The aim of this paper is to provide an account of how hunger motivates us to seek food and eat. It seems that the way that it feels to be hungry must play some role in it fulfilling this function. We propose that hunger is best viewed as a complex state involving both affective and somatic constituents, as well as, crucially, changes in the way in which the hungry agent’s attention is deployed. We argue that in order to (...) capture the distinctive way in which hunger motivates we need to articulate the relations amongst such components. The resulting account explains how hunger as an aversive affective reaction to a state of need motivates us specifically to eat and not to just to rid ourselves of the unpleasant sensations associated to it. We suggest, however, that there is more than this to the overall affective experience of the hungry agent, because hunger ordinarily facilitates the elicitation of other, positive affective reactions such as interest and appetite, and recruits them to further its function. (shrink)

Framed within the development policies for the region, educational agendas for Latin America represent specific commitments that transcend the improvement in the results of specific tests permeating both pedagogical practices and conceptual frameworks in which these ones acquire meaning. This paper covers some of the commitments made by these agendas and develops the general framework in which participation of philosophical community is expected and required as a guarantor and promoter of the construction of spaces for reflection and action on educational (...) system. (shrink)

If we consider human thought as the, so far, ultimate, if not supreme, stage in the evolution of life on Earth, we must also try to understand the evolutionary conditions that allowed it to emerge, and that leads us to look again at living organization.Whatever the origins of life (cf. the text of Jacques Reisse, p. 53), it is clear that the oldest living organization, that of a protobacteria, is extremely complex in its functional and complementary association of extremely diverse (...) macro-molecules, and that this complexity includes in particular: a) the organization of exchanges with an environment from which it draws both matter-energy and organization ; b) a permanent process of self-reorganization through the replacing of molecules that have deteriorated and through the production of new ones; c) the organization of the self-reproduction of the creature through division. An organization of this kind includes a quasi-informational dimension (the hereditary message inscribed in the genes and the capacity to extract information from the environment), a quasi-computational dimension (the processing of data, via indices or quasi-signs from the interior and exterior), and a communicational dimension (internal RNA-protein communication and external communication with its congeners). In short, from the beginning, a living being is the product/producer of a self-eco-organization the nature of which is at the same time computational, informational, and communicational. In other words, within every living organization, there is a cognitive dimension, but this cognitive dimension is undifferentiated within it. (shrink)

El presente artículo reflexiona sobre los orígenes del pragmatismo atendiendo puntos importantes para implicaciones epistemológicas que buscan servir luego de clave para una perspectiva para el pensamiento del sur del continente. Hay una exposición de aspectos centrales que sobre el pragmatismo expuso Charles Pierce, específicamente sobre las creencias, el signo como mediación cognitiva, así como una consideración de las ciencias para comprender el papel tanto del razonamiento como de la percepción y el instinto. Igualmente, se exponen elementos claves de la (...) teoría del conocimiento de John Dewey, quien ante el rechazo declarado al racionalismo cartesiano y sin limitarse a la experiencia como punto de referencia para la clarificación conceptual, se encamina más a unas vivencias y contactos con un mundo observado comprometiendo así la realidad sentida la propia mente. El pragmatismo implica atención a lo que nos rodea sin generar separaciones entre sensibilidad y razón o entre pensamiento y emoción, lo cual hace que los asuntos de la ciencia y del conocimiento no se den ajenos a las acciones democráticas entre los individuos activos y sus colectivos. (shrink)

Using the notion of territorialization, the text traces connecting points between classical American pragmatism and contemporary Latin American philosophy as an effort to counter the usual criticism that states that because of its origins in the north of the continent pragmatism has nothing to offer to the construction of any sound philosophy in the south, while recognizing that its history, that of pragmatism, can be read in parallel of the history of the ways in which Latina American philosophies were built (...) since the beginning of the 20th century. (shrink)

The real, thought of as human reality, that is, a mixture of the imaginary, mythology, emotions, flesh, passions, suffering, love, is always surprising, full of possibilities and hard to grasp. A thinking adapted to the complex reality of our earthly homeland cannot be a trivial realism content with the established order and accepting the victory of the victorious. On the contrary, understanding of reality, lucidity are often the result of an ethical revolt against the fait accompli, against certainty. The thinking (...) suggested by Morin attempts to move beyond the alternatives between, on the one hand, the worst option: the utopia that thinks it is realistic, and on the other the utopia that knows it is utopia, and is therefore harmless, outside the real. The hope is to introduce the poetry of intensity into reality, to resist the oppressive forces of pseudo-realism by cultivating the garden of our earthly homeland. (shrink)

Gigerenzer and his collaborators have shown that the Take the Best heuristic (TTB) approximates optimal decision behavior for many inference problems. We studied the effect of incomplete cue knowledge on the quality of this approximation. Bayesian algorithms clearly outperformed TTB in case of partial cue knowledge, especially when the validity of the recognition cue is assumed to be low.

