El Barrio Inglés de Bella Vista es uno de los parajes más enigmáticos de la ciudad de Huelva. El turista que desee pasar una jornada agradable en el suroeste de España, hará bien en privarse de una mañana de playa para transitar sus calles. La experiencia tiene un halo de exotismo. En medio de una provincia repleta de templos católicos y bloques de pisos, el paseante se verá rodeado de diáfanas hileras de casas victorianas, escoltadas por otros edificios curiosos, como (...) una capilla presbiteriana de bella factura y un cementerio protestante. Tan bucólico enclave enseguida le generará preguntas de índole histórica. ¿Cómo llegó hasta aquí esta Inglaterra en miniatura? Si les consulta a los guías turísticos, estos le compartirán un relato convenientemente amable: todo comenzó con la _Rio Tinto Company Limited_, una empresa que adquirió las minas de cobre de Rio Tinto en 1873 y que construyó el lugar con miras a que le sirviese de morada a sus técnicos y trabajadores. El visitante abandonará el paraje con la impresión de que deja tras de sí la huella patrimonial de una historia de progreso compartido, de crecimiento económico y de modernización sociocultural. Lo que no sabe es que el Barrio Inglés de Bella Vista es el testimonio de un pasado mucho más complejo y mucho menos amable de lo que es perceptible en la inmediatez de su paisaje. Tal pasado oculta una relación desigual de subordinación comercial, financiera y geoestratégica. Una relación que puso a la Monarquía española parcialmente a merced de los intereses británicos. El libro _Britain’s Informal Empire in Spain, 1830–1950_, de Nicholas Sharman, nos descubre con asombrosa clarividencia y sistematicidad, las claves de este fenómeno. (shrink)

El presente ensayo pretende realizar un análisis en torno a las crecientes demandas que, por parte de la comunidad educativa y de ciertas instituciones supranacionales, se elevan para reclamar la “universalización” de los contenidos en los manuales escolares y programas docentes de historia. A tal efecto, realizamos un análisis comparativo sobre las teorías y textos oficiales que han defendido las ideas de “integración” y educación inclusiva y, a su vez, de los trabajos historiográficos que desde distintos ámbitos nacionales reclaman la (...) mundialización de la historia escolar como medio preferente para inculcar en la conciencia social de los estudiantes valores cívicos inclusivos y transculturales. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a considerable and progressive increase in historical claims. Within the context of colonialism criticism, but also outside this sphere, numerous politicians, collectives and intellectuals have emerged to denounce certain acts of the past, demanding recognition and repentance that would compensate for these past affronts. In this article we will analyze one of these cases: the demand for an apology from Spain and the Vatican by the President of Mexico, López Obrador. Taking as a guide the debate (...) around the ethical problem of non-identity, we will see what ethical and metaphysical assumptions serve as the basis for these claims. We will also assess whether the claims of the so-called «historical victims» are consistent and ethically acceptable. (shrink)

This book is the first monograph fully devoted to analyzing the philosophical aspects of affordances. The concept of affordance, coined and developed in the field of ecological psychology, describes the possibilities for action available in the environment. This work offers a systematic approach to the key philosophical features of affordances, such as their ontological characterization, their relation to normative practices, and the idea of agency that follows from viewing affordances as key objects of perception, while also proposing an innovative philosophical (...) characterization of affordances as dispositional properties. The Philosophy of Affordances analyzes the implications that a proper understanding of affordances has for the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, and aims to intensify the dialogue between philosophy and ecological psychology in which each discipline benefits from the tools and insights of the other. (shrink)

Resumen La lingüística abarca una amplia gama de fenómenos que evolucionan a la misma velocidad que las lenguas lo hacen. Algunos fenómenos lingüísticos como la atrición han sido confundidos con otros fenómenos y han recibido nombres distintos en el transcurso de la historia debido al contacto entre varias lenguas. Por ese motivo, un estudio sobre dicho fenómeno se estima oportuno. Esto engloba la elección de la palabra atrición como traducción de attrition, su definición, las circunstancias que deben producirse para que (...) surja, los tipos de atrición que pueden darse y una comparación de la atrición lingüística con otros fenómenos lingüísticos. Esta exploración concluye con el hecho de que la atrición es el término apropiado, ya que delimita este fenómeno lingüístico que, aunque no es un fenómeno nuevo, sí es cada vez más actual debido a las migraciones y a la globalización. (shrink)

