Recent debates on phenomenal consciousness have shown renewed interest for the idea that experience generally includes an experience of the self – a self-experience – whatever else it may present the self with. When a subject has an ordinary experience (as of a bouncing red ball, for example), the thought goes, she is not just phenomenally aware of the world as being presented in a certain way (a bouncy, reddish, roundish way in this case); she is also phenomenally aware of (...) the fact that it is presented to her. This supposed phenomenal dimension has been variously called “mineness”, “for-me-ness”, “pre-reflective self-awareness” and “subjective character”, among others. This view, associated with historical figures such as William James, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, is attracting a new surge of attention at the crossroads of phenomenology, analytic philosophy of mind and the philosophy of cognitive science, but also intense controversy. This book explores some of the questions running through the ongoing debate on the putative subjective dimension of experience: Does it exist?, the existence question; What is it?, the essence question; What is it for?, the function question; and What else does it explain?, the explanation question. The volume also surveys various domains of human experience, both normal and pathological, where a “sense of self” might be at play, including agency, bodily awareness, introspection, memory, emotions and values, and offers insights into the possible relations between the notions of subjective awareness involved. The first part of the book is devoted to more sceptical or deflationary views about self-experience, and the second, to more robust ones. (shrink)

Pretendemos, en este trabajo, mostrar cómo la erudición orientalista de árabes cristianos venidos a España desde Oriente (a través de Italia) se aproximó a la literatura de los moriscos, cómo la entendió y para qué la utilizó. Mostramos que estos eruditos, de entre los que elegimos los casos de Marcos Dobelio y Miguel Casiri, no pudieron realizar su trabajo orientalista, que se basa en una fuerte vinculación con los manuscritos árabes de la Biblioteca de El Escorial, sin evitar el problema (...) morisco en forma de su producción escrita aparecida en diversos fondos requisados por la Inquisición. Sus saberes y su actividad sirven para trazar los contornos amplios de una historia intelectual de la lengua árabe en Europa, en la que el hecho morisco es interpretado en función de sus variables lingüsticas y doctrinales, a partir de la constitución de una disciplina erudita (el orientalismo), en medio de las polémicas religiosas entre Reforma y Contrarreforma, a partir, en fin, de la historia de la disidencia religiosa y del escepticismo en la Europa Moderna. (shrink)

En este artículo tratamos da reconstruir la vida de Diego de Urrea, uno de los traductores e intérpretes más importantes de finales del s. XVI y principios del XVII en España. Sus actividades como catedrático en Alcalá de Henares, traductor de los Plomos del Sacromonte, catalogador de los manuscritos árabes de El Escorial, negociador intermediario y espía en asuntos marroquíes, hacen de él una figura paradigmática de lo que significó en su época el conocimiento y la utilización del árabe, como (...) instrumento para cuestiones de importancia política y estratégica inmediata y también en su dimensión humanística y académica. (shrink)

This volume delves into the question of how, in an Iberian world apparently far removed from the battlegrounds of modernity and secularisation, doubt and unbelief found fertile soil, stimulated by social and religious developments. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, the contributors show how the crisis of identity produced by forced mass conversion touched off inner crises about the nature of Truth. By tracing the path from medieval Spain to the Spanish Inquisition, and from the great literary and artistic works of the (...) Spanish Baroque to Sephardic Marranism, this volume fills a historiographical gap in European social and intellectual history, demonstrating the importance of the Iberian world in the evolution of European scepticism. Mercedes García-Arenal is Research Professor at CSIC, Madrid, and Stefania Pastore is Associate Professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. They work on tolerance and dissent in Early Modern Iberia: on forced conversion, on the violent world of the Inquisition and the debates and protests that it sparked, and on the complex interplay of minorities. They have recently collaborated on After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity (Brill, 2016) and, as editors, Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo (Abada, 2018). (shrink)

This contribution to a symposium “on the consequence of blur” deals with the case of Agustín de Ribera and his followers in sixteenth-century Castile. Inquisition trial records report the appearance, around 1535 among the Moriscos (Catholic converts of Muslim origin) in Toledo, of a boy who had ecstasies and visions in which he traveled to the Hereafter and received revelations. Though considered by his followers and also by the Inquisition a prophet of Muhammad, Agustin and his visions appear to have (...) arisen in a context held in common with the Christian majority of Castile. This case thus reveals the existence of a hybrid form of Catholic Muslim religiosity, but only to scholars who do what is required to de differentiate — that is, to blur — the categories of identity and orthodoxy that were established by the Inquisition. Scholars have for too long allowed the Inquisition to overclarify for posterity the distinctions that existed between ethno religious groups and to define for us the nature of religious dissidence in early modern Spain. (shrink)

