En los estudios de Marx sobre el modo de producción específicamente capitalista en la periferia, más allá de Europa occidental, encontramos un doble movimiento: sus estudios históricos configuran todo un campo de tensiones en el que podemos examinar sus posiciones políticas y teóricas entrecruzadas con los cambios y las contradicciones históricas del siglo xix. Analizando las opiniones de Marx sobre la cuestión colonial y la cuestión nacional en casos tan variados como los de India, América Latina, China, Irlanda, Polonia o (...) Rusia comprobamos su distanciamiento creciente pero irregular con respecto al “sistema” hegeliano, que nunca dejó de inspirarlo, en un intento de superar la teleología de la historia. En cuestionamiento se encontraba el presupuesto de que las formas sociales superiores surgen del agotamiento y la aniquilación de las directamente inferiores. Aunque imperfecta, la superación de la teleología acercó a Marx al reconocimiento de la coexistencia en el espacio y en el tiempo de formas sociales heterogéneas, lo que apuntaba hacia una concepción diferente de la teoría y la acción política. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo corresponde a la segunda parte del artículo titulado Castigo y normas sociales: acerca de la validez ecológica del castigo en la economía experimental. En la primera parte me ocupé de desarrollar una serie de argumentos que arrojan incertidumbre acerca de la legitimidad de inferir que la causa de la aplicación del castigo en los juegos experimentales es unívocamente la transgresión de normas sociales. En esta parte me ocupo de ofrecer una defensa teórica de un método que tiene (...) el potencial de responder a los problemas de la irrelevancia normativa y la ilegitimidad del castigo en juegos experimentales, y que consiste en la introducción de normas explícitas.: This article corresponds to the second part of the article entitled Punishment and social norms: on the ecological validity of punishment in experimental economics. In the first part I developed a series of arguments that throw uncertainty about the legitimacy of inferring that the cause of the application of punishment in experimental games is univocally the transgression of social norms. In this part, I offer a theoretical defence of a method that has the potential to respond to the problems of normative irrelevance and the illegitimacy of punishment in experimental games, and which consists in the introduction of explicit norms. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo es la primera parte de un trabajo que estudia la conexión entre el castigo y las normas en estudios experimentales en economía. Estos asumen que la transgresión de normas de justicia y equidad es la causa de la aplicación del castigo. A pesar de que hay evidencia empírica que refuerza tal conexión, existen razones para pensar que su validez ecológica puede verse socavada debido a ciertos artefactos experimentales. Estos artefactos experimentales se refieren a dos conjuntos de (...) problemas vinculados con la validez ecológica: primero, la “irrelevancia normativa” del castigo, esto es, que los participantes de los juegos económicos experimentales utilizan la opción de castigo por motivos no relacionados a la transgresión de normas; y segundo, la ilegitimidad del castigo, producto de la falta de procedimientos adecuados para la asignación de roles y de la ambigüedad normativa.: This article focuses on the connection between punishment and norms. Experimental studies in economics assume that transgression of norms of justice and equity is the cause of the application of punishment. While such a connection is evident, there are reasons to believe that external validity of such inference may be undermined due to certain experimental artefacts. These experimental artefacts refer to two sets of problems linked to ecological validity: first, the "normative irrelevance" of punishment, that is, that participants in experimental economic games use the option of punishment for reasons unrelated to the transgression of norms; and second, the illegitimacy of punishment, as a result of the lack of adequate procedures to the allocation of roles and normative ambiguity. I conclude with recommendations about how to tackle these problems. (shrink)

En este artículo argumento que para la Síntesis extendida resulta imperioso reemplazarlos modelos causales tradicionales en biología, el de causas próximas— últimas y el de lacausalidad lineal ascendente, debido a su incapacidad para capturar la causalidad biológicacompleja que describen la mayoría de áreas de investigación en la actualidad. Estas nuevastendencias muestran la necesidad de reconceptualizar la causalidad y así permitir la construcciónde modelos multinivel que conecten bidireccionalmente diversos niveles de organizacióny diferentes escalas de tiempo. La causalidad multinivel es fundamental en (...) losprocesos de organización natural, por lo que, argumento, la extensión de la síntesis debeubicarla en su base. (shrink)

