The European demand for platina in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could not be met by the Spanish authorities who only authorized limited exports of the mineral, approximately 267 kg between 1750 and 1804. The lack of an adequate commercial structure generated direct trade between Latin America and Europe, particularly England. This article is an attempt to analyse and to quantify the three European sources of platina: exports from Spain, shipments of platina consigned by European travellers, and direct (...) trade. The reasons for the latter are studied, exemplified by the Wollaston case, and legal and direct trade are compared. (shrink)

This work seeks to contribute to the construction of a Postmodern Global Political Economy, applying to the study of the world economy a renovated version of the systemic analysis whose characteristics are picked up in a synthetic way. The main contribution of this work consists on the applicatio..

Could global government be the answer to global poverty and starvation? Cosmopolitan thinkers challenge the widely held belief that we owe more to our co-citizens than to those in other countries. This book offers a moral argument for world government, claiming that not only do we have strong obligations to people elsewhere, but that accountable integration among nation-states will help ensure that all persons can lead a decent life. Cabrera considers both the views of those political philosophers who say we (...) have much stronger obligations to help our co-citizens than foreigners and those cosmopolitans who say our duties are equally strong to each but resist restructuring. He then outlines his own position, using the European Union as a partial model for the integrated alternative and advocating instituting EU-style supranational government, development aid, and free movement of persons in the Americas and other regions. Over time, Cabrera argues that the transformation of the global system into a cohesive network of democratic institutions would help ensure that anyone born anywhere could lead a decent life. This book will appeal to all those interested in political philosophy and the processes and potential of globalization. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism is said by many critics to be arrogant. In emphasizing universal principles and granting no fundamental moral significance to national or other group belonging, it wrongly treats those making non-universalist claims as not authorized to speak, while treating those in non-Western societies as not qualified. This book works to address such objections. It does so in part by engaging the work of B.R. Ambedkar, architect of India's 1950 Constitution and revered champion of the country's Dalits (formerly "untouchables"). Ambedkar cited (...) universal principles of equality and rights in confronting domestic exclusions and the "arrogance" of caste. He sought to advance forms of political humility, or the affirmation of equal standing within political institutions and openness to input and challenge within them. This book examines how an "institutional global citizenship" approach to cosmopolitanism could similarly advance political humility, in supporting the development of input and challenge mechanisms beyond the state. It employs a grounded normative theory method, taking insights for the model from field research among Dalit activists pressing for domestic reforms through the UN human rights regime, and from their critics in the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Insights also are taken from Turkish protesters challenging a rising domestic authoritarianism, and from UK Independence Party members demanding "Brexit" from the European Union-in part because of possibilities that predominantly Muslim Turkey will join. Overall, it is shown, an appropriately configured institutional cosmopolitanism should orient fundamentally to political humility rather than arrogance, while holding significant potential for advancing global rights protections and more equitable rights specifications. (shrink)

The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an “anthrobotic” horizon, in which data analytics, statistics and probabilities throw our agential power into question. How can we avoid the consequences of a reified definition of intelligence as universal operation becoming imposed upon our destinies? It is here argued that the fantasised autonomy of automated intelligence presents a contradistinctive opportunity for philosophical consciousness to understand itself (...) anew as holistic and co-creative, beyond the recent “analytic” moment of the history of philosophy. Here we introduce the concept of “crealectic intelligence”, a meta-analytic and meta-dialectic aspect of consciousness. Intelligent behaviour may consist in distinguishing discrete familiar parts or reproducible functions in the midst of noise via an analytic process of segmentation; intelligence may also manifest itself in the constitution of larger wholes and dynamic unities through a dialectic process of association or assemblage. But, by contrast, crealectic intelligence co-creates realities in the image of an ideal or truth, taking into account the desiring agent imbued with a sense of possibility, in a relationship not only with the Real but also with the creative sublime or “Creal”. (shrink)

“Literature and the Right to Death” is probably the most quoted of French thinker Maurice Blanchot’s texts. For decades it has been discussed by such important figures as Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, or even the writer Paul Auster. Its importance is twofold: on the one hand, it is often considered an important gateway to Blanchot’s literary thought. On the other hand, it constitutes a substantial example of the new reception of Hegel in France after the Second World War. Although there (...) is no doubt about its Kojèvo-Hegelian inspiration and its center in what we could call “literary experience”, this article intends to explore another of its layers: its relation to the discussion around humanism and the Terror, as forgotten as it was central in France at the end of the 1940’s. We will thus try to lay the foundations for a new reading of this fundamental piece in Blanchot’s production. (shrink)

This paper reviews computational models of surprise, with a specific focus on the authors’ probabilistic, contrast model. The contrast model casts surprise, and its intensity, as emerging from the difference between the probability of the surprising event and the probability of the highest expected‐event in a given situation. Strong arguments are made for the central role of surprise in creativity and learning by natural and artificial agents.

