John Holloway, the well-known sociologist who revolutionized the academic environment and political de bates with his book Change the World with out Taking Power, visited Argentina again in September, 2006, to give seminars. This dialogue took place in the city Mar del Plata. In it, notions of cr..

This paper presents a short review and then examines in some detail a text by Ricardo Maliandi on the natural motives of technique. It offers/provides methodological considerations and raises anthropological and ethical issues, casting doubt about the sense and scope of the technical in relation to human evolution.Esta comunicación resume primero y analiza después con cierto detalle un escrito de Ricardo Maliandi sobre los resortes naturales de la técnica , haciendo consideraciones de método, cuestionamientos antropológicos y éticos, sentando otros reparos (...) luego respecto del sentido y alcance de lo técnico en relación con la evolución del hombre. (shrink)

The problem of deviant causation has been a serious obstacle for causal theories of action. We suggest that attending to the problem of deviant causation reveals two related problems for causal theories. First, it threatens the reductive ambitions of causal theories of intentional action. Second, it suggests that such a theory fails to account for how the agent herself is guided by her reasons. Focusing on the second of these, we argue that the problem of guidance turns out to be (...) related to a number of other issues in the literature on action explanation, and that it is much more general: it threatens not only causal theories but any theory of action. Finally, we suggest that a certain version of the view that acting has a constitutive or formal aim can overcome this problem. (shrink)

Recent research on algebraic models of quasi-Nelson logic has brought new attention to a number of classes of algebras which result from enriching (subreducts of) Heyting algebras with a special modal operator, known in the literature as a nucleus. Among these various algebraic structures, for which we employ the umbrella term intuitionistic modal algebras, some have been studied since at least the 1970s, usually within the framework of topology and sheaf theory. Others may seem more exotic, for their primitive operations (...) arise from algebraic terms of the intuitionistic modal language which have not been previously considered. We shall for instance investigate the variety of weak implicative semilattices, whose members are (non-necessarily distributive) meet semilattices endowed with a nucleus and an implication operation which is not a relative pseudo-complement but satisfies the postulates of Celani and Jansana’s strict implication. For each of these new classes of algebras we establish a representation and a topological duality which generalize the known ones for Heyting algebras enriched with a nucleus. (shrink)

'We desire all and only those things we conceive to be good; we avoid what we conceive to be bad.' This slogan was once the standard view of the relationship between desire or motivation and rational evaluation. Many critics have rejected this scholastic formula as either trivial or wrong. It appears to be trivial if we just define the good as 'what we want', and wrong if we consider apparent conflicts between what we seem to want and what we seem (...) to think is good. In Appearances of the Good, Sergio Tenenbaum argues that the old slogan is both significant and right, even in cases of apparent conflict between our desires and our evaluative judgements. Maintaining that the good is the formal end of practical inquiry in much the same way as truth is the formal end of theoretical inquiry, he provides a fully unified account of motivation and evaluation. (shrink)

A implementação de tecnologias móveis de informação e comunicação no suporte à Saúde Mental tem atraído a atenção das autoridades. Com a ascensão das Inteligências Artificiais, esse movimento pode ser impulsionado de maneira exponencial. Nesse cenário, esta revisão tem como objetivos verificar a aplicabilidade das Inteligências Artificiais (IAs) na Saúde Mental e analisar os aspectos que favorecem a relação entre IAs e usuários. Para tanto, realizou-se uma revisão sistemática nas bases de dados PubMed e Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, no período (...) de 25 de maio a 23 de junho de 2023. Selecionamos os 100 primeiros artigos mais relevantes com as palavras-chave: “Inteligência Artificial”, “Saúde Mental”, “Chatbots”, “Psicoterapia”, “Psicologia” e suas equivalentes em inglês. Os critérios de inclusão foram: acesso aberto, publicação a partir de 2018, em português ou inglês e menção à atuação de IAs no âmbito da Saúde Mental. Para reduzir o risco de viés, excluímos os estudos que não mensuraram o impacto das intervenções por meio de métodos experimentais ou quase-experimentais. Para a síntese dos dados, delimitaram-se alguns pontos específicos de análise, como “Resultado da intervenção”, “Aspectos que favorecem a relação”, entre outros. Atenderam aos critérios de inclusão 24 estudos, dos quais 17 apresentaram resultados positivos em suas intervenções. O uso de IAs na Saúde Mental possui grande potencial de expansão e os resultados obtidos neste trabalho podem guiar a implementação dessas práticas e futuras pesquisas na área. (shrink)

