El propósito de este artículo es analizar la perspectiva de Hannah Arendt sobre el problema de la originalidad e incomprensibilidad del horror de los regímenes totalitarios, utilizando los testimonios de Primo Levi en Si esto es un hombre y Los hundidos y los salvados. Arendt considera que los campos de concentración y exterminio son la institución central de los regímenes totalitarios, en los cuales se intenta destruir la humanidad de las víctimas a través de prácticas de terror que no solo (...) acaban con su cuerpo, sino con su espíritu. Así, los testimonios de los sobrevivientes se convierten en las piezas clave para comprender la esencia y los ideales de estos sistemas políticos. De ahí que la memoria salte a la escena política para develar la verdad de este tipo de acontecimientos políticos y, a su vez, plantee una serie de problemas cuando se intenta definir su estatus investigativo. (shrink)

What we generally regard as ‘the face’ should be semiotically understood not as something given and monolithic, but rather stratified – it is at least threefold: biological (face), physiognomic (expression), perceivable (visage) – and relational as it has to be put within a narrative in order to make sense. The face lies at the centre of a whole semiotic system, the form of life, revolving around the issue of identity (which the face – the visage, to be precise – embodies (...) and still does not resolve). What we may call ‘the natural face’ is not, as common sense would suggest, the precondition of the ‘culturalized’ one (featured with modifications ranging from make-up and proper masks to surgery), but rather just one of the possible semiotic masks a person may choose to wear. At the same time, the mask does not have to be reduced to a deceptive device only (nor to be meant merely as a material object), being in fact at the centre of a more complex axiology. The classic veridictory square articulating the opposition between Being and Seeming may provide a suitable model for the semiotic square of ‘visageness’, so that we would have: Face, Disguise (the place of the mask proper), Fake, Anonymity. Based on these theoretical premises, the paper finally addresses popular music and outlines a provisional map of the pragmatics of the mask (subtractive vs. additive, ritualistic vs. continuous, material vs. virtual, mask as face vs. face as mask), as a suggestion for further studies. (shrink)

Entrevista concedida por Antonio Negri a Homero Santiago e Mario Marino por ocasião do lançamento da segunda edição da tradução brasileira de A anomalia selvagem: poder e potência em Espinosa.

On an expressivist view, ethical claims are not fact stating; instead they serve the alternative function of expressing our feelings, attitudes and values. On a deflationary view, truth is not a property with a nature to be analyzed, but merely a grammatical device to aid us in endorsing sentences. Views on the relationship between expressivism and deflationism vary widely: they are compatible; they are incompatible; they are a natural pair; they doom one another. Here I explain some of these views, (...) extract some necessary distinctions, and put these to use for understanding expressivism. I argue that contrary to the opinions of some, deflationism doesn’t help with problems of objectivity, knowledge and reasoning in ethics. I suggest alternative expressivist treatments of these problems, and show how expressivism as a metaethical view must have consequences for our ethical lives and beliefs. In particular it must affect the way we deal with ethical consistency—when norms or beliefs conflict—and ethical incompleteness—when ethical questions have no right answer. (shrink)

Satz posed the term "legal gerrymandering for human interest," referring to the redrawing of the natural baseline of protections for other animals to further human use of them. One of the domains where this exists most clearly is in scientific research on animal models. An animal model is sufficiently like humans in anatomy, physiology, or psychology to be used in research considered too harmful or risky for humans. I argue that the use of animal models is, by its very nature, (...) ethical gerrymandering and a corruption of the self-correcting component of the scientific process. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 1 Seiten: 67-88.

A Constituição dos Atenienses é uma pequena obra acerca da politeia de Atenas e das condições que permitem que a democracia permaneça em Atenas como forma de gerenciar a vida da polis. Esta obra representa um problema filológico e historiográfico, porque, embora esteja no corpus das obras de Xenofonte, ela é considerada obra de outro autor, conhecido como Pseudo-Xenofonte ou “Velho Oligarca”. Trata-se de um pamphlet de orientação oligárquica que apresenta Atenas como um mundo ao contrário, em que os piores (...) comandam e os melhores são como escravizados pela multidão ignorante. (shrink)

