El antropocentrismo determina nuestra percepción sobre el mundo y nuestra relación con él, teniendo un efecto material en tanto que impregna nuestros discursos, pensamiento, sensibilidades y prácticas. Este artículo trata de explorar cómo una reformulación ontológica que busque salir de los presupuestos antropocéntricos puede suponer un cambio material efectivo en nuestra percepción, generando cambios en nuestras sensibilidades y disponibilidades. Comprender los límites ontológicos desde el dinamismo y como zona de contacto nos permite acceder o materializar otro tipo de (...) realidades aún por conocer. Poniendo en juego algunas ideas de Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Karen Barad y Alfred Whitehead se busca un desarrollo conceptual y una reformulación ontológica como un intento de comprendernos en un mundo más-que-humano. (shrink)

En este artículo teórico se presenta el modelo metodológico de los Mapas Corporales como una estrategia para la producción de conocimientos sobre el cuerpo en investigaciones biográficas. Este modelo aborda la corporeidad como un lugar por el que fluye el trazado de construcciones intersubjetivas que regulan al sujeto, permitiendo textualizar procesos subjetivos que, con las estrategias tradicionales del método biográfico, quedan invisibles, en tanto, lenguajes semiótico-materiales encarnados. A nivel interpretativo se busca la comprensión del orden normativo inscrito en el (...) cuerpo donde se articulan aspectos relativos a procesos psicosexuales y modelos de género anclados en la cultura, como así también, la expresión de transgresiones o disidencias a las ideologías de género vigentes. This theoretical paper refers to a methodological model of Body Maps as a strategy to create knowledge on corporeity in bibliographic research. This model approaches the body as a place through which the intersubjective construction path regulating the subject flows, allowing the textualization of subjective processes which, together with the traditional strategies of the bibliographic method, remain invisible as embodied semiotic-material languages. At an interpretational level, the paper deals with understanding the normative order of the body where aspects relative to psychosexual processes and gender models rooted in the culture articulate, along with the expression of transgression to current gender ideologies. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo propone una lectura de la meseta “10000 AC. La geología de la moral ” desde el punto de vista de una ontología del espacio. Nos concentraremos específicamente en el concepto de estrato. En los primeros dos apartados se mostrará que todo estrato supone aspectos materiales y semióticos. Para ello se explicitarán algunos conceptos de la geología y de la lingüística utilizados por Deleuze y Guattari. Los apartados 3, 4 y 5 se ocuparán, sucesivamente, de los conceptos de (...) substrato, epistrato y paraestrato. En la articulación de estos conceptos se juegan tres aspectos fundamentales para pensar la configuración de todo espacio actual: la territorialización, la desterritorialización relativa y la codificación/descodificación. Esta tipología de estratos da cuenta de lo diverso espacial y será estudiada a partir de algunas de las fuentes utilizadas por los autores. Se hará un énfasis especial en la obra de Pia Laviosa Zambotti, fuente crucial para comprender la tipología de estratos, como así también en ciertos aspectos del pensamiento de Jacques Monod y Jakob Von Uexküll, claves para pensar el concepto de mundo circundante en la determinación de la noción de paraestrato. Palabras clave: Estrato; Geología de la moral; Codificación; Territorialización; Espacio: The article proposes a reading of the chapter “10000 BC. The Geology of Morals ” from the perspective of an ontology of space. We will deal specifically with the concept of stratum. In the first and second paragraphs we will show that every strate is composed of both material and semiotic aspects. In order to do so we will develop some notions of geology and lingüistics used by the authors. Then, paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 will deal, succesivelly, with the concepts of substratum, epistratum and paraestratum. Three fundamental aspects of actual space are configured in the articulation of these three concepts: territorialization, relative deterritorialization and codification/decodification. This tipology of strates gives an account of spatial diversity and it will be studied through some of the sources utilized by Deleuze and Guattari. The thought of Pia Laviosa Zambotti will receive special attention since her work is an essential source of the tipology of strates. Some aspects of the thoughts of Jacques Monod and Jakob Von Uexküll will also be taken into account, especially those concerning the concept of umwelt and paraestratum. Key Words: Stratum; Geology of morals; Codification; Territorialization; Space. (shrink)

