Humans have engaged in artistic and aesthetic activities since the appearance of our species. Our ancestors have decorated their bodies, tools, and utensils for over 100,000 years. The expression of meaning using color, line, sound, rhythm, or movement, among other means, constitutes a fundamental aspect of our species' biological and cultural heritage. Art and aesthetics, therefore, contribute to our species identity and distinguish it from its living and extinct relatives. Science is faced with the challenge of explaining the natural foundations (...) of such a unique trait, and the way cultural processes nurture it into magnificent expressions, historically and ethnically unique. How do the human mind and brain bring about these sorts of behaviors? What psychological and neural processes underlie the appreciation of painting, music, and dance? How does training modulate these processes? Are humans the only species capable of aesthetic appreciation, or are other species endowed with the rudiments of this capacity? Empirical examinations of such questions have a long and rich history in the discipline of psychology, the genesis of which can be traced back to the publication of Gustav Theodor Fechner's Vorschule der Aesthetik in 1876, making it the second oldest branch in experimental psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Aesthetics brings together leading experts in psychology, neuroimaging, art history, and philosophy to answer these questions. It provides the most comprehensive coverage of the domain of empirical aesthetics to date. With sections on visual art, dance, music, and many other art forms and aesthetic phenomena, the breadth of this volume's scope reflects the richness and variety of topics and methods currently used today by scientists to understand the way our mind and brain endow us with the faculty to produce and appreciate art and aesthetics. (shrink)

The Routledge International Handbook of Neuroaesthetics is an authoritative reference work that provides the reader with a wide-ranging introduction to this exciting new scientific discipline. The book brings together leading international academics to offer a well-balanced overview of this burgeoning field while addressing two questions central to the field; how the brain computes aesthetic appreciation for sensory objects, and how is art created and experienced.

La autora presenta al “Estado de derecho” como un campo de lucha. Desde arriba, se busca conferirle ese estatuto al nuevo poder mundial, correlato y brazo político-militar de las burocracias privadas. Es la estrategia de globalización –que reduce la democracia a puro procedimentalismo formalista- y que no puede sino generar desde abajo resistencias mundiales: resistencias programáticas y organizadas que buscan construir otro mundo posible, por un lado, y por otro lado resistencias irracionales, sin capacidad de articulación política. La autora recorre (...) el pensamiento de Hinkelammert, destacando la crítica que elabora al fetichismo de la mercancía, del dinero y del capital y su planteamiento de un conflicto entre rebelión legítima frente a la ley despótica e idolatría de la ley. (shrink)

La figura del chileno Francisco Bilbao (1823-1865), como pensador americanista y crítico de las filosofías de la historia eurocentristas, constituye el hilo central de este análisis. La autora expone los elementos claves de la crítica de Bilbao respecto de los sistemas de pensamiento que promueven una aceptación pasiva del pasado y el presente como un designio de la Providencia o bien del Progreso. Se develan las lógicas que existen tras las distintas versiones de la filosofía de la historia, como teoría (...) justificadora del relato de los vencedores sobre los vencidos, como así de las intenciones hegemónicas de los países centrales respecto de las nacientes repúblicas latinoamericanas del siglo XIX. El carácter visionario y libertario de Bilbao es destacado por la autora, especialmente en cuanto forjador de una original teoría crítica de la historia con raíces americanas. (shrink)

Human aesthetic experiences are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endowment (Ayala 2010). As part of the scientific efforts to characterize the biological foundations of our human uniqueness, recently there has been (...) interest in the brain’s underpinnings of aesthetic reactions to art on the one hand, and in the neural correlates of moral judgment and decision-making on the other (Greene and Paxton .. (shrink)

Consequence is at the heart of logic, and an account of consequence offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. This text presents what the authors term as 'logical pluralism' arguing that the notion of logical consequence doesn't pin down one deductive consequence relation; it allows for many of them.