The use of facial recognition systems in concerts provides a perfect pretext to semiotically discuss the role of the face in contemporary culture, identifying different strategies and axiologies (systems of values). In his visionary essay Bruits (“noises”) from 1977, the French thinker Jacques Attali establishes a close connection between music and power and locates it in the site of the collective unfolding of music: the concert hall. Following this hint, the article reconstructs the current debate on facial recognition systems in (...) the music business, with a particular focus on concerts and festivals. The different positions (of musicians, authorities, and professionals) are outlined (some are openly in favor, others openly against), key moments are identified (Beyoncé’s concert in Cardiff, 2017; Jacky Cheung’s in Nanchang, 2018; Taylor Swift’s at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 2018; the “banfacialrecognition.com” campaign launched in 2019; the case of Barbara Hart at Brandi Carlile’s show at the Madison Square Garden, 2022) and, finally, the issue is framed within the broader debate about the face as an indexical marker of presence, identity, and humanity (the contrast between Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and American sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton is addressed). (shrink)

One of the mammalian groups absent from the Finlay et al. study is cetaceans (dolphins, whales, and porpoises). Inclusion of cetaceans would be useful for assessing the generalizability of the authors' conclusions. Recent findings suggest dolphins may differ from the general pattern observed by Finlay et al. I encourage Finlay and her colleagues to include developmental neurobiological data on cetaceans, when available.

Smith et al. propose that the most parsimonious explanation for identical responses of humans and nonhumans under the same conditions is not always the simplest cognitive explanation but could be the one that has the most logical consistency across species. The authors provide convincing evidence and a reasonable argument for declarative consciousness as a shared psychological property in humans, monkeys, and dolphins.

In 2006, based on the advice of 50 international experts, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society and the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology issued a consensus statement on the nomenclature and management of children who have a phenotype that is neither typical male nor female (Lee et al. 2006). Responding to a decade of criticism over the terminology that had been in place, including such terms as intersex, hermaphrodite, or pseudohermaphrodite, they proposed to call those conditions in which the patient (...) does not have the typical male or female gonads, chromosomes, or anatomy "disorders of sexual development."While this proposed change in nomenclature is helpful, in order to truly effect a .. (shrink)

Early Buddhist texts were first being composed and compiled during South Asia’s Iron Age, and thus contain many references to iron and other metal technologies. This article examines one metalworking image that came to play a special role in the imagination of early Buddhists: the red-hot iron ball. I argue that the iron ball, which comes to be a torture device in hell, force-fed by hell wardens, is a mimesis of the pi??ap?ta, or almsfood offered to monks and nuns by (...) the laity. Around iron ball imagery clusters a set of related Buddhist concerns: anxieties about undisciplined and deceitful monks and nuns, especially in relation to taking alms; the public perception of the sa?gha; the conceptualization of Buddhist hells as an unfortunate karmic result of lacking discipline; and the relationship between these hells and Indian juridical forms of punishment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Defending a Phenomenological–Behavioral Perspective: Culture, Behavior, and ExperienceMarino Pérez-Álvarez (bio), José M. García-Montes (bio), Adolfo J. Cangas (bio), and Louis A. Sass (bio)KeywordsBehavior, contextual phenomenology, culture, experienceWe should like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors for their commentaries on our articles. Given the restrictions of space (a limitation they too had to contend with), we can only respond to a few aspects of their interesting remarks. (...) We shall reply of course on the basis of our own approach—an approach that sets out to integrate culture, behavior, and experience, and that might be termed contextual phenomenology, phenomenological behaviorism, or perhaps most accurately (albeit more awkwardly), the phenomenological–behavioral perspective.In her commentary, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008), referring to the target articles “Phenomenology and behaviorism” (Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, and Cangas 2008) and “The role of superstition in psychopathology” (García-Montes et al. 2008), wonders whether our maintaining of the spirit of Skinner, as well as our recourse to phenomenology, might not themselves represent forms of superstitious behavior. She points out that it is not always a good idea to put new wine in old barrels. For her, the new wine and new barrels would be represented by social constructivism, of which she is reminded by some aspects of our work. But in making her own case, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008) reveals certain common prejudices concerning behaviorism, prejudices that have apparently persisted even after reading our article. Thus, for example, she does not see operant behavior as incorporating intentionality (what, in the target article, is presented in terms of final causality), because she assumes that intentionality would necessarily imply a mentalist and dualist notion involving a supposed internal mental entity that causes behavior. Skinner (1974) himself noted and rejected this very assumption in a passage that clearly distinguishes his own approach from what he calls a “stimulus-response formula”: “Possibly no charge,” he wrote,is more often leveled against behaviorism or a science of behavior than that it cannot deal with purpose or intention. A stimulus-response formula has no answer, but operant behavior is the very field of purpose and [End Page 281] intention. By its nature it is directed toward the future: a person acts in order that something will happen, and the order is temporal.(pp. 55–6)The place Skinner gives to intentionality and purpose is elaborated in our target article.Furthermore, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008) assumes that, on methodological grounds, Skinner rejects all that is not observable, or at least that cannot be operationalized. This, however, is simply incorrect, at least as regards Skinner’s radical behaviorism. As the reader may recall, radical (as opposed to methodological) behaviorism is neither operationalist nor does it reject private or subjective events because of their unobservability. Indeed, Skinner specifically acknowledges that such events are in fact observable—at least for one person: the subject him- or herself. The question for Skinner is to understand how the part of the world that is only observable and experiential for oneself is constructed or formed. In the end, it turns out that radical behaviorism is more radical, in the Aristotelian ontological sense (see Pérez-Alvarez, Sass, and García-Montes 2008), than post-modern constructionism. Indeed, as we remarked, radical behaviorism can still surprise us today. Similarly, phenomenology is starting to be missed in the clinical context (Andreasen 2007). We believe that radical behaviorism and phenomenology, mutually readjusted, are in fact excellent wines for the times we live in—if only we knew how to appreciate them.In their commentary on “Phenomenology and behaviorism: A mutual readjustment,” Fletcher and Hayes (2008) argue that the philosophy and theory of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)/Relational Frame Theory (RFT) already contain the salutary aspects of phenomenology that we highlight in our target article. Their insistence on reducing the affinities we find between phenomenology and behaviorism to ACT/RFT consists, in our view, in a scientific–technical argument that is more scientistic than strictly philosophical in nature. Their insistence on the scientific–technical argument itself implies an unclarified philosophical assumption. On what grounds do experimental data constitute the last word? Has... (shrink)

