Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the “dictionary” she is compiling; and to trace (...) the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form. An instant classic, _Vita_ has been widely acclaimed for its bold fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and literary force. Reflecting on how Catarina’s life story continues, this updated edition offers the reader a powerful new afterword and gripping new photographs following Biehl and Eskerod’s return to Vita. Anthropology at its finest, _Vita_ is essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought, and ethics in the contemporary world. (shrink)

This innovative volume is an extended intellectual conversation about the ways personal lives are being undone and remade today. Examining the ethnography of the modern subject, this preeminent group of scholars probes the continuity and diversity of modes of personhood across a range of Western and non-Western societies. Contributors consider what happens to individual subjectivity when stable or imagined environments such as nations and communities are transformed or displaced by free trade economics, terrorism, and war; how new information and medical (...) technologies reshape the relation one has to oneself; and which forms of subjectivity and life possibilities are produced against a world in pieces. The transdisciplinary conversation includes anthropologists, historians of science, psychologists, a literary critic, a philosopher, physicians, and an economist. The authors touch on how we think and write about contingency, human agency, and ethics today. (shrink)

Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the “dictionary” she is compiling; and to trace (...) the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form. As Biehl painstakingly relates Catarina’s words to a vanished world and elucidates her condition, we learn of subjectivities unmade and remade under economic pressures, pharmaceuticals as moral technologies, a public common sense that lets the unsound and unproductive die, and anthropology’s unique power to work through these juxtaposed fields. _Vita’s_ methodological innovations, bold fieldwork, and rigorous social theory make it an essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought and ethics in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Brazil is among the approximately 100 countries that recognize a constitutional right to health that includes access to medicines. All over Brazil, patients are turning to courts to access prescribed medicines. Although lawsuits secure access for thousands of people, at least temporarily, this judicialization of the right to health generates intensely complex sociomedical realities and significant administrative and fiscal challenges that, officials argue, have the potential to widen inequalities in health-care delivery. In this article, we explore how right-to-health litigation became (...) an alternative pathway for Brazilians to access health care, now understood as access to medicines that are either on government lists for pharmaceutical distribution or are only available through the market. Is the judicial system an effective venue to implement socioeconomic rights? Which practices of citizenship and governance are crystallized in these struggles over drug access and administrative accountability? (shrink)

Information processing in neural systems can be described and analysed at multiple spatiotemporal scales. Generally, information at lower levels is more fine-grained but can be coarse-grained at higher levels. However, only information processed at specific scales of coarse-graining appears to be available for conscious awareness. We do not have direct experience of information available at the scale of individual neurons, which is noisy and highly stochastic. Neither do we have experience of more macro-scale interactions, such as interpersonal communications. Neurophysiological evidence (...) suggests that conscious experiences co-vary with information encoded in coarse-grained neural states such as the firing pattern of a population of neurons. In this article, we introduce a new informational theory of consciousness: Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (ICT). We hypothesise that conscious processes are processes which form non-trivial informational closure (NTIC) with respect to the environment at certain coarse-grained scales. This hypothesis implies that conscious experience is confined due to informational closure from conscious processing to other coarse-grained scales. ICT proposes new quantitative definitions of both conscious content and conscious level. With the parsimonious definitions and a hypothesise, ICT provides explanations and predictions of various phenomena associated with consciousness. The implications of ICT naturally reconcile issues in many existing theories of consciousness and provides explanations for many of our intuitions about consciousness. Most importantly, ICT demonstrates that information can be the common language between consciousness and physical reality. (shrink)

