_Resumen_ _ _ El presente trabajo tiene por objeto reflexionar sobre el carácter filosófico del pensar andino abyayalense, explicitar las características de una racionalidad senti-pensante y relacional que superan las metafísicas subjetivas y, finalmente, ayudar a construir una epistemología decolonial latinoamericana. El logro de estos objetivos se hará en diálogo con la propuesta de la ontología existencial del filósofo alemán Martín Heidegger. _Palabras Clave: _Pensar, Relacionalidad, Epistemología, Filosofía, Andes. _ _ __ _ _ This paper aims to reflect on the (...) philosophical thinking character of the abyayalense Andean tradition, explain the characteristics of a relational sentient-intelligent rationality, and, finally, help build a Latin American decolonial epistemology. The achievements of these goals will be done in dialogue with existential ontology carried out by the German philosopher Martín Heidegger. _Keywords: _Think, Relatedness, Epistemology, Philosophy, Andean. (shrink)

Si bien toda la filosofía de la imaginación bachelardiana está afectada por un materialismo simbólico y este puede ejercer las funciones de mediación o acompañamiento en el viaje de la ensoñación, también es cierto que la finalidad del arte –en este caso, de la poesía– es el relámpago, la búsqueda de la verdad, la aprehensión profunda del ser de las cosas; experiencia esta que difícilmente se puede dar si mediamos, entre el ser de la cosa y el ser del hombre, (...) conceptos o categorías que, al buscar una mayor comprensión de los fenómenos operativos que allí se están dando, acaban por ahogar el propio decir de lo que tenuemente se nos muestra. La imagen poética debe ser el vehículo capaz de simbolizar la realidad conectándola con el imaginario, siendo a la vez aquella fuerza a-causal que traiga la novedad ontológica capaz de construir un nuevo antropocosmos. Palabras clave: imagen poética; límite; símbolo; ética; belleza. (shrink)

Spontaneous brain activity has received increasing attention as demonstrated by the exponential rise in the number of published papers on this topic over the last thirty years. Such “intrinsic” brain activity, generated in the absence of an explicit task, is frequently associated with resting-state or default-mode networks. The focus on characterizing spontaneous brain activity promises to shed new light on questions concerning the structural and functional architecture of the brain and how they are related to “mind”. However, many critical questions (...) have yet to be addressed. In this review, we focus on a scarcely explored area, specifically the energetic requirements and constraints of spontaneous activity, taking into account both thermodynamical and informational perspectives. We argue that the “classical” definitions of spontaneous activity do not take into account an important feature, that is, the critical thermodynamic energetic differences between spontaneous and evoked brain activity. Spontaneous brain activity is associated with slower oscillations compared with evoked, task-related activity, hence it exhibits lower levels of enthalpy and “free-energy” (i.e. the energy that can be converted to do work), thus supporting noteworthy thermodynamic energetic differences between spontaneous and evoked brain activity. Increased spike frequency during evoked activity has a significant metabolic cost, consequently, brain functions traditionally associated with spontaneous activity, such as mind wandering, require less energy that other nervous activities. We also review recent empirical observations in neuroscience, in order to capture how spontaneous brain dynamics and mental function can be embedded in a non-linear dynamical framework, which considers nervous activity in terms of phase spaces, particle trajectories, random walks, attractors and/or paths at the edge of the chaos. This takes us from the thermodynamic free-energy, to the realm of “variational free-energy”, a theoretical construct pertaining to probability and information theory which allows explanation of unexplored features of spontaneous brain activity. (shrink)

Contiene tres trabajos sobre Arturo Ardao: sobre la noción de sujeto (Yamandú Acosta); sobre la interpretación de Andrés Bello (Arturo A. Roig); y sobre su libro Filosofía de lengua española (ver HLAS 36:5047). Mencionamos algunas de las otras contribuciones: el tema de la historia de la filosofía latinoamericana (Horacio Cerutti Guldberg); el batllismo (Manuel A. Claps); el tema de Calibán (Roberto Fernández Retamar); el pensamiento de Pedro Figari (Juan Fló); la universidad latinoamericana en el siglo XVIII (Gregorio Weinberg); (...) el pensamiento socialista en el Uruguay (Carlos Zubillaga). Es de lamentar que no se agregara al volumen una bibliografía de Ardao"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58. (shrink)

The debate that raged in the interwar period between the Austrian economists and socialist economists was, narrowly conceived, a debate in positive economics. What was being discussed was certainly not the morality of capitalism or of socialism. Nor, strictly speaking, was the debate even about society's economic well-being under socialism; it concerned the ability of central planners to make decisions that take appropriate account of relevant resource scarcities, in the light of consumer preference rankings. To be sure, the extraordinary interest (...) which surrounded the debate and the passions that lurked barely below its surface testified to the powerful implications of the debate for crucial issues in welfare economics. The Austrians were not merely exploring the economies of socialism; they were in effect demonstrating that, as an economic system attempting to serve the needs of its citizens, socialism must inevitably fail. But, even if the debate is interpreted in its broadest terms, as a debate in welfare economics, it represented a sharp break widi traditional polemics relating to the socialism-capitalism issue. Traditionally the arguments for or against capitalism had, until 1920, been deeply involved in ediical questions. Mises's 1920 challenge to socialism, in contrast, was explicit in making no attempt to address any claims concerning the alleged moral superiority of socialism. He simply argued that, as an economic system, socialism was inherendy incapable of fulfilling the objectives of its proponents; central planners are unable to plan centrally. (shrink)