ObjectivesThe aims of this research were to compare the levels of physical activity of eHealth users and non-users, to determine the effects of these technologies on motivations, and to establish the relationship that could exist between psychological constructs and physical activity behaviors.MethodsThis cross-sectional study involved 569 adults who responded to an online questionnaire during confinement in France. The questions assessed demographics, usage of eHealth for exercise and physical activity, and behavioral levels. The questionnaire also measured the constructs of Social Cognitive (...) Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and automaticity facets toward eHealth for exercise and physical activity.ResultsParticipants who were users of eHealth for exercise and physical activity presented significantly higher levels of vigorous physical activity and total physical activity per week than non-users. The chi-square test showed significant interactions between psychological constructs toward eHealth and physical activity levels. Self-efficacy was significantly and negatively correlated with walking time per week. Concerning the automaticity facets, efficiency was positive and significantly correlated with vigorous physical activity levels per week. Then, regressions analyses showed that self-efficacy and automaticity efficiency explained 5% of the variance of walking minutes per week and vigorous physical activity per week, respectively.ConclusionThis study has shown that people during confinement looked for ways to stay active through eHealth. However, we must put any technological solution into perspective. The eHealth offers possibilities to stay active, however its benefits and the psychological mechanisms affected by it remains to be demonstrated: eHealth could be adapted to each person and context. (shrink)

One requirement for the formation of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is that they include a community member who embodies the values of the general population. This study’s aim is to investigate whether community members use moral arguments when deliberating a case of nonhuman animals used in experimentation. To this end, we tested the responses of community members in a situation similar to those confronting members of IACUC. The participants’ evaluation of the protocol was consistent with the mandates (...) of IACUC. We also found that overall no moral argument played a significant role in their evaluation of a protocol. Only arguments based on loyalty to the human species played a moderate role in the evaluation of using animals in experimental research, in a way similar to using some moral arguments regarding the importance of human welfare to justify the use of animals in experimental research. (shrink)