Definiciones de epistemología hay muchas, al igual que clases y estilos. Sin embargo, más allá de esta diversidad, es necesario contar con una definición básica que guíe nuestra comprensión del tema. Dos serán las preguntas que nos ayuden a ello en este artículo: a) ¿qué es la epistemología? y b) ¿para qué le sirve al científico?

The COVID‐ 19 pandemic is a critical test for the already overburdened and mostly underfunded public healthcare systems of Latin America. In a region that suffers from severe inequalities, public healthcare systems are the only source of medical care for a large sector of the population who work in the informal economy or are unemployed. State‐run hospitals and clinics are already overstressed by continuous demand for treatment of vector‐borne diseases and community‐acquired infections as well as high rates of non‐communicable diseases. (...) Ideological misconceptions and denial among Latin America’s political leaders prevented timely preparations for the pandemic and added to chronic governance problems. As ethical expertise in Latin America focuses on research ethics, few hospitals in the region have functioning clinical ethics committees or clinical ethics policy, forcing healthcare personnel to make excruciating treatment decisions in an environment dominated by material scarcity and public distrust. This essay examines the emergence of COVID‐19 in Latin America and the serious challenge that it poses for Latin America's public healthcare systems. (shrink)

_Humanesis_ critically examines central strains of posthumanism, searching out biases in the ways that human–technology coupling is explained. Specifically, it interrogates three approaches taken by posthumanist discourse: scientific, humanist, and organismic. David Cecchetto’s investigations reveal how each perspective continues to hold on to elements of the humanist tradition that it is ostensibly mobilized against. His study frontally desublimates the previously unseen presumptions that underlie each of the three thought lines and offers incisive appraisals of the work of three prominent (...) thinkers: Ollivier Dyens, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Hansen. To materially ground the problematic of posthumanism, _Humanesis_ interweaves its theoretical chapters with discussions of artworks. These highlight the topos of sound, demonstrating how aurality might produce new insights in a field that has been dominated by visualization. Cecchetto, a media artist, scrutinizes his own collaborative artistic practice in which he elucidates the variegated causal chains that compose human–technological coupling. _Humanesis_ advances the posthumanist conversation in several important ways. It proposes the term “technological posthumanism” to focus on the discourse as it relates to technology without neglecting its other disciplinary histories. It suggests that deconstruction remains relevant to the enterprise, especially with respect to the performative dimension of language. It analyzes artworks not yet considered in the light of posthumanism, with a particular emphasis on the role of aurality. And the form of the text introduces a reflexive component that exemplifies how the dialogue of posthumanism might progress without resorting to the types of unilateral narratives that the book critiques. (shrink)

This article tries to establish the scopes and limits of the main interpretations on Newton during the 20th century, highlighting on the one hand the textual evidence at disposal, and on the other hand the philosophical and epistemological currents that defines the main features of those interpretations. It will be shown that the rejection of positivism is not sufficient condition for establishing an adequate interpretation and, together with the strengthening of the research from Newton’s manuscript, it is necessary a wider, (...) and more detailed model that those established by some of the most outstanding scholars like Alexandre Koyré, I. Bernard Cohen, Betty Dobbs, and Richard Westfall. (shrink)