Cet article se propose d'analyser les relations entre l'anthropologie et l'indigénisme au Brésil. Pour cela, il retrace le processus de migration des savoirs indigénistes depuis leur contexte d'origine au Mexique jusqu'au Brésil, et les transformations qu'ils connaissent au cours de leur trajectoire jusqu'à aujourd'hui, en s'appuyant sur la notion de « traditions de savoirs » pour la gestion des populations qui se sont développées à partir de l'époque coloniale. Cette approche participe d'une anthropologie du colonialisme, en ce qu'elle étudie les (...) conceptions de la diversité culturelle des populations dans les administrations publiques brésiliennes et les façons de gouverner celles-ci. (shrink)

Wittgenstein defiende que los problemas filosóficos son ilegítimos. Sin embargo, no resulta del todo claro qué se entiende en general por problema filosófico, cuál es, pues, su naturaleza. El presente artículo intenta elucidar la observación de Wittgenstein que sostiene que la forma de un problema filosófico se puede presentar con la expresión “Yo no sé salir del atolladero” (IF § 123). En el artículo se elige, a manera de ejemplo, el escándalo kantiano, que demanda que demostremos con el uso de (...) la razón que la proposición “hay objetos físicos” es verdadera. Sin renunciar al ejemplo, se explora en qué sentido la expresión de Wittgenstein caracteriza en buena medida la naturaleza misma de la dificultad filosófica. En el ejercicio se atienden recomendaciones formales del Tractatus, terapias desplegadas en Sobre la Certeza y el recurso de distinguir entre sentido primario y sentido secundario de una expresión insinuado en las Investigaciones Filosóficas. (shrink)

To date, no definition of life has been unequivocally accepted by the scientific community. In frustration, some authors advocate alternatives to standard definitions. These include using a list of characteristic features, focusing on life’s effects, or categorizing biospheres rather than life itself; treating life as a fuzzy category, a process or a cluster of contingent properties; or advocating a ‘wait-and-see’ approach until other examples of life are created or discovered. But these skeptical, operational, and pluralistic approaches have intensified the debate, (...) rather than settled it. Given the failure of even these approaches, we advocate a new strategy. In this paper, we reverse the usual line of reasoning and argue that the “life problem” arises from thinking incorrectly about the nature of life. Scientists most often conceptualize life as a class or kind, with earthly life as a single instance of it. Instead, we advocate thinking about Earth’s Life as an individual, in the way that species are now thought to be. In this view, Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last universal common ancestor, and includes all its descendants. We can continue to use the category ‘life’ pragmatically to refer to similarities between various phenomena and Life. But the relevant similarities are a matter of interest and preference, not a matter of fact. The search for other life in the Universe, then, is merely a search for entities that resemble parts of Life in whatever sense astrobiologists find most appealing. This does not mean that the search for evolved complexity elsewhere in the universe or its creation in the lab are futile endeavors, but that debates over whether they count as ‘life’ are. Ironically, finally abandoning the concept ‘life’ may make our searches for evolved complexity more fruitful. We explain why. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a survey examining if there are gender and career stage differences between male and female practitioners regarding ethical judgment. The results show that, on average, females adopted a more strict ethical stance than their male counterparts on 7 out of 19 vignettes. Males on the other hand, demonstrated a more ethical stance than their female counterparts on 2 out of 19 vignettes. The results furthermore indicate there is a significant difference in ethical judgment across (...) career stages. Overall, it appears that practitioners in later career stages display higher ethical judgment than practitoners in lower career stages. Implications are provided for both practitioners and academicians. (shrink)