Correspondence theories are frequently either too vaguely expressed – “true statements correspond to the way things are in the world,” or implausible – “true statements mirror raw, mind-independent reality.” I address this problem by developing features and roles that ought to characterize what I call ldquo;modest” correspondence theories. Of special importance is the role of correspondence in directing our responses to cases of suspected non-factuality; lack of straightforward correspondence shows the need for, and guides us in our choice of, various (...) kinds of reconstrual projects. This, I argue, is in contrast to the approaches suggested by deflationism and coherence, and thus modest correspondence theories are appropriately distinct from rivals. (shrink)

Some of the fundamental activities of the software development process are related to the discipline of Requirements Engineering. Their objectives are to discover, analyze, document, and verify the system’s requirements. The requirements are the conditions or capabilities that software needs to have or fulfill to meet its users’ needs, and problems in its identification can mean the failure of a software project. This study is part of the research that is being developed to propose a model based on Know­ledge Organization (...) Systems to be used in the Requirements engineering process. This article aims to present the results of an analysis on a set of Know­ledge Organization Systems to identify whether they are likely to be applied in the Requirements engineering process and identify at which stage of this process each one of them can be implemented. The Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed were the authority files, gazetteers, glossaries, subject headings, classification systems, thesauri, semantic networks, and ontologies. Based on the results obtained, it was possible to conclude that the Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed can be used in the Requirements engineering process and, consequently, contribute to increasing the software requirements’ quality. (shrink)

This article seeks to clarify the concepts of risk and uncertainty, restricting its focus to environmental problems and to three strands of reflection. Firstly, I suggest that we should apply the label riscophrenia to the tendency to envisage most environmental problems excessively in terms of probabilistic risk, erecting the concept to a core dogma of certainty based on the image it offers of safety and control of the random. Looking at the most serious environmental problems of the twenty-first century through (...) the prism of "animal spirits" is above all an exercise which shows that unpredictability and uncertainties are constituent elements of human existence and social life. Secondly, I argue that the assessment of uncertainty has political and normative implications. I hold that uncertainty may make it possible to invoke precautionary, not just preventive, measures, and that alternative "contextualised" research strategies, open to a variety of points of view, are possible. Lastly, I claim that the language of risk and its excessive application is generally laden with a type of ambiguity which tends not to emphasize society's current problems, and so facilitates the continuation rather than the questioning of our society's dominant technocratic and technological model. (shrink)

Histone variants are specialized histones which replace their canonical counterparts in specific nucleosomes. Together with histone post‐translational modifications and DNA methylation, they contribute to the epigenome. Histone variants are incorporated at specific locations by the concerted action of histone chaperones and ATP‐dependent chromatin remodelers. Recent studies have shown that the histone chaperone FACT plays key roles in preventing pervasive incorporation of two histone variants: H2A.Z and CenH3/CENP‐A. In addition, Spt6, another histone chaperone, was also shown to be important for appropriate (...) H2A.Z localization. FACT and Spt6 are both associated with elongating RNA polymerase II. Based on these two examples, we propose that the establishment and maintenance of histone variant genomic distributions depend on a transcription‐coupled epigenome editing (or surveillance) function of histone chaperones. (shrink)

O presente artigo debruça-se sobre a tradução argentina do livro Who Sings the Nation-State? de Butler e Spivak. Colocando em questão a relação entre tradução e hino nacional para sublinhar o possível nacionalismo atinente a determinadas manifestações políticas, esse mesmo livro, não obstante a sua própria advertência sobre a necessidade de incli-nação para cantar o hino, “erra” a grafia de “Il [sic] pueblo unido jamás sera [sic] vencido” ao citá-lo. Entretanto, será esse o caso de um “erro” deliberado, de uma (...) contradição performativa? Com que incli-nação Butler terá citado essa canção? E o que poderia significar o fato de que, havendo suspeita de nacionalismo de um lado, de outro parece não haver, pois o tradutor da edição argentina “corrige” esses erros e, ao mesmo tempo, testemunha, em nota de rodapé, que estão “En español en el original”? Analisando esses impasses da tradução, o artigo pretende indicar a contundência política que há na tarefa do tradutor e nas formas com que a literatura infringe as gramáticas. (shrink)

O presente artigo aborda um acontecimento recente ao redor de um problema babélico e, por conseguinte, literário, com o intuito de esclarecer os limites e os poderes da tradução. Não apenas é sabido que a responsabilidade de um tradutor está ligada a critérios empregados em escolhas atinentes às palavras, respeitando ou não a plurívoca matiz de seus significados e, detrás disso, seu sentido, mas, também, o tradutor escolhe, ao traduzir, aquilo que não deve ser traduzido, aquilo que, em determinados contextos, (...) só é dito mantendo-se à distância. (shrink)