Resumen: Algo particular de los estudios de la ciencia, tecnología y sociedad son sus formas de relacionar objetos y prácticas. La relación difiere del papel que tiene en la sociología de la ciencia y en la construcción social de la tecnología. Suele afirmarse en CTS, contradiciendo conocimientos humanistas, que la naturaleza de los actores sociales no estaría definida por adelantado. Asumir lo semiótico como algo excepcional del sujeto humano, donde los objetos sólo acreditan sus agencias a través de procesos (...) simbólicos, sería perder de vista la riqueza empírica de las prácticas colectivas que articulan lo humano y lo no-humano. En cambio, sujetos y objetos suelen pensarse en CTS como efectos sociomateriales reconfigurables de relaciones in situ. La figura del actor-red, la lectura situada de actores material-semióticos, el estudio de objetos frontera y el uso de métodos de ensamblaje son algunas de los virajes en este giro de la teoría de la acción. Aquí voy a delinear un recorrido parcial a través de sus argumentos, introduciendo el debate sobre las divisiones entre naturaleza y cultura, para examinar la noción de agencia con los conceptos de traducción, configuración, multiplicidad y no-coherencia. A modo de ejemplo, termino con una lectura sobre la socialidad y espacialidad de los cajeros automáticos.: Studies of science, technology and society are characteristics in relating objects and practices. The relationship differs from the role it has in the sociology of science and in the social construction of technology. It is usually affirmed in STS, contradicting humanities, that the nature of the social actors would not be defined in advance. Considering that the semiotic is something exceptional of the human subject, where objects only accredit their agencies through symbolic processes, would be to lose sight of the empirical richness of collective practices that articulate the human and the non-human. Instead, subjects and objects are often thought of in STS as reconfigurable sociomaterial effects of in situ relationships. The figure of the actor-network, the situated reading of material-semiotic actors, the study of boundary objects and the use of assembly methods are some of the conceptual turns in this variation of action theory. Here I will delineate a partial route to travel through its arguments, introducing the debate on the divisions of nature and culture, to examine the notion of agency with the concepts of translation, configuration, multiplicity and non-coherence. As an example, I finish with a reading on the sociality and spatiality of ATMs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to defend the dialogical nature of the landscape. Working in between the borders of the Bakhtinian philosophy of language and cultural studies on landscape, we defend that landscape study should not be studied without considering the cultural forms of communication in the different domains of social organization– the speech genres; that landscape is a semiotic encounter with a concrete otherness; that the interpreter who emerges when an area enters a relationship of representation is necessarily characterized as (...) a chronotope; that every landscape is a chronotopic representation; that cultural geography recognizes that the semiotic aspects of the landscape are as material as its morphology. We start from the hypothesis that landscape is a chronotopic representation that is always made possible by means of some speech genre, because it is always a communicative process, and an encounter with another in a situation of socially organized interrelation – it is concrete dialogue. To find the deeper meaning of a landscape, one must recognize and understand its material, historical, geographical, and dialogic nature. RESUMO O artigo objetiva defender a índole dialógica da paisagem. Trabalhando na fronteira entre a filosofia bakhtiniana da linguagem e os estudos culturais da paisagem, defendemos que a paisagem não seja estudada sem considerar as formas culturais de comunicação nos diferentes domínios da organização social – os gêneros discursivos; que toda paisagem é encontro semiótico com uma alteridade concreta; que o intérprete que emerge quando uma área entra em relação de representação é necessariamente caracterizado por um cronotopo; que toda paisagem é representação cronotópica; que a geografia cultural reconheça que os aspectos semióticos da paisagem são tão materiais quanto sua morfologia. Partimos da hipótese de que a paisagem é uma representação cronotópica que sempre se realiza através de algum gênero discursivo, pois sempre é um processo comunicativo e de encontro com o outro em uma situação de inter-relação socialmente organizada – é diálogo concreto. Para adentrar à profundeza de seus sentidos, precisa-se reconhecer e compreender sua índole material, histórica, geográfica e dialógica. (shrink)

