In this case report, we studied Theory of Mind and figurative language comprehension in a 7.2-year-old child, conventionally named RJ, with isolated and complete agenesis of the corpus callosum, a rare malformation due to the absence of the corpus callosum, the major tract connecting the two brain hemispheres. To study ToM, which is the capability to infer the other’s mental states, we used the classical false belief tasks, and to study figurative language, i.e., those linguistic usages involving non-literal meanings, we (...) used tasks assessing metaphor and idiom comprehension. RJ’s intellectual level and his phonological, lexical, and grammatical abilities were all adequate. In both the ToM false belief tasks and novel sensory metaphor comprehension, RJ showed a delay of 3 years and a significant gap compared to a typically developing control group, while in idioms, his performance was at the border of average. These outcomes suggest that RJ has a specific pragmatic difficulty in all tasks where he must interpret the other’s communicative intention, as in ToM tasks and novel sensory metaphor comprehension. The outcomes also open up interesting insights into the relationships between ToM and figurative language in children with isolated and complete ACC. (shrink)

It seems rather intuitive that if I can save either one stranger or five strangers, I must save the five. However, Kantian (and other non-consequentialist) views have a difficult time explaining why this is the case, as they seem committed to what Parfit calls “innumeracy”: roughly, the view that the values of lives (or the reasons to save them) don’t get greater (or stronger) in proportion to the number of lives saved. This chapter first shows that in various cases, it (...) is permissible to save fewer lives, contrary to what is implied by “numerate” views. Then it argues that in the cases in which it is intuitive that we must save the greater number, Kantians (and other deontologists) can not only deliver this verdict but also explain why it is correct, without presupposing that the value of our action depends on “adding up” the values of the lives saved. (shrink)

In trying to explain the possibility of akrasia , it seems plausible to deny that there is a conceptual connection between motivation and evaluation ; akrasia occurs when the agent is motivated to do something that she does not judge to be good . However, it is hard to see how such accounts could respect our intuition that the akratic agent acts freely, or that there is a difference between akrasia and compulsion. It is also hard to see how such (...) accounts could be extended to the realm of theoretical reason, but this is generally not taken Ito be a problem, because it is generally assumed that there is no similar phenomenon in the realm of theoretical reason. This paper argues that there is such a thing as theoretical akrasia, and that we can find a characterization of this phenomenon in Descartes’s Meditations. Drawing on certain passages in the Meditations, we can construct an account of theoretical akrasia; this account can then be adapted to resolve the original problem of akrasia in the realm of practical reason. The account asserts that there is a conceptual connection between motivation and evaluation in free action; it also enables us to show how the akratic agent is still acting freely when he does something that he does not judge to be the best all things considered. (shrink)

Mayr’s paper is extremely interesting and compelling and I don’t plan here to address all its insights. Rather, I’ll just try to argue that there might be more unity in understanding of Raz’s accou...

El problema de determinar cuál es el método de la Ciencia de la Información ha sido objeto de distintos abordajes y propuestas metodológicas. En este trabajo defendemos que dichos problemas usualmente se han planteado de manera errónea, y que su planteo no contribuye a una mejora del campo. Comenzamos con un recorrido por diferentes propuestas metodológicas, señalando el consenso existente sobre el impacto de la indagación metodológica en el status científico de la disciplina. Luego rastreamos la influencia del positivismo en (...) la metodología de la CI, sosteniendo que la concepción positivista del método científico aún sigue gobernando de forma implícita la autopercepción epistemológica de la disciplina. Finalmente ensayamos una lectura de algunos problemas metodológicos basada en la filosofía de Thomas Kuhn, enfatizando que no es la reflexión metodológica, sino el desarrollo de una tradición exitosa de resolución de problemas lo que consolida el status científico. (shrink)

Compilación de textos que abordan la elaboración de las ideas filosóficas de Gaos, así como la forma en la que éste se apropia de algunos de los autores más significativos del pensamiento occidental.

Accidie, depression, and dejection seem to be psychological phenomena that are best characterized as cases in which an agent has no motivation to pursue what he or she judges to be good or valuable. The phenomena thus seem to present a challenge to any view that draws a close connection between motivation and evaluation. ‘Accidie, Evaluation, and Motivation’ aims to show that the phenomena are actually best explained by a theory that postulates a conceptual connection between motivation and evaluation.

La celebración del centenario de la publicación de las Meditaciones del Quijote ofrece la oportunidad única de reflexionar sobre una obra que creó un nuevo tipo de reflexión filosófica contemporánea en lengua castellana, reflexión caracterizada por una forma de “ontología del presente”.

Volume I. Dall'Antica Grecia al Classicismo -- Volume II. Dal Romanticismo alla contemporaneità.