It has often been noted that Leo Strauss developed his understanding of political philosophy through a critical engagement with Heidegger. Yet most analyses focus on Strauss’s American works while neglecting his earlier response during the crisis years of the Weimar Republic. The article seeks to overcome this limitation by ‘deconstructing’ Strauss’s American definitions of political philosophy in light of both his Weimar understanding of politische Wissenschaft and his 1922 discovery of Heidegger’s Aristotle. I argue that Strauss’s conception of political philosophy (...) originated in Heidegger’s subversion of the traditional distinction between theory and praxis. I thus propose a way to read Strauss from the start following his own changing views of that distinction. (shrink)

For over a decade neuroscience has uncovered that appropriate decision-making in daily life decisions results from a strong interplay between cognition and covert biases produced by emotional processes. This interplay is particularly important in social contexts: lesions in the pathways supporting these processes provoke serious impairments on social behavior. One important mechanism in social contexts is empathy, fundamental for appropriate social behavior. This paper presents arguments supporting this connection between cognition and emotion, in individual as well as in social contexts. (...) The central claim of this paper is that biologically inspired cognitive architectures ought to include these mechanisms. A taxonomy of computational models addressing emotions is presented, together with a brief survey of the research published in this area. The Prisoner Dilemma game is used as a case study exposing the trade-off between individual rationality and cooperative behavior. Experiments using a simple implementation of empathy and emotion expression, employing an Iterated Prisoner Dilemma setup, illustrate the emergence of a cooperative behavior mutually beneficial for both players. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single post-cognitivist research framework if we highlight the common pragmatist assumptions of both approaches. These pragmatist assumptions or starting points are shared by ecological psychology and the enactive approach independently of being historically related to pragmatism, and they are based on the idea of organic coordination, which states that the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities of an organism are explained by appealing to the (...) history of interactions of that organism with its environment. It is argued that the idea of behavioral or organic coordination within the enactive approach gives rise to the sensorimotor abilities of the organism, while the ecological approach emphasizes the coordination at a higher-level between organism and environment through the agent’s exploratory behavior for perceiving affordances. As such, these two different processes of organic coordination can be integrated in a post-cognitivist research framework, which will be based on two levels of analysis: the subpersonal one and the personal one. If this proposal is on the right track, this may be a promising first step for offering a systematized and consistent post-cognitivist approach to cognition that retain the full potential of both enactivism and ecological psychology. (shrink)

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In (...) this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda la recepción temprana del filósofo esloveno Slavoj Žižek en el debate teórico chileno entre los años 1998-2013. El interés de este articulo no consiste meramente en enlistar las menciones a Žižek en el contexto local, sino problematizar los intereses históricos de las escenas teóricas locales y el alcance político de la teoría materialista dialéctica de Žižek, considerando que esta recepción se masifica al aproximarse el movimiento estudiantil del 2011 bajo la necesidad de acudir a nuevos referentes teóricos (...) para entender la realidad contingente. (shrink)

In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity. First, we offer an account of normativity and provide some examples of how it is understood in the specialized literature. Affordances, we claim, lack correctness criteria and, hence, the possibility of error is not among their necessary conditions. For this reason we will oppose Chemero’s normative theory of affordances. Finally, we will show that there is a (...) way in which taking advantage of affordances could be considered as possessing a normative character, but only when they are evaluated within the framework of social normative standards in particular situations. This reinforces our claim that affordances, per se, lack normativity and can only be taken to be rule-governed in relation to established normative practices. (shrink)