This article explores Bernard Stiegler’s philosophical approach to culture in dialogue with Oliver Marchart’s postfoundational framework and conflictual aesthetics. Through the exposition of two different cases of gestural devices, it exposes Stiegler’s potential postfoundational aesthetics as an attempt to establish the necessary conditions for re-thinking the grounded-ungrounded existing relationship between humans, technical objects, and the composition of potential realities to grasp from an autopoietic relationship. These artistic and cultural examples are considered critical concepts that enhance and interrupt the philosophical discourse. (...) The article argues that Stiegler’s aesthetics is committed to the capacity that art, as a technology of the spirit, can contribute as agency in shaping public power, even when these agents are not directly in conflict and develop lesser and fragile performative technics through which a memory becomes present again. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

We point out the need to clarify some of the ideas related to the connection between development and sustainability in the Report of the Open Working Group of the General Assembly on Sustainable Development. In particular, the meaning of ‘sustainable’ is not clear when applied to specific areas of human activity. A more detailed explanation of the kind of equality sought for in the proposal is also needed. Because of potential conflicts between goals, we miss some considerations on the impact (...) of population increase both on development and on sustainability. A distinction is made here between two kinds of goals included in the Report. Some of the proposed 17 goals can then be seen as ends in themselves, whereas others seem to be means for the first set. The two sets thereby established should be seen in theory and dealt with in practice in a differentiated manner. (shrink)

Nowadays, batteries play an important role in a lot of different applications like energy storage, electro-mobility, consumer electronic and so on. All the battery types have a common factor that is their complexity, independently of its nature. Usually, the batteries have an electrochemical nature. Several different test are accomplished to check the batteries performance, and commonly, it is predictable how they work depending of their technology. The present research describes the hybrid intelligent system created to accomplish fault detection over a (...) Lithium Iron Phosphate—LiFePO4 power cell type, commonly used in electro-mobility applications. The approach is based on the cell temperatures behaviour for voltage and current specific values. Taken into account the operating range of a real system based on a LiFePO4 cell, a large set of points of operation have been used to achieve the dataset. The different behaviour zones have been obtained by clustering as a first step. Then, different regression techniques have been used over each cluster. Polynomial regression, artificial neural networks and support vector regression were the combined techniques to develop the hybrid intelligent model proposed. The intelligent system gives very good results over the operating range, detecting all the faults tested during the validation. (shrink)

This article’s assumption is that ordinary aesthetics does not necessarily imply a distancing from art and artists; rather, it can benefit from the input of creators when they use everyday scenes or objects as their theme. This approach focuses on the practice of twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who depicted compositions of common objects such as bottles, jars, and vases. Through Morandi’s meditative and artistic search, these objects are given value and aesthetic elevation in his paintings. Thomas Leddy’s aesthetics of (...) everyday life will also be called upon in my analysis, insofar as the author recognizes a continuity between the ordinary and the extraordinary, through auratic experiences. If Morandi discovers the extraordinary in the trivial, this is achieved through a gradual process of selection regarding the objects he favoured, which allows for the interaction of various levels of aesthetic intensity. Morandi’s objects and models and their preparation suggest a circulation between aesthetic degrees that, in turn, suggests a timeless “language of things” fixed through the discourse of the paintings. Along these lines, it will be necessary to address the enchantment related to common things, a mesmerizing presence of which we became more aware through Morandi compositions. (shrink)

A conception of global citizenship should not be viewed as separate from, or synonymous with, the cosmopolitan moral orientation, but as a primary component of it. Global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame. Such requirements, framed here as belonging to the category of individual cosmopolitanism, offer guidelines on right action in the context of global human community. They are complementary to the principles of moral cosmopolitanism — those to be used in assessing the justice (...) of global institutions and practices — that have been emphasised by cosmopolitan political theorists. Considering principles of individual and moral cosmopolitanism together can help to provide greater clarity concerning individual duties in the absence of fully global institutions, as well as clarity on individual obligations of justice in relation to emerging and still-developing trans-state institutions. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the areas where neuroscientific and philosophical issues intersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking as point of departure a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) that appears to block philosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, the paper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms of self-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of nonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention is paid in particular to the primitive forms of nonconceptual self-consciousness manifested in visual perception, somatic proprioception, spatial reasoning and interpersonal psychological interactions. (...) The study of these primitive forms of self-consciousness is an interdisciplinary enterprise and the paper considers a range of points of contact where philosophical work can illuminate work in the cognitive sciences, and vice versa. (shrink)

