Ressenya /Reseña / Review H. U. Gumbrecht, R. Koselleck, H. Stuke, Il·lustració, progrés i modernitat. Història dels conceptes, València, Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2018.

This paper presents the notion of transfinite developed by García Bacca in his «Infinito, transfinito, finito». This concept is a reaction to the Aristotelian concepts of «nature» and «finite», making man a historical being. García Bacca argues that man has lost his nature and his finitude through technology. So, strictly speaking, is not finite, nor infinite.

This essay proposes that the work of Sylvia Wynter, a canonical figure in Afro-Caribbean philosophy, demonstrates other ways of doing philosophy, a comparative philosophy carried out as a cross-cultural exercise. Sylvia Wynter has argued for a “New Science of the Word” by drawing from the contributions of Frantz Fanon (sociogeny), Aimé Césaire (poetic knowledge), and the field of cybernetics, among other sources. This essay aims to explain the framework and methodology of the New Science and the original transdisciplinary engagement that (...) such a framework facilitates. It argues that, by appropriating the concept of “autopoiesis” beyond the natural sciences, Wynter refashions autopoiesis as autopoetics to answer the age-old question of what it means to be human. Comparative philosophy, the essay concludes, can be fertile ground for Wynter’s project and epistemic decolonization. (shrink)

The trope of fetishization is central to Latin American liberation philosophy and its proposal for an “anti-fetishist” method. In this essay, I offer a genealogy of the trope of fetishization in the work of the Argentine-Mexican philosopher of liberation Enrique Dussel. Engaging recent work in cultural anthropology that demonstrates how the notion of “fetishism” develops out of a one-sided Eurocentric anthropology of religion that misrepresents elements of Afro-Atlantic religions, I argue that without a serious revision of the metaphysical premises of (...) “anti-fetishism,” liberation philosophy risks perpetuating a Eurocentrism that runs counter to the interests of epistemic decolonization to which it is committed. This essay therefore concludes by outlining the prospects of a decolonial “anti-fetishist” method that might overcome the Eurocentric misapprehension of Afro-Atlantic religions. (shrink)

*Winner of the American Philosophical Association's 2020 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought* This essay offers a novel account of the secularity of Latin American liberation philosophy. It challenges the accepted notion that liberation philosophy applies the methods and approaches of Latin American liberation theology to the philosophical arena, thus putting liberation theology on secular grounds. While this formulation is true insofar as liberation philosophy is not bound by the hermeneutics of any particular religious tradition, this formulation could be misconstrued (...) given that liberation philosophy does not premise such secularization in an undialectical understanding of secularity as secularism that disavows religion. Rather, liberation philosophy’s secularity is dialectical in that it requires constant engagement with re-ligion, not in the hermeneutics of any specific tradition but with “the traditional question of the Absolute.” Due to this often-misunderstood element of liberation philosophy, it has frequently been “ghettoized and relegated to the ‘safe’ area of theological studies,” as Eduardo Mendieta argues. However, I contend that liberation philosophy’s secular grounds offer an original contribution to philosophy as a decolonial and postsecularist liberation philosophy, one that conceives of secularism as an aspect of coloniality to be overcome, an obstacle rather than a benefit for Latin American philosophers seeking to gain a better understanding of our historical conditions. (shrink)

Based on Maldonado-Torres’s formulation of the term, we conceive the decolonial turn as a form of liberating and decolonising reason beyond the liberal and Enlightened emancipation of rationality, and beyond the more radical Euro-critiques that have failed to consistently challenge the legacies of Eurocentrism and white male heteronormativity (often Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism). We complement Maldonado-Torres’s account of the decolonial turn in philosophy, theory and critique by providing an analysis of the trajectories of academic philosophy and clarifying the relevance of (...) decolonising philosophy and of the decolonial turn for current efforts in transforming philosophy in face of the challenges of social movements such as the Third World Liberation Front and Black Lives Matter in the United States, and Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa and England. After a brief analysis of the trajectory and current status of philosophy as a discipline in the modern Western research university, we provide examples of the decolonial turn and of decolonising philosophy in three areas: the engagement with (1) Asian and (2) Latin American philosophies, and (3) debates in the philosophy of race and gender. (shrink)

