My hypothesis is that the cognitive challenge posed by death might have had a co-evolutionary role in the development of linguistic faculties. First, I claim that mirror neurons, which enable us to understand others’ actions and emotions, not only activate when we directly observe someone, but can also be triggered by language: words make us feel bodily sensations. Second, I argue that the death of another individual cannot be understood by virtue of the mirror neuron mechanism, since the dead provide (...) no neural pattern for mirroring: this cognitive task requires symbolic thought, which in turn involves emotions. Third, I describe the symbolic leap of the human species as a cognitive detachment from the here and now, allowing displaced reference: through symbols the human mind can refer to what is absent, possible, or even impossible (like the presence of a dead person). Such a detachment has had a huge adaptive impact: adopting a coevolutionary standpoint can help explain why language is as effective as environmental inputs in order to stimulate our bodily experience. In the end I suggest a further coevolutionary reversal : if language is necessary to understand the death of the other, it might also be true that the peculiar cognitive problem posed by the death of the other (the corpse is present, but the other is absent) has contributed to the crucial transition from an indexical sign system to the symbolic level, i.e., the cognitive detachment . Death and language, as Heidegger claimed, have an essential relation for humans, both from an evolutionary and a phenomenological perspective: they have shaped the symbolic consciousness that make us conceive of them. (shrink)

En este artículo pretendo desmantelar la opinión generalizada según la cual una interpretación relacional del espaciotiempo no es posible. Centro mi atención en el hecho de que las variables dinámicas usualmente están asociadas a objetos materiales en las teorías físicas. El tensor métrico de la Teoría General de la Relatividad (TGR) es un objeto dinámico así que —sostengo— este debe ser mejor entendido como un campo material en toda regla. Este argumento me lleva a vincular la naturaleza relacional del espaciotiempo (...) a las dificultades para formular una genuina ley de conservación de energía-momento en la TGR.I will try to dismantle the widespread impression that a relational account of spacetime is not possible. I concentrate on the fact that dynamical variables are usually linked to material objects in physical theories. The metric tensor field of GR is a dynamical object so, I claim, it should be viewed as a matter field. The argument links the relational ontological status of spacetime to the failure to provide a genuine law of energy-momentum conservation within General Relativity. (shrink)

Plural Logic is an extension of First-Order Logic which has, as well as singular terms and quantifiers, their plural counterparts. Analogously, Higher-Level Plural Logic is an extension of Plural Logic which has, as well as plural terms and quantifiers, higher-level plural ones. Roughly speaking, higher-level plurals stand to plurals like plurals stand to singulars; they are pluralised plurals. Allegedly, Higher-Level Plural Logic enjoys the expressive power of a simple type theory while committing us to nothing more than the austere ontology (...) of First-Order Logic. Were this true, Higher-Level Plural Logic would be a useful tool, with various applications in philosophy and linguistics. However, while the notions of plural reference and quantification enjoy widespread acceptance today, their higher-level counterparts have been received with a lot of scepticism. In this paper, I argue for the legitimacy of Higher-Level Plural Logic by providing evidence to the effect that natural languages contain higher-level plural expressions and showing that it is likely that they do so in an indispensable manner. Since the arguments I put forward are of the same sort advocates of Plural Logic have employed to defend their position, I conclude that the commonly held view that Plural Logic is legitimate, but not so its higher-level plural extensions is untenable. (shrink)

This paper proposes a parallel in the forms of Aristotle’s and Einstein’s physics. It’s an exercise on conceptual analysis rather than history. The possible similarity between Aristotle’s world and the form (global geometry) of Einstein’s universe is discussed. The correlation between kinematics, dynamics and gravity in their respective theories is also studied. Finally, Aristotle’s ontology of space is compared to the relativistic ontology spacetime.