Mary Everest, Boole's wife, claimed after the death of her husband that his logic had a psychological, pedagogical, and religious origin and aim rather than the mathematico-logical ones assigned to it by critics and scientists. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the validity of such a claim. The first section consists of an exposition of the claim without discussing its truthfulness; the discussion is left for the sections 2?4, in which some arguments provided by the examination of (...) the inner consistency of Mary Everest's writings, Boole's own writings, and other sources, lead to the conclusion that there are sound reasons to accept Mary Everest's viewpoint. (shrink)

The essays in this volume investigate the norms of reason--the standards which contribute to determining whether beliefs, inferences, and actions are rational. Nine philosophers and two psychologists discuss what kinds of things these norms are, how they can be situated within the natural world, and what role they play in the psychological explanation of belief and action. Current work in the theory of rationality is subject to very diverse influences ranging from experimental and theoretical psychology, through philosophy of logic and (...) language, to metaethics and the theory of practical reasoning; this range is well represented here. (shrink)

One of the potentially most significant objections to a cosmopolitan moral approach charges an essential arrogance: cosmopolitanism disdains particularist moral insights even while – in what is said to be its most coherent form – it seeks to bind all persons within global political institutions. It is argued here that adopting a form of institutional cosmopolitanism actually helps to meet this sort of objection. An appropriately configured such approach will have a conception of equal global citizenship at its core. It (...) will seek to place individuals in relations of political humility, understood not as plain deference to competing moral claims, but as concrete recognition of the equal moral status of others. It will seek to progressively empower as actual citizen equals those whose interests are often ‘arrogantly’ neglected in the current system, and to multiply mechanisms of input and challenge for them over time. (shrink)

Los Māsilik al-abṣār de Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-'Umarī incluyen un breve resumen de la Historia de los omeyas de al-Andalus. En este trabajo se analizan las relaciones textuales entre ese pasaje y el Muqtabis de Ibn Ḥayyān, crónica que resulta ser la fuente casi única utilizada por al-'Umarī para redactar ese capítulo.

This paper explores the relationship between individual work values and unethical decision-making and actual behavior at work through two complementary studies. Specifically, we use a robust and comprehensive model of individual work values to predict unethical decision-making in a sample of working professionals and accounting students enrolled in ethics courses, and IT employees working in sales and customer service. Study 1 demonstrates that young professionals who rate power as a relatively important value are more likely to violate professional conduct guidelines (...) despite receiving training regarding ethical professional principles. Study 2, which examines a group of employees from an IT firm, demonstrates that those rating power as an important value are more likely to engage in non-work-related computing even when they are aware of a monitoring software that tracks their computer usage and an explicit policy prohibiting the use of these computers for personal reasons. (shrink)

We deal with situations incongruent with our automatic response tendencies much better right after having done so on a previous trial than after having reacted to a congruent trial. The nature of the mechanisms responsible for these sequential congruency effects is currently a hot topic of debate. According to the conflict monitoring model these effects depend on the adjustment of control triggered by the detection of conflict on the preceding situation. We tested whether these conflict monitoring processes can operate implicitly (...) in an implicit learning procedure, modulating the expression of knowledge of which participants are not aware. We reanalyze recently published data, and present an experiment with a probabilistic sequence learning procedure, both showing consistent effects of implicit sequence learning. Despite being implicit, the expression of learning was reduced or completely eliminated right after trials incongruent with the learned sequence, thus showing that sequential congruency effects can be obtained even when the source of congruency itself remains implicit. (shrink)

En 1588, el jesuita Luis de Molina publicaría su famosa Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, en la cual intenta defender –contra el fatalismo protestante- la libre determinación de la voluntad con respecto a su fin último sobrenatural. Sin embargo, las explicaciones teológicas del P. Molina suponen graves errores metafísicos, particularmente con respecto al concurso general o simultáneo de Dios sobre las causas segundas en las que Dios no obra in sino cum causa, donde la acción de la creatura (...) determina al Creador a producir conjuntamente un efecto. A partir de la Apología de los Padres Dominicos que recoge la doctrina de Santo Tomás acerca de la premoción física, procederemos en la crítica de esta tesis molinista: sólo Dios es Acto Puro y por eso es causa del movimiento actualizador tanto de las potencias naturales como espirituales, pues todo efecto –sea contingente o necesario– depende de la voluntad divina que trasciende todo orden de necesidad y contingencia: de allí que sólo Dios puede mover eficazmente nuestro intelecto y voluntad, y no por eso nuestros actos dejan de ser nuestros y personales. (shrink)