Scientists have always attempted to explain the world in terms of a few unifying principles. In the fifth century B.C. Democritus boldly claimed that reality is simply a collection of indivisible and eternal parts or atoms. Over the centuries his doctrine has remained a landmark, and much progress in physics is due to its distinction between subjective perception and objective reality. This book discusses theory reduction in physics, which states that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its (...) parts: the properties of things are directly determined by their constituent parts. Reductionism deals with the relation between different theories that address different levels of reality, and uses extrapolations to apply that relation in different sciences. Reality shows a complex structure of connections, and the dream of a unified interpretation of all phenomena in several simple laws continues to attract anyone with genuine philosophical and scientific interests. If the most radical reductionist point of view is correct, the relationship between disciplines is strictly inclusive: chemistry becomes physics, biology becomes chemistry, and so on. Eventually, only one science, indeed just a single theory, would survive, with all others merging in the Theory of Everything. Is the current coexistence of different sciences a mere historical venture which will end when the Theory of Everything has been established? Can there be a unified description of nature? Rather than an analysis of full reductionism, this book focuses on aspects of theory reduction in physics and stimulates reflection on related questions: is there any evidence of actual reduction? Are the examples used in the philosophy of science too simplistic? What has been endangered by the search for (the) ultimate truth? Has the dream of reductionist reason created any monsters? Is big science one such monster? What is the point of embedding science Y within science X, if predictions cannot be made on that basis? (shrink)

Rational Powers in Action presents a conception of instrumental rationality as governing actions that are extended in time with indeterminate ends. Tenenbaum argues that previous philosophical theories in this area, in focusing on momentary snapshots of the mind of idealized agents, miss central aspects of human rationality.

Deontological theories face difficulties in accounting for situations involving risk; the most natural ways of extending deontological principles to such situations have unpalatable consequences. In extending ethical principles to decision under risk, theorists often assume the risk must be incorporated into the theory by means of a function from the product of probability assignments to certain values. Deontologists should reject this assumption; essentially different actions are available to the agent when she cannot know that a certain act is in her (...) power, so we cannot simply understand her choice situation as a “risk-weighted” version of choice under certainty. (shrink)

This article sheds light on Hobbes’s concept of the state of nature through a reading of his conception of knowledge, which makes it possible to relate him with the ‘New Science’ or the Scientific Revolution. In consequence, this article describes Hobbes with some problems and traditions of the Scientific Revolution through a fresh reading of his theory of knowledge, whence the concept of the state of nature is redefined in terms of integral cause; this makes it possible to argue the (...) need for Commonwealth, excluding the anthropological pessimism traditionally attributed to Hobbes. (shrink)

. The uniform prior distribution is often seen as a mathematical description of noninformativeness. This paper uses the well-known Three Prisoners Paradox to examine the impossibility of maintaining noninformativeness throughout hierarchization. The Paradox has been solved by Bayesian conditioning over the choice made by the Warder when asked to name a prisoner who will be shot. We generalize the paradox to situations of N prisoners, k executions and m announcements made by the Warder. We then extend the consequences of hierarchically (...) placing uniform and symmetrical priors for the probability p of the Warder naming Prisoner B, say. We prove that breaks of indifference and neutrality caused by assignment of uniform and symmetrical priors in lieu of degenerate indifference probabilities hold in general. Speaking of unknown probabilities or of probability of a probability must be forbidden as meaningless. Bruno de Finetti, 1977 I regard the use of hierarchical chains as a technique helping you to sharpen your subjective probabilities. I. J. Good, 1981. (shrink)

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore de Finetti's ideas and contributions to decision theory. Such ideas are not as well-known as his work on probability. ;The first part of the work is placed in a unisubjective decision-making context. It starts by including a discussion on predictivism, an approach to statistics which de Finetti insisted on and which has only recently been rediscovered and advocated. ;The second part is placed in the context of group, or multisubjective, decision-making. This (...) area is well-known for its negative results, starting with Arrow's impossibility theorem. While being aware of such difficulties, de Finetti made important contributions to this field, which he saw as the appropriate context to approach basic concepts such as "objectivity" and Wald's admissibility theorem. Such concepts, together with exchangeability, illuminate the Bayesian position by also making connection with the non-Bayesian approach. ;The last part of the work starts with a critical discussion of classical methods which are unacceptable for Bayesians. Finally, an important application problem--environmental stress screening--is solved from a Bayesian predictivist point of view. (shrink)

