This article expands Patchen Markell’s seminal problematization of The Human Condition by examining the impact that the modern developments in science and technology had on Arendt’s signature categories. Whereas Markell is interested in the systematic “architecture” of the book, I attempt to historicize Arendt’s distinctions in light of the story she tells about science and technology. From the invention of the telescope to the splitting of the atom, technoscience has provoked shifts in the hierarchies within the vita activa; spawned new (...) varieties of “labor,” “work,” and “action”; and blurred the traditional boundaries between “nature” and the “human world.” These reconfigurations draw the contours of a new, “modern world” that is different from the world whose story and conceptual tradition Arendt set out to articulate. Largely as a result of the activities of science and technology, the experiences that informed the categories of the “Western tradition” correspond to a world that is no longer our own. (shrink)

This paper’s main contention is that some basically methodological developments in science which are apparently distant and unrelated can be seen as part of a sequential story. Focusing on general inferential and epistemological matters, the paper links occurrences separated by both in time and space, by formal and representational issues rather than social or disciplinary links. It focuses on a few limited aspects of several cognitive practices in medical and biological contexts separated by geography, disciplines and decades, but connected by (...) long term transdisciplinary representational and inferential structures and constraints. The paper intends to show a given set of knowledge claims based on organizing statistically empirical data can be seen to have been underpinned by a previous, more familiar, and probably more natural, narrative handling of similar evidence. To achieve that this paper moves from medicine in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century in England among gentleman naturalists, following its subject: the shift from narrative depiction of hereditary transmission of physical peculiarities to posterior statistical articulations of the same phenomena. Some early defenders of heredity as an important causal presence in the understanding of life adopted singular narratives, in the form of case stories from medical and natural history traditions, to flesh out a special kind of causality peculiar to heredity. This work tries to reconstruct historically the rationale that drove the use of such narratives. It then shows that when this rationale was methodologically challenged, its basic narrative and probabilistic underpinings were transferred to the statistical quantificational tools that took their place. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a broad characterization of the kind of account that I believe cannot plausibly face conclusively the problem of the ethics of immigration restrictions in a non-ideal world at the level of the constitutional essentials. I argue that justice-based accounts of immigration controls fail to normatively evaluate what immigration controls do to outsiders subjected to them in non-ideal conditions, so judgments of justice by themselves tend to be overall bad for the interest of (...) immigrants. I explain this by insisting that a prior question about the legitimacy of immigration controls have been overlooked by familiar accounts. A full account of the ethics of immigration suitable for guiding constitutional essentials should be able to connect distinct kinds of justice-based evaluations in order to ask both, what legitimacy requires from territorial institutional control as well as what justice requires from immigration policy. (shrink)

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control (...) ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders. (shrink)

This article assesses an assumption pervasive in one strain of arguments in favor of stringent immigration controls. The assumption affirms that—for the case of regular admissions—to a certain extent states are permitted to prioritize the interests of their citizens and residents by issuing exclusionary immigration policies (call this the priority assumption). Using the normative methodology of applied international ethics, I suggest some broad constraints to this priority assumption that have a bearing on justifications for current practical immigration policy in Europe, (...) North America, and beyond. I do so by redefining borders as domestic-international institutions that open up borders not only to (internal) standards of justice but also to standards of international legitimacy. (shrink)

This article examines fashion models as gender myths and cultural iconsthrough a cultural history of modelling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by the successive addition of meaningful signs:physique, manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, chameleonism, slenderness and so on. On the basis of empirical material on models’ experiences gathered from interviews, secondary oral sources and autobiographical material, the author approaches models’ bodies, identities and public personas as artefacts performed through the reiteration of collectively defined gender standards and practices. (...) This approach overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse between visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction. (shrink)

From a scientific standpoint, the world is more prepared than ever to respond to infectious disease outbreaks; paradoxically, globalization and air travel, antimicrobial resistance, the threat of bioterrorism, and newly emerging pathogens driven by ecological, socioeconomic, and environmental factors, have increased the risk of global epidemics.1,2,3 Following the 2002–2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), global efforts to build global emergency response capabilities to contain infectious disease outbreaks were put in place.4,5,6 But the recent H1N1, Ebola, and Zika global epidemics have (...) shown unnecessary delays and insufficient coordination in response efforts.7,8,9,10 In a thoughtful and compelling essay,11 Thana C. de Campos argues that greater clarity in the definition of pandemics would probably result in more timely effective emergency responses, and pandemic preparedness. In her view, a central problem is that the definition of pandemics is based solely on disease transmission across several countries, and not on spread and severity together, which conflates two very different situations: emergency and nonemergency disease outbreaks. A greater emphasis on severity, such that pandemics are defined as severe and rapidly spreading infectious disease outbreaks, would make them “true global health emergencies,” allowing for priority resource allocation and effective collective actions in emergency response efforts. Sympathetic to the position taken by de Campos, here I highlight some of the challenges in the definition of severity during an infectious disease outbreak. (shrink)