This paper explores aspects of GPT-3 that have been discussed as harbingers of artificial general intelligence and, in particular, linguistic intelligence. After introducing key features of GPT-3 and assessing its performance in the light of the conversational standards set by Alan Turing in his seminal paper from 1950, the paper elucidates the difference between clever automation and genuine linguistic intelligence. A central theme of this discussion on genuine conversational intelligence is that members of a linguistic community never merely respond “algorithmically” (...) to queries through a selective kind of pattern recognition, because they must also jointly attend and act with other speakers in order to count as genuinely intelligent and trustworthy. This presents a challenge for systems like GPT-3, because representing the world in a way that makes conversational common ground salient is an essentially collective task that we can only achieve jointly with other speakers. Thus, the main difficulty for any artificially intelligent model of conversation is to account for the communicational intentions and motivations of a speaker through joint attention. These joint motivations and intentions seem to be completely absent from the standard way in which systems like GPT-3 and other artificial intelligent systems work. This is not merely a theoretical issue. Since GPT-3 and future iterations of similar systems will likely be available for commercial use through application programming interfaces, caution is needed regarding the risks created by these systems, which pass for “intelligent” but have no genuine communicational intentions, and can thereby produce fake and unreliable linguistic exchanges. (shrink)

What are the limits of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the relational aspects of medical and nursing care? There has been a lot of recent work and applications showing the promise and efficiency of AI in clinical medicine, both at the research and treatment levels. Many of the obstacles discussed in the literature are technical in character, regarding how to improve and optimize current practices in clinical medicine and also how to develop better data bases for optimal parameter (...) adjustments and predictive algorithms. This paper argues that there are also in principle obstacles to the application of AI in clinical medicine and care where empathy is important, and that these problems cannot be solved with any of the technical and theoretical approaches that shape the current application of AI in specific areas of clinical medicine in which care for patients is fundamental. This is important, because it generates specific risks that may be overlooked otherwise, and it justifies the necessity of human monitoring and emotional intervention in clinical medicine. Consequently, difficult issues concerning moral and legal responsibility may ensue if these in principle problems are ignored. (shrink)

El presente trabajo busca explicar cómo la filosofía de Leibniz da cuenta de una concepción radicalmente objetiva de la belleza a partir de las posiciones teológicas y cosmológicas defendidas por el alemán en contra de Descartes y Spinoza. Después de introducir, en la primera sección, el lugar de la estética en los sistemas filosóficos de los racionalistas, la segunda sección se centra en exponer la definición de belleza propia de Leibniz y configurar un criterio de objetividad estética con el aporte (...) de discusiones filosóficas históricas y contemporáneas. En la tercera sección, se revisa el argumento de Leibniz contra el voluntarismo cartesiano y el subjetivismo de Spinoza en relación a la noción de belleza. En la cuarta, evaluaremos si la propuesta ontológica sobre la belleza de Leibniz es compatible con la definición de objetividad desarrollada en la segunda sección. Se concluye que, a la luz de la cosmología y metafísica leibniziana, la belleza debe ser independiente de toda corroboración subjetiva, ya que la belleza de las cosas es lógicamente anterior, incluso, a la existencia de éstas, lo que resulta en una concepción autónoma y objetiva de la belleza. (shrink)

La conquista del poder por la izquierda ha tenido un carácter internacional desde su génesis en el siglo XIX. Esta aproximación colaborativa permite contextualizar lo que significó el Foro de São Paulo a finales del siglo XX para la izquierda latinoamericana tras la desintegración de la URSS. Por lo que se analiza al Socialismo del siglo XXI como su principal producto, explicando las circunstancias que permitieron su surgimiento en Venezuela, así como su proceso de expansión y crisis, que se vería (...) acentuada por la muerte de los líderes históricos de la izquierda latinoamericana. Finalmente, se presenta al Grupo de Puebla como una respuesta a la iniciativa articuladora de la derecha en América Latina, el Grupo de Lima, indicando por medio de ello los elementos de continuidad y disrupción con el Foro de São Paulo, sirviendo como instancia articuladora de la izquierda en la región. (shrink)