A guerra civil iniciada no final de 2013 no Sudão do Sul causou, pela primeira vez na história das Nações Unidas, um afluxo gigantesco de deslocados internos para o interior de bases da Missão das Nações Unidas no Sudão do Sul, em busca de proteção. Assim, foram criados os Protection of Civilian Sites. Com a chegada de dezenas de milhares de pessoas em poucas semanas, houve um enorme crescimento nas demandas humanitárias e de segurança. Para prover a necessária proteção, foi (...) necessário o trabalho conjunto de militares, policiais e civis da UNMISS, que será apresentado nesse trabalho. (shrink)

Intercultural discourse (especially via a lingua franca when interlocutors have a false impression that they are speaking one and the same language) adds a new dimension – facework (the establishment of culture-sensitive politeness strategies) – to the theory and practice of argumentation from a number of perspectives: its specificity as compared to ordinary argumentational discourse, the interpretation of the concept of incommensurability, and the conduct of international negotiations. Politeness systems relevant for different cultures are not unpredictable, but represent linguistically and (...) cognitively a highly generalised universal system which can be adopted by interlocutors and used in practical discourse. Politeness expressions are governed by linguistic components – by language forms of a certain type and by specific discourse patterns. The proper choice of language forms and discourse patterns adds a special dimension to argumentative schemata. The politeness-relevant packaging of discourse adds a zero-step to the normative stages of an argumentative discussion (establishing hierarchical relations as such), and needs permanent alignment of these relations, by using correct language forms and discourse patterns. (shrink)

An effective method to increase the number of potential cadaveric organ donors is to make people donors by default with the option to opt out. This non-coercive public policy tool to influence people’s choices is often justified on the basis of the as-judged-by-themselves principle: people are nudged into choosing what they themselves truly want. We review three often hypothesized reasons for why defaults work and argue that the as-judged-by-themselves principle may hold only in two of these cases. We specify further (...) conditions for when the principle can hold in these cases and show that whether those conditions are met is often unclear. We recommend ways to expand nationwide surveys to identify the actual reasons for why defaults work and discuss mandated choice policy as a viable solution to many arising conundrums. (shrink)

In this paper we advance a new solution to Quinn’s puzzle of the self-torturer. The solution falls directly out of an application of the principle of instrumental reasoning to what we call “vague projects”, i.e., projects whose completion does not occur at any particular or definite point or moment. The resulting treatment of the puzzle extends our understanding of instrumental rationality to projects and ends that cannot be accommodated by orthodox theories of rational choice.

This essay examines the problem of medial specificity in music and sound art, giving particular attention to Seth Kim-Cohen’s call for a non-cochlear sound art based on the notion of “expansion” that has been decisive in visual arts discourses. I argue that Kim-Cohen’s non-cochlear intervention in In the Blink of an Ear might be productively pressured towards the concept of a “sonic effect” that acknowledges the material-discursive particularity of sound without recourse to the phenomenological claims of authenticity that Kim-Cohen correctly (...) abhors. In service of this argument, the essay extensively discusses a sound and media artwork – Exurbia, created by myself and William Brent – that leverages the metaphorics of sound against existing understandings of specific forms of network communication. I argue that the conceptual and material dimensions of the project stridulate in a hum of recursive vectors for considering the constitution and consequences of networked aural interaction. Exurbia can thus be parsed in terms of medial specificity precisely because its digital aural materials are themselves discursive. (shrink)