DEUS EXISTE OU SERIA A FÉ RELIGIOSA APENAS UM DELÍRIO UNIVERSAL? Em O ceticismo da fé, o teólogo e arqueólogo Rodrigo Silva traz um estudo profundo sobre a “existência” de Deus. O objetivo primário desta obra, entretanto, não é um convencimento sobre Deus, mas acompanhar crentes e descrentes nessa jornada sem-fim inerente a todo ser humano em busca da “verdade”. Pois a fé comporta, sim, muitas dúvidas. René Descartes que o diga. Mesmo não sendo teólogo, nem pretendendo produzir uma (...) declaração de fé religiosa, ele ajudou Rodrigo Silva a ter umdos mais brilhantes insights confessionais: “o homem deve desconfiar de tudo para poder acreditar em alguma coisa”.Não se pretende aqui enganar o leitor ou insultar sua inteligência, nem apresentar qualquer soberba confessional. Rodrigo Silva é crente, sim, mas a inspiração para este trabalho veio justamente de sua descrença. E apesar das respostas que encontrou nesses quase trinta anos de estudo, o autor não foge de algumas questões polêmicas e provocadoras que envolvem Deus, como “Por que ele se esconde?”, “Por que um Deus de amor matou e mandou matar tanta gente no Antigo Testamento?” e “Onde eleestava durante o massacre de Auschwitz?”.Este livro convida o leitor, seja o ateu ou o religioso mais convicto, a questionar, a pensar, a se comprometer sinceramente com a dúvida, a fim de que a sua sistematização o conduza a grandes certezas. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the evolutionary role of affordances, that is, the possibilities for action available in our environments. There are two allegedly competing views for explaining the evolutionary role of affordances: the first is based on natural selection; the second is based on niche construction. According to the first, affordances are resources that exert selection pressure. The second view claims that affordances are ecological inheritances in the organism’s niche that are the product of a previous alteration of the (...) environment. While there seems to be a mutually exclusive definition of affordances in each of these views, I argue in this paper that the views are not competing but, rather, complementary. In this sense, affordances play the role of either resources or ecological inheritances depending on the temporal stage of the evolutionary process. I make this argument by analyzing how natural selection and niche construction affect each other even when they function independently from each other. In this light, if these two evolutionary mechanisms exert their power in parallel but at two different stages in the evolutionary history of a given econiche, then there is room to claim that affordances can be understood as both resources and ecological inheritances. This dual aspect of affordances shows their evolutionary role. (shrink)

This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not factual. We highlight a problematic assumption shared by the two most influential trends in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science, reductionism and enactivism. Our intentional, normative explanations are referential, descriptive or factual. Underneath this assumption lies the idea that only facts can make true or false our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of (...) reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy. Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are complementary approaches whose engagement will help us explain the organism-environment interaction at the cognitive level. The Extended Synthesis, through niche construction theory, can explain the organism-environment interaction at an evolutionary level because niche construction is a process guided by information. We believe that the best account that defines information at this level is the one offered by biosemiotics and, within all kinds of biosemiotic information available, we believe that (...) ecological information is the best candidate for making sense of the organism-environment relation at the cognitive level. This entanglement of biosemiotics, ecological information and the Extended Synthesis is promising for understanding the multidimensional character of the organism-environment reciprocity as well as the relation between evolution, cognition, and meaning. (shrink)

El Test de Turing es un método tan controvertido como desafiante en Inteligencia Artificial. Se basa en la imitación de la conducta lingüística de humanos, y tiene como objetivo recabar evidencia empírica en favor de la tesis de que las máquinas programadas podrían pensar. Alan Turing, su creador, ha sido catalogado como conductista por la mayor parte de los comentaristas. En este capítulo muestro que no lo es. Por el contrario, Turing es un funcionalista, porque todo el énfasis del juego (...) de la imitación está en el engaño de la máquina hacia los humanos. Por ello el género es importante en dicho juego, al menos en su versión preliminar. (shrink)

A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play (...) a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them. (shrink)

En Ciencia de la lógica, Hegel finaliza la lógica objetiva con un largo estudio de las categorías modales (realidad, necesidad y posibilidad). Nuestra propuesta es que tal estudio hay que entenderlo en confrontación directa con la situación dejada por Kant en los principios del entendimiento puro de KrV. Para defender tal tesis expondremos, en primer lugar, la exposición kantiana del problema; en segundo lugar, el desarrollo de la lógica de la esencia dentro de la obra; y, por último, la nueva (...) interpretación que propone Hegel de las categorías modales. (shrink)

Considers the potential of autopoiesis theory to provide an alternate unifying framework for the study of organizations as systems and of organizational phenomena as emergent phenomena. This title includes papers that integrate open systems theory with the pioneering work of Maturana and Varela (1980, 1992) on autopoiesis in biological systems.