Israel Scheffler is the pre-eminent philosopher of education in the English-speaking world today. This volume collects seventeen original, invited papers on Scheffler's philosophy of education by scholars from around the world. The papers address the wide range of topics that Scheffler's work in philosophy of education has addressed, including the aims of education, cognition and emotion, teaching, the language of education, science education, moral education, religious education, and human potential. Each paper is followed by a response from Scheffler himself. (...) The collection is essential reading for anyone concerned with contemporary scholarship in philosophy of education, or with the place of this singularly important author in it. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy is a prolific thinker, not only because of an abundant body of work—more than a hundred titles—but also and above all because his thought, in the form of an opening, encourages and invites us to think what he himself has not put into question. So it is with the category of “milieu”. This category, of which Georges Canguilhem in his time marked the contemporaneity, is more relevant today than ever. It enables us to think differently about our world, (...) and about what makes the world our world. Who makes the “we,” when we think through the “milieu”? How can we think from the relationship first and not from a primordial subject? How, therefore, can we think of another subjectivity, beyond the reflexive subjectivity of the human? This study aims to show the conditions in which Nancy’s work can contribute in a powerful way to a thought of being-together from an ecosophical point of view. (shrink)

Objectivity Under Attack: a fundamental feature of science is its ideal of objectivity, an ideal that subjects ...

The brain displays both the anatomical features of a vast amount of interconnected topological mappings as well as the functional features of a nonlinear, metastable system at the edge of chaos, equipped with a phase space where mental random walks tend towards lower energetic basins. Nevertheless, with the exception of some advanced neuro-anatomic descriptions and present-day connectomic research, very few studies have been addressing the topological path of a brain embedded or embodied in its external and internal environment. Herein, by (...) using new formal tools derived from algebraic topology, we provide an account of the metastable brain, based on the neuro-scientific model of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning. We introduce a “topodynamic” description that shows how the relationships among the countless intertwined spatio-temporal levels of brain functioning can be assessed in terms of projections and mappings that take place on abstract structures, equipped with different dimensions, curvatures and energetic constraints. Such a topodynamical approach, apart from providing a biologically plausible model of brain function that can be operationalized, is also able to tackle the issue of a long-standing dichotomy: it throws indeed a bridge between the subjective, immediate datum of the naïve complex of sensations and mentations and the objective, quantitative, data extracted from experimental neuro-scientific procedures. Importantly, it opens the door to a series of new predictions and future directions of advancement for neuroscientific research. (shrink)

This essay proposes going beyond the difference between literary writing and new communication technologies. This appears to be possible by using a genealogical perspective that can recognize the underlying relationships between communication strategies that on the surface seem different. For this, it is necessary to identify the remote and unexpected ascendancies of diverse languages at a moment when the various media express themselves in an increasingly similar style. Even literary language should be considered a medium that shapes and models reality, (...) using codes that are anthropological before they are aesthetic. As Viktor Shklovsky, Italo Calvino, and Paolo Fabbri have shown, literary language explores reality by revealing its incompleteness. On the contrary, ordinary language is confined to that incompleteness with its standard lexicon that would claim to enclose reality within a net of pre-established recurrences. Il saggio invita ad andare oltre il divario esistente tra scrittura letteraria e nuove tecnologie della comunicazione . Questo appare possibile attraverso una prospettiva genealogica che sappia riconoscere le relazioni sotterranee che si stabiliscono tra strategie comunicative che in superficie appaiono diverse. Per questo occorre riconoscere le ascendenze remote e inaspettate dei diversi linguaggi in un momento in cui i vari media si esprimono in maniera sempre più intrecciata. Anche il linguaggio letterario va considerato come un medium che foggia e plasma la realtà utilizzando codici che sono antropologici prima ancora che essere estetici. Come hanno mostrato sia pure in maniera diversa Viktor Šklovskij, Italo Calvino e Paolo Fabbri, il linguaggio letterario esplora la realtà, rivelandone l’incompiutezza alla quale è inchiodato il linguaggio ordinario: quel lessico usuale che pretenderebbe di racchiudere la realtà entro una griglia di ricorrenze prestabilite. (shrink)

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods have resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems (...) using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed. (shrink)