La utilización de la radio de manera planificada e intencionada en el proceso educativo contribuye a que los jóvenes adquieran una amplia gama de conocimientos referidos a diversos temas académicos, científicos y humanísticos, de una manera interactiva y vivencial. Partiendo de esta premisa es posible inferir que la radio constituye un recurso útil y valioso para consolidar competencias para la convivencia social en los estudiantes de educación media. Es por ello que el objetivo de este estudio es proponer el uso (...) de la radio como un recurso tecnológico pertinente para la asimilación de competencias para la convivencia social. Para alcanzar el objetivo propuesto el trabajo se enmarca en una investigación de tipo documental. Los resultados del estudio evidencian que la incorporación de la radio a la dinámica de trabajo pedagógico es potencialmente útil en la estimulación de competencias para la convivencia social, fortaleciendo significativamente aptitudes afectivas y morales como la igualdad, el respeto, el trabajo colaborativo y en equipo, la solidaridad, entre otros, además de propiciar en el estudiante el mejoramiento de sus habilidades para la expresión oral y escrita. (shrink)

En el Cuento de un tonel, Swift denuncia a esos �innovadores en el imperio de la razón� que son los modernos. El discurso de la sátira es escéptico. Su estructura es la fuerza igual (isosthéneia escéptica) de los argumentos. Si con sus prácticas de lenguaje el escepticismo antiguo (pirronismo) buscaba liberarse de la argumentación para alcanzar la tranquilidad del alma, el texto swiftiano se desentiende de la interpretación del lector, amenazando con excluirlo, forzándolo a decidir. La controversia generada desestabiliza al (...) lector y promueve su despertar ético-político. Esto, y el uso en el orden discursivo de la simulación y la disimulación, con que Maquiavelo (autor favorito de Swift) caracteriza a las prácticas políticas, organizan una peculiar trama de la dominación. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, trato la relación entre las afecciones y lo aparente en el escepticismo antiguo. Evalúo las dimensiones ética y epistemológica de esta relación, en lo que concierne al intercambio entre el afuera y el adentro subjetivos. Entiendo aquí este intercambio en términos del continuo del conocimiento. Doy inicio a este texto con la lectura de un pasaje de los Esbozos Pirrónicos de Sexto Empírico, para proceder luego con una evaluación del conocimiento y de la afección escéptica, en (...) el marco de una revisión de los conceptos principales de esta tradición filosófica. Esto nos permitirá abordar el carácter crítico de sus postulados, así como su actualidad. In this paper I make a review of the relation between affections and the apparent in ancient skepticism. I hereby evaluate ethical and epistemological dimensions of this relation, in what concerns the exchange between the inside and the outside of subjectivity. I understand this exchange in terms of the continuum of knowledge. I begin this text with a reading of a passage of Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Skepticism, proceeding next with an evaluation of skeptical knowledge and affection, in the context of a revision of the main concepts of this philosophical tradition. This will allow us to treat the critical character of its postulates, as well as its actuality. (shrink)

En la genealogía del cuidado de sí, Foucault afirma que la filosofía cartesiana propina a esta tradición el golpe definitivo que la condena al olvido. A partir de entonces, el sujeto ya no debe practicar sobre su ser de sujeto ninguna transformación para acceder a la verdad, basta con el empleo correcto de sus facultades cognoscitivas. En este artículo se defiende que en Descartes la cuestión del cuidado no es olvidada, sino que precisamente la empresa de la reconstrucción del edificio (...) del conocimiento para la búsqueda de la verdad es abordada como fruto de una decisión moral sobre la forma de vida. (shrink)

This paper argues that our modern concept of biological heredity was first clearly introduced in a theoretical and practical setting by the generation of French physicians that were active between 1810 and 1830. It describes how from a traditional focus on hereditary transmission of disease, influential French medical men like Esquirol, Fodéré, Piorry, Lévy, moved towards considering heredity a central concept for the conception of the human bodily frame, and its set of physical and moral dispositions. The notion of heredity (...) as a natural force, with a wide ranging capabilities of transmitting differentially both fundamental and accidental characters was generalized by that generation of physicians with the help of contemporary naturalists and physiologists. By 1830 the term hérédité was widespread, and it shared the explanatory and semantic qualities of traditional medical concepts like constitution and temperament. An analysis is given of the main developments that led to the conception of biological (including human) bodies as consisting of a layered, hierarchical organization of characters, differentially affected by the laws of conservation (Heredity) and change (Inneity, Variation). The mid-century work of the French physician Prosper Lucas, Traité Philosophique et Physiologique de L'Hérédité Naturelle, is shown to be the culmination of the efforts of several generations of French physicians towards having a feasible, complexly structured notion of how heredity works. (shrink)