El artículo se inicia con un análisis acerca de la relación que Hayek establece entre los fundamentos del liberalismo clásico y las teorías darwinianas. De esta manera, identificamos un campo semántico que resultaría decisivo para una genealogía del factor competencia, reconociendo a este último como la hipótesis principal que fundamenta la naturalización del capitalismo. A partir de esto ofrecemos una revisión y actualización de la célebre obra El apoyo mutuo de Kropotkin con el objetivo de invalidar desde una perspectiva histórica (...) la comprensión de la sociedad como un territorio de lucha salvaje entre los seres humanos por la subsistencia. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a criticism, inspired by Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, of the enactivist account of perception and action. We start by setting up a non-descriptivist naturalism regarding the mind and continue by defining enactivism and exploring its more attractive theoretical features. We then proceed to analyse its proposal to understand normativity non-socially. We argue that such a thesis is ultimately committed to the problematic idea that normative practices can be understood as private and factual. Finally, we offer a (...) characterization of normativity as an essentially social phenomenon and apply our criticisms to other approaches that share commitments with enactivism. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: This commentary highlights some controversial aspects of enactivism and ecological psychology, specifically the notions of subjectivity and ecological information. I argue that, instead of choosing between them, both theories could complement each other at different levels of analysis in a single research framework for explaining cognition from a situated perspective.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce an approach for understanding social cognition that we call the normative approach to social cognition. Such an approach, which results from a systematization of previous arguments and ideas from authors such as Ryle, Dewey, or Wittgenstein, is an alternative to the classic model and the direct social perception model. In section 2, we evaluate the virtues and flaws of these two models. In section 3, we introduce the normative approach, according to (...) which human, socio-cognitive competences rely on a myriad of social norms and routines that mediate our social interactions in such a way that we can make sense of each other without taking into consideration their mental states. In sections 4 and 5, we find some common premises shared by the two prior models and offer some arguments against them. In section 6, we advance some possible arguments against our approach and offer some responses against them. (shrink)

En este trabajo examinamos el tópico de la responsabilidad en el derecho penal internacional a la luz de la filosofía de John Searle, y del fallo dictado por la Corte Penal Internacional en el caso de Thomas Lubanga. En el primer acápite analizamos la declaración de responsabilidad penal en función de la teoría de actos de habla de Austin y de Searle, tratándola como un acto ilocucionario cuyo significado es dependiente de un marco institucional específico. Luego, en el segundo acápite, (...) mostramos de qué forma tal marco puede reconstruirse como un ejemplo paradigmático de la realidad social construida descrita por Searle, especialmente en virtud del nexo entre mente, lenguaje y sociedad. A nuestro juicio, los conceptos de intencionalidad colectiva, atribución de funciones de estatus y poderes deónticos son fundamentales para entender tal nexo. En efecto, tal como argumentamos en la tercera sección, los sistemas de poderes deónticos asociados al derecho internacional no solo explican la aparición de Tribunales penales internacionales, como la Corte Penal Internacional, sino además el carácter imprescriptible de los crímenes de lesa humanidad. Los acuerdos internacionales que promueven y protegen los derechos humanos, y que tratan la imprescriptibilidad de aquellos crímenes, son objeto de análisis en la sección final, en donde exponemos algunas reflexiones finales a partir del caso Lubanga. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to introduce an approach for understanding social cognition that we call the normative approach to social cognition. Such an approach, which results from a systematization of previous arguments and ideas from authors such as Ryle, Dewey, or Wittgenstein, is an alternative to the classic model and the direct social perception model. In section 2, we evaluate the virtues and flaws of these two models. In section 3, we introduce the normative approach, according to (...) which human, socio-cognitive competences rely on a myriad of social norms and routines that mediate our social interactions in such a way that we can make sense of each other without taking into consideration their mental states. In sections 4 and 5, we find some common premises shared by the two prior models and offer some arguments against them. In section 6, we advance some possible arguments against our approach and offer some responses against them. (shrink)

Context: Affordances are gaining momentum as a key object of study in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of mind. In The Philosophy of Affordances I propose a new way to understand ….

Neste trabalho, pretendemos avaliar criticamente algumas das teses de John McDowellsobre a natureza da virtude, tal como expostas em seu artigo “Virtue and Reason” e, ao fazê-lo,expor algumas de suas limitações. Mais especificamente, tratarei o que vejo como problemas emsua apresentação da virtude como uma forma de conhecimento, e sua proposta – corporificada natese da unidade das virtudes – de que as virtudes comumente reconhecidas deveriam ser vistascomo manifestações parciais da virtude enquanto tal. Também enfocarei a assertiva de McDowellde que (...) o conhecimento que constitui a virtude não pode ser visto como tendo um conteúdoproposicional que se preste a uma codificação em princípios de conduta – a tese de nãocodificabilidade– e a relação da postura pessoal de McDowell com a empreitada mais ampla daética de virtudes. (shrink)