In August 2011 Edward Fullbrook, the editor of the Real World Economics Review and the driving force behind the World Economics Association (WEA), asked the three of us to take on editorial roles in the newly established philosophy, methodology and history of thought journal of the association. The project was, to say the least, rather daunting. We had a document outlining the scope and editorial policies of the would-be journal written by Grazia Ietto-Gillies. Grazia had also developed the proposed Open (...) Peer Discussion Forum (OPD), based on her research into similar peer review systems used within the natural sciences. However, we had never met each other nor worked together and we lacked administrative and technical support. In addition, scheduling editorial meetings between Rome, Mexico City and Oxford proved rather challenging! Nevertheless, a combination of belief in the cause of the WEA and foolhardiness led us all to accept. The first issue of the journal is the fruit of our collective labours as well as those of our authors. In addition, both Jake McMurchie (the association's IT expert) and Jane Spurr (our production and layout expert) have been instrumental in the process of transforming a vibrant open peer discussion into six conventional journal articles. (shrink)

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

What happens when someone acts? A familiar answer goes like this. There is something that the agent wants, and there is an action that he believes conducive to its attainment. His desire for the end, and his belief in the action as a means, justify taking the action, and they jointly cause an intention to take it, which in turn causes the corresponding movements of the agent's body. I think that the standard story is flawed in several respects. The flaw (...) that will concern me in this paper is that the story fails to include an agent-or, more precisely, fails to cast the agent in his proper role. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDescartes did not use the terms ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities, but a similar distinction emerges from his texts: certain qualities of objects are intrinsic pr...

El libro de Michael Heinrich tiene el doble mérito de presentar una mediación de la obra cumbre de Karl Marx, redactada en un lenguaje claro y accesible, y de proponer, al mismo tiempo, una interpretación densa y erudita del famoso texto. El autor no sólo evita las simplificaciones y los esquematismos, sino que incluso se interna por las complejidades y paradojas del pensamiento marxiano, que han dado origen a discusiones y polémicas nunca saldadas, y nos ofrece siempre una posición argumenta..

Abstract I argue that meaning in life is importantly influenced by bioloical ties. More specifically, I maintain that knowing one's relatives and especially one's parents provides a kind of self-knowledge that is of irreplaceable value in the life-task of identity formation. These claims lead me to the conclusion that it is immoral to create children with the intention that they be alienated from their bioloical relatives?for example, by donor conception.