The introduction of and the commitment to evidence-based nursing in all care settings have led to a rapid increase of intervention and outcome-based research programs. Yet, the topics of nursing research are not only affected by interventions and outcomes but also affected by the concept of caring derived from humanistic philosophy. Considering this twofold orientation of nursing science, nuanced ethical regulations for nursing research programs are called for. In addition to the different research approaches, further arguments for ethical regulations are (...) as follows: first, the different degrees of contextualization and the variety of participation models regarding the target groups; second, the capacities and opportunities of participants; and third, the caring relationship between nurses and research subjects. To capture these special features of nursing science, four approaches to fill the gaps in existing ethical regulations for nursing research are proposed: (a) process orientation, (b) community orientation, (c) context orientation, and (d) relation orientation. (shrink)

Cuando hablamos de iconos nos referimos a representaciones que producen un cierto impacto en nosotros aunque no sean perfectas; del icono se esperan armonía, belleza, simplicidad. Cuando el icono no es una imagen sino una persona humana, se convierte en referente: observamos aspectos de su personalidad con los que nos identificamos aunque nos coincidan exactamente con los nuestros. A lo largo de la historia de la ciencia, las mujeres han sido iconos referenciales fundamentalmente por dos cosas, su calidad humana y (...) su excelencia científica. (shrink)

Cada vez más, la medida de los estándares educativos está arrojando luz a las Reformas emprendidas en los distintos países. En el caso español, y concretamente en lo relativo a la enseñanza de las Ciencias, el paso a dar está en la transferencia de los aprendizajes hacia situaciones de vida.

Este escrito pretende examinar el papel de la estética en el pensamiento de Schiller y Schelling en 1795 para rastrear el modo en que el pensamiento estético comienza a constituirse como un camino desde el que afrontar la problemática de la libertad planteada por la modernidad y, en especial, por la filosofía práctica de Kant. En el primer apartado se tratará de aclarar el sentido en el que la reflexión estética de ambos autores en 1795 no se puede disociar de (...) la problemática servida por la filosofía kantiana. En primer lugar intentaré mostrar las razones por las que las premisas mismas del sistema crítico hacen necesaria la Crítica del Juicio, cuya primera parte, como es sabido, constituye precisamente una ¿crítica del juicio estético¿ y, desde aquí, defenderé que la obra se hace cargo de cierta ambivalencia inherente al kantismo y que, precisamente por ello, expresa del modo más perspicuo el problema que plantea el concepto kantiano, formal, de libertad. Con ello se insiste evidentemente en la relevancia de esta obra para la primera recepción de Kant en general, esto es, para el primer Idealismo postkantiano en tanto que preocupado por elevarse a la verdad del espíritu kantiano, pero, sobre todo, se comenzarán a iluminar las razones por las que la orientación estética del pensamiento, orientación que en 1795 exploran tanto Schiller como Schelling, podrá considerarse un camino privilegiado de cara tanto a la ¿recuperación¿ de la consistencia del kantismo como a la elaboración de un concepto satisfactorio de libertad. Es decir, se intentará fundamentar así, aun cuando sólo sea indirectamente, que la conexión de la ética, de la filosofía práctica, con la estética resulta prometedora aun desde una óptica estrictamente kantiana. Pero el núcleo de este trabajo se desarrollará en los apartados segundo y tercero donde, partiendo de este suelo común compartido por Schiller y Schelling, se examinarán las diferencias entre los modos en que la reflexión estética de cada uno responde a la problemática planteada por el kantismo. En relación a esto último será fundamental determinar si sus respuestas, en tanto que soluciones, realmente se mantienen fieles a la complejidad que nace de la ambivalencia del espíritu kantiano o si, antes bien, pagan el precio de optar por uno sólo de los hilos que tejen el sistema crítico. (shrink)

Taking the Critique of Judgement for an answer to the problem raised by the kantian dualisms, I offer a reading of this work according to which in the part devoted to the teleological judgement Kant practices a Hegelian way of resolution, whereas, in the “critique of the aesthetic judgement”, he thinks the relation between the opposites of such dualisms in a new way that opens up the possibility of a dialectical thought rid of the absolutness of the Hegelian reason.

What is the difference between the discriminations made by a home appliance able to distinguish salt from sugar, and my sensations of salty and sweet? It is never taken into consideration that, in contrast to the appliance, I can have offline sensations, i.e., phenomenal experiences in the absence of direct environmental stimuli, mainly evoked by words occurring into thought, conversation, reading, etc. If we put this detachment stimuli/sensations in relation with the correlative detachment signs/referents inaugurated by the cognitive revolution of (...) symbolic language , we might rethink the role played by language in our phenomenal experience as a whole. Qualia can be defined as forms of relationship between organisms and environment, given that human environment is extended to the linguistic dimension, and that the latter has ignited a coevolutionary process with human cognition. The very same properties we attribute to qualia, even when conceiving of them as pre-linguistic phenomenal traits, rely on the cognitive resources that language has made available. The substantialist notion of qualia, I argue, is formed by an online sensation on which the focus shifts from the perceived object to the sensory quality by virtue of linguistic modes of thinking, which are systematically neglected. (shrink)

