A través del personaje Agnes de la novela La inmortalidad de Milán Kundera, se hace una reflexión acerca de la singularidad en el mundo contemporáneo, singularidad que se halla invadida por los imagólogos, los medios masivos de comunicación y los lugares comunes que estos fenómenos provocan. La reflexión se acercará al personaje como símbolo de una singularidad en peligro y como posibilidad estética de resistencia a través de un derrumbamiento como posibilidad singular.

The objective of this article is to analyze the consequences that affect the First Metaphysical Principles when the Ontological Argument is established. Saint Anselm and Descartes do not share the same consideration about the first principles. My intention is to show the differences between their points of view and at the same time contrast these ideas with Polo's theory.

In this article we aim to support the thesis that Nietzsche, from his first work The Birth of Tragedy, to his last texts, such as Twilight of the Idols, in What I owe to the ancients, proposes a radical transvaluation of the meaning of suffering human. He adopts a completely different perspective from Western metaphysical and religious conceptions, which considered suffering as an objection to life, arising from faults, failures, “sins”, which must be expiated through countless constraints, until inexorable death. (...) The nietzschean transvaluation, with its unique tragic perspective, inaugurated in The Birth of Tragedy and sustained throughout his entire work, far from considering suffering as an objection or imperfection of existence, values it and even exalts it as another modality of becoming. vital, consubstantial and inherent in every affirmation, every pleasure, every possibility of joy. (shrink)

Resumo: Abordamos a interpretação nietzschiana sobre “liberdade” e “necessidade” e como o filósofo contesta noções da tradição, vinculadas a essa problemática: “causa e efeito”, “sujeito”, “vontade”, etc. Ele assinala como esses conceitos seriam construtos antropomórficos que não conseguem desvendar as ações geridas apenas pela dinâmica da vontade de potência. Mostramos que Nietzsche, mesmo com sua crítica aos conceitos da tradição, continua empregando noções como “fatalidade”, “necessidade”, que parecem reeditar uma conceituação antropomórfica. Indicamos como ele ultrapassa objeções passíveis de serem feitas (...) a um pensamento oscilante, que parece negar e afirmar a liberdade. Concordamos com intérpretes que destacam como seu estilo suscita deliberadamente paradoxos e aporias, já que seu objetivo, antes que estabelecer uma doutrina ou uma teoria consolidada, visa instigar novas reflexões e experiências de pensamento sobre o agir do homem.: We address nietzschiana interpretation on the issue of freedom and necessity. We show how the German philosopher disputes notions of philosophical tradition, linked to this problem, as “cause and effect”, “subject”, “i”, “will” etc. He points how these concepts would be just anthropomorphic constructs that cannot unravel the nature of the actions; managed only by the power control game of the will of power. We show that Nietzsche, even with this radical criticism of the concepts of tradition, continues to employ notions such as “fatality”, “necessity” that seem to resend to the anthropomorphic conceptualization questioned. We indicate how the author of Zaratustra manages to overcome the objections that may be made to an oscillating thought, which sometimes seems to deny and affirm freedom at different times of his work. We agree with interpreters who point out that Nietzsche’s style deliberately chooses to raise paradoxes and apparent apores, since his goal, before establishing a doctrine or a consolidated theory about freedom and necessity, is an attempt to instigate new reflections, new thought experiences, new paths of meditation on the action of man. (shrink)

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

In developing a theory of consciousness, one of the main problems has to do with determining what distinguishes conscious states from non-conscious ones—the delimitation problem. This paper explores the possibility of solving this problem in terms of self-awareness. That self-awareness is essential to understanding the nature of our conscious experience is perhaps the most widely discussed hypothesis in the study of consciousness throughout the history of philosophy. Its plausibility hinges on how the notion of self-awareness is unpacked. The idea that (...) consciousness involves self-awareness has been understood in two different ways: either as awareness of oneself—the subject of experience—or as awareness of the conscious episode itself. In this paper I argue (i) that every experience concerns the subject in a very specific way, involving what I will call ‘perspectival de se representation’, and (ii) that there is no need to appeal to the experience itself in order to characterize the awareness within that experience. The view I articulate explains the subjective nature of experience without over-intellectualizing it, accommodates the phenomenology of experience, and dispels any doubt about the need to find the self in introspection. (shrink)

