I argue that Nietzsche’s thinking, contrary to the interpretation of Martin Heidegger, is compatible with an ecologically oriented, environmentally concemed philosophizing. In support of this contention, I show that Nietzsche’s critique of traditional Western thinking closely parallels the critique of this tradition by environmentalist writers such as Lynn White, Ir. I also show that one of the principal thrusts of Nietzsche’s own philosophizing consists of the attempt to overcome the kind of thinking that has provided a theoretical foundation for the (...) technological control and exploitation of the natural world. Finally, I show that Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power, at least in several of its fonnulations, has certain affinities to the ecosystem approach of modem ecologists. (shrink)

Addressing six primary philosophical concerns - the self, reality, epistemology, ethics, politics and religion, this text contains not only many readings from the Western canon, but essential readings from many cultural perspectives not typically included in introductory philosophy classes as well.

Philosophical critics standardly read behaviorism as a program for defining the concepts of folk psychology in equivalent behavioral terms. This is a misreading. Behaviorism is a program for getting rid of ill-defined mentalistic terms in favor of better defined behavioral idiom. In short, it is a program not for conceptual analysis but for verbal reform. Therefore, criticizing behaviorists for failing to define mentalistic concepts is like criticizing opponents of the Spanish Inquisition for failing to define witchcraft.

I argue that Nietzsche’s thinking, contrary to the interpretation of Martin Heidegger, is compatible with an ecologically oriented, environmentally concemed philosophizing. In support of this contention, I show that Nietzsche’s critique of traditional Western thinking closely parallels the critique of this tradition by environmentalist writers such as Lynn White, Ir. I also show that one of the principal thrusts of Nietzsche’s own philosophizing consists of the attempt to overcome the kind of thinking that has provided a theoretical foundation for the (...) technological control and exploitation of the natural world. Finally, I show that Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power, at least in several of its fonnulations, has certain affinities to the ecosystem approach of modem ecologists. (shrink)

Behaviorism is belief that psychological states and traits are behavioral dispositions. This is normally interpreted by critics to mean that every person in state S is disposed to behave in way B. So interpreted, behaviorism is subject to the objection that there are spartans who feel pain but do not moan and groan. However, with few exceptions, behaviorists have not contended that everybody who is in a given state of mind necessarily behaves in the same obvious way. Instead, behaviorists have (...) typically contended only that being in one state of mind rather than another makes a discoverable difference to how one is disposed to behave. Thus, behaviorism does not require that spartans moan and groan when in pain. All it requires is that they behave differently when in pain than when not in pain. (shrink)

This anthology includes 42 selections from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and historical periods. The text is not limited to Western material; it also includes Native American, African-American, Hispanic and feminist selections. While quite diverse historically and culturally, the readings are chosen for their readability and philosophical significance. To facilitate incorporation into existing courses, the selections are arranged in six chapters that correspond to traditional philosophical categories: self identity, knowledge and truth, creation and reality, ethics, politics and religion.

Im Rahmen der formalen Logik versucht man auf verschiedene Art und Weise Implikationen zu definieren, die den intuitiven Gehalt der "weil..., darum..." Beziehung wiedergeben. Einige dieser Formalisierungsansätze werden vorgestellt. Am Beispiele einer auf Jaśkowski zurückgehenden Konzeption wird demonstriert, wie man kausale Beziehungen repräsentierende Funktoren semantisch charakterisieren kann. Man konstruiert dazu zunächst n-dimensionale Kripke-Modelle, in denen eine nichtklassische aussagenlogische Sprache interpretiert wird. Die Ausdrucksmittel der Sprache gestatten die Definition verschiedener Kausalfunktoren, deren Eigenschaften überdies von der jeweiligen Modellklasse abhängen. Man erhält also (...) eine Vielzahl formaler Entsprechungen für die intuitive Kausalbeziehung, unter denen die den jeweiligen Anschauungen am nächsten kommende auszuwählen ist. (shrink)

W pracy prezentowane są niektóre wyniki dotyczące wprowadzonej, w jednej z poprzednich prac autora, klasy tzw. dyskusyjnych systemów Jaśkowskiego. W szczególności zwraca się uwagę na parakonsystentność owych systemów, brak reguły dołączania prawdziwościowej koniunkcji oraz respektowanie reguły dołączania tzw. koniunkcji dyskusyjnej w każdym z tych systemów. Jako specjalne systemy parakonsystentne stanowią one punkt wyjścia do dyskusji nad pewnymi własnościami logik parakonsystentnych. Autor poddaje krytyce stanowisko Priesta na temat roli dołączania koniunkcji dla logik parakonsystentnych oraz sensowność pojęć ścisłej parakonsystencji.