La siempre latente posibilidad de ver que la filosofía abandone las escuelas se revisa en este texto a partir de las categorías de análisis propuestas por la teoría de la injusticia epistémica, según la cual las limitaciones, en términos de silenciamiento o de falta de reconocimiento, a que son sometidos algunos individuos cuando se les considera indignos como miembros de una comunidad epistémica representan una forma de acallamiento de su agencia epistémica. Esta perspectiva no solo permite considerar una nueva dimensión (...) del asunto de la presencia de la filosofía en los planes de estudio escolares, sino también formular propuestas para que la enseñanza de la filosofía ayude a superar algunas de las injusticias que ella misma ha ayudado a invisibilizar. (shrink)

En un intento de probar los límites de la interpretación más aceptada de lamecánica cuántica, de acuerdo con la cual los sistemas microscópicos seencuentran siempre en una superposición de estados, el premio Nobel defísica A. Leggett ha propuesto la tesis del macrorealismo, según la cual lassuperposiciones mecanico-cuánticas de estados microscópicamentediferentes nunca tienen lugar. Leggett ha mostrado también los elementosbásicos de algunas pruebas experimentales que podrían decidirdefinitivamente entre la mecánica cuántica y el macrorealismo. En este textopresento los elementos fundamentales de la (...) interpretación estándar de lamecánica cuántica y del macrorealimo, a fin de poner en evidencia que losresultados experimentales están más abiertos a interpretación de lo que Leggettestá dispuesto a aceptar. Dentro de las interpretaciones alternativas sedestaca la posibilidad de comprender los resultados como ejemplos deviolaciones al principio de inducción en que descansa el macrorealismo,abriendo así la puerta para resolver la tensión entre la MC y el macrorealismoen términos causalidad inversa, de acuerdo con la cual no es necesarioapelar a ningún papel especial desempeñado ni por los observadores ni porlos aparatos de medición a fin de explicar las diferencias entre los sistemasmecánico-cuánticos y los macroscópicos, una diferencia que puede ahoraser definida parcialmente en términos de su direccionalidad causal y temporal. (shrink)

In this essay, the author sets out the question: where bodies move according to Spinoza's physical thought? The question is linked to another one Oldenberg asked him then, about how objects acquire their unique individuality and the way nature behaves as a unit, despite the complexity of its constitution. The response refers not only to Spinoza's criticism to Cartesian mechanics, as usual, but will appeal to Spinoza's own interpretation, consistent with his system, about the constitution and dynamics of the physical (...) world, in terms of a mechanic interaction between bodies, firm enough to accomplish the task for which it was designed. (shrink)

My last editorial was written before the world became aware of the covid-19 pandemic, and the impact that it would have on our lives. (Editorials are written some three months before publication, l...

The contributors to _Somaesthetics and Sport_ explore our embodied experiences of watching and playing sport, including sport’s beauty; the place of exercise in our sense of living a good life; and how we cope with pain and suffering.

Consider two competing interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the epistemic and cognitive interpretations. The epistemic interpretation presents the first Critique as a work of epistemology, but what is more, it sees Kant as an early proponent of anti-psychologism—the view that descriptions of how the mind works are irrelevant for epistemology.2 Even if Kant does not always manage to purge certain psychological-sounding idioms from his writing, the epistemic interpretation has it, he is perfectly clear that he means his evaluation (...) of knowledge to be carried out independently of psychology.3 In contrast, the cognitive interpretation presents the first Critique as a description of the operation of human .. (shrink)

In the previous chapter ‘The Beauty of Sport', I made a distinction between classical and modernist aesthetics. The classical is exemplified in eighteenthcentury art criticism and its use of the la...

This paper seeks to explore the attraction and the beauty of the contemporary athletic body. It will be suggested that a body shaped through muscular bulk and definition has come to be seen as aesthetically normative. This body differs from the body of athletes from the early and mid-twentieth century. It will be argued that the contemporary body is not merely the result of advances in sports science, but rather that it is expressive of certain meanings and values. The visual (...) similarity of the contemporary athletic body and that of the comic book superhero suggests that both bodies carry a similar potential for narrative story-telling, and that their attraction is bound up with this narrative potential. The superhero and athlete live meaningful lives, pursuing clear and morally unambiguous goals. The aesthetic attraction of the body lies in its capacity to facilitate the articulation of a story of a meaningful life, and to do so in the face of the growing anomie and thus meaninglessness of life as experienced in contemporary society. Athleticism offers an illusion of meaning, serving to reproduce dominant justificatory narratives and social stereotypes. Yet, as an illusion of meaning, it may be challenged and negotiated, not least with respect to its bias towards a certain form of the male body. The female athletic body disrupts the illusion, opening up new existential possibilities, new ways of living and being, and thus new, and potentially disruptive, narratives. (shrink)

The structure of the next three chapters owes much to Kant's four great definitions of ‘beauty’ found with his Critique of Judgement, in the ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ (1952, §§1–22). The first pa...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures (and thus upon the lifeworld), and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious (...) effects of the colonisation of the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature (where nature is an infinitely malleable material, to be dominated and shaped, without adverse consequences, purely for the purposes of human survival). While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism. (shrink)

Danto, in a somewhat Hegelian manner, argues that art is an alienated form of philosophy. My contention is that sport, too, is an alienated form of philosophy. In making his argument, Danto (1981,...