En el Canto V del Infierno, uno de los pasajes más universalmente conocidos de la Divina Comedia, Dante sugiere la fuerza corruptora de la literatura, desencadenante del adulterio de Paolo y Francesca. Este esquema en que lo literario se convierte en motivo de perdición, reaparece en casos tan conocidos como el de Don Quijote y otros menos conocidos como el dickensiano Nicodemus Boffin de Nuestro común amigo. Estos escritores dejan traslucir en sus obras sus inquietudes respecto a una influencia que (...) simultáneamente buscan y temen sobre los lectores. Sus «libros dentro de los libros» pueden ser interpretados como una vacuna con la que el escritor quiere proveer al lector de las herramientas para protegerse de los efectos perversos de una literatura recibida en clave romántica. Proponemos, siguiendo especialmente a Renato Poggioli, John Freccero o René Girard, una interpretación antirromántica que subraya la actualidad de la arquitectura moral de la Divina Comedia y su ascendencia sobre varios clásicos de la literatura moderna posterior. (shrink)

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of our ordinary experiences. (...) I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness : a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects. (shrink)

Esta investigación trata sobre la Lógica poética formulada por Giambattista Vico en la Ciencia nueva. Se trata de una teoría de la génesis, desarrollo y constitución del λóγος humano, no en cuanto intelecto, sino en cuanto expresión lingüística. Trata pues del origen del lenguaje. Esta investigación se desarrolla en dos partes (sincrónica y diacrónica) de la que aquí presento la primera. En ulteriores investigaciones acometeré la segunda. El trabajo se inicia con un estudio de las fuentes vichianas y su reformulación (...) por parte de nuestro pensador. Seguidamente se analiza el requisito para la formación de cualquier lenguaje natural (es decir, no formal), que para Vico reside en lo que llama una Metafísica poética. El núcleo del trabajo estriba en la comprensión de lo que Vico denomina primera operación de la mente humana. Desde esta teoría del conocimiento cabe acceder al estudio sincrónico de los factores que posibilitan el lenguaje humano. Los divido en tres tipos: biopsicológicos, socio-culturales e internos al mismo lenguaje. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate which of the main conditions proposed in the moral responsibility literature are the ones that spell trouble for the idea that Artificial Intelligence Systems could ever be full-fledged responsible agents. After arguing that the standard construals of the control and epistemic conditions don’t impose any in-principle barrier to AISs being responsible agents, I identify the requirement that responsible agents must be aware of their own actions as the main locus of resistance to attribute that kind (...) of agency to AISs. This is because this type of awareness is thought to involve first-person or de se representations, which, in turn, are usually assumed to involve some form of consciousness. I clarify what this widespread assumption involves and conclude that the possibility of AISs’ moral responsibility hinges on what the correct theory of de se representations ultimately turns out to be. (shrink)

This work is an introduction on Polo's criticism of Saint Anselm's argument, showing that this argument is inefficient with respect to Polo's comprehesion of the intellect and Polo's study of the existence.

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Higher-order thought theories of consciousness attempt to explain what it takes for a mental state to be conscious, rather than unconscious, by means of a HOT that represents oneself as being in the state in question. Rosenthal Consciousness and the self: new essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) stresses that the way we are aware of our own conscious states requires essentially indexical self-reference. The challenge for defenders of HOT theories is to show that there is a way to explain (...) the required reference-fixing mechanisms that is compatible with the theory. According to Rosenthal, the reference to oneself as such is grounded in the disposition to identify the individual the HOT refers to as the individual who has that HOT. I argue that this leads to a vicious infinite regress on the more than plausible assumption that our cognitive capacities are limited. This leaves such theories without a foundation, since self-reference is thought essential to consciousness. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