According to material plenitude, every material object coincides with an abundance of other material objects that differ in the properties they have essentially and accidentally. Although this kind of plenitude is becoming increasingly popular, it isn't clear how to make sense of the view beyond its slogan form. As I argue, it turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to do so: straightforward attempts are either inconsistent or fail to capture the target idea. Making progress requires us to (...) engage in more delicate metaphysics than we might have expected and, along the way, reveals substantive constraints on the material world. In this article, I argue that any attempt to develop a coherent version of plenitude is subject to two under-appreciated challenges, and I develop a version of plenitude (global plenitude) capable of overcoming both. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate how museum collection sustainability is grounded in a range of concrete care practices that are social and material. It explores the unstable nature of heritage materials, drawing on the ecological approach of infrastructure and maintenance studies in the field of art and museums. To do this, I analyse the role of mundane operations in the daily functioning of an exhibition area, presenting data from fieldwork I conducted from 2015–2016 at the Musée du quai Branly (...) in Paris, which preserves collections of art and ethnology from outside Europe. I observed the museum's preventive conservation practices, which work to minimise the risks of material deterioration of heritage objects, focusing attention on stabilising the relationship between objects and their environments. These practices contribute to the construction of the temporalities of museum objects. In exploring the means and devices of preserving these heritage objects, the very assumption of perpetuation is destabilised. Environments continually unfold with the silent material metamorphosis of objects. The exhibition becomes a place of flows, where a multitude of entities circulate and cohabit at different scales, such as insects, dust, and powdery fragments. The daily human work of vacuuming, cleaning, trapping, and measuring provide a set of actions united with other entities engaged in the material life of the exhibited object. As we zoom in on the exhibition space, different timelines emerge that are inextricably linked to the different lives of the museum. (shrink)

While there is considerable disagreement on the precise nature of material objecthood, it is standardly assumed that material objects must be spatial. In this paper, I provide two arguments against this assumption. The first argument is made from largely a priori considerations about modal plenitude. The possibility of non-spatial material objects follows from commitment to certain plausible principles governing material objecthood and plausible principles regarding modal plenitude. The second argument draws from current philosophical discussions regarding theories (...) of quantum gravity and the emergence of spacetime. When it is appreciated what possible worlds these current theories commit us to, the possibility of non-spatial material objects will follow. Thus, either route will lead us to the possibility of non-spatial material objects. The significance of this result is that we need to revise our accounts of material objecthood to both accommodate these possibilities and the theories that lead to them. (shrink)

The idea of “material plenitude” has been gaining traction in recent discussions of the metaphysics of material objects. My main goal here is to show that this idea may have important dialectical implications for the metaphysics of properties – more specifically, that it provides nominalists with new resources in their attempt to reject an ontology of universals. I will recapitulate one of the main arguments against nominalism – due to David Armstrong – and show how plenitude helps the (...) nominalist overcome the argument. (shrink)

Understanding compositional practices is a major goal of musicology and music theory. Compositional practices have been traditionally viewed as disembodied and idiosyncratic. This view makes it hard to integrate musical creativity into our understanding of the general cognitive processes underlying meaning construction. To overcome this unnecessary isolation of musical composition from cognitive science, in this conceptual analysis, we approach compositional processes with the analytic tools of blending theory, material anchoring, and enaction. Our case study is Iannis Xenakis’ use of (...) sieves for distributing rhythmic patterns in Psappha. Though disregarded in previous accounts, the timeline and the gearwheel provide crucial conceptual templates for anchoring Xenakis’ idea of time for this score. This case study of conceptual integration templates for temporal representation seeks to gain insight into musical creativity, embodiment, and blending, especially into how virtual interactions with material structures facilitate the construction of complex meanings. (shrink)

Despite obvious advantages, no generalised ideographic codes have evolved through cultural evolution to rely on iconicity. Morin suggests that this is because of missing means of standardisation, which glottographic codes get from natural languages. Although we agree, we also point to the important role of the available media, which might support some forms of reference more effectively than others.

Notations are cognitive systems involving distinctive psychological functions, behaviors, and material forms. Seen through this lens, two main types – semasiography and visible language – are fundamentally differentiated by their material prehistories, emphasis on iconography, and the centrality of language's combinatorial faculty. These fundamental differences suggest that key qualities (iconicity, expressiveness, concision) are difficult to conjoin in a single system.