Our understanding of the universe has grown rapidly in recent decades. We’ve discovered evidence of water in nearby planets, discovered planets outside our solar system, mapped the genomes of thousands of organisms, and probed the very origins and limits of life. The scientific perspective of life-as-it-could-be has expanded in part by research in astrobiology, synthetic biology, and artificial life. In the face of such scientific developments, we argue there is an ever-growing need for universal biology, life-as-it-must-be, the multidisciplinary study of (...) non-contingent aspects of life as guided by biological theory and constrained by the universe. We present three distinct but connected ways of universalizing biology—with respect to characterizing aspects of life everywhere, with respect to the explanatory scope of biological theory, and with respect to extending biological insights to the structure of nonbiological entities. For each of these, we sketch the theoretical goals and challenges, as well as give examples of current research that might be labeled universal biology. (shrink)

Expressivists claim that normative judgments (NJ) are non-cognitive states. But what kind of states are they, exactly? Expressivists need to provide us with an adequate account of their nature. Here, I argue that there are structural features that render this task rather daunting. The worry takes the form of a looming dilemma: NJ are either conative states (i.e. states with a world-to-mind direction of fit) or they are not. If they are, then they are either attitudes de se (i.e. attitudes (...) about oneself) or they are not. If they are, then they’re unable to account for disagreement. If they are not, then they're unable to account for agent-relative NJ. So NJ cannot be conative states (they cannot have a world-to-mind direction of fit). On the other hand, however, if NJ are not conative states (if they are states without a direction of fit, like affective or other sui generis non-cognitive, non-conative attitudes) then it remains a mystery how they support relations of disagreement. (shrink)

Freire is one of the most powerful voices challenging the hegemony of bureaucratic and banking educational systems. His voice was particularly influential impacting revolutionary processes and progressive social movements while at the same time learning from their practices. However, some silences in his oeuvres requires further examination. In this article, we focus on the silences of Freire regarding education and its relationship with work and labor, gender issues, and citizenship building.

This article presents what I call the Central Normative Proposal of Luis Villoro. This proposal is based on an interpretation of the principle of non-exclusion in ethics and epistemology. The core argument of the paper is based on a linguistic analogy that demonstrates the importance of reasonable communication for non-exclusion in epistemology, which is assumed in various theses of Villoro. A consequence of this analogy for non-exclusion in ethics is that Villoro defends basing what is reasonable on the concrete possibilities (...) of mutual understanding, starting with asymmetries and injustices that are obfuscated or eliminated in a contractualist analysis, or one that begins with strictly egalitarian principles. This criticism is compatible with egalitarian views, but it assumes a radically different point of departure. Although various theses by Villoro are compatible with egalitarian notions, given this point of departure based on asymmetries of power his proposal should be understood based on our cognitive capacities to understand and appreciate such asymmetries. For this reason, the paper concludes with an analysis of the notion of reasonableness, which under my interpretation Villoro defines in terms of our capacities for attention, that are not reducible to beliefs or systems of beliefs. In this way, the Central Normative Proposal of Villoro depends on the convergence between truth and the dignity of the members of communities in which as matter-of-fact asymmetries exist and must be eliminated through concrete communicative efforts. (shrink)

1. EI dilema de Jørgensen. 2. La salución propuesta. 3. Breve historia de un prejudicio filosófico. 4. Normas sin lógica. 4.1. Imperativos sin lógica. 4.2. Normas y proposicienesnormativas. 4.3. Proposiciones normativas y normas verdaderas. 4.4. Mundos posibles. 4.5. Validez e invalidez. 4.6. La racionalidad del legislador. 5. La noción abstracta, sintáctica y semántica de consecuencia. 5.1. La noción abstracta de consecuencia. 5.2. La noción sintáctica de consecuencia. 5.3. La noción semántica de consecuencia. 5.4. EI sentido dado por las reglas de (...) uso en un contexto. 5.5. Qué operadores para la lógica. 5.6. Solo en un contexto la parte cobra sentido. 6. La lógica deóntica. 7. De donde la solución del dilema interesa a toda la lógica. 8. Consecuendas para la informática. (shrink)