Postmodernity has brought new forms of social control which are exercised through new forms of communication. Paradoxically, however, postmodernity also seemed to be heading towards the exaltation of the individual in their absolute freedom. The 20 th century pushed, in the name of science and progress, the secularization of Western societies, often distancing people from their traditional community ties, including ties to the ecclesial community. Thus, the postmodern individual initially appeared free of ancestral community pressures. However, subtle new forms of (...) social control have replaced traditional ones. Mechanisms such as social media, new forms of work and sexual exploitation, or the impossibility of maintaining privacy in the face of the power of private and public corporations, thus expose the individual to the asocial elements. Frequently, these new social control mechanisms (a clear example being the leadership of the WHO in the policies implemented worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic) are presented to us not as repressive, but scientifically and paternally protective. In this context, the vindication of religious freedom and the community experience of faith represent decisive touchstones for the vitality and validity of a social and political order in which the personal being is truly the highest value. The authors of this monograph are professors, some of them with twenty or thirty years of university teaching, others halfway between Generation X and Y, but all with a deep vocation as teachers called to understanding the world around them. A vocation to collaborate with their students so that the seed of love for the knowledge of reality and the joyful experience of contact with the truth may bear fruit in them. Such an experience only makes sense as a shared experience. And this is what the authors of this monograph usually do: share their concerns, worries, and research. In formal terms, this shared experience has been developing in recent times under the mantle of research projects such as the one that forms the basis of this issue of _Scientia et Fides_: “Social Control, Postmodernism and Political Community” (COSOPOC). Sharing the results of their research is also a way of inviting the specialized public to this experience without forgetting that the first circle of this community work is formed by the students themselves, whom this monograph aims to serve as a stimulus in their personal trajectories as students, as future professionals and, above all, as people in charge of their actions and responsible and capable of facing the worrying challenges that face us all. (from the Editorial). (shrink)

Political thought, from Aristotle to Lefebvre, has placed importance on the control of space as an activity of political power. Extraordinary measures taken by global policy-makers since the early 2020s as part of efforts to to combat the pandemic have included mass lock-downs, closed borders, social distancing and other forms of spatial control. Importantly, spaces dedicated to religious worship (churches, etc.) were subjected to extraordinary regulation. In the exercise of this new control of space, social control has played an important (...) role (obligation to declare one’s health condition, incitement to denounce offenders...) fostered by the authorities through various means of new social education, generating new social habits in terms of the management of space. Religious freedom and the autonomy of the Church thus faced new challenges as a result of the extraordinary control of religious space by civil power and the pressure of social control. The new forms of control incorporated into our habits deserve to be critically reviewed in our search for true spaces of freedom that are not sacrificed in the name of supposed science. (shrink)

Después de que Friedrich Nietzsche expusiera el fenómeno del resentimiento mediante un supuesto desenmascaramiento de un complejo emotivo oculto, autores posteriores, como Max Scheler y René Girard, matizaron el análisis nietzscheano aplicándolo a diversos ámbitos antropológicos y sociales. Muchas de las principales aportaciones de estos análisis contemporáneos encuentran sus precedentes en autores anteriores, modernos y medievales. Seis siglos y medio antes de Scheler, Tomás de Aquino ofrece en dos cuestiones de su Summa Theologiae dedicadas a la acedia y la envidia (...) una serie de precisiones conceptuales y observaciones psicológicas que coinciden en gran parte de su fondo y, en ocasiones, en la forma, con ciertas caracterizaciones del resentimiento. Demostramos, apoyándonos en numerosas referencias textuales, los paralelismos entre la fenomenología scheleriana del resentimiento y la exposición tomasiana de los vicios capitales. (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can only result from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behavior, but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’s fading qualia argument falls in it. (shrink)

In Postsocial History: An Introduction, historian Miguel A. Cabrera points to the crisis of modernity as a locus for the collapse of social historical models. Previously established theories of social change and social relations are proving insufficient, calling for the emergence of a new social historical theory. By arguing convincingly for the inclusion of language in that model, Cabrera awakens a revolutionary new approach to historiography. The book will prove indispensable to historians, and to social scientists in general, who (...) are dissatisfied with the old paradigms and seek new ways of addressing the challenges of social research. (shrink)

Pineda Canabal, Aníbal (2021)Le concept de non-contemporanéité dans la philosophie d’Ernst BlochHildesheim: OLMS, 355 p.ISBN 978-3-487-16067-2.

El libro de María González Navarro se presenta a sí mismo como una “nueva hermenéutica” (23). La novedad involucra dos aspectos: uno que llamaremos metateórico y otro hermenéutico en propiedad. Hablando metateóricamente, el libro presenta una hermenéutica gadameriana vigorizada y robustecida por las teorías pragma-dialécticas de la argumentación. Desde el punto de vista hermenéutico propiamente dicho, la novedad reposa en que se considera que la interpretación correcta está indesligablemente vinculada a la argumentación abductiva.