El presente artículo examina situaciones y problemas planteados por ciertas características del predominio de la racionalidad occidental en la vida de nuestro planeta, y con base en una crítica a dicha racionalidad, contempla la necesidad y posibilidad de postular una ética intercultural, fundamentada teóricamente en autores como Dussel, Hinkelammert, y otros que han hecho de esa crítica y esa preocupación el tema de su reflexión filosófica.

In jurisprudential literature, the adjective 'defeasible' appears as a predicate of many terms: concepts, laws, rules, reasoning, justification, proof, and so on. In this paper, we analyze the effects of some versions of the thesis of the defeasibility of legal norms on the reconstruction of the notion of legal validity. We analyze some possible justifications of this thesis considered as a claim concerning validity, and enquire into two possible sets of problems related to the defeasibility of the criteria of identification (...) of a legal system. We also provide a formalization of some options regarding defeasible criteria of identification, which can be used as a tool for meta-jurisprudential analysis. Finally, the thesis according to which defeasibility is better conceived of as a feature of legal application is examined and questioned. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the ways in which the notion of interdisciplinarity was understood, implemented and experienced by researchers at a government-funded Chilean climate research centre. Our multi-site ethnography, consisting of interviews, participant observations, and document analysis, was motivated by three key aims. First, to generate an inductive, multi-faceted picture of the lived meaning of “interdisciplina” at the Centre; second, to explore whether and to what extent the “peripheral” features of the research context would exacerbate the challenges associated with (...) practicing interdisciplinarity, and third, to see whether frictions between disciplines at the Centre could be considered productive “dissonances” in Stark’s sense of the term. We found that despite the centre efforts to produce a common framework to regulate interdisciplinary research, its researchers nevertheless understood, enacted and experienced it in diverse ways. More specifically, we found that researcher´s conceptions of interdisciplinarity were coloured by their lived experiences of attempting to practice it, and in particular by the benefits and costs they associated with doing so. This in turn was linked to several variables, including the specific balance between disciplines, the absence or presence of shared, clearly-defined goals, the affirmation of a common research ethic or motivational commitment, and the structural-material conditions of the research in question. We also found that the research conditions characteristic of the Global South do tend to exacerbate the well-documented challenges associated with interdisciplinarity, yet that the adversities associated with precarious conditions were often met by increased resilience and bonding among researchers, who use creative and collaborative strategies to adapt to adversity. (shrink)

La presencia gnóstica denunciada por Voegelin a finales del siglo pasado y que ha visto su expresión más fiel en las ideologías contemporáneas, ha ido mutando a diversas manifestaciones denunciadas por teóricos contemporáneos, no solo por su naturaleza inmanente, sino por su misma inconsistencia gnoseológica. Así, el presente artículo tiene por objeto profundizar en torno a las propiedades o características fundamentales del gnosticismo moderno y contemporáneo, así como en sus antecedentes gnoseológicos. Para llevar a cabo esta labor nos centraremos en (...) un análisis crítico, primero en las características del pensamiento gnóstico, fundamentalmente a partir de las ideas de Voegelin, para luego analizar sus antecedentes ubicados en el pensamiento teológico de Joaquín de Fiore y del nominalismo de Guillermo de Occam. (shrink)

Desde la perspectiva de la teoría de la complejidad "de Edgar Morin" y de la filosofía intercultural "de Raúl Fornet Betancourt" el presente estudio procura presentar algunas de las criticas a las que el debate contemporáneo viene sometiendo a la racionalidad occidental surgida a raíz de la modernidad. Este análisis encuentra entre ambas reflexiones un elemento en común, representado por la preocupación ética que procura la construcción de un nuevo saber que hace de la vida el centro de la reflexión. (...) Se trata pues de la vuelta al sujeto, del respeto a la naturaleza y al reconocimiento del derecho de otros pueblos a tener un discurso reflexivo particular y diferente al elaborado por occidente. (shrink)

Gustavo Machado, pertenece a la generación de intelectuales que se nutrió fundamentalmente de la doctrina marxista e hizo de ella la herramienta para desarrollar la interpretación de nuestra realidad. Este estudio recoge referencias sobre su vida, analiza su postura antiimperialista y la defensa que hace de la democracia participativa. Además desarrolla su postura ante la educación, la iglesia y su concepción de la historia.