During the last decades the special literature has paid relatively much attention to the problematic of speech acts. However, in Slovakia it still remains underdeve-loped. Therefore the author decided to examine it from the points of view of its establishment, gradual development and interactional communication. The paper offers a survey of all philosophical-linguistic views on this problematic. Further, it gives a more detailed analysis of the theory of the founders of the speech acts theory , comparing their main ideas with (...) those of other philosophers and linguists. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer, al hilo de un análisis del texto de la Fenomenologíadel Espíritu que comenta la Antígona de Sófocles, una interpretación del concepto hegeliano de acciónque pone en cuestión la tesis, defendida habitualmente, según la cual Hegel habría pretendido que elconflicto trágico resulta superado por la acción moderna.Ese texto revela que la acción, que comparece ahí como principio absoluto, posee sin embargo unaestructura quebrada y paradójica: necesariamente presupone y niega una instancia en sí, inmediata ysustantiva (...) que, finalmente, oculta la negatividad de la muerte. En la medida en que esa vinculación ala sustancia se demuestra así consustancial a la acción, el trabajo concluye, frente a otras lecturas, que,aun cuando la historia del espíritu haya dejado atrás la “sustancia ética” antigua, la acción nopuede liberarse para Hegel del carácter trágico. Por último, defiende el sentido en el que precisamenteesta condición trágica la determina a la vez como destructiva y productiva, capaz de abrir la historia. (shrink)

A partir de la reivindicación de Adorno del poder crítico del arte, este trabajo confronta la posición de este pensador con las de Kant y Hegel a propósito de la cuestión de la autonomía del ámbito estético. Explica por qué Adorno considera que ni Kant, quien afirma esa autonomía, ni Hegel, quien, por el contrario, asume su heteronomía, logran reconocer (el poder de) la obra de arte y de la experiencia estética. Muestra luego que Adorno tomó conciencia de que ello (...) proviene del compromiso de ambos autores con la pretensión de plena autonomía del sujeto moderno, y explica finalmente que Adorno sí reconoce la función crítica del arte y del pensamiento que le corresponde gracias a que rechaza tal pretenciosa subjetividad. Taking Adorno's vindication of the critical power of art as a starting point and focussing on the question of the autonomy of the aesthetic field, this paper confronts Adorno's position with those of Kant and Hegel. I explain why Adorno considers that neither Kant-affirming its autonomy- nor Hegel -assuming its heteronomy- succeeded in recognising (the power of) the work of art and the aesthetic experience. I show that Adorno saw that this was due to their common commitment to the modern subject's claim to full autonomy, and finally argue that Adorno, on the contrary, can do that because he abandons such a pretentious subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper proposes to call «countermodern aesthetics» a philosophical line that, reaching from the last Kant to Heidegger, would oppose to the modern dominance of theory while acknowledging the inner connection of the aesthetic to truth, to the tragic truth. It presents then cinema as a mass medium that modern aesthetics interprets according to its own conception of art in order to fit it into the advanced capitalist system and its ideology. And, finally, ir argues that S.Zizek´s alternative understanding of (...) cinema, because of the tragic condition of its very underlying metaphysics, continues the tradition that has been presented as «counter-modern aesthetics». (shrink)

This paper offers an alternative perspective to the traditional interpretation of Hegel's philosophical reflection on history, departing from a reinterpretation of Hegel's reading of the tragic action of Antigone in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The customary interpretation of this text affirms that Hegel shows how the conflict of tragic action finds its truth and its end in the identity of spirit. Tragic conflict is left behind to the same extent that spirit sublates the Greek ethical substance. This (...) way, spirit can guarantee that our historical time is released from the past of the substance, or the spiritual movement of mediation from the immediacy of an ‘in-itself’. My reading, by contrast, finds under the tragic conflict of this text of Hegel's nothing but the ‘no’ of death that negates itself, or a principle that has the form of an original and irreducible conflict. Under this interpretation of Hegelian spirit, it becomes clear that it can neither fail to posit some form of ‘in-itself’ nor sublate its own tragic nature. This way it is shown that Hegel's reflection on the past does not reassure the superiority of the identity of the present, but rather illuminates its ‘broken’ nature. I thus offer an alternative view on Hegel's comprehension of the relation between present and past and between philosophy and time. (shrink)