'We desire all and only those things we conceive to be good; we avoid what we conceive to be bad.' This slogan was once the standard view of the relationship between desire or motivation and rational evaluation. Many critics have rejected this scholastic formula as either trivial or wrong. It appears to be trivial if we just define the good as 'what we want', and wrong if we consider apparent conflicts between what we seem to want and what we seem (...) to think is good. In Appearances of the Good, Sergio Tenenbaum argues that the old slogan is both significant and right, even in cases of apparent conflict between our desires and our evaluative judgements. Maintaining that the good is the formal end of practical inquiry in much the same way as truth is the formal end of theoretical inquiry, he provides a fully unified account of motivation and evaluation. (shrink)

A Escolástica medieval elevou a teologia ao grau de ciência. Tendência que começou a se manifestar no final do século XI e início do século seguinte, e que atinge seu apogeu no século XIII. Tomás de Aquino torna-se a maior expressão deste novo estatuto da teologia, embora não o único. A primeira questão de sua Suma Teológica trata justamente dos princípios que permitem considerar a teologia como ciência e formam um conjunto de dez artigos que são o objeto de estudo (...) desta investigação. A apresentação destes artigos, por si só, revela a concepção de Tomás sobre a teologia na segunda metade do século XIII, contudo uma reflexão sobre suas fontes, seu método e suas conquistas são igualmente objeto deste estudo. (shrink)

Resumo : O presente artigo objetiva discutir o mal-estar docente a partir da perspectiva niilista de Friedrich Nietzsche. Atualmente, o debate sobre o mal-estar docente tem privilegiado perspectivas ou enfoques políticos, econômicos e psicológicos. Neste texto, os autores analisam inferências e evidências possíveis que relacionem o fenômeno cultural do niilismo ao mal-estar docente, tão em evidência nas instituições públicas de ensino, no Brasil. São tecidas discussões e argumentos sobre a decadência dos valores do entorno e dos fundamentos da ação educativa, (...) mais precisamente o valor da educação, do conhecimento, da ciência, da cultura elaborada, da autoridade docente, da didática etc. Em outras palavras, a originalidade desse texto é, sobretudo, situar o mal-estar docente, em um espaço e tempo de derrocada de valores culturais, dentre outros, e o apresentar como resultado de um mal-estar maior compartilhado pela cultura ocidental em parte do século XX até os dias atuais. Espera-se que os debates presentes no texto possam ampliar as perspectivas para a compreensão do mal-estar entre os professores. (shrink)

The role of Greek thought in the final days of the Roman republic is a topic that has garnered much attention in recent years. This volume of essays, commissioned specially from a distinguished international group of scholars, explores the role and influence of Greek philosophy, specifically Epicureanism, in the late republic. It focuses primarily (although not exclusively) on the works and views of Cicero, premier politician and Roman philosopher of the day, and Lucretius, foremost among the representatives and supporters of (...) Epicureanism at the time. Throughout the volume, the impact of such disparate reception on the part of these leading authors is explored in a way that illuminates the popularity as well as the controversy attached to the followers of Epicurus in Italy, ranging from ethical and political concerns to the understanding of scientific and celestial phenomena. (shrink)

I will examine the first of Thomas Kuhn’s Thalheimer Lectures delivered in 1984, with the purpose of establishing a connection between Kuhn’s historiographical thought and his criticism of the traditional distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, or, as I call it, the DJ distinction. In order to do this, I will start by exploring the Kuhnian view of the so-called static approach in philosophy of science, taking as my main reference the work of Bacon, Descartes, (...) and foundationalist epistemology. I will continue by examining the relationship between Kuhnian historiography and the DJ distinction, comparing the first Thalheimer Lecture with other texts published by Kuhn. Finally, I will assert that Kuhn’s rejection of the DJ distinction is the result of adopting a historiographical matrix whose philosophical consequences are irreconcilable with the static approach in history and philosophy of science, for which the DJ distinction is essential. (shrink)

Rational Powers in Action presents a conception of instrumental rationality as governing actions that are extended in time with indeterminate ends. Tenenbaum argues that previous philosophical theories in this area, in focusing on momentary snapshots of the mind of idealized agents, miss central aspects of human rationality.

A volume in Advances in Cultural Psychology Series Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Aalborg University This book is long awaited within the contemporarily creative field of cultural psychologies. It is a theoretical synthesis that is at the level of innovations that Sigmund Freud, James Mark Baldwin, William Stern, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Jan Smedslund have brought into psychology over the past century (...).Here we can observe a creative solution to integrating cultural psychology with the rich traditions of psychodynamic perspectives, (...) without repeating the conceptual impasses in which many psychoanalytic perspectives have become caught. (Jaan Valsiner). (shrink)