The present text surveys and reevaluates the meaning and scope of Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy. The chapters reveal the most important aspects of his history such as the Neokantian training he went thru in Germany as well as his discovery of Husserl’s phenomenology around 1912. The work also covers his original contributions to philosophy namely vital and historical reason - and the cultural and educational mission he proposed to achieve. The Spanish – and to a certain extent the European – (...) circumstance was the milieu from which his work emerged but this does not limit Ortega’s scope. Rather, he believed that universal truths can only emerge from the particulars in which they are embedded. The publication in 2010 of a critical edition of his Complete Works opened worldwide access for many unpublished manuscripts, and some of his lectures. There is renewed interest among students and researchers in Ortega and this book uniquely delivers scholarship on his content in English. (shrink)

Hegel afirma que la perspectiva del “alma bella” es sostenida por seguidores de Fichte que confunden el Yo absoluto con el yo psicofísico. Estos pensadores y literatos son reconocidos como miembros del Romanticismo alemán. Curiosamente, Hegel no menciona la obra de Jean Paul Richter entre estos casos. Jean Paul sostiene la identificación entre el Yo absoluto fichteano y la conciencia individual. Además, el autor de Hesperus define a los personajes principales de su novela como “almas bellas” y les atribuye cualidades (...) similares a las expuestas por Hegel en la concepción de su figura del Espíritu. El objetivo del presente artículo es demostrar la coincidencia entre la noción hegeliana de “alma bella” y la representación de la subjetividad expuesta por Jean Paul Richter en Hesperus. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of attention skills in the development of universal associative learning, and it explains why the centrality of attention in UAL presents a considerable difficulty for the UAL approach. Attentional abilities are not just developmentally related to UAL but are in fact explanatory of UAL. The main problem is that all the types of attention involved in UAL can be dissociated from consciousness. This means that while attention skills for UAL might be necessary for consciousness, (...) they are not sufficient because they can all occur unconsciously. Thus, the possibility that UAL capacities might not be sufficient for consciousness cannot be eliminated, thereby challenging the key claim of the UAL approach. (shrink)

Abordagens pós-cognitivistas mais recentes têm lançado duras críticas à noção de representação mental, procurando ao invés disso pensar a mente e a cognição em termos de ações corporificadas do organismo em seu meio. Embora concordemos com essa concepção, não está claro que ela implique necessariamente a rejeição de qualquer tipo de vocabulário representacional. O objetivo deste artigo é argumentar que representações podem nos comprar uma dimensão explicativa adicional não disponível por outros meios e sugerir que, ao menos em alguns casos, (...) elas podem participar da explicação de performances ou capacidades cognitivas. A noção de representação apresentada, como deixaremos claro ao longo do artigo, não viola os preceitos metodológicos mais caros à cognição 4E em geral e ao enativismo em particular, podendo, portanto, ser utilizada como uma ferramenta teórica útil em investigações sobre a natureza corporificada e situada da mente. (shrink)

In his article 'Individualism and Descartes' (Teorema, vol. 16, pp. 71-86), William Ferraiolo puts into question the widely accepted interpretation of Descartes as an individualist about mental content. In this paper, I defend this interpretation of Descartes thought against Ferraiolo's objections. I hold, first, that the interpretation is not historically misguided. Second, I try to show that Descartes’s endorsement of anti-individualism would lead either to depriving skeptical hypotheses of their force or to rejecting the epistemological privilege of the first person. (...) Finally, I argue that Ferraiolo’s objections to the individualistic interpretation rest on two important errors: a misapprehension of the argumentative order of the Meditations and a confusion between the notions of causal and constitutive dependence of content on the external environment. (shrink)

Reductionism has dominated science and philosophy for centuries. Complexity has recently shown that interactions—which reductionism neglects—are relevant for understanding phenomena. When interactions are considered, reductionism becomes limited in several aspects. In this paper, I argue that interactions imply nonreductionism, non-materialism, non-predictability, non-Platonism, and non-Nihilism. As alternatives to each of these, holism, informism, adaptation, contextuality, and meaningfulness are put forward, respectively. A worldview that includes interactions not only describes better our world, but can help to solve many open scientific, philosophical, and (...) social problems caused by implications of reductionism. (shrink)