The essay presents an interpretation of Hegel’s speculative sentence that, emphasizing the “counter-thrust” that the modern subject undergoes here, allows us to connect the movement of the Hegelian subject to the negativity recognised by Kant at the bottom of the faculty of judgment with regard to its aesthetic dimension. This way, it aims, first, to put into question the interpretation that sees in Hegel’s philosophy a regression with regard to the consciousness, attained by Kant, of the finitude, or the constitutive (...) split, of the modern subject, and, finally, in line with recent interpretations of Hegel, like those of Žižek or Malabou, to contribute to the questioning of the traditional interpretation of Hegel’s dialectics as the overcoming of negativity into a final reconciling synthesis. (shrink)

Este trabajo parte de la constatación del carácter central que en la reconocimiento adorniano de lo estético tiene la rehabilitación de su vínculo al conocimiento y a la verdad. Se reconstruye así la crítica de Adorno a la teoría estética kantiana desde su rechazo de la separación que Kant estableció entre el ámbito estético y el epistemológico. Esta crítica, que acusa a la estética kantiana de subjetivista, se retrotrae finalmente a la insatisfacción de Adorno respecto al enfoque trascendental, en tanto (...) que no dialéctico. En este punto deviene patente la necesidad de determinar la especificidad de su propia comprensión de lo estético y de la dialéctica. Sorprendentemente se descubre entonces una inesperada cercanía entre su posición y la de la misma estética kantiana que permite reconocer en ésta última ciertos rasgos que desbordan el propio sistema crítico hacia el planteamiento adorniano. Pero esta cercanía prueba también la inmanencia y legitimidad de la (ambigua) crítica de Adorno a Kant y, de resultas, el carácter insatisfactorio de la determinación kantiana del conocimiento y la verdad. (shrink)

Lévinas believed that Blanchot identified artistic inspiration with his understanding of the il y a, that is, an inauthentic attitude toward life and the Other. Lévinas, who tried to overcome the neutrality of the il y a, criticised Blanchot’s desire to establish ethics as a prima philosophia. Lévinas asked himself in what way the artwork could give access to the ethical, which is why he explored the relationship between expression and responsibility. He concluded that poetic speaking was excluded from his (...) understanding of ethical language. Therefore, Lévinas was against poetic activity, in ethical terms, because poetic activity (dis)possessed the subject/artist in such a way that the creator was not able to control his writing, which converted art into the worst kind of irresponsibility. This paper will focus on Lévinas’ first aesthetic period, and on the ideas collected in the essay La Réalité et son ombre, published in 1948. (shrink)

Sostiene el autor que en la cosmovisión de las sociedades indígenas no existe el concepto de desarrollo, menos como algo a transitar por las personas para la consecución de bienestar; y tampoco los conceptos de riqueza y pobreza determinados por la acumulación y carencia de bienes materiales. Sí existe una visión holística a cerca de lo que debe ser el objetivo o la misión de todo esfuerzo humano, que consiste en buscar y crear las condiciones materiales y espirituales para construir (...) y mantener una ‘vida armónica’. Esto coloca a la sustentabilidad bajo otro paradigma que incorpora lo trascendente y lo espiritual. (shrink)

This chapter offers some insight into Spinoza's understanding of the concept of potentia. As is well known amongst scholars, the concept of potentia is fundamental for Spinoza. From ontology, to ethics and politics, the concept of potentia seems to embody the unity of Spinoza's thought. Unlike E1p9, Spinoza focuses on the independence or in the per se nature of the intelligibility of each attribute. The demonstration of the proposition recalls both the definition of the attribute and the definition of substance (...) as explanations. Having more reality, Spinoza states, means having more powers or strength, that is, more potentia to exist. The chapter shows that Spinoza's radical ontology of power emerges in the propositions preparing the consideration of God's necessary existence, namely E1p9–10. (shrink)