Cause-related marketing has risen to become a popular strategy to increase business value through profit-motivated giving. Despite the growing number of articles published in the last decade, no comprehensive analysis of the most discussed constructs of cause-related marketing is available. This paper uses an advanced Text Mining methodology to conduct a comprehensive analysis of 246 articles published in 40 different journals between 1988 and 2013 on the subject of cause-related marketing. Text Mining also allows quantitative analyses to be performed on (...) the literature. For instance, it is shown that the most prominent long-term topics discussed since 1988 on the subject are “brand-cause fit”, “law and Ethics”, and “corporate and social identification”, while the most actively discussed topic presently is “sectors raising social taboos and moral debates”. The paper has two goals: first, it introduces the technique of CTM to the Marketing area, illustrating how Text Mining may guide, simplify, and enhance review processes while providing objective building blocks to be used in a review; second, it applies CTM to the C-RM field, uncovering and summarizing the most discussed topics. Mining text, however, is not aimed at replacing all subjective decisions that must be taken as part of literature review methodologies. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 40 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into clear sections addressing the following central topics: -/- • Historical Philosophical Engagements with Cities -/- • Modern and Contemporary Philosophical Theories of the City -/- • Urban Aesthetics -/- • Urban Politics -/- • Citizenship -/- • Urban Environments and the Creation/Destruction of (...) Place. -/- The concluding section, Urban Engagements, contains interviews with philosophers discussing their engagement with students and the wider public on issues and initiatives including experiential learning, civic and community engagement, disability rights and access, environmental degradation, professional diversity, social justice, and globalization. -/- Essential reading for students and researchers in environmental philosophy, aesthetics, and political philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the City is also a useful resource for those in related fields, such as geography, urban studies, sociology, and political science. (shrink)

O jornal Tribuna Criciumense foi o único impresso publicado na cidade de Criciúma no período deste escrito. Fundado em 1955, ele passou por três fases. Na primeira, produziu um discurso anticomunista, mas de maneira um pouco tímida. Na segunda fase, com curta duração, o impresso passou a valorizar a ideologia comunista e, ao mesmo tempo, a defesa do presidente João Goulart. A última fase foi marcada por ataques violentos contra o comunismo, em defesa do golpe civil-militar e da ditadura implantada. (...) Analisar essas fases e como os discursos anticomunista e pró-comunismo reverberaram no jornal se configura no objetivo deste escrito. (shrink)

The present essay offers a sketch of a philosophy of value, what I shall here refer to as ‘ethical instrumentalism.’ My primary aim is to say just what this view involves and what its commitments are. In the course of doing so, I find it necessary to distinguish this view from another with which it shares a common basis and which, in reference to its most influential proponent, I refer to as ‘Humeanism.’ A second, more general, aim is to make (...) plausible the idea that, given the common basis, ethical instrumentalism provides a more compelling picture of the philosophy of value than Humeanism does. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of discussions on the ecumenical document ‘Christian witness in a multi-religious world’. Beginning in Germany, it highlights the attention the document received and tracks some of the arguments through the changing contexts of the last decade connected to the document’s invitation for a mission in respect of others. The challenge to implement the recommendations the document offers in a common endeavour to witness to Christ is then emphasized. The reception process for the document is described (...) as an invitation to adopt and contextualize the principles and recommendations in one’s own practising of mission and evangelism instead of sending comments on the text for revision. (shrink)

Este artigo interpreta a quarta conferência de uma série de seis pronunciadas por Foucault em Berkeley (Universidade da Califórnia) de outubro a novembro de 1983. A problemática da parrhesia retomada pelo filósofo francês do diálogo Laques, de Platão, suscita uma discussão sobre os sentidos de democracia, sistema político em baixa na Atenas do final do século V a.C. Articulando os discursos cômico e filosófico, evidenciam-se, ao mesmo tempo, a força e as lacunas do texto de Foucault. Se, por um lado, (...) o interesse foucaultiano pela verdade força um retorno ao “falar franco”, por outro, falta, nesta conferência, um olhar de conjunto mais amplo que dê conta da parrhesia como sintoma de uma falta e da decadência do espírito democrático ateniense nos termos propostos no Laques. Deriva dessa falta, por exemplo, a ideia de que, do ponto de vista conceitual, o Laques seria “um fracasso”. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Democracia; Discurso; Parrhesía; Verdade. (shrink)