Ortega y Gasset afirmó “[...] la fenomenología no fue una filosofía para nosotros: fue... una buena suerte”. Esto se debió a que, a través de ella, pudo encontrar una salida del neokantismo. En consecuencia, Ortega entenderá que la fenomenología busca salvar la racionalidad sin ignorar la experiencia, es decir, sin olvidar, que todo sucede en la vida de cada individuo. Sin embargo, desde el principio se da cuenta de que este individuo no es algo aislado, sino que se forma en (...) relación con el mundo, la circunstancia (“Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia y si no la salvo a ella, no me salvo yo”, dirá hacia 1914) y que la fenomenología debe recuperar el carácter ejecutivo de la vida. El presente ensayo recorrerá desde el encuentro de Ortega con la fenomenología hasta sus intuiciones acerca de la vida como realidad radical. Palabras clave: Ortega y Gasset, Fenomenología, Circunstancias, Vida, Vivencias. (shrink)

Negri, A. (2020). De la fábrica a la metrópolis. (F. Venturi, trad.). Cactus. 256 pp.

Cosmopolitan political theorists hold that our obligations to distribute resources to others do not halt at state borders, but most do not advocate a restructuring of the global system to achieve their distributive aims. This article argues that promoting democratically accountable economic and political integration between states would be the most effective way to enable cosmopolitan, or routine, tax-financed, trans-state distributions. Movement toward a more integrated global system should encourage the view that larger sets of persons have interests in common (...) that should be protected and promoted in common. Democratically accountable integration also should enable those within less-affluent states to more vigorously press trans-state distributive claims. The still-evolving E.U. is examined as a partial model for the integrated alternative in other geographic regions, as well as, in the much longer term, for some form of democratic global government capable of ensuring that any person born anywhere would have access to adequate resources and life opportunities. (shrink)

This article presents the thesis the weak thinking and nihilistic vocation of Gianni Vattimo's hermeneutics, unlike the criticisms and misunderstandings underwent, does not necessarily imply the assumption, defense and proposal of a philosophical and hermeneutical irrationality. Based on a hermeneutics of the Italian philosopher texts, it is evident the criticisms of irrationalism are contested by the author, however, like all philosophy, it is necessary to deepen and reflect on the implications this philosophy has for modern philosophy and hodiernal hermeneutics. The (...) concepts of thought and hermeneutic rationality are the axes upon which Gianni Vattimo's philosophy is analyzed and philosophically reflected in this article. (shrink)

En este trabajo se presenta la concepción estándar del principio de igualdad con el fin de mostrar sus límites. Estas barreras se vinculan con la debida consideración de las diferencias y las políticas de reconocimiento, las críticas feministas, la perspectiva interseccional y la persistencia estructural del particularismo. El objetivo de este examen crítico es enfrentar los desafíos que nos impone la dimensión igualitaria de la justicia social.

Initial evaluation structures (IESs) currently proposed as the earliest detectors of affective stimuli (e.g., amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, or insula) are high-order structures (a) whose response latency cannot account for the first visual cortex emotion-related response (~80 ms), and (b) lack the necessary infrastructure to locally analyze the visual features that define emotional stimuli. Several thalamic structures accomplish both criteria. The lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), a first-order thalamic nucleus that actively processes visual information, with the complement of the thalamic reticular nucleus (...) (TRN) are proposed as core IESs. This LGN–TRN tandem could be supported by the pulvinar, a second-order thalamic structure, and by other extrathalamic nuclei. The visual thalamus, scarcely explored in affective neurosciences, seems crucial in early emotional evaluation. (shrink)

El objetivo que debe perseguir el editor de un texto árabe es el de acercarse lo más posible al original salido de la pluma del autor, respetando incluso sus posibles errores. En este artículo se presenta también una breve reflexión sobre la utilización de las técnicas informáticas para la edición de textos árabes.