Este artículo examina la propaganda establecida por Aḥmad al-Manṣūr al-Ḏahabī tanto en su correspondencia, como a través del ceremonial de la corte y de los cronistas, apologistas oficiales del sultán, propaganda que sacraliza extraordinariamente su figura y que roza en todo momento la pretensión mahdista, unida a la pretensión califal. Esta propaganda se realiza en el contexto de rivalidad con los Otomanos y en torno a la conquista del Sudán, conquista profundamente contestada por los ulemas marroquíes. La conclusión del artículo (...) es que la sacralización del poder islámico es siempre efímera y coyuntural y sólo puede hacerse a través de la figura del mahdī, una figura rupturista y a la que generalmente recurren los rebeldes al poder establecido: el recurso a esta figura por parte de un sultán es necesaria en un momento en el que los ulemas no consideran legítimo un poder o unas acciones emprendidas por tal poder. (shrink)

Recent debates on phenomenal consciousness have shown renewed interest for the idea that experience generally includes an experience of the self—a self-experience—whatever else it may present the self with. When a subject has an ordinary experience (as of a bouncing red ball, for example), the thought goes, she is not just phenomenally aware of the world as being presented in a certain way (a bouncy, reddish, roundish way in this case); she is also phenomenally aware of the fact that it (...) is presented to her. This supposed phenomenal dimension has been variously called “mineness,” “for-me-ness,” “pre-reflective self-awareness,” and “subjective character,” among others. This view, associated with historical figures such as William James, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, is attracting a new surge of attention at the crossroads of phenomenology, analytic philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of cognitive science, but also intense controversy. This book explores some of the questions running through the ongoing debate on the putative subjective dimension of experience: Does it exist?, the existence question; What is it?, the essence question; What is it for?, the function question; and What else does it explain?, the explanation question. The volume also surveys various domains of human experience, both normal and pathological, where a “sense of self” might be at play, including agency, bodily awareness, introspection, memory, emotions, and values, and offers insights into the possible relations between the notions of subjective awareness involved. The first part of the book is devoted to more skeptical or deflationary views about self-experience, and the second, to more robust ones. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between a relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and a profit maximizing yet unequal one. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits when interacting within their social category, but chose not to maximize individual and joint profits when interacting across social categories. Study 3 demonstrated that outside observers, who were not members of the focal social categories, also were less likely (...) to maximize profits when resources were distributed across social category lines. Study 4 showed that the transaction utility of maximizing profits required greater compensation when resources were distributed across, in contrast to within social categories. We discuss the ethical implications of these decision making biases in the context of organizations. (shrink)

This chapter discusses fundamental problems and prospects for ethical naturalism. Section 1 explains what is meant by “ethical naturalism” and surveys different versions of the view. Section 2 discusses the central philosophical challenge to ethical naturalism, viz., the “Normativity Objection.” Section 3 offers a battery of responses to it on behalf of the ethical naturalist. Section 4 explores a promising and novel approach to ethical naturalism, viz., a moral nativist theory that that combines a Chomskian approach to moral competence with (...) a structuralist metaphysics. (shrink)

Ever since Clifford Geertz urged the “blurring of genres” in the social sciences, many scholars have considered the crossing of disciplinary boundaries a healthy alternative to rigidly maintaining them. But what precisely does the metaphor of “blurring” imply? By unpacking the varieties of visual experiences that are normally grouped under this rubric, this essay seeks to provide some precision to our understanding of the implications of fuzziness. It extrapolates from the blurring caused by differential focal distances, velocities of objects in (...) the visual field, and competing perspectival vantage points to comparable effects in the intersection of different scholarly disciplines. Arguing against the holistic implications of Geertz's metaphor, as well as the even more totalizing concept of “consilience” introduced by E. O. Wilson, it suggests that blurring implies new types of complexity between or among those disciplines. (shrink)

In this introduction to the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia, the editor explains the rationale of the new project, citing increases in aggressive xenophobia internationally. He comments on the intergroup-relations theorist Todd Pittinsky's argument that, since tolerance is not logically the antithesis of negative feelings toward out-groups, even long-established traditions of toleration are inadequate to prevent intergroup aggression. Pittinsky proposes that tolerance be replaced, as a principle of peacekeeping, by the encouragement of positive feelings toward out-groups, (...) and the author of this essay responds by showing how the Freudian theory of ambivalence and the history of literature on which Freud drew in constructing it support Pittinsky's viewpoint. Enemies regularly fall in love, above all in Shakespearean drama, which Freud explains by arguing that all human relations are love-hate relations. Thus, this essay suggests, it takes as much psychic energy to repress the love in what appear to be relationships of hatred as to repress the hatred in what appear to be relationships of love. There is a metaphysical component as well to this argument: the xenophobe and xenophile equally presuppose that the identity principle is applicable to society as well as to mathematics; both assume that each discrete social group is self-identical and differs from all other groups more or less radically. The main difference between –phile and –phobe is the latter's relative incapacity to live with ambivalence. Given these arguments, one must expect to find negative as well as positive motives in the etiology and conduct of xenophilia—and the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium is said to focus on cases of xenophilia in which varieties of enmity accompany that singular and underrated variety of love. (shrink)