Background: Screen time among adults represents a continuing and growing problem in relation to health behaviors and health outcomes. However, no instrument currently exists in the literature that quantifies the use of modern screen-based devices. The primary purpose of this study was to develop and assess the reliability of a new screen time questionnaire, an instrument designed to quantify use of multiple popular screen-based devices among the US population. -/- Methods: An 18-item screen-time questionnaire was created to quantify use of (...) commonly used screen devices (e.g. television, smartphone, tablet) across different time points during the week (e.g. weekday, weeknight, weekend). Test-retest reliability was assessed through intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) and standard error of measurement (SEM). The questionnaire was delivered online using Qualtrics and administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). -/- Results: Eighty MTurk workers completed full study participation and were included in the final analyses. All items in the screen time questionnaire showed fair to excellent relative reliability (ICCs = 0.50–0.90; all < 0.000), except for the item inquiring about the use of smartphone during an average weekend day (ICC = 0.16, p = 0.069). The SEM values were large for all screen types across the different periods under study. -/- Conclusions: Results from this study suggest this self-administered questionnaire may be used to successfully classify individuals into different categories of screen time use (e.g. high vs. low); however, it is likely that objective measures are needed to increase precision of screen time assessment. (shrink)

Comprende tres obras, distintas en su estructura, pero coincidentes en el significado que atribuyen al Derecho y a sus relaciones con el poder.

En este trabajo se estudia la concepción escotista del universal entendido como universallógico y accidente intencional, cuya función cognitiva se entiende como modo de aprehensión oconcepción de la esencia o naturaleza. El artículo se concentra en analizar las cuestiones 4 y 5 del comentario de Duns Escoto a la Isagoge. Se subraya la relación de los análisis escotistas con lateoría aviceniana del triple estatuto de la esencia sobre el telón de fondo de la teoría boeciana de los universales. Al final (...) del artículo se presenta brevemente el momento ontológico del universal tal comose puede ver en la teoría de la naturaleza común. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the data collected about 5,388 videos from the 15 leading channels from Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States focusing on toys and in which the protagonists are children under 14 years of age. It aims to determine whether there are common patterns of use, production, and activity in videos by kid YouTubers. Specific software was developed to enable information to be gathered from the YouTube platform through the YouTube Data API by analyzing the date on (...) which the video was published, length, number of visits, likes, dislikes, and visits/vote. The main conclusions drawn are that a channel’s success is not dependent on a pattern or specific characteristics, although an impulse pattern has been detected; participation by children who consume content in the United States differs significantly from participation by those in Europe; and certain similarities based on video length and production frequency can be observed between channels. (shrink)

Recensión de: _Cano, M., _Performatividad y vulnerabilidad_, Barcelona: Shackleton Books, 2021._ En este libro publicado en 2021 por la editorial Shackleton Books, la profesora Mónica Cano Abadía hace un estudio del pensamiento de Judith Butler a partir de los dos ejes principales que extrae de su obra: la performatividad y la vulnerabilidad. Por un lado, se deja claro que todas construimos nuestra identidad a partir de un mecanismo de repetición de normas que está sujeto a fallo y que, por tanto, (...) puede ocasionar que nuestro cuerpo realice ciertos actos de habla cuyas consecuencias no sean las deseadas desde un principio. Por otro lado, también se indica que somos seres vulnerables de manera constitutiva, lo que quiere decir que necesariamente tendremos que establecer relaciones de interdependencia con las demás personas si queremos sobrevivir en este mundo. No somos individuos autónomos y libres que pueden llegar a construir su identidad independientemente de la mirada del Otro, pero tampoco somos meros seres pasivos que se configuran como resultado de una imposición y asimilación de las normas sociales. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to contribute to the recent philosophical interest in the phenomenon of narco-culture. I build on the intervention initiated by Carlos Alberto Sánchez’s A Sense of Brutality: Philosophy after Narco-Culture (2020) by articulating the spiritually “generative” aspects of violence. For this endeavor, I turn to the French philosopher René Girard, whose work audaciously understands community-building and the maintenance of social order as a violent process of sacralization. This conception of violence then permits me to challenge some (...) of Sánchez’s interpretations of the violence and brutality of narco-culture. My argument is that any comprehensive analysis of the narco-world, just as any other existential option, must consider the spiritual component that, in Girard’s terms, can be expressed as a search for the sacred. (shrink)