Les Sphériques ont été écrites par Ménélaos sous la forme d’un traité d’apparence purement mathématique. Cependant, la matière qui y est développée dans les deuxième et troisième livres est étroitement liée à des problèmes rencontrés en astronomie: calcul des coordonnées équatoriales du Soleil, établissement de tables d’ascensions, étude du mouvement du Soleil dans la sphère oblique, levers simultanés. Ce lien, qui demeure implicite dans le texte, a été mis en évidence par deux mathématiciens et astronomes arabo-musulmans, qui ont exposé la (...) signification astronomique de certains théorèmes des Sphériques. Nous présenterons, commenterons et complèterons cette explicitation en classant les théorèmes concernés en trois groupes: sens de variation de certaines grandeurs sur la sphère, propositions de trigonométrie sphérique et applications, sens de variation de rapports entre certaines grandeurs sur la sphère. The Spherics were written by Menelaos in the form of a purely mathematical treatise. However, the material developed in the second and third book is closely linked to problems met in astronomy: computation of equatorial coordinates of the Sun, setting up of rising-time tables, study of the motion of the Sun in the sphaera obliqua, simultaneous risings. This link, which remains implicit in the text, was clearly displayed by two arabo-islamic mathematicians and astronomers, who expounded the astronomical meaning of some theorems of the Spherics. We describe, comment and complement their explanations, by classifying the implications of the theorems in three groups: direction of variation of some quantities on the sphere, spherical trigonometry and applications, direction of variation of ratios of some quantities on the sphere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 34.2 (2006) 62-84 [Access article in PDF] Georg Lukács Magus Realismus? Sara Nadal-Melsió The reception of Georg Lukács's theorizing of realist narratives has been complicated and controversial, often relying on an artificial division of Lukács's oeuvre. On the one hand, the widely admired History and Class Consciousness stands as the mouthpiece for anything philosophical or political in Lukács. On the other, one finds a generalized dismissal of (...) Lukács's "reactionary" defenses of realism. But the role of realism in Lukács's oeuvre cannot be trivialized or rejected as "doctrinaire" or "outmoded"—two of the most common charges against Lukácsean literary criticism—without damaging an understanding of his political and philosophical contributions to Western Marxism.I thus propose a revisiting of Lukács's writings on literature during the 1930s. I consider them to be a development of the philosophical insights of History and Class Consciousness and as a corrective to the aesthetic theory of Theory of the Novel in the form of an axiological understanding of literary change and preservation. One cannot accept the outcome of Lukács's philosophical investigations and dismiss his often authoritarian radical advocacy of realism—for they are mutually inclusive. Lukács's project takes shape through his use of the aesthetic to salvage ideological and epistemological issues raised by his critical adoption of Marxism. What I propose is similar to what has become a trademark of Gramscian studies.1 In the same way that one does not begin an analysis of Gramsci's philosophy without addressing his molding and obsessive study of the Italian language, his twisting and redefinition of words ("hegemony," "intellectual," and so on), one should not, indeed cannot, embark on the exegesis of Lukács's philosophical writing without addressing his use of literary criticism and of nineteenth-century realism to rethink philosophical Marxism and to rename some of his terminology; "naturalism" and "realism" became, from the 1930s onward, codewords for a reworking of his earlier "reification" and "totality." After History and Class Consciousness, the superstructure, culture, and its changing values, not only became the condition of possibility for a Lukácsean/Marxist philosophy but, in a move against determinism, the only, quasi-utopian transformative force able to explain Marxism to itself. After Lukács, it comes as no surprise that Marx's last, never completed, project was a critical study of Balzac's La comédie humaine.I will focus on two moments of Lukács's "turn to literature": his famously controversial intervention in the Expressionism Debate and his less prominent entrance into the realm of "literary criticism," the essays "Narrate or Describe" and "The Intellectual Physiognomy in Characterization. " I will also read Lukács's failure to theorize contemporary realism in terms of his own insights regarding the historicity of subjective standpoints. Paradoxically, this failure functions as an example and proof of the Lukácsean narrative of literary change.While the first critical work to acknowledge the philosophical implications of Lukács's defense of realism, Fredric Jameson's 1971 Marxism and Form, remains [End Page 62] widely read, it did not bring about a reconsideration of Lukács's literary criticism. It is Jameson's contention that Lukács's entire oeuvre can be accounted for through an epistemology of narrative. Thus, Lukács's numerous writings emerge as part of a coherent and single-minded project. According to Jameson, "Lukács's work may be seen as a continuous and lifelong meditation on narrative, on its basic structures, its relationship to the reality it expresses, and its epistemological value when compared with other, more abstract and philosophical, modes of understanding" [163].2 If one agrees with Jameson's statement, one is also forced to acknowledge the sustained coherence of the Lukácsean project together with its enforced complexity. The chronology of such a lifelong project (1885–1971) began with the ambiguities of "fin-de-siècle" aestheticism and ended shortly after May '68. Lukács's recantations, revisions, and contradictions play against the backdrop of historical and institutional pressure. Yet one cannot help... (shrink)

Retributive theories of punishment argue that punishing a criminal for a crime she committed is sufficient reason for a justified and morally permissible punishment. But what about when the state gets lucky in its decision to punish? I argue that retributive theories of punishment are subject to “Gettier” style cases from epistemology. Such cases demonstrate that the state needs more than to just get lucky, and as these retributive theories of punishment stand, there is no anti-luck condition. I’ll argue that (...) Gettier-style cases demonstrate an impermissible instance of punishment, even though they meet the conditions of retributive theories of punishment. Retributive theories are, therefore, too weak. The safety condition from epistemology provides the anti-luck condition needed for permissible punishment. I argue that two forms of retributivism, rights-forfeiture and what I call standard retributivism, are both subject to Gettier-style cases. Unlike the literature on standards of proof, this paper argues that safety is a condition on punishment itself, i.e., in all nearby possible worlds, the accuser must correctly accuse the convicted for the crime they actually committed. (shrink)

El trabajo analiza la obra del filósofo Arturo Andrés Roig, recientemente fallecido, desde la perspectiva del humanismo latinoamericano, corriente de pensamiento crítico de fuerte presencia en América Latina. El núcleo de la propuesta teórica de Roig está dado por la problemática del sujeto o, como ..

Apartir de una revisión de la definición tradicional de la filosofía y de una crítica de sus supuestos, el artículo propone una formulación del quehacer filosófico latinoamericano acorde a las exigencias de una agenda teórica y práctica actual. A continuación se valora el aporte de Franz Hinke..

Based on a crit i cal analisis of the fun da - men tal works of Hinkelammert, an at tempt is made to sys tem atize his eth i cal and po lit i cal thoughts in ref er ence to the op po si tion be tween “global mar ket/civic cit i zen ship”. The ef fort to re cover the lib er tar ian potencial in ..