Héctor Mujica, representa unos de los intelectuales más importantes del marxismo venezolano del siglo XX. Las ideas que guían el presente estudio, recogen su postura ante la historia, la religión, los medios de comunicación, así como su tesis sobre el progreso y su postura antiimperialista y, de man..

En el presente artículo, me serviré del ejemplo de las Páginas Amarillas de los Hauts-de-Seine para tratar la problemática de la inacción2 que ciertos regímenes textuales e imaginarios imponen a la subjetividad contemporánea. El pensamiento crítico, por su parte, afronta el carácter disperso del saber actual encarnando su ilogismo constitutivo, ampliando sus operaciones a nuevas formas de discurso.

This book offers a transnational perspective of evidentiary problems, drawing on insights from different systems and legal traditions. It avoids the isolated manner of analyzing evidence and proof within each Common Law and Civil Law tradition. Instead, it features contributions from leading authors in the evidentiary field from a variety of jurisdictions and offers an overview of essential topics that are of both theoretical and practical interest. The collection examines evidence not only as a transnational field, but in a cross-disciplinary (...) context. Each chapter engages with the interdisciplinary themes cutting through the issues discussed, benefiting from the expertise and experience of their diverse authors. (shrink)

Does the law contain implicit exceptions to its own rules? If so, what consequence does that have for understanding the relationship between law and morality? This collection gathers leading legal philosophers to analyse the logical structure of legal norms, advancing the understanding of the general philosophy of law.

This article tries to clarify the contrast between the contemporary tourist figure and the romantic traveler. From a conceptual and theoretical framework, it is our aim to establish a critical apparatus to problematize the influence of new media in the experience of travel nowadays, as a part of the Industry of Culture. From categories of analysis such as the unexpected, the travel as a personal transformation or the authenticity, our essay deals with a critical perspective of the hyperconnected tourist, specially (...) through the smartphone, from the point of view of the ideals of the romantic traveler and the Grand Tour. (shrink)

En un contexto histórico en el que la categoría de lo monstruoso está siendo relegada a concepciones quiméricas de la realidad faltas de una comprensión racional de la misma, Gracián la revaloriza. Frente a las tendencias imperantes en la modernidad, el misterio que caracteriza a monstruos y prodigios implica la concesión de prioridad a la realidad con respecto al sujeto. La realidad natural, la esfera del mundo humano y el sí mismo son instancias que exceden sistemáticamente la capacidad del sujeto (...) para aprehenderlas. Gracián se sirve de las alegorías de lo extraordinario para señalar la conciencia de esta subordinación y el trabajo que es necesario realizar para descifrarlo en la medida de lo humanamente posible y construir así el camino de la virtud. Lo extraordinario es el instrumento con el que la filosofía graciana señala la imposibilidad de racionalizar mecánicamente la realidad, protegiendo la esfera de la libertad y revitalizando la potencia de la voluntad humana. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se propone una comprensión de los Ensayos de Montaigne como un ejercicio de sí que busca transformar la verdad en ethos: una vida fiel con un mundo infundado y en devenir es la única vida vivible. Para ello se discuten las interpretaciones de la obra desde la perspectiva del autoconocimiento que han sido propuestas en el siglo XX, sirviéndonos de las lecturas de Horkheimer y Merleau-Ponty como hilos conductores. El primero elabora una interpretación externa que se (...) basa en la idea de que los Ensayos son un instrumento político al servicio del conservadurismo. Por otro lado, Merleau-Ponty propone una interpretación interna que privilegia la comprensión de la filosofía de los Ensayos como una concepción metafísica que transforma la teoría de la verdad. A través de la discusión de ambas es posible recorrer las posiciones más importantes defendidas sobre el pensamiento de Montaigne desde una perspectiva más amplia. (shrink)

We model a piece of text of human language telling a story by means of the quantum structure describing a Bose gas in a state close to a Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero temperature. For this we introduce energy levels for the words (concepts) used in the story and we also introduce the new notion of ‘cogniton’ as the quantum of human thought. Words (concepts) are then cognitons in different energy states as it is the case for photons in different (...) energy states, or states of different radiative frequency, when the considered boson gas is that of the quanta of the electromagnetic field. We show that Bose–Einstein statistics delivers a very good model for these pieces of texts telling stories, both for short stories and for long stories of the size of novels. We analyze an unexpected connection with Zipf’s law in human language, the Zipf ranking relating to the energy levels of the words, and the Bose–Einstein graph coinciding with the Zipf graph. We investigate the issue of ‘identity and indistinguishability’ from this new perspective and conjecture that the way one can easily understand how two of ‘the same concepts’ are ‘absolutely identical and indistinguishable’ in human language is also the way in which quantum particles are absolutely identical and indistinguishable in physical reality, providing in this way new evidence for our conceptuality interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