Face transplants have been performed, in a small number, since 2005. Popular concern over the morality of the face transplant has tended to focus on the role that one’s face plays in one’s sense of self or one’s personal identity. In order to address this concern, the current paper will explore the significance of face transplants in the light of a theory of the self that draws on symbolic interactionism, narrative theory, and accounts of embodiment. The paper will respond to (...) certain presuppositions concerning personal identity made by Huxtable and Woodley. A theory of the self will be articulated that draws on the work of Merleau-Ponty and G. H. Mead, in order to place embodiment and social interaction centrally to an understanding of self-identity. This will allow an account of the nature of the suffering that a face transplant seeks to remedy, and its worth as an operation, and crucially the impact that it may have on the sense of personal identity of the recipient of the transplant. The conclusion will review the treatment in the context of the prejudices that members of contemporary societies may hold against those with disfigurements. (shrink)

This paper aims to answer the question: what does the realism of laws of nature consist of? To achieve this, in the first part, three philosophical accounts of laws of nature are presented and examined: the universalist, the dispositionalist and the counter-factualist. The presentation and examination focuses on the answer given by each of these accounts to the question: what is a law of nature? Later, in the second part, convergences and divergences between these three accounts are shown. Finally, in (...) the third section, the points of agreement between them are put together to advance the fundamental thesis that encompasses each of these accounts as realist accounts of laws of nature. This thesis, I argue, is at the end the core of the general realist stance on laws of nature that I name “Realism of Laws of Nature”. (shrink)

Philosophy as a discipline is typically characterized through the use of rigorous argument and analysis, and the clarification of the meaning of concepts. Philosophical problems are thus resolved, not through the appeal to empirical evidence, but by identifying inconsistent and confusing patterns of thought and reflection. This paper will clarify the nature of a philosophical methodology by explicating the relationship between the philosophy of sport and the core traditional areas of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and logic.

(2013). Sport and Philosophy. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 10-29. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.761882.

Arthur Danto, in Transfiguration of the Commonplace, poses the important, but easily neglected question, as to whether art is the sort of thing of which there can be a philosophy (1981, 54). If it...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that sport can be understood as a form of engagement with the fundamental contingency and vulnerability of the human condition, and as such that it expresses a yearning for meaning in a modern society that offers only the illusion of meaning. Sport, at its most profound, is argued to be a negative liturgy, in the sense that it highlights an absence of meaning, rather than offering a positive alternative. The paper draws on (...) an analysis of contemporary society, and resultant defence of the potential role that liturgy might play in restoring meaning and a sense of transcendence to society, that is offered by the Radical Orthodoxy theologian Catherine Pickstock. (shrink)

As I write, sport in Europe has returned to something like normal, despite the continuing restrictions caused by the pandemic. The Tour de France is in its first week, although the spectator though...

Volume 14, Issue 2, May 2020, Page 127-128.

In the mid-1970s the sometime manager of Manchester City, Crystal Palace, and Sporting Lisbon, Malcolm Allison, was interviewed for the position of USA’s national soccer coach. While in the USA, Al...

Some of the time we are conscious. But we are a very small part of the universe, and consciousness, so it seems, is a very small part of us. Yet that very small part is the starting-point of all knowledge and the field in which all our experience occurs.

Each year the British Philosophy of Sport Association holds a competition, sponsored by our publisher, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, for student essays in the philosophy of sport. I had the privile...

The paper offers an account of integrity as the capacity to deliberate and reflect usefully in the light of context, knowledge, experience, and information (that of self and others) on complex and conflicting factors bearing on action or potential action. Such an account of integrity seeks to encompass the moral complexity and conflict of the professional environment, and the need for compromises in professional practice. In addition, it accepts that humans are social beings who must respect and engage with the (...) moral position of others. This account is contrasted with a more traditional view of integrity as the rigid maintenance of consistency between professional practice and deeply held, but inflexible, moral principles. While this strong sense of moral conviction may be valuable as a source of moral motivation, e.g. in the case of whistle‐blowers, it is equally likely to lead to dogmatism and hubris. Professionals and their organizations are encouraged to foster the more complex and reflective form of integrity. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical response to Fredrik Svenaeus’ use of the Heideggerian uncanny to analyse the experience of illness. It is argued that the uncanny is part of a culture of concepts through which the condition of modernity has been analysed by philosophers, social theorists, writers and artists. All centre upon the idea of alienation, and thus not being at home in the society that should be one’s home. This association will be exploited to offer a reinterpretation of Svenaeus’ (...) thesis as a sociological and political, rather than an ontological, one. By reviewing the work of Hegelian philosophers, Georg Simmel, and novelists, represented by Mann, Camus and McCullers, it will be argued that illness is bound up with social alienation, both as something that is caused by conditions of alienation and as an interpretative response to alienation. Seeing illness as a metaphor of the human condition in modernity allows the medical humanities to inform therapy, that would allow the patient to understand their illness, not as the ontological condition of Dasein, but rather as something mediated by modern social, economic and political conditions. (shrink)