AbstractIn many cultures, interactions between humans and plants are rooted in what is called “relational values”—values that derive from relationships and entail reciprocity. In Mexico, biocultural diversity is mirrored in the knowledge and use of some 6500 plant species and the domestication of over 250 Mesoamerican native crop species. This research explores how different sets of values are attributed to plants and how these influence management strategies to maintain plant resources in wild and anthropogenic environments. We ran workshops in two (...) communities in a highly biodiverse region in western Mexico, to ascertain the values and management activities related to important plant resources. The relationship between values attributed to plants and management activities was examined through redundancy analysis. A total of 180 plant resources were mentioned during the workshops, with a broad spectrum of values attributed to them, including material, non-material, and regulatory dimensions. We divided plant management strategies into three general categories of increasing intensity and complexity. We found that participants in the Indigenous community value and manage more wild plant resources than people in the non-Indigenous community. We also identified relationships between plant resource values and the type of management performed; for example, more intensive forms of management, such as sowing seeds, were used for seasonal plants that had a food value. By valuing and managing different sets of plant resources from forest, agricultural plots, and home gardens, people enabled multi-functional landscapes to form, illustrating a key feature of relational values in agroecosystems, which promotes both conservation and domestication of plants. (shrink)

Sainsbury 2005 and 2009 offers a theory of empty names that purports to account for the content and truth-value of all utterances involving them. The goal is to do this while offering a homogenous semantic treatment: both empty and nonempty names make the same kind of contribution to truth-values. The account is based on a new theory of reference that purports to be an alternative among nondescriptivist accounts. According to the new theory, there is reference even without referents. In this (...) paper I argue that the theory does not offer a homogeneous semantics for names and that, thus, it fails to offer a more satisfactory alternative to the theories already available. I conclude by briefly describing a way in which a theory could in fact offer such homogeneous semantics for names via a cognitive theory of empty names. (shrink)

It is assumed that the content of an assertion is determined either by the semantically defined content or by the interaction of the latter with the context. Here I present a counterexample by means of the Wookiee problem. After considering several options I offer what appears to be its most satisfactory solution. This requires that we give up the assumption in favor of a view according to which it may be that semantic information does not at all determine the content (...) of an assertion, not even partly so. (shrink)

According to dynamic semantics, what is said by an utterance of a sentence is determined by how the common ground is affected by the acceptance of such utterance. It has been claimed that dynamic semantics offers an account of what is said by an utterance in a context that excels that of traditional static semantics. Assertions of negative existential constructions, of the form ‘X does not exist’, are a case in point. These assertions traditionally pose a problem for philosophers of (...) language. A recent proposal, owed to Clapp, argues that static semantics is unable to solve the problem and offers a dynamic semantics account that promises to succeed. In this paper I want to challenge this account and, more generally, the scope of the dynamic semantics framework. I will offer a counterexample, inspired by “answering machine” uses of indexical and demonstrative expressions, to show how dynamic semantics fails. I conclude by considering the merits of both static and dynamic accounts. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone analizar el desvío retórico que hace Walter Benjamin en su lectura de la crítica kantiana a la metafísica. En función de ello, mediante una vía de interpretación expositiva, abordaremos cómo se sitúa lo retórico en el marco de una tarea crítica que busca ampliar los dominios transcriptos de la experiencia posible hacia un trasfondo incondicionado, no reducible bajo el ideal sistemático de la _Wissenschaft_ y sus primados de tipo metafísico-gnoseológico. A partir de la exposición de (...) los vínculos entre crítica retórica, _Sprache_ y el uso retórico de figuras teológicas en algunos contextos discursivos de las disquisiciones benjaminianas, arribaremos a las consideraciones finales, en las que planteamos que el desvío retórico de la crítica efectuado por el autor resulta inseparable de una crítica radical al estatuto del discurso filosófico sistemático y a su fundamento de determinación idealista, concebida mediante una reinvención de categorías y problemas estéticos. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se propone analizar la apropiación que hace Walter Benjamin del criticismo kantiano para la construcción de una filosofía contemporánea venidera. En función de ello, mediante una vía de interpretación expositiva, abordaremos cómo se articula en “Sobre el programa de la filosofía venidera” el pasaje de la crítica a la metafísica hacia una crítica de tipo retórico, considerando los momentos siguientes: la doble articulación del significante Lehre (entendido en su acepción teorético-doctrinal —tal como funciona en el discurso (...) de las filosofías de sistema— o en su fundamento retórico —Lehre como enseñanza, transmisión o comunicación indirecta—), la ampliación del campo de la experiencia concebido en el ámbito de die Sprache y la interpretación de la metafísica crítica en cuanto mitología moderna. A partir de la exposición de estos momentos, arribaremos a las consideraciones finales de que la apropiación de Benjamin del criticismo como punto de partida para la constitución de una filosofía contemporánea venidera, en contraposición con el ideal epistémico de la Lehre entendida bajo una interpretación teórico-doctrinal, resulta inseparable de una crítica radical al estatuto del discurso filosófico sistemático y a su fundamento de determinación idealista. (shrink)

In this paper we articulate, partially and from a rhetorical analysis approach, the crucial moments in which reading appears linked to die Sprache in Walter Benjamin's writings. Both reading and die Sprache operate in Benjamin's discourses as a point of synecdochic crystallization for the elaboration of his rhetorical critique, already outlined in his posthumous writings of youth and brought into play in his early and late essays on art criticism. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator.

En la primera parte del artículo se propone un análisis de la insuficiencia constitucional del ser humano en el contexto de la filosofía griega. Se presenta una crítica al concepto de autarquía y se analiza el carácter contracultural de los movimientos filosóficos del cinismo, estoicismo y epicureísmo. La negación relativa y absoluta de la alteridad son igualmente analizadas. En la segunda parte, se analiza la insuficiencia constitucional desde el concepto de pobreza en el contexto de la orden franciscana y su (...) renuncia a la propiedad. También se hace referencia a los argumentos de los teólogos de la escuela de Salamanca y finalmente se plantea en qué medida el discurso franciscano está presente hoy como discurso político revolucionario. El objetivo general de las dos partes es presentar dos momentos anómalos de nuestra historia filosófica y su posible carácter contracultural válido para una crítica al capitalismo actual. (shrink)