The Foundations of Cognitive Science is a set of thirteen new essays on key topics in this lively interdisciplinary field, by a stellar international line-up of authors. Philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists here come together to investigate such fascinating subjects as consciousness; vision; rationality; artificial life; the neural basis of language, cognition, and emotion; and the relations between mind and world, for instance our representation of numbers and space. The contributors are Ned Block, Margaret Boden, Susan Carey, Patricia Churchland, Paul Churchland, (...) Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Ilya Farber, James Higginbotham, Christopher Peacocke, Will Peterman, Zenon Pylyshyn, John Searle. Anyone interested in the exploration of the human mind will enjoy this book. (shrink)

In den drei Büchern der Schrift Über die Seele begründet Aristoteles erst-mals eine philosophische Psychologie als eigene Disziplin, welche empirisch von den Lebensfunktionen auf allen Stufen des Lebendigen ausgehend zu definitorischen Bestimmungen der verschiedenen seelischen Prinzipien kommt, besonders auch zum Vernunftprinzip des Menschen. Diese Ausgabe stützt sich auf die bekannten großen kommentierten Ausgaben des letzten und dieses Jahrhunderts. Der griechische Text ist der Teubner-Ausgabe entnommen; einige Varianten der Oxforder Ausgabe von Ross sind verzeichnet worden. Die Übersetzung orientiert sich an W. (...) Theiler, sucht jedoch eigene Wege des geeigneten Ausdrucks und gliedert zum besseren Verständnis häufiger Sinneinheiten ab, denen der Kommentar folgt. Mit Einleitung, Literaturhinweisen und Registern zum griechischen und deutschen Text. (shrink)

We analyze axioms and postulates as speech acts. After a brief historical appraisal of the concept of axiom in Euclid, Frege, and Hilbert, we evaluate contemporary axiomatics from a linguistic perspective. Our reading is inspired by Hilbert and is meant to account for the assertive, directive, and declarative components of modern axiomatics. We will do this by describing the constitutive and regulative roles that axioms possess with respect to the linguistic practice of mathematics.

This article is to be a bridge between Kant’s aesthetics and contemporary art – not by being a paper on Kant and contemporary art, but rather by being on Kant and contemporaryphilosophy of art. I claim that Kant’s views on the appreciation of art can accommodate contextualism as well as ethicism. I argue that not only does contextualism fit Kant’s views on the appreciation of art; in §§51–3 of the thirdCritique, Kant’s appreciation of art is in accordance with contextualism. I (...) go on to argue that not only does ethicism fit Kant’s views on the appreciation of art; in §§51–3, Kant’s appreciation of art is in accordance with ethicism. (shrink)

En este artículo examino el soporte textual para la hipótesis de que, dentro del marco de la teoría estética de Kant, la belleza artística no es necesariamente de tipo adherente –y puede ser, por consiguiente, de tipo libre. Tal examen está dividido en dos partes: en la primera parte cito y reflexiono en base a pasajes de la Crítica del juicio que sugieren que la belleza artística no es necesariamente una belleza adherente. En la segunda parte presento tres lecturas emprendidas (...) por intérpretes de Kant que proponen, las primeras, que la belleza artística puede ser de tipo libre, mientras la última, que la belleza artística, si es de arte bello, del arte del genio que se trata, es una belleza libre. (shrink)

In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this work (...) is to summarize a systematic analysis of the variety of emergence theories and concepts, elaborated by Achim Stephan. Along the summary of this analysis, we pose fundamental questions that have to be answered in order to ascribe a precise meaning to the term "emergence" in the context of an understanding of semiosis. After discussing a model for explaining emergence based on Salthe's hierarchical structuralism, which considers three levels at a time in a semiotic system, we present some tentative answers to those questions. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende mostrar que o conceito de segunda natureza ocupa um lugar central no pensamento de Blaise Pascal, sendo o fundamento das suas reflexões políticas, dentre as quais emergem aquelas em torno do conceito de justiça. Para tanto, mostra como o conceito de segunda natureza, embora tenha sua origem em categorias teológicas, situa-se já no plano metafísico, de onde se impõe como fundamento da existência histórico-temporal do homem. Deste modo, o conceito de segunda natureza possibilita a Pascal pensar (...) um conceito de justiça que, afastando-se do Direito Natural moderno, se apóia em bases históricas. No pensamento político pascaliano emergem, em primeiro plano, as concupiscências, a partir das quais se constituem a força, a imaginaçáo, os costumes e as leis, e, com elas, a distinçáo entre as grandezas de estabelecimento e as grandezas naturais. Com estas últimas categorias, Pascal transita de uma reflexáo genealógica da política, à qual se liga um conceito negativo de justiça, a uma reflexáo doutrinal, que possibilita um conceito positivo de justiça. (shrink)