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present HOT (...) theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

Este trabajo examina parte del pensamiento de Kant de cara a precisar en qué sentido puede pensarse la universalidad como una exigencia para la filosofía moral y cómo las investigaciones de ese autor pueden contribuir a esclarecer esta cuestión. El análisis de los argumentos muestra algunas inconsistencias lógicas en el desarrollo del problema de la universalización moral que los especialistas han tratado de explicar, a partir de las cuales sugerimos que una alternativa de análisis gramatical al estilo de Wittgenstein puede (...) ayudar a clarificar. El trabajo es, pues, crítico y pro positivo y conlleva una interpretación programática de tesis kantianas. (shrink)

Castillos de Teruel. Historia y Patrimonio. Actas de las I Jornadas Castillos de Teruel:de la puesta en valor a la didáctica. Mora de Rubielos, 2018 Teruel: Asociación para la Recuperación de los Castillos Turolenses, Qualcina. Arqueología, Cultura yPatrimonio, y Acrótera Gestión del Patrimonio 201895 págs. 21 x 15 cm.ISBN: 978-84-948836-1-3.

El arribo de la pandemia de influenza a México en 1918 ocasionó una gran crisis. Las autoridades nacionales y estatales se vieron superadas por la virulencia de la enfermedad. Se tomaron diversas acciones preventivas (cuarentenas, consignación a los enfermos en hospitales destinados especialmente para tal fin, limpieza de la vía pública, etc.). Pero, más allá de estas medidas que se habían aplicado en otras crisis sanitarias anteriores, no se plantearon nuevas alternativas. Por su parte, las autoridades estatales si bien trataron (...) de ejecutar las medidas indicadas desde la ciudad de México, problemas económicos, políticos y sociales, ocasionaron conflictos, encuentros y desencuentros, entre autoridades locales, por un lado, y la sociedad civil, por otro, relacionados con la política sanitaria. (shrink)

In this essay we discuss recent attempts to analyse the notion of representation, as it is employed in cognitive science, in purely informational terms. In particular, we argue that recent informational theories cannot accommodate the existence of metarepresentations. Since metarepresentations play a central role in the explanation of many cognitive abilities, this is a serious shortcoming of these proposals.

All around the world, but especially in the Third World, we are confronted by beggars who appeal to our sympathy. Most of us have no principled way to deal with the situation. Should we give to them? How much? To what purpose? We are inclined to let our momentary feelings dictate our response. Although applied ethicists have been tackling the general question of poverty in the world and what we ought to do, if anything, to alleviate it, nobody seems to (...) have taken an interest in the specific part of the general question which involves mendicity. This paper argues, firstly, that the question of our duties, if any, towards beggars demands a reasoned answer, and secondly, that careful reasoning indicates that we should channel the resources we are ready to give to beggars not tothem directly but rather to charities, for they have more and better information on who can and should be helped. (shrink)

La reflexión teológica sobre la Iglesia es transversal en la obra ratzingeriana. En ella, la Iglesia destaca por su entidad teologal específica y la proporción universal de comunión que presenta a partir del cuerpo único de Cristo. La forma nosotros, con la que Joseph Ratzinger se refiere a la Iglesia, expresa justamente esta unidad de integración de la humanidad en Cristo, a partir de su cuerpo, que no se corresponde con la mera suma de sus miembros, sino realidad absolutamente nueva: (...) el uno comunional antropo-teológico (Iglesia), sujeto propio en la historia. (shrink)

En el estudio de los partidos y movimientos contemporáneos de extrema derecha hay una laguna reiteradamente enunciada por los estudiosos de la materia: el análisis de su sustrato ideológico. La razón principal de esta situación radica en la heterogeneidad, la fragmentación, el oportunismo y la ocultación planificada característicos de estos movimientos extremistas. En este artículo se pretende realizar un análisis de elementos fundamentales de la ideología del Front National recurriendo al modelo de Totalismo Ideológico formulado por ROBERT JAY LIFTON como (...) herramienta heurística de reducción de la complejidad. Ello nos permitirá comprobar que el discurso del Front National agrupa, en diferente grado pero de un modo claro, todos los componentes que posibilitan calificarlo de discurso y movimiento totalista. (shrink)