We model a piece of text of human language telling a story by means of the quantum structure describing a Bose gas in a state close to a Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero temperature. For this we introduce energy levels for the words used in the story and we also introduce the new notion of ‘cogniton’ as the quantum of human thought. Words are then cognitons in different energy states as it is the case for photons in different energy states, (...) or states of different radiative frequency, when the considered boson gas is that of the quanta of the electromagnetic field. We show that Bose–Einstein statistics delivers a very good model for these pieces of texts telling stories, both for short stories and for long stories of the size of novels. We analyze an unexpected connection with Zipf’s law in human language, the Zipf ranking relating to the energy levels of the words, and the Bose–Einstein graph coinciding with the Zipf graph. We investigate the issue of ‘identity and indistinguishability’ from this new perspective and conjecture that the way one can easily understand how two of ‘the same concepts’ are ‘absolutely identical and indistinguishable’ in human language is also the way in which quantum particles are absolutely identical and indistinguishable in physical reality, providing in this way new evidence for our conceptuality interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

We model a piece of text of human language telling a story by means of the quantum structure describing a Bose gas in a state close to a Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero temperature. For this we introduce energy levels for the words used in the story and we also introduce the new notion of ‘cogniton’ as the quantum of human thought. Words are then cognitons in different energy states as it is the case for photons in different energy states, (...) or states of different radiative frequency, when the considered boson gas is that of the quanta of the electromagnetic field. We show that Bose–Einstein statistics delivers a very good model for these pieces of texts telling stories, both for short stories and for long stories of the size of novels. We analyze an unexpected connection with Zipf’s law in human language, the Zipf ranking relating to the energy levels of the words, and the Bose–Einstein graph coinciding with the Zipf graph. We investigate the issue of ‘identity and indistinguishability’ from this new perspective and conjecture that the way one can easily understand how two of ‘the same concepts’ are ‘absolutely identical and indistinguishable’ in human language is also the way in which quantum particles are absolutely identical and indistinguishable in physical reality, providing in this way new evidence for our conceptuality interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrior research has found a relationship between perceived facial attractiveness and perceived personal trustworthiness. We examined the time course of attractiveness relative to trustworthiness evaluation of emotional and neutral faces. This served to explore whether attractiveness might be used as an easily accessible cue and a quick shortcut for judging trustworthiness. Detection thresholds and judgment latencies as a function of expressive intensity were measured. Significant correlations between attractiveness and trustworthiness consistently held for six emotional expressions at four intensities, and neutral (...) faces. Importantly, perceived attractiveness preceded perceived trustworthiness, with lower detection thresholds and shorter decision latencies. This reveals a time course advantage for attractiveness, and suggests that earlier attractiveness impressions could bias trustworthiness inferences. A heuristic cognitive mechanism is hypothesised to ease processing demands by relying on simple a... (shrink)

Previous work on individual differences has revealed limitations in the ability of existing measures (e.g., working memory) to predict language processing. Recent evidence suggests that an individual's sensitivity to detect the statistical regularities present in language (i.e., “chunk sensitivity”) may significantly modulate online sentence processing. We investigated whether individual chunk sensitivity predicted the online processing of gender cues, a core linguistic feature of Spanish. In a self‐paced reading task, we examined native speakers’ processing of relative clauses in which gender cues (...) were variably exploited to induce processing costs. Even after considering the effect of working memory and cognitive control, the results revealed a significant effect of chunking ability in modulating online sentence processing. Critically, higher‐chunking ability speakers’ reading times showed online sensitivity to core linguistic cues online; while low‐chunking ability readers showed no sensitivity to manipulations, indicating shallow real‐time processing of their native language. (shrink)

La investigación asume el estudio de la " otredad " en el pensamiento aristo-télico, profundizando el carácter del θεός. Se procura responder a la pregun-ta: ¿Qué es " otro " (ἄλλος)? y ¿Cómo es entendida la otredad (ἑτερότης) por Aristóteles? para así, en un último escenario. esbozar una reflexión a propó-sito de θεός como otredad (ἑτερότης), radicalizando las tesis aristotélicas.

La pesquisa pretende analizar las principales tesis presentes en el pensamiento de Paul Ricœur y Emmanuel Lèvinas, a propósito de la muerte y, a partir de sus postulados, establecer un diálogo del cual emerjan desavenencias y concomitancias respecto al tema.