Este artigo trata das mudanças ocorridas no universo religioso católico da Diocese de Nova Iguaçu, localizada na Baixada Fluminense, região metropolitana do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, conhecida pela situação de pobreza e pela violência, em especial por ação de grupos de extermínio. O evento que serve de base para investigamos tais mudanças ficou sendo denominado de Chacina da Baixada, que deixou 29 pessoas mortas e uma ferida no bairro da Posse em Nova Iguaçu. A diocese prontamente se mostrou solidária (...) com as famílias das vítimas, cobrando desde o primeiro momento providências das autoridades locais. Entretanto, as visões sobre o envolvimento eclesial se dividem conforme a proximidade dos agentes religiosos, em especial os leigos, da área física dos assassinatos. Assim, os que residem e trabalham pastoralmente mais próximo à localidade apresentam reticências, silêncios e receios não apresentados por leigos entrevistados de outras localidades. Percebemos que, embora haja consenso quanto à necessidade de mobilização da Diocese quanto ao caso, as percepções são abaladas pelo medo que constantemente rege as experiências cotidianas dos moradores daquela região. (shrink)

O artigo tenta reconstruir alguns elementos acerca da passagem da Lógica da essência para a Lógica do conceito, da necessidade para a liberdade, na Ciência da Lógica hegeliana. No contexto da publicação dos duzentos anos dessa obra filosófica, a explicitação dessa passagem é referencial para a compreensão da Ciência da Lógica e de todo o pensamento hegeliano. O artigo procura sustentar que o binômio necessidade/contingência, um dos pares categoriais da Lógica da essência, não é adequado para a articulação da filosofia (...) hegeliana. Como Hegel afirma reiteradas vezes, é preciso superar a dura necessidade para dar lugar à lógica da liberdade. Para a discussão da problemática, a confrontação entre algumas categorias da essência, tais como substancialidade, necessidade, contingência e causalidade, e algumas categorias do conceito, tais como universalidade, particularidade e singularidade é o foco da exposição. Dessa discussão brota a noção hegeliana de liberdade e a sua relação com o sistema. (shrink)

This paper has a negative and a positive claim. The negative claim is that the Frege-Russell account of existence as a higher-order predicate is mistaken and should be abandoned, even with respect to general statements of existence such as “Flying mammals exist” (where statements of this sort are supposed to be best accommodated by the account). The Frege-Russell view seems to be supported by two ideas. First, the idea that existence is entirely expressed by the existential quantifier of standard predicate (...) logic. Second, the idea that the existential quantifier is a higher-order predicate, a predicate of predicates, not of individuals. I think that both ideas are wrong but will focus on the latter. By construing prima facie first-order statements such as “Flying Mammals exist” as higher-order predications such as “The Fregean Concept Flying Mammal maps at least one individual onto the True”, the Frege-Russell view commits one - merely on the basis of the meaning it assigns to the existence predicate – to abstract objects such as concepts (Gottlob Frege), or propositional functions (Bertrand Russell), or classes (Rudolf Carnap), or properties, kinds, and so on. This cannot be right, I think. The positive claim of the present paper is that, at least in the context of first-order discourse, the existence predicate is just what it seems to be: a bona fide first-order predicate (pace Kant, Hume, Frege, Russell and others). Three important ideas about existence are shared with the Frege-Russell conception of existence, though. (1) Being and existence are one and the same thing: there is no difference between “Unicorns are not”, or “There are no unicorns”, and “Unicorns do not exist”, or “There exist no unicorns”. (2) To be is to be the value of a bound variable, to belong to a domain of quantification (Willard Quine). (3) Anti-Meinongianism, the idea that there are no non-existent objects (Russell). However, we diverge from the Frege-Russell tradition with respect to the following claim. (4) The best concept of existence, in the sense of the one that is best understood and best enables us to formulate ontological disputes, is a purely logical first-level concept defined in terms of existential quantification and identity. First-order statements of existence and non-existence like “Flying Mammals exist” and “Unicorns do not exist” are accordingly taken at face value and analyzed in terms of a logical first-order predicate of existence, the predicate “is (identical to) something”. Reasons are given to prefer this notion of existence to other first-order non-logical notions that have been proposed in the literature, notions characterized in terms of predicates such as “is in space-time”, “is concrete”, “is causally efficacious”, “is actual”, “is real”, etc. (shrink)