In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity. First, we offer an account of normativity and provide some examples of how it is understood in the specialized literature. Affordances, we claim, lack correctness criteria and, hence, the possibility of error is not among their necessary conditions. For this reason we will oppose Chemero’s normative theory of affordances. Finally, we will show that there is a (...) way in which taking advantage of affordances could be considered as possessing a normative character, but only when they are evaluated within the framework of social normative standards in particular situations. This reinforces our claim that affordances, per se, lack normativity and can only be taken to be rule-governed in relation to established normative practices. (shrink)

In the last years, we have attended to different attempts to extend the notion of affordance to include mental or cognitive actions. In short, the idea is that our capacity to perform some cognitive functions such as counting, imagining, mathematical reasoning, and so on, is preceded by our awareness of cognitive or mental affordances. In this paper, we analyze two of these attempts, Mental Affordance Hypothesis, and cognitive horizons, and conclude that they fail to deliver their promise. Our argument is (...) two-fold. First, we show that both proposals lack an explanation for how these affordances can be perceived or experienced by the individuals. Second, we argue, focusing on the examples provided by the authors, that the introduction of cognitive affordances is not justified on explanatory grounds. In other words, neither of these proposals offers a compelling justification for thinking that performing said “mental acts” requires the perception of mental or cognitive affordances. Hence, the existence of mental or cognitive affordances remains both scientifically mysterious and explanatorily unjustified. (shrink)

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lower-level handwriting and motor skills and higher-order cognitive processes. It is important to allocate mental resources to these high-order processes since these processes place a great demand on cognitive capacity. This is possible when lower-level skills such as transcription are effortlessness and fluent. Given that fluency is a value in virtually all areas of academic learning, schools should provide instructional activities to promote writing fluency from the first stages of learning (...) to write. In an effort to determine if teaching handwriting enhances writing fluency, we conducted a systematic and meta-analytic review of the writing fluency intervention literature. We selected 31 studies: 21 true and quasi-experimental studies, 4 single-group design, 3 single-subject design, and 3 non-experimental studies, conducted with K-6 students in a regular school setting. A total of 2,030 students participated in these studies. When compared to no instruction or non-handwriting instructional conditions, teaching different handwriting intervention programs resulted in statistically significant greater writing fluency. Moreover, three specific handwriting interventions yielded statistically significant results in improving writing fluency, when compared to other handwriting interventions or to typical handwriting instruction conditions: handwriting focused on training timed transcription skills, multicomponent handwriting treatments, and performance feedback. There were not enough data to calculate the impact of sensory-motor and self-regulated strategy handwriting interventions on writing fluency. The significance of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting fluency instruction and guiding future research will be discussed. (shrink)

L'idée directrice de cet ouvrage est qu'une inflexion décisive caractérise les avancées théoriques proposées par Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jan Patocka et Renaud Barbaras. S'il s'agit bien encore, en effet, avec ces trois auteurs de refonder la phénoménologie (geste classique depuis Husserl), ce mouvement de refondation n'implique plus le strict recentrage de la phénoménologie sur ses possibilités propres. Il y va bien plutôt d'une refondation-extension (par là même post-phénoménologique) exigeant un déport, un mouvement vers une métaphysique, vers une autre métaphysique à déterminer. (...) On verra que l'écart entre phénoménologie et métaphysique n'en est pas pour autant annulé, mais qu'il est bien plutôt pensé à nouveaux frais comme lieu toujours reconfiguré du dépassement de l'opposition initiale - un lieu aux bordures mouvantes qui a la particularité d'entretenir, d'aggraver même le polemos entre post-phénoménologie et métaphysique non substantielle. C'est en thématisant ce lieu que les post-phénoménologies que nous étudions ici révèlent le lien intime entre phénomènes-de-monde et être non positif. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 1 - 28 This paper is an attempt to think through Derrida’s newly discovered _Geschlecht III_, the third and missing installment of Derrida’s four part series on Heidegger and _Geschlecht_. I argue that Derrida’s reading of Heidegger in _Geschlecht III_ needs to be situated within the philosophico-political context of Derrida’s 1984–85 seminar—given under the general title _Philosophical Nationality and Nationalism_—from which _Geschlecht III_ is extracted. In the first part of the paper, I reconstruct (...) Derrida’s general problematic of national-humanism as he lays it out in the opening sessions of the seminar, before arriving at his reading of Heidegger, who will be part of “a sequence of German national-philosophism,” as Derrida calls it. In the second part, the paper turns explicitly to _Geschlecht III_ where, as I show, Derrida’s thoroughgoing denunciation of a national-humanism in Heidegger becomes all the more telling when seen through the theoretical matrix of the seminar. (shrink)