The essay aims to offer some thoughts about the configuration of the subject as a category of analysis for the understanding of citizenship. For this purpose, two key dimensions are outlined: ideal and empirical. The arguments presented allow an understanding of citizenship as a symbolic construct fraught with tension, beyond the legal and administrative dimension; for example, through its links with migration, racism and identity. Finally, it presents what we have called the ideal-empirical subject, as a construct that contributes to (...) the understanding of social reality from the perspective of the subject as irreducible singularity. The central thesis of this essay is that citizenship, as a construct supported in the inclusion exclusion dichotomy, operates as a shaping element of the ideal-empirical subject in modern societies, and more specifically in globalized post-industrial societies. El ensayo tiene por objetivo exponer algunas reflexiones relativas a la configuración del sujeto como categoría de análisis para la comprensión de la ciudadanía. Para estos efectos se plantean dos dimensiones claves, la ideal y la empírica. Los argumentos que se presentan permiten captar la ciudadanía como un constructo simbólico cargado de tensiones, más allá de la dimensión jurídica y administrativa; por ejemplo, por medio de su articulación con las migraciones, el racismo y la identidad. Finalmente se expone lo que hemos denominado el sujeto ideal-empírico, como constructo que contribuye a la comprensión de la realidad social desde la perspectiva del sujeto, en tanto singularidad irreductible. La tesis central de este ensayo es que la ciudadanía en tanto constructo sustentado en la dicotomía inclusión exclusión opera como elemento modelador del sujeto ideal-empírico en el escenario de las sociedades modernas y más específicamente en las sociedades postindustriales globalizadas. (shrink)

This book describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. The idea of knowledge bases lies at the heart of symbolic, or "traditional," artificial intelligence. A knowledge-based system decides how to act by running formal reasoning procedures over a body of explicitly represented knowledge—a knowledge base. The system is not programmed for specific tasks; rather, it is (...) told what it needs to know and expected to infer the rest. This book is about the logic of such knowledge bases. It describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. Assuming some familiarity with first-order predicate logic, the book offers a new mathematical model of knowledge that is general and expressive yet more workable in practice than previous models. The book presents a style of semantic argument and formal analysis that would be cumbersome or completely impractical with other approaches. It also shows how to treat a knowledge base as an abstract data type, completely specified in an abstract way by the knowledge-level operations defined over it. (shrink)

Background The purpose of this study was to examine whether extended use of a variety of screen-based devices, in addition to television, was associated with poor dietary habits and other health-related characteristics and behaviors among US adults. The recent phenomenon of binge-watching was also explored. -/- Methods A survey to assess screen time across multiple devices, dietary habits, sleep duration and quality, perceived stress, self-rated health, physical activity, and body mass index, was administered to a sample of US adults using (...) the Qualtrics platform and distributed via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were adults 18 years of age and older, English speakers, current US residents, and owners of a television and at least one other device with a screen. Three different screen time categories (heavy, moderate, and light) were created for total screen time, and separately for screen time by type of screen, based on distribution tertiles. Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted to examine differences in dietary habits and health-related characteristics between screen time categories. -/- Results Aggregate screen time across all devices totaled 17.5 h per day for heavy users. Heavy users reported the least healthful dietary patterns and the poorest health-related characteristics – including self-rated health – compared to moderate and light users. Moreover, unique dietary habits emerged when examining dietary patterns by type of screen separately, such that heavy users of TV and smartphone displayed the least healthful dietary patterns compared to heavy users of TV-connected devices, laptop, and tablet. Binge-watching was also significantly associated with less healthy dietary patterns, including frequency of fast-food consumption as well as eating family meals in front of a television, and perceived stress. -/- Conclusions The present study found that poorer dietary choices, as well as other negative health-related impacts, occurred more often as the viewing time of a variety of different screen-based devices increased in a sample of US adults. Future research is needed to better understand what factors among different screen-based devices might affect health behaviors and in turn health-related outcomes. Research is also required to better understand how binge-watching behavior contributes impacts health-related behaviors and characteristics. (shrink)

This article discusses Jacques Rancière's theory of literature as centred on an agonistic concept of literature, where literature is seen as a ‘positive contradiction’. This positive contradiction arises from what Rancière sees as literature's origins in the ‘errant letter’, which is conceived as an intrinsically democratic principle that, for Rancière, also results in the tendency of literature to incarnate the word and to propose an extra-textual truth which would signal the end of literature as democratic errancy. Asking whether it is (...) possible to identify Rancière as ‘taking sides’ in what he sets up as a struggle, the article analyses three examples of Rancière's engagement with literary texts in which he demonstrates the necessity for literature to maintain its constitutive contradiction, resulting in a conception of literature as an agonistic field and as a self-critical mode of writing. (shrink)

