspective. I propose that Maurice Nédoncelle wanted to demonstrate that what best characterizes persons is their ability to love and be loved. (shrink)

This monograph addresses the question of the increasing irrelevance of philosophy, which has seen scientists as well as philosophers concluding that philosophy is dead and has dissolved into the sciences. It seeks to answer the question of whether or not philosophy can still be fruitful and what kind of philosophy can be such. The author argues that from its very beginning philosophy has focused on knowledge and methods for acquiring knowledge. This view, however, has generally been abandoned in the last (...) century with the belief that, unlike the sciences, philosophy makes no observations or experiments and requires only thought. Thus, in order for philosophy to once again be relevant, it needs to return to its roots and focus on knowledge as well as methods for acquiring knowledge. Accordingly, this book deals with several questions about knowledge that are essential to this view of philosophy, including mathematical knowledge. Coverage examines such issues as the nature of knowledge; plausibility and common sense; knowledge as problem solving; modeling scientific knowledge; mathematical objects, definitions, diagrams; mathematics and reality; and more. This monograph presents a new approach to philosophy, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers with interests in the role of knowledge, the analytic method, models of science, and mathematics and reality. (shrink)

Many of the computing systems programmed using Machine Learning are opaque: it is difficult to know why they do what they do or how they work. Explainable Artificial Intelligence aims to develop analytic techniques that render opaque computing systems transparent, but lacks a normative framework with which to evaluate these techniques’ explanatory successes. The aim of the present discussion is to develop such a framework, paying particular attention to different stakeholders’ distinct explanatory requirements. Building on an analysis of “opacity” from (...) philosophy of science, this framework is modeled after accounts of explanation in cognitive science. The framework distinguishes between the explanation-seeking questions that are likely to be asked by different stakeholders, and specifies the general ways in which these questions should be answered so as to allow these stakeholders to perform their roles in the Machine Learning ecosystem. By applying the normative framework to recently developed techniques such as input heatmapping, feature-detector visualization, and diagnostic classification, it is possible to determine whether and to what extent techniques from Explainable Artificial Intelligence can be used to render opaque computing systems transparent and, thus, whether they can be used to solve the Black Box Problem. (shrink)

In his new book, Carlos Alberto Torres, an internationally renowned critical theorist of education, explores the early writings of Paulo Freire whose ideas have had a tremendous and long-lasting impact on the world of pedagogy and politics. Torres analyzes Freire's works, from the 1960s and 1970s, before Freire gained worldwide recognition for his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Offering an in-depth look into the formative thinking of Freire, Torres identifies how his ideas produced frameworks for educating global citizens, building community (...) and mutual respect, creating social responsibility, instilling an appreciation for diversity, promoting multiple literacies, and social justice education. This volume is the result of more than 3 decades of research with access to Freire's personal library and the archives of the Paulo Freire Institute, as well as the author's extensive conversations with Paulo Freire over two decades--Dr. Torres was Freire's adviser during his tenure as Secretary of Education in the Municipality of São Paulo, Brazil, 1989-1991. (shrink)

This paper extends earlier work by its authors on formal aspects of the processes of contracting a theory to eliminate a proposition and revising a theory to introduce a proposition. In the course of the earlier work, Gardenfors developed general postulates of a more or less equational nature for such processes, whilst Alchourron and Makinson studied the particular case of contraction functions that are maximal, in the sense of yielding a maximal subset of the theory (or alternatively, of one of (...) its axiomatic bases), that fails to imply the proposition being eliminated. In the present paper, the authors study a broader class, including contraction functions that may be less than maximal. Specifically, they investigate "partial meet contraction functions", which are defined to yield the intersection of some nonempty family of maximal subsets of the theory that fail to imply the proposition being eliminated. Basic properties of these functions are established: it is shown in particular that they satisfy the Gardenfors postulates, and moreover that they are sufficiently general to provide a representation theorem for those postulates. Some special classes of partial meet contraction functions, notably those that are "relational" and "transitively relational", are studied in detail, and their connections with certain "supplementary postulates" of Gardenfors investigated, with a further representation theorem established. (shrink)

v. 1. Ensino secundário e médio -- v. 2. Estudos sobre o ensino primário -- Planejamento educacional e contribuições à educação do futuro.

The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

The definitive account of Aristotle's life and school This definitive biography shows that Aristotle's philosophy is best understood on the basis of a firm knowledge of his life and of the school he founded. First published in Italian, and now translated, updated, and expanded for English readers, this concise chronological narrative is the most authoritative account of Aristotle's life and his Lyceum available in any language. Gathering, distilling, and analyzing all the evidence and previous scholarship, Carlo Natali, one of the (...) world's leading Aristotle scholars, provides a masterful synthesis that is accessible to students yet filled with evidence and original interpretations that specialists will find informative and provocative. Cutting through the controversy and confusion that have surrounded Aristotle's biography, Natali tells the story of Aristotle's eventful life and sheds new light on his role in the foundation of the Lyceum. Natali offers the most detailed and persuasive argument yet for the view that the school, an important institution of higher learning and scientific research, was designed to foster a new intellectual way of life among Aristotle's followers, helping them fulfill an aristocratic ideal of the best way to use the leisure they enjoyed. Drawing a wealth of connections between Aristotle's life and thinking, Natali demonstrates how the two are mutually illuminating. For this edition, ancient texts have been freshly translated on the basis of the most recent critical editions; indexes have been added, including a comprehensive index of sources and an index to previous scholarship; and scholarship that has appeared since the book's original publication has been incorporated. (shrink)