Reconstrucción de la descripción que de la conquista musulmana de la Península Ibérica hizo el cronista cordobés del siglo X ‛Arīb b. Sa‛īd. Aunque no se nos ha conservado el relato, las citas de que él hacen autores posteriores, especialmente Ibn al-Šabbāṭ, nos permiten conocer casi en su literalidad el texto de ‛Arīb Esta versión de la conquista se asemeja en sus líneas generales a la de al-Rāzī, estudiada en un reciente trabajo en esta misma revista, aunque las diferencias en (...) los detalles son lo suficientemente notables como para considerarla una versión totalmente independiente. (shrink)

Se presenta una reflexión reposada y en tono más bien familiar y desde la perspectiva de la epistemología axiológica acerca de las enseñanzas que elZeitgeist, o espíritu de los tiempos intenta insuflar en la comunidad académica y en la sociedad total, a raíz de los dos años y más de la pandemia del Covid-19 que ha padecido gran parte de la humanidad. Tales enseñanzas no solo pueden, sino que, además, deben marcar el derrotero para la construcción y promoción de nuevas (...) y reinventadas formas de sentido común. Para ello, la propuesta del viraje o transformación epistémica, tanto desde la dimensión meramente informativa, como de la funcional del conocimiento hacia el ámbito de lo axiológico, se presenta como la atención a un reclamo impostergable del viviente humano contemporáneo, urgido de articular su doble acceso al conocimiento, aquel que le es relativo a su subsistencia y el que le permite situarse en lo profundo de la existencia misma para integrar desde allí todo lo que en él converge. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se inscribe en la crítica a la modernidad positivista e instrumental en la deriva de un capitalismo globalizador asfixiante. De la mano de Nietzsche, Deleuze, Heidegger y Schürmann, estudiaremos la problemática en torno al arché, con el objetivo de evitar el relativismo donde todo vale y el subjetivismo que puede campar a sus anchas guiñando un ojo de soslayo a sus intereses particulares.

Con base en la filosofía de Gilles Deleuze, presentamos un arma conceptual, a la que llamaremos horizontalización-desorientativa, que nos servirá para luchar contra cualquier sistema autoritario. En primer lugar, buscaremos algunos denominadores comunes en la filosofía deleuziana, como son la imbricación teórico-práctica, la minoridad, la radicalidad y la anomalía. Después, explicaremos el arma conceptual de la mano de la inmanencia y la expresividad. A continuación, antes de las conclusiones, propondremos una aplicación sobre el non-finito escultórico y comprobaremos que la crítica (...) llevada a cabo mediante la horizontalización-desorientativa comportará creatividad. (shrink)

In a famous passage of Naming and Necessity Kripke summarizes the core of his criticism to the description theory of natural kind terms, taking into account the theory of general terms proposed by Mill, insofar as it is applied to natural kind terms, as a paradigm of that sort of theory. The aim of this paper is to argue that Mill’s generic theory on general terms does not coincide with his theory concerning the sort of general terms that natural kind (...) terms are and that the main thesis of the latter is not subject to Kripke’s objections put forward in the aforementioned passage. (shrink)

La propuesta fenomenológica de Husserl, aunque se inició con un estudio sobre la naturaleza del número y las funciones matemáticas, abarca mucho más que eso. Se conocen una serie de ensayos editados póstumamente en el tomo XXI de la serie Hussserliana que abarcan los años 1890-1908, y que se enfocan en comprender los avances de la geometría (euclidiana y no euclidiana) y el papel que desempeña en la constitución del espacio físico. Los estudios sobre geometría euclidiana y no euclidiana continuarían (...) así la investigación de Filosofía de la aritmética, ya que ambos comparten los Grundgedanken, es decir, el conjunto de herramientas y temas relacionados con la noción de representación simbólica. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar de manera general los principales problemas a los que Husserl se enfrenta en relación con temas geométricos y espaciales. Se intentará reconstruir, de manera histórico-crítica, aspectos esenciales sobre los temas y problemas de la filosofía de la geometría tal y como Husserl la desarrolla en sus primeras obras fenomenológicas. (shrink)

Es werden zwei Einwände Putnams gegen die semantische Konzeption der Wahrheit untersucht. Pumam behauptet, nach dieser Wahrheitskonzeption seien die Äquivalenzen der Form (W) logisch notwendig oder logisch wahr, und die Wahrheit eines Satzes hänge von seiner syntaktischen Struktur und davon ab, wie die Welt ist, aber nicht von der Bedeutung des Satzes. Bei der Untersuchung dieser Einwände wird gegen Putnam geltend gemacht, daß Camaps Bestimmung einer Sprache durch semantische Regeln nicht tautologisch ist, und es werden wichtige Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen (...) der Semantik Tarskis und Camaps festgestellt. (shrink)