A Computable Universe is a collection of papers discussing computation in nature and the nature of computation, a compilation of the views of the pioneers in the contemporary area of intellectual inquiry focused on computational and informational theories of the world. This volume is the definitive source of informational/computational views of the world, and of cutting-edge models of the universe, both digital and quantum, discussed from a philosophical perspective as well as in the greatest technical detail. The book discusses the (...) foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and their philosophical implications. The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays representing a field that takes information and computation to be key to understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. It also includes a new edition of Konrad Zuse's "Calculating Space", and a panel discussion transcription on the topic, featuring worldwide experts (including a Nobel prize) in quantum mechanics, physics, cognition, computation and algorithmic complexity.A Computable Universe is a collection of papers discussing computation in nature and the nature of computation, a compilation of the views of the pioneers in the contemporary area of intellectual inquiry focused on computational and informational theories of the world. This volume is the definitive source of informational/computational views of the world, and of cutting-edge models of the universe, both digital and quantum, discussed from a philosophical perspective as well as in the greatest technical detail. The book discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and their philosophical implications. The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays representing a field that takes information and computation to be key to understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. It also includes a new edition of Konrad Zuse's "Calculating Space", and a panel discussion transcription on the topic, featuring worldwide experts (including a Nobel prize) in quantum mechanics, physics, cognition, computation and algorithmic complexity. (shrink)

Aristóteles ha pasado a la historia como el padre de la lógica. Este artículo resalta dos puntos. Primero, analiza los motivos por los cuales Aristóteles rechaza habitualmente la definición metafórica, especialmente en el ámbito de la llamada metafisica; segundo, pone al descubierto algunas inconsistencias metodológicas en el corpus al respecto.

Detecting intrusions in large networks is a highly demanding task. In order to reduce the computation demand of analysing every single packet travelling along one of such networks, some years ago flows were proposed as a way of summarizing traffic information. Very few research works have addressed intrusion detection in flows from a visualizations perspective. In order to bridge this gap, the present paper proposes the application of a novel projection method (Beta Hebbian Learning) under this framework. With the aim (...) to validate this method, 8 traffic segments, containing many flows, have been analysed by means of this projection method. The promising results obtained for these segments, extracted from the University of Twente dataset, validate the proposed application. (shrink)

This paper explores principles governing the rational balance among an agent's beliefs, goals, actions, and intentions. Such principles provide specifications for artificial agents, and approximate a theory of human action (as philosophers use the term). By making explicit the conditions under which an agent can drop his goals, i.e., by specifying how the agent is committed to his goals, the formalism captures a number of important properties of intention. Specifically, the formalism provides analyses for Bratman's three characteristic functional roles played (...) by intentions [7, 9], and shows how agents can avoid intending all the foreseen side-effects of what they actually intend. Finally, the analysis shows how intentions can be adopted relative to a background of relevant beliefs and other intentions or goals. By relativizing one agent's intentions in terms of beliefs about another agent's intentions (or beliefs'), we derive a preliminary account of interpersonal commitments. (shrink)

This essay builds on a recent intervention made by Mariana Ortega, who has called on philosophers committed to decolonization to avoid reproducing “colonial impulses and erasures” in the very attempt to advance epistemic decolonization. When connected to “practices of un-knowing,” these tendencies become an “affliction,” which Ortega labels with the notion of “decolonial woes.” The author focuses on the reception of the spiritual elements in Anzaldúa’s work to identify a specifically secular form of a decolonial woe: the disregard for the (...) potential that spirituality comprises for advancing the project of decolonization. To counter such secularist erasure, this essay offers an interpretation of Anzaldúa’s well-known concept of la facultad as a postsecular methodology that can help advance the project of epistemic decolonization. (shrink)

This article seeks to interrogate the moment of queer theory's ‘birth’ out of French influences, or what is designated by the umbrella term ‘French Theory’. It specifically points to the operations of transformation and dislocation, subversion and perversion of French theoretical influences at work in two distinctive ‘pairings’ of French ‘progenitor’ and American queer ‘offspring’: Jacques Derrida with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Jacques Lacan with Judith Butler.