¿Es el espacio una entidad física real en toda regla o se trata simplemente de un conjunto de relaciones entre objetos materiales coexistentes? Esta pregunta sobre el estatus ontológico del espacio físico enfrentó a Leibniz y Newton. Mientras que Leibniz cuestionó la identidad de las partes del espacio, Newton pudo cargar a la tradición relacional originada en Leibniz con el problema de la inercia. La importancia de la estructura inercial en esta discusión fue reconocida por Mach y sus críticas fueron (...) adoptadas como una especie de credo relacional por Einstein. De la mano de los protagonistas más destacados en este debate, se muestra que la identidad de las partes del espacio absoluto, frecuentemente discutida en artículos sobre el tema, es casi irrelevante al lado del problema del origen de la estructura inercial. Para esto incluyo una breve presentación de la representación neo-newtoniana de la dinámica clásica. (shrink)

A manera de estudio comparativo, en este artículo se propone un paralelo formal entre la física de Aristóteles y la física de Einstein. La finalidad no es la del rigor histórico. Se trata más bien de un ejercicio de análisis conceptual. En este sentido, se discute la posible similitud entre la forma..

En su artículo titulado Weimar Culture; Causality and Quantum Theory,1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists to a Hostile IntellectualEnvironment, Paul Forman intentó dibujar una historia de la vieja mecánicacuántica según la cual la influencia cultural de la época resultó determinanteen la introducción, aceptación y asimilación de la acausalidad en esta teoría.Estas afirmaciones conocidas como las tesis de Forman, son puestas enperspectiva historiográfica, es decir, desde el panorama ofrecido por lastensiones propias de la historiografía y la filosofía de la ciencia contemporá-nea se (...) perfila su importancia. Se argumenta que el dilema del determinismoes central en esta discusión y finalmente se presenta una breve revisióncrítica de las tesis de Forman revelando sus principales debilidades. (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende analizar el problema de la agonía y la muerte en el pensamiento de Miguel de Unamuno, como estos dos aspectos innegables en la vida del hombre se constituyen en el fundamento del filosofar y del existir. La lucha encarnizada por no morir generará en el autor una duda muy grande a la que no se la puede negar pero que estará presente en todo el proceso vital del ser humano, para después dar paso a unas alternativas (...) de pervivencia que el mismo autor presenta pero que no logran convencerlo como una solución final. (shrink)

Este trabajo es el ganador de la III Olimpiada de Filosofía que organiza FICUM en la modalidad de primero de bachillerato. A los alumnos se le hizo la siguiente pregunta: ¿cuál es la filosofía del siglo XXI? Adriana, ha afrontado la cuestión comentado la importancia de recuperar la pasión por pensar las cosas con profundidad filosófica.

Cet article interroge la construction de la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze à partir de son rapport à la pensée de Spinoza. En partant d’une remarque dans Différence et répétition au sujet de l’ontologie spinozienne, nous interrogeons à la fois le problème du temps et de l’éternité chez Spinoza et la genèse de l’ontologie deleuzienne de la différence dans la mesure où elle s’affirme comme héritière de l’affirmation spinozienne de l’univocité de l’être.

Abstract:This essay traces the intellectual journey of the Queer/Cuir/Cuyr Américas Working Group, a dedicated network of queer scholars from across the Americas who came together to address how knowledge is produced and constructed as Anglocentric and North-centric and how it circulates across the hemisphere. I discuss how this occurs by placing heteronormativity at the center to cross-examine the multiple ways in which it feeds both socialist and capitalist regimes. Thinking cuir as well as thinking cuir feminista confronts gender, sexual, racial, (...) and/or ethnic determinism. (shrink)

In the literature on vagueness one finds two very different kinds of degree theory. The dominant kind of account of gradable adjectives in formal semantics and linguistics is built on an underlying framework involving bivalence and classical logic: its degrees are not degrees of truth. On the other hand, fuzzy logic based theories of vagueness—largely absent from the formal semantics literature but playing a significant role in both the philosophical literature on vagueness and in the contemporary logic literature—are logically nonclassical (...) and give a central role to the idea of degrees of truth. Each kind of degree theory has a strength: the classical kind allows for rich and subtle analyses of the comparative form of gradable adjectives and of various types of gradable precise adjectives, while the fuzzy kind yields a compelling solution to the sorites paradox. This paper argues that the fuzzy kind of theory can match the benefits of the classical kind and hence that the burden is on the latter to match the advantages of the former. In particular, we develop a new version of the fuzzy logic approach that—unlike existing fuzzy theories—yields a compelling analysis of the comparative as well as an adequate account of gradable precise predicates, while still retaining the advantage of genuinely solving the sorites paradox. (shrink)