This work intends to demonstrate the existence of limits that hinder the absolute authority of the sovereign in Hobbes’s political theory. Particularly, I will try to identify the concept of honor as the paradigm of this limitation. The field of the manifestations of worth — it will be argued — operates within a logic that runs parallel to that of the State. Moreover, it engenders authorities with high degree of autonomy. To be sure, the sovereign power can intervene in this (...) field by means of persuasion and coercion, but it will never be able to erase the resistances and limitations imposed by signs of honor. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop the notion of ‘therapy of desire’ as a hermeneutic key for understanding Kierkegaard’s view of desire. First, I develop the notion of ‘therapy of desire’ as it has appeared in the secondary literature on Kierkegaard and Augustine, particularly in Lee C. Barrett. In my reading, I underscore how a ‘therapy of desire’ implies that the desire can be ‘healed’ and that the desirer has ‘agency’ over his/her desires. Second, I conduct a textual analysis of Kierkegaard’s (...) discourse on Lk 22:15, which deals with the desire for the Eucharist. In employing the notion of ‘therapy of desire’ as a hermeneutic key to interpret it, I characterize Kierkegaard’s view of desire as a lack of satisfaction and verify how the ideas of ‘agency’ and ‘healing’ appear in Kierkegaard’s text. Finally, I show how the characterization of desire as a constant lack of satisfaction that consists in a gift from God, that implies the possibility of undertaking a healing process and that underscores the agency of the desirer, differs from some Lutheran ideas, namely the relationship between grace and deeds and the understanding of original sin. (shrink)

Presentación del número de la revista Ideas y Valores dedicado a la obra de W.V.O Quine con ocasión de su fallecimiento.

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.

Political concepts are fundamentally polemical. Their supposed neutrality is solely a vain intellectual supposition. This paper pay attention to the XIX century's Politics through three political concepts: the representation, medieval notion wich the liberal genius transformed to fight the Ancien Régime; the association, socialist and traditionalist alternative to the revolutionary individualism; and finally the participation, based on the originary political community return's myth.

This volume is a collection of essays of a philosophical nature on the subject of technology, introducing authors from the Portuguese-speaking community, namely from Portugal itself, Africa and Brazil. Their contributions detail a unique perspective on technology, placing this important topic within the historical, ideological and social contexts of their countries, all of which share a common language. The shared history of these countries and the cultural and economic specificities of each one have stimulated singular insights into these thinkers’ reflections. (...) The essays are thematically diverse. Among the topics covered are technogenic knowledge, visions of technology, risks and uncertainties, mediatization, digitalization, and datafication, engineering practice and ethics, alternative technoscientific strategies, ontotechnologies of the body, virtual and archive. The contributions also explore other themes that are more closely related to the semi-peripheral world, such as technological dependence and the incorporation of Western technology into the social structure of ancestral communities. This book appeals to students and researchers and provides a voice to authors whose work are not usually available in English-language publications. It serves as an ideal guide for all those who seek rigorous and geographically widespread knowledge regarding thinking on technology in several Portuguese-speaking countries. (shrink)

El siguiente monográfico sobre Perú acoge diferentes reflexiones y aportaciones de un total de nueve trabajos que buscan problematizar y arrojar luz sobre algunos aspectos que han acompañado al proceso de construcción democrática que el país ha venido experimentando desde 1980. Como otros escenarios de la región, la democracia se erige tras décadas convulsas para un sistema político cooptado por elites caudillistas, encono político, intromisión militar y condiciones estructurales irresolutas. Este conjunto de factores, inscritos en un contexto de guerra fría, (...) y al albor de la revolución cubana, inspiró movimientos guerrilleros a inicios de los sesenta, como el Ejército de Liberación Nacional o el Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Su escasa relevancia nada tendría que ver con la fuerza disruptiva que experimentaría el Partido Comunista del Perú - Sendero Luminoso. Un grupo armado de marcada impronta maoísta que, si bien hunde sus raíces en la ruptura sino-soviética de 1962, construye sus fundamentos ideológicos y sus bases revolucionarias durante la década de los setenta. (shrink)