La presente contribución atiende a la interpretación por parte de Heidegger de la dualidad planteada expresamente por Kant de facultades cognoscitivas y sus respectivos tipos específicos de representación. Intentará mostrar cómo su interpretación fenomenológica da cuenta de esta cooriginariedad de sensibilidad y entendimiento y puede incluso –en un sentido bien determinado– legitimarla. Para ello enfoca su interés en el posicionamiento crítico de Heidegger frente a la lectura neokantiana de este elemento doctrinal de la filosofía transcendental de Kant.

El cristianismo, obligado por la Modernidad, tuvo que hacer un desplazamiento desde el plano dogmático al plano moral; hoy estamos ante otro desplazamiento: el que va desde el terreno moral al místico. En este terreno dominará sobre todo la experiencia personal de la presencia salvífica de Dios en Cristo. Esa experiencia, vivida en medio del pluralismo, consistirá en una síntesis activa entre la Presencia y su interpretación . Este ensayo trata de diseccionar las dimensiones existenciales y lingüísticas de esa síntesis. (...) Después de ver por qué somos pobres en experiencia, se analizan los componentes y caracteres esenciales de toda experiencia religiosa A continuación se disecciona la estructura simbólica de esta experiencia , y su configuración mítico-narrativa Palabras clave: 'Hermenéutica de los símbolos'; 'Mitos'; 'Mundos ficcionales'; 'Hermenéutica narrativa'; 'Mundo del texto'; 'Apropiación del sentido'.Christianity forced by modernity had to make a shift from a dogmatic plane to a moral one; today, there is another shift which goes from a moral to a mystical ground. The personal experience of God’s saving presence in Christ will dominate, over all, in this field. That experience, lived in the midst of pluralism will consist of an active synthesis between the presence and its interpretation .This essay intends to dissect the linguistic and existential dimensions of this synthesis. After seeing why we are poor in experience, we will analyze the essential components and characteristics of the religious experience , and its mythical narrative configuration. (shrink)

In this paper an algebraic version for temporal algebras of the logical filtrations for modal and temporal logics is analysed. A structure theorem for free temporal algebras and also some results with regard to the variety of temporal algebras are obtained.

In this paper the structure of pretemporal algebra is used to study some aspects of temporal algebras and modal algebras. The paper contains a computational approach to finite temporal algebras and a general splitting theorem for finite temporal algebras.

Here we defend the view that one ought to categorize and classify at least some mental disorders as clusters of interrelated dysfunctions of (usually, several) cognitive capacities – that is, the kinds of capacities that are postulated in cognitive science; capacities that are understood as entities that are primarily individuated in cognitive-functional terms (CF-systems); systems that have a set of peculiar properties in their manner of operation when processing information or representations. Usually, some of the mental disorders postulated in psychiatry (...) are clinically heterogeneous with respect to their symptoms, and tend to be comorbid – that is, one disorder is often accompanied by other disorders – for example, schizophrenia often comes with major depression. We argue that describing the manner in which CF-systems operate within themselves and with other CF-systems as well as with stimuli and other kinds of information can best explain why certain mental disorders are very heterogeneous with respect to their symptoms, and why comorbidity is so frequent among these disorders. A consequence is that both within-category heterogeneity and comorbodity are not necessarily indications of defective classifications but are rather a consequence of the actual cognitive functional architecture itself and are therefore to be expected in these cases. (shrink)

Immer öfter werden der Natur eigene Rechte zugesprochen. Rund um den Globus helfen sie gefährdeten Ökosystemen, sich gegen schädliche Wirtschaftsinteressen zu verteidigen. Seit ihrer Einführung in die ecuadorianische Verfassung im Jahre 2008 wurden Rechte der Natur unter anderem in Bolivien, Kanada, Kolumbien, Neuseeland und den USA eingeführt. Zuletzt in Spanien zum Schutz einer Salzwasserlagune. Dieses Buch zeigt, wie die Idee der Rechte der Natur entstand, wie sie immer mehr an Fahrt aufnahm und wie sie uns künftig helfen kann, die Natur (...) und gefährdete Ökosysteme zu schützen. Dabei begibt es sich auf die Reise durch verschiedene Länder und Kontinente und stellt konkrete Anwendungsfälle und Initiativen vor. (shrink)