This paper reports the framework, method and main findings of an analysis of cultural milieus in 4 European countries. The analysis is based on a questionnaire applied to a sample built through a two-step procedure of post-hoc random selection from a broader dataset based on an online survey. Responses to the questionnaire were subjected to multidimensional analysis-a combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis. We identified 5 symbolic universes, that correspond to basic, embodied, affect-laden, generalized worldviews. People in this (...) study see the world as either a) an ordered universe;b) a matter of interpersonal bond;c) a caring society;d) consisting of a niche of belongingness;e) a hostile place. These symbolic universes were also interpreted as semiotic capital: they reflect the capacity of a place to foster social and civic development. Moreover, the distribution of the symbolic universes, and therefore social and civic engagement, is demonstrated to be variable across the 4 countries in the analysis. Finally, we develop a retrospective reconstruction of the distribution of symbolic universes as well as the interplay between their current state and past, present and future socio-institutional scenarios. (shrink)

The prehistory of science and technology studies -- The Kuhnian revolution -- Questioning functionalism in the sociology of science -- Stratification and discrimination -- The strong programme and the sociology of knowledge -- The social construction of scientific and technical realities -- Feminist epistemologies of science -- Actor-network theory -- Two questions concerning technology -- Studying laboratories -- Controversies -- Standardization and objectivity -- Rhetoric and discourse -- The unnaturalness of science and technology -- The public understanding of science -- (...) Expertise and public participation -- Political economies of knowledge. (shrink)

Nota crítica a propósito de: Castro, R. y Chamorro, E. _ Para una crítica del neoliberalismo: Foucault y el Nacimiento de la biopolítica_. Madrid: Lengua de trapo. González Sánchez, I. _Neoliberalismo y castigo_. Barcelona: Bellaterra. Villacañas, J. L. _Neoliberalismo como teología política: Habermas, Foucault, Laval, Dardot y la historia del capitalismo contemporáneo_. Barcelona: NED ediciones.

The practice of parkour in urban spaces by young people, especially those who call themselves traceurs, illustrates how identities are formed in an ephemeral way by reinterpreting spaces in the city – briefly and without leaving a trace. However, in a sort of paradox, these interventions are registered in the socio-digital spectrum, tokenistically anchoring and incorporating them into conversations and social interactions. This work aims to explain the practice of the sport called parkour as a socio-semiotic phenomenon. We have used (...) some zones of Mexico City as a specific case for our approach. The foregoing leads to the conclusion that the meaning of parkour goes beyond its recreational role and places it as a relevant piece of identity for excluded urban social groups – even though these practices have been appropriated by marketing strategies. Our approach will use a cultural semiotics perspective, as well as direct observations and interviews as research techniques. (shrink)

Definiciones de epistemología hay muchas, al igual que clases y estilos. Sin embargo, más allá de esta diversidad, es necesario contar con una definición básica que guíe nuestra comprensión del tema. Dos serán las preguntas que nos ayuden a ello en este artículo: a) ¿qué es la epistemología? y b) ¿para qué le sirve al científico?

Two Lagrangians L and L′ are equivalent if the equations of motion derived from them have the same set of solutions. In that case, a matrix Λ may be defined which has the property that the trace of any analytic function of Λ is a constant of the motion. We extend this trace theorem to the case of classical field theory and discuss some of the implications for quantum theory and for procedures for finding equivalent Lagrangians.

A questão sobre Deus em Aristóteles aparece na teoria sobre o primeiro motor imóvel, demonstrada no livro XII da Metafísica. Tudo o que se move é movido por outro. Entende Aristóteles que no universo há uma série indeterminada de motores e movidos. Todos os movimentos têm uma causa anterior. Mas, não é possível regredir ao infinito, pois todos e cada um sempre dependeriam de outro. Por esta razão, conclui o Estagirita que é necessário que exista um primeiro motor imóvel que (...) não seja movido por nenhum outro. Ora, se não existisse um primeiro motor absoluto, seria impossível o movimento gerado nos outros motores que compõem o universo. Neste estudo sobre a teoria aristotélica, que se tornou tradicional na teodiceia, apresentamos determinados passos da Metafísica com o auxílio de alguns comentadores sem, contudo, entrar em aporias importantes que o texto aristotélico vem suscitando entre os pesquisadores. (shrink)