In a recent essay Professor Taylor criticizes the criteria used by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow in 1943 to distinguish purposeful from non-purposeful behavior. He also criticizes our definition of behavior, our concept of the vague as opposed to the general, our use of the word correlation, and our statement that a system may reach a final condition. Indeed, there seems to be little, if anything, in our paper to which he does not emphatically object.He maintains that the notions of purpose (...) and teleology are not only useless for the understanding of mechanical behavior, but wholly incongruous when applied to this behavior. He further affirms that our use of the term purpose “bears no similarity whatever to the meaning which is ordinarily attached to it.” He does not state, however, his own notions of purpose and teleology; and the meaning which he considers to be ordinarily attached to the term purpose. This omission weakens his criticism considerably. (shrink)

El autor trabaja en este artículo una de las obras más citadas y controvertidas del Hegel de su periodo maduro cual es los Principios de la Filosofía del Derecho o Derecho Natural y Ciencia Política, comúnmente conocida como Filosofía del Derecho y desarrolla algunos temas que permanecen como cuestiones abiertas al debate o como aspectos objetables, tanto en su teoría del espíritu objetivo como en su interpretación.

The contribution describes some aspects related to the representation of special curves; recalling mechanisms created specifically for the design of these curves, which have particular characteristics. Through the construction of a simple apparatus, consisting of two pendulums—which oscillate at the same time- it is possible to graphically reproduce Lissajous’ experiments on the commuting vibrations of the diapasons. This equipment was first built by Samuel Charles Tisley (London 1829-Unknown), under the name of harmonographer. The contribution aslo illustrates the essential characteristics of (...) the harmonograph—born as a means of analysing vibrations—but which, by its principle belongs to mechanics, for its applications to acoustic science and geometry for the ability to draw “harmonious” curves. (shrink)

El autor sigue a Ana Arendt para examinar el tema de la responsabilidad personal bajo dictadura. Ante el argumento de que no había opciones pues se era una ‘ruedecilla del engranaje’, afirma que el mal menor no deja de ser un mal, y que la verdadera pregunta moral no es ‘por qué obedeciste’ sino ‘por qué ayudaste’.

The discrepancy between syntax and semantics is a painstaking issue that hinders a better comprehension of the underlying neuronal processes in the human brain. In order to tackle the issue, we at first describe a striking correlation between Wittgenstein's Tractatus, that assesses the syntactic relationships between language and world, and Perlovsky's joint language-cognitive computational model, that assesses the semantic relationships between emotions and “knowledge instinct”. Once established a correlation between a purely logical approach to the language and computable psychological activities, (...) we aim to find the neural correlates of syntax and semantics in the human brain. Starting from topological arguments, we suggest that the semantic properties of a proposition are processed in higher brain's functional dimensions than the syntactic ones. In a fully reversible process, the syntactic elements embedded in Broca's area project into multiple scattered semantic cortical zones. The presence of higher functional dimensions gives rise to the increase in informational content that takes place in semantic expressions. Therefore, diverse features of human language and cognitive world can be assessed in terms of both the logic armor described by the Tractatus, and the neurocomputational techniques at hand. One of our motivations is to build a neuro-computational framework able to provide a feasible explanation for brain's semantic processing, in preparation for novel computers with nodes built into higher dimensions. (shrink)

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, is (...) meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)

Arthur Danto believed that “style has to be expressed immediately and spontaneously.” Danto writes that “the question of when is a thing an artwork becomes one with the question of when is an interpretation of a thing an artistic interpretation”. His extensive art criticism focuses, then, on the way artworks are about. The presence of a metaphor and the demand for interpretation are insufficient to draw the demarcation line between art and not‐art. A work of art ought to be “a (...) piece of visual thought”. Danto's own style was an invitation, almost intimate, to engage his enticing and entertaining way of thinking. His writing creates the impression that he is speaking and simply registering his thoughts and imaginings as they come. (shrink)

Con una belleza literaria incomparable, la Comedìa refleja la cosmovisión católica que vertebra la Cristiandad medieval, que tuvo su máximo exponente filosófico y teológico en santo Tomás. A lo largo de todo el itinerario poético, vemos la impronta del Aquinate presente en el meollo de la narración. Aquí analizaré cómo la cuestión teológica fundamental del gobierno divino del mundo permea la Comedìa, tanto en su estructura formal como en ciertos aspectos concretos del viaje de Dante. A partir de dicha premisa, (...) estudiaré las consecuencias que ello tiene en ese orden jurídico manifestado en la «arquitectura» del infierno, cuyo dintel es elocuente: «Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; / fecemi la divina podestate, / la somma sapienza e ‘l primo amore». Finalmente, abordaré la proporcionalidad de las penas que sufren los condenados, como indicador de la medida natural de los castigos dictados por justicia divina. (shrink)

Schelling and music.- Music is a theme which enables us to have more direct access to the philosophy of Schelling. This is because in the Romantic period it is typical to find the conceptual framework provided by affirming a unity between reason and sensibility, while thought of the modern period tends to split these two. Here music is dealt with on the basis of a study of the meaning of art in the System of transcendental idealism, and of the question (...) of philosophy as a system of identity. (shrink)