O ensaio tentar realizar um exercício hermenêutico de explicitar os sentidos de tempo que surgem no poema O tempo o homem, do poeta paraense Max Martins. Neste ensaio, as premissas interpretativas partem sobretudo do pensamento do filósofo paraense Benedito Nunes, tendo, no horizonte a Ontologia fundamental de Martin Heidegger, mas também de outros pensadores, como Giorgio Agamben. Além disto, o horizonte hermenêutico deste ensaio alcança um dos poetas que marcaram determinantemente a poesia de Max Marins, que foi seu amigo Mário (...) Faustino. Assim, o problema central desta investigação ensaística é a busca por saber o sentido dos tempos Ampulheta, Era, hera e Hora. A hipótese é que o aporte hermenêutico fenomenológico desenvolvido por Benedito Nunes para a relação dialógica, de “transa”, entre poesia e filosofia, viabilizada pelo que chamou de “passagem para o poético” (Kehre), oferece a tese de que o poema de Max Martins é um poema sobre o próprio poetar e sobre a “aventura” enquanto “evento” (Ereignis) da Hora que o artista faz. (shrink)

Public health agencies undertake a broad range of health promotion and injury and disease prevention activities in collaboration with an array of actors, such as the community, businesses, and non-profit organizations. These activities are “multisectoral” in nature and centered on public health agencies that oversee and engage with the other actors. Public health agencies can influence the hazardous activities in the private sector in a variety of ways, “ranging from prohibition and regulation to volunteerism, and from cooperation to cooption.” Hence, (...) a public health agency that possesses the necessary administrative resources and authority is vital to the effective implementation of health policies and regulations.In the developing world, however, many state health agencies lack these basic capacities in dealing with critical health threats, including their ability to avert epidemics of communicable diseases arising from poor sanitary conditions. A serious constraint is the shortage of public health funding for health agencies in the developing world for typical agency functions. This is often aggravated by the transaction-intensive demands entailed in enforcing regulations among an array of private and public sector actors including individuals, businesses, and local bodies responsible for providing civic services. (shrink)

Developing country efforts to enforce basic public health standards are often hindered by limited agency resources and poorly designed enforcement mechanisms, including excessive reliance on slow and erratic judicial systems. Traditional public health regulation can therefore be difficult to implement. This article examines innovative approaches to the implementation of public health regulations that have emerged in recent years within the OECD countries. These approaches aim to improve compliance with health standards among the different actors while reducing dependence on the legal (...) system and the administrative resources of public health agencies in developing countries. Developing countries may find some useful lessons from these approaches that can be adapted for use in their own institutional settings. (shrink)

Influenciados pelas discussões desenvolvidas por Álvaro Nascimento no artigo Trabalhadores Negros e o “Paradigma da Ausência”: contribuições à história social do trabalho no Brasil, pensamos este trabalho, cujo objetivo é analisar a instrumentalização da identidade negra nas estratégias argumentativas do Partido Comunista Brasileiro, das Ligas Camponesas e da Igreja Católica, forças que atuaram no campo brasileiro entre 1945 e 1964. Para tanto, consultamos um conjunto diversificado de periódicos e dialogamos com produções de diferentes centros de pesquisa.

O objetivo do presente artigo é desenvolver uma reflexão acerca de relações existentes entre informação e ação, no contexto das tecnologias informacionais de comunicação. O problema central que guiará o artigo pode ser assim formulado: Qual é a influência da informação disponível nas TICs na ação autônoma? O direcionamento de pesquisas em relação ao conceito de informação possui geralmente uma orientação técnica, não focalizando questões éticas, ontológicas e epistemológicas, que são igualmente relevantes ao se tratar desse conceito. Em contraste com (...) a orientação técnica vigente, ressaltamos a abordagem proposta por Charles S. Peirce, que caracteriza informação a partir de diferentes perspectivas: lógico-semântica, pragmática e semiótica. Partindo da hipótese que processos informacionais têm uma participação fundamental no direcionamento da ação, investigamos impactos das TICs presentes nas relações cotidianas. Discutimos transformações que as TICs têm possibilitado na relação agente-ambiente, ressaltando recursos computacionais de mineração de dados, que propiciam ações, muitas vezes direcionadas por interesses alheios àqueles dos usuários. Argumentamos que o estudo da informação é importante para entender possíveis implicações das TICs no direcionamento da ação humana. (shrink)