¿Qué tipo de agencia es necesaria para la personalidad jurídica? ¿Cuáles son los requisitos cognitivos y racionales que los sistemas legales asumen acerca de los sujetos de la ley? ¿Cómo es que los seres humanos cumplen con estos requisitos? En trabajo previo (Cáceres y Montemayor, 2016), hemos argumentado que estas preguntas requieren un nuevo acercamiento a la teoría del derecho, basado en hallazgos recientes en ciencia cognitiva, que van más allá de tratamientos teóricos neuro-legales contemporáneos. Aquí construimos sobre esta propuesta, (...) ahora enfocándonos en cuestiones de agencia y normatividad, incluyendo tipos de agencia que son relevantes para la epistemología social. La conclusión principal del artículo es que los muy estrictos requisitos cognitivos que se asumen sobre las capacidades explícitas de racionalidad de los agentes cognitivos, presupuestos por la ley, no sólo son incompatibles con los hallazgos en psicología, sino que un análisis sistemático de la agencia moral y epistémica también es necesario para poder entender la normatividad legal. El argumento principal es que tipos de agencia colectiva, moral y epistémica, difieren de la agencia individual, la cual también debe distinguirse como moral y epistémica. Fundamentalmente, la agencia colectiva difiere de la individual no sólo con base en diferencias con respecto a la racionalidad, sino también con base en los criterios de integración informativa. Varias consecuencias de este análisis son evaluadas, incluyendo aspectos concernientes a integración informativa para juicios y decisiones, comunicación fiable para la agencia epistémica, y la integración de consideraciones morales en el razonamiento jurídico. Una revisión comprensiva de la noción de “autonomía” es justificada por esta propuesta, en parte porque los requisitos comunes para la personalidad y autonomía jurídica son muy demandantes e inadecuados en muchos casos, y en parte porque la agencia colectiva debe tomarse en consideración como un tipo fundamental de agencia legal responsable para procesos de integración informativa. Basándonos en la distinción entre formas epistémicas y morales de razonamiento, explicamos cómo los sistemas legales necesitan de altos niveles de integración cognitiva para la responsabilidad legal a nivel colectivo. (shrink)

Anticipating the fifth centennial of Vives’ birth in 1992, this is the first comprehensive study of two of Vives’ main works, De Anima et Vita, Book 3 and De Prima Philosophia, accompanied by the first general biography based on recent research. Juan Luis Vives was a Spanish sixteenth-century humanist who spent most of his life as an exile in England and the Low Countries. De Anima et Vita, the third book of which makes up the tract on emotions, represents the (...) culmination of Vives’ effort to understand human nature. Noreña has organized Vives and the Emotions into three parts. Part one incorporates recent research on Vives and corrects some of the inaccuracies of Noreña’s 1970 Luis Vives. He provides expanded accounts of Vives’ attitude toward Erasmus and religion, his reaction to terminist logic, his social and legal views, and his contributions to Renaissance pedagogy. The second part of the book examines in detail one of Vives’ most philosophical and forgotten tracts, a lengthy summary of his metaphysical views published in 1531 under the title De Prima Philosophia seu de Intimo Naturae Opificio, which is probably the most speculative of Vives’ works. Part three compares Vives’ thoughts on emotion to those of Aristotle, some ancient Stoic sources, Saint Thomas, Descartes, and Spinoza, while dividing the entire material under such headings as the nature, the classification, the interaction, and the therapeutic control of emotion. (shrink)