Franz Brentano is not usually associated with mathematics. Generally, only Brentano’s discussion of the continuum and his critique of the mathematical accounts of it is treated in the literature. It is this detailed critique which suggests that Brentano had more than a superficial familiarity with mathematics. Indeed, considering the authors and works quoted in his lectures, Brentano appears well-informed and quite interested in the mathematical research of his time. I specifically address his lectures here as there is much less to (...) be found about mathematics in his published works. Besides Brentano’s own work, it is quite remarkable to see that practically all of his better-known students sooner or later produced a work on the philosophy of mathematics. This also encourages the supposition not just of a common interest in the matter, but of a common theoretical core. All this prompts the question: Can we speak of a Brentanist philosophy of mathematics? (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to critically (...) challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

In the last few decades there has been a revival of interest in diagrams in mathematics. But the revival, at least at its origin, has been motivated by adherence to the view that the method of mathematics is the axiomatic method, and specifically by the attempt to fit diagrams into the axiomatic method, translating particular diagrams into statements and inference rules of a formal system. This approach does not deal with diagrams qua diagrams, and is incapable of accounting for the (...) role diagrams play as means of discovery and understanding. Alternatively, this paper purports to show that the view that the method of mathematics is the analytic method is capable of dealing with diagrams qua diagrams, and of accounting for such role. (shrink)

Bayesian reverse-engineering is a research strategy for developing three-level explanations of behavior and cognition. Starting from a computational-level analysis of behavior and cognition as optimal probabilistic inference, Bayesian reverse-engineers apply numerous tweaks and heuristics to formulate testable hypotheses at the algorithmic and implementational levels. In so doing, they exploit recent technological advances in Bayesian artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, but also consider established principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Although these tweaks and heuristics are highly pragmatic in character and (...) are often deployed unsystematically, Bayesian reverse-engineering avoids several important worries that have been raised about the explanatory credentials of Bayesian cognitive science: the worry that the lower levels of analysis are being ignored altogether; the challenge that the mathematical models being developed are unfalsifiable; and the charge that the terms ‘optimal’ and ‘rational’ have lost their customary normative force. But while Bayesian reverse-engineering is therefore a viable and productive research strategy, it is also no fool-proof recipe for explanatory success. (shrink)

The philosophy of mathematics of the last few decades is commonly distinguished into mainstream and maverick, to which a ‘third way’ has been recently added, the philosophy of mathematical practice. In this paper the limitations of these trends in the philosophy of mathematics are pointed out, and it is argued that they are due to the fact that all of them are based on a top-down approach, that is, an approach which explains the nature of mathematics in terms of some (...) general unproven assumption. As an alternative, a bottom-up approach is proposed, which explains the nature of mathematics in terms of the activity of real individuals and interactions between them. This involves distinguishing between mathematics as a discipline and the mathematics embodied in organisms as a result of biological evolution, which however, while being distinguished, are not opposed. Moreover, it requires a view of mathematical proof, mathematical definition and mathematical objects which is alternative to the top-down approach. (shrink)

The philosophical conception of mechanistic explanation is grounded on a limited number of canonical examples. These examples provide an overly narrow view of contemporary scientific practice, because they do not reflect the extent to which the heuristic strategies and descriptive practices that contribute to mechanistic explanation have evolved beyond the well-known methods of decomposition, localization, and pictorial representation. Recent examples from evolutionary robotics and network approaches to biology and neuroscience demonstrate the increasingly important role played by computer simulations and mathematical (...) representations in the epistemic practices of mechanism discovery and mechanism description. These examples also indicate that the scope of mechanistic explanation must be re-examined: With new and increasingly powerful methods of discovery and description comes the possibility of describing mechanisms far more complex than traditionally assumed. (shrink)

The terms of a mathematical problem become precise and concise if they are expressed in an appropriate notation, therefore notations are useful to mathematics. But are notations only useful, or also essential? According to prevailing view, they are not essential. Contrary to this view, this paper argues that notations are essential to mathematics, because they may play a crucial role in mathematical discovery. Specifically, since notations may consist of symbolic notations, diagrammatic notations, or a mix of symbolic and diagrammatic notations, (...) notations may play a crucial role in mathematical discovery in different ways. Some examples are given to illustrate these ways. (shrink)

I am a theoretical physicist, and, following Aristotles' injunction (Aristotle, Physics III, 202b 34), I do consider it my responsibility to discuss the problem of the notion of infinity in the world--in particular, to "inquire whether there is such a thing or not." I will do so here by illustrating some aspects of the notion of infinity in the natural sciences.

This paper provides a commentary on Truth and Method III.1.

This article argues for a new interpretation of the realist claim that politics is autonomous from morality and involves specific political values. First, this article defends an original normative source: functional normativity. Second, it advocates a substantive functional standard: political institutions ought to be assessed by their capacity to select and implement collective decisions. Drawing from the ‘etiological account’ in philosophy of biology, I will argue that functions yield normative standards, which are independent from morality. For example, a ‘good heart’ (...) is one that pumps blood well, and a good army is one that it is effective at exerting military force. I then interpret realism’s naturalistic conception of politics as an etiological function of social groups: namely making binding collective decisions under persistent disagreement. I conclude that political institutions should be evaluated realistically by how well they perform this task. Finally, I assess trade-offs between this functional political normativity and other moral values. I conclude that justice, fairness, freedom and equality remain obviously important concerns, but only once the basic political function is secured. (shrink)

This chapter subsumes David Marr’s levels of analysis account of explanation in cognitive science under the framework of mechanistic explanation: Answering the questions that define each one of Marr’s three levels is tantamount to describing the component parts and operations of mechanisms, as well as their organization, behavior, and environmental context. By explicating these questions and showing how they are answered in several different cognitive science research programs, this chapter resolves some of the ambiguities that remain in Marr’s account, and (...) shows that many different areas and traditions of cognitive scientific research can be unified under the mechanistic framework. (shrink)