In a review of Frege's Puzzle1, Graeme Forbes makes the claim that Salmon's account of belief might be seen, under certain conditions, as a mere notational variant of a neo-Fregean theory; and thus that such an account might be reduced to a neo-Fregean one simply by rewriting it in terms of Fregean terminology. With a view to supporting his claim, Forbes offers an outline of an account of belief which, according to him, would satisfy the following conditions: (i) it could (...) be directly obtained from Salmon's own analysis by means of a certain set of substitutions, which presumably would not affect the essential features of Salmon's view; (ii) it could naturally be described as Fregean, in the sense that it would preserve, (at least) the spirit of Frege's doctrines, especially his fundamental intuitions about belief. Of course, the upshot of Forbes's argument is that Salmon's theory would not, at bottom, constitute a genuine alternative to a Fregean semantics for belief ascriptions. In this paper I argue to the effect that Forbes's claim is not in general sound. It seems to me that the sort of indirect argument used by Forbes - that of trying to undermine Salmon's theory by showing that it is just a version of a neo-Fregean account - does not provide someone working within a Fregean framework with an adequate strategy to counter Salmon's neo-Russellian views. It would perhaps be better to concentrate a Fregean attack on certain apparently dubious and highly controversial theses and results which are constitutive of Salmon's view, e.g. the counterintuitive character of a substantial set of consequences which follow from his theory of belief, as well as the associated revisionist stand he is forced to take towards our current patterns of speaking about belief. (shrink)

: In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this (...) work is to summarize a systematic analysis of the variety of emergence theories and concepts, elaborated by Achim Stephan. Along the summary of this analysis, we pose fundamental questions that have to be answered in order to ascribe a precise meaning to the term "emergence" in the context of an understanding of semiosis. After discussing a model for explaining emergence based on Salthe's hierarchical structuralism, which considers three levels at a time in a semiotic system, we present some tentative answers to those questions. (shrink)

En ese texto problematizaremos el debate entre Michel Foucault e Jürgen Habermas en torno a la Teoría crítica. Más específicamente, trataremos de establecer una relación entre genealogía y crítica en lo que concierne a la tradición kantiana. El objetivo de nuestro texto será delimitar la herencia que Foucault reivindica de Immanuel Kant a partir del concepto de Aufklärung.

This paper is devoted to an examination of issues concerning the persistence and linguistic re-expression of indexical singular belief. I discuss two approaches to the topic: the directly referential approach, which I take as best represented in Kaplan's views, and the neo-Fregean approach, which I take as best represented in Gareth Evans's views. The upshot of my discussion is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that both Kaplan's account and Evans's account are on the whole defective. On the other, (...) I claim that a broadly Fregean account is still to be preferred, since by positing semantically efficacious modes of presentation it is clearly better equipped to deal with the phenomena in the area. In particular, I argue that the notion of a memory-based mode of presentation of an object (a spatio-temporal particular, a region in space, a period of time, etc.), as introduced by Christopher Peacocke, turns out to be indispensable to account for the persistence and re-expression of intentional mental states over time. (shrink)