Después de enseñar la asignatura de Ética, y de la aplicar unas normas familiares escolares tradicionales, los estudiantes no se apropian de elementos éticos por varias causas: no les ven utilidad, no comprenden el contexto, o simplemente no les afecta, anulando cualquier interés al respecto. Esto impide que su obrar en la cotidianidad no sea tolerante en su ambiente escolar, generando dificultades en el docente para mediar comportamientos opuestos a una cultura de paz. Ante esto, se propone la Filosofía para (...) Niños (FpN) como apuesta ético-política que permita robustecer el pensamiento crítico, creativo y cuidadoso para mirar hacia una cultura de paz. Diego Pineda, el fundador de FpN en Colombia, sostiene que es necesario desarrollar en los estudiantes habilidades de pensamiento que, adicionales a conocimientos éticos-ciudadanos, los lleve a tomar decisiones acertadas en el abordaje pacífico del conflicto. El desarrollo paulatino del pensamiento, la cercanía a las comunidades de indagación, la incursión en habilidades cognitivas y éticas producto de las herramientas pedagógicas propias del programa de FpN, constituyen una preparación para asumir posiciones argumentadas frente a dilemas que acontecen dentro de los conflictos escolares, ello facilitará al estudiante estructurarse y lograr tomar decisiones iluminadas por la razón. (shrink)

This book traces the origins and evolution of cybersemiotics, beginning with the integration of semiotics into the theoretical framework of cybernetics and information theory. The book opens with chapters that situate the roots of cybersemiotics in Peircean semiotics, describe the advent of the Information Age and cybernetics, and lay out the proposition that notions of system, communication, self-reference, information, meaning, form, autopoiesis, and self-control are of equal topical interest to semiotics and systems theory. Subsequent chapters introduce a cybersemiotic viewpoint on (...) the capacity of arts and other practices for knowing. This suggests pathways for developing Practice as Research and practice-led research, and prompts the reader to view this new configuration in cybersemiotic terms. Other contributors discuss cultural and perceptual shifts that lead to interaction with hybrid environments such as Alexa. The relationship of storytelling and cybersemiotics is covered at chapter length, and another chapter describes an individual-collectivity dialectics, in which the latter constrains the former, but the former fuels the latter. The concluding chapter begins with the observation that digital technologies have infiltrated every corner of the metropolis - homes, workplaces, and places of leisure - to the extent that cities and bodies have transformed into interconnected interfaces. The book challenges the reader to participate in a broader discussion of the potential, limitations, alternatives, and criticisms of cybersemiotics. (shrink)

This volume draws a balanced picture of the Rationalists by bringing their intellectual contexts, sources and full range of interests into sharper focus, without neglecting their core commitment to the epistemological doctrine that earned ...

Evaluation processes are a basic component of creativity. They guide not only the pure judgement about a new artefact but also the generation itself, as creators constantly evaluate their own work. This paper proposes a model for automatic story generation based on the evaluation of stories. A model of how quality in stories is evaluated is presented, and two possible implementations of the generation guided by this evaluation are shown: exhaustive space exploration and constrained exploration. A theoretical model and its (...) implementation are explained and validation of the evaluation function through comparison with human criteria is described. (shrink)

"Person� is a very ambiguous word (as most of our words when isolated). The outstanding vagueness of the terms used in philosophical discourse, like "action� or "mind�, is an essential characteristic of language that provides the set upon which philosophy relies. Indeed, inquiries into certainty, objectivity and many other important metaphysical problems would never arise if this indeterminacy were not present in language. The history of philosophy as such can be considered as a quest for meaningful statements on which we (...) can ground our judgment. This search for certainty has an ethical dimension, since it discloses what we have in common and what we cannot share. An important feature of this ethical dimension is that the investigation of "certainty� is, at the same time, a struggle against arbitrariness. However, we must be careful while engaging into this exploration, by refusing to analyze or equate certainty with goodness or correctness. The danger of this attractive analysis is evident in our religious and political history. I believe that Wittgenstein can help us in elucidating some of these difficult issues. The problem of the identity of persons, or what constitutes a human being, pervades through philosophical texts. The general strategy of this paper is to link the issue of certainty, as explained by Wittgenstein, with the concept of person. (shrink)

This chapter draws parallels between Leopoldo Zea and Stanley Cavell's thought. It forms the basis of this argument in their thought on circumstantialism. Cavell and Zea both reflect on the American circumstance, a circumstance conditioned by the discovery, colonizations, and nationalization of Americas, together with the American people's heroic desire to connect, continuously and urgently, with themselves and their destiny as Americans.