: This commentary focuses on the scientific status of perceptual projection-a central feature of Pereira’s projective theory of consciousness. In his target article, he draws on my own earlier work to develop an explanatory framework for integrating first-person viewable conscious experience with the third-person viewable neural correlates and antecedent causes that form conscious experience into a bipolar structure that contains both a sense of self and a sense of the world. I stress that perceptual projection is a psychological effect and (...) list many of the ways it has been studied within experimental psychology, for example in studies of depth perception in vision and audition and experiences of depth arising from cues arranged on two-dimensional surfaces in stereoscopic pictures, 3D cinemas, holograms, and virtual realities. I then juxtapose Pereira’s explanatory model with two other models that have similar aims and background assumptions but different orientations, Trehub’s Retinoid model, which focuses largely on the neural functioning of the visual system, and Rudrauf et al’s Projective Consciousness Model, which draws largely on projective geometries to specify the requirements of organisms that need to navigate a three-dimensional world, and how these might be implemented in human information processing. Together, these models illustrate both converging and diverging approaches to understanding the role of projective processes in human consciousness. Resumo: Este comentário enfoca o status científico da projeção perceptiva - uma característica central da teoria da consciência de Pereira. Em seu artigo alvo, ele recorre ao meu trabalho anterior para desenvolver uma estrutura explicativa para integrar a experiência consciente visível em primeira pessoa com os correlatos neurais visíveis de terceira pessoa e as causas antecedentes que formam a experiência consciente em uma estrutura bipolar que contém tanto um sentido de eu e um sentido do mundo. Enfatizo que a projeção perceptiva é um efeito psicológico e relaciono modalidades de seu estudo na psicologia experimental, por exemplo em estudos de percepção de profundidade em visão e audição, experiências de profundidade em superfícies bidimensionais em imagens estereoscópicas, cinemas 3D, hologramas e realidades virtuais. Eu então justaponho o modelo explicativo de Pereira com dois outros modelos que têm objetivos e suposições similares, mas orientações diferentes, o modelo do sistema retinóide de Trehub, que se concentra principalmente no funcionamento neural do sistema visual, e o modelo de consciência projetiva de Rudrauf et al., que estabelece raciocínios geométricos para especificar os requisitos de organismos que precisam navegar em um mundo tridimensional, e como eles podem ser implementados no processamento de informação no contexto humano. Juntos, esses modelos ilustram abordagens convergentes e divergentes para compreender o papel dos processos projetivos na consciência humana. (shrink)

Radically Rethinking Copyright in the Arts: A Philosophical ApproachYoungJames O. Routledge. 2020. pp. 184. £120.

RESUMENporque somos finitos, porque hay límite, hay sentido. Asimismo, en la medida que precisamente somos, constituyendo tal límite, hay comunidad. Aquello que la configura es el despliegue del sentido. Con lo del sentido, lo que se aborda aquí es la esencia de una misma comunidad, una comunidad sin nombre. En este trabajo se revela la intensidad de su despliegue, en su cierre (Schmitt) y apertura (Derrida).PALABRAS CLAVESentido, finitud, decisión, Schmitt, DerridaABSTRACTBecause we are finite, because there is limit, there is sense. (...) Likewise, insofar as we are precisely, constituting such limit, there is community. It is the display of sense what forms it. With the sense issue, what we approach here is the essence of a community itself, a community without name. In this work we disclose the intensity of its display, in its closing (Schmitt) and opening (Derrida).KEYWORDSSense, finiteness, decision, Schmitt, Derrida. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie believe that some mental representations are evoked by stimuli to which a person is attending, and other mental representations are evoked by stimuli to which attention was not paid. I argue that this is the classical view of consciousness; yet this is the view which they wish to challenge.

In an earlier essay in this journal, the estimable John Staddon charges B. F. Skinner and E. O. Wilson with committing several fallacies while promoting evolutionary ethics. The present essay replies that what Staddon regards as fallacies are signal contributions to a naturalistic understanding of ethical choice and language.

This is an open peer commentary on O’Brien & Opie (1999) “A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience”, published as a target article in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. O’Brien & Opie defend a “vehicle” rather than a “process” theory of consciousness largely on the grounds that only conscious information is “explicit”. I argue that preconscious and unconscious representations can be functionally explicit (semantically well-formed and causally active). I also suggest that their analysis of how neural activation space mirrors the information (...) structure of phenomenal experience fits more naturally into a dual-aspect theory of information than into their reductive physicalism. (shrink)

RESUMEN Largamente desatendida o malinterpretada, la noción de caos en la filosofía de Nietzsche es una pieza constitutiva de la particular concepción del ser que este autor habría dejado apenas esbozada. El artículo se propone elaborar este concepto en la obra nietzscheana, siguiendo algunas de las metáforas que lo iluminan. Desde allí se busca plantear los rasgos centrales de una ontologia del caos, de sesgo no metafísico, que, al afirmar el carácter acontecimental de la realidad, puede verse como precursora de (...) la ontología hermenéutica contemporánea. ABSTRACT The notion of chaos, which has long been neglected or misinterpreted, is a constitutive element of a peculiar conception of being that the philosopher only had time to outline. The objective of this article is to elaborate on this concept in Nietzschean philosophy, guided by some of the metaphors that shed light on it. This serves as the basis to set forth the main characteristics of a non-metaphysical ontology of chaos that asserts the eventful nature of reality and can thus be seen as a precursor of contemporary hermeneutic ontology. (shrink)