Mereological nihilism is the view that no objects have proper parts. Despite how counter‐intuitive it is, it is taken quite seriously, largely because it solves a number of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects – or so its proponents claim. In this article, I show that for every puzzle that mereological nihilism solves, there is a similar puzzle that (a) it doesn’t solve, and (b) every other solution to the original puzzle does solve. Since the solutions to the (...) new puzzles apply just as well to the old puzzles, the old puzzles provide no motivation to be a mereological nihilist. (shrink)

Growth of different body parts in humans is sensitive to different resource constraints that are mediated by parental investment. Parental investment can involve the expenditure of material, cognitive, and emotional resources on offspring. Cranial volume, an important predictor of cognitive ability, appears understudied in this context. We asked whether there are associations between growth and family structure, self-reported estimates for resource availability, and sibling number; and whether these constraints relate to head and body growth in a similar manner. We (...) assessed the associations between parental investment, height, and cranial volume in a cross-sectional study of Estonian children. Height correlated negatively with the number of siblings but this association became negligible in a model controlling for birthweight, parental heights, and mother’s age at birth. Unlike height, cranial volume was unrelated to sibling number, but it was negatively associated with self-reported meat and general resource shortage. Cranial volume was related to family structure and paternal education. Children living with both birth-parents had larger heads than those living in families containing a step-parent. Since these family types did not differ with respect to meat or general resource shortage, our findings suggest that families including both genetic parents provide non-material benefits that stimulate predominantly cranial growth. For the studied developmental period, cranial volume appeared a more sensitive marker of growth constraints than height. The potential of using cranial volume for quantifying physical impact of non-material parental investment deserves further attention. (shrink)

It is natural to think that social groups are concrete material particulars, but this view faces an important objection. Suppose the chess club and nature club have the same members. Intuitively, these are different clubs even though they have a common material basis. Some philosophers take these intuitions to show that the materialist view must be abandoned. I propose an alternative explanation. Social groups are concrete material particulars, but there is a psychological explanation of nonidentity intuitions. Social (...) groups appear coincident but nonidentical because they are perceived to be governed by conflicting social norms. (shrink)

Introduction -- Being/becoming material -- Knowledge & class: coming to process -- Truth-telling, inquiry, and affirmative ethics -- Relational inquiry as radical cartography -- Higher education and the governance of things -- Refusal & resistance.

E-Co-Affectivity is a philosophical investigation of affectivity in various forms of life: photosynthesis and growth in plants, touch and trauma in bird feathers, the ontogenesis of human life through the placenta, the bare interface of human skin, and the porous materiality of soil. Combining biology, phenomenology, Ancient Greek thought, new materialisms, environmental philosophy, and affect studies, Marjolein Oele thinks through concrete, living places that show the receptive, responsive power of living beings to be affected and to affect. She focuses on (...) these localized interfaces to explain how affectivity emerges in places that are always evolving, creative, porous, and fluid. Every interface is material, but is also "more" than its current materiality in co-creating place, time, and being. After extensively describing the effects of the milieu and community within which each example of affectivity takes place, in the final chapter Oele adds a prescriptive, ethical lens that formulates a new epoch beyond the Anthropocene, one that is sensitive to the larger ecological, communal concerns at stake. (shrink)

An adequate semantics for generic sentences must stake out positions across a range of contested territory in philosophy and linguistics. For this reason the study of generic sentences is a venue for investigating different frameworks for understanding human rationality as manifested in linguistic phenomena such as quantification, classification of individuals under kinds, defeasible reasoning, and intensionality. Despite the wide variety of semantic theories developed for generic sentences, to date these theories have been almost universally model-theoretic and representational. This essay outlines (...) a range of proof-theoretic analyses for characterizing generics. Particular attention is given to an expressivist proof-theory that can be traced to 1) work on logical syntax that Carnap undertook prior to his turn toward truth-conditional model theory in the late 1930s, and 2) research on sequent calculi and natural deduction systems that originate in work from Gentzen and Prawitz.1. (shrink)

Humans have cognitive mechanisms that allow them to keep track of time, represent past events, and simulate the future, but these capacities have intrinsic constraints. Here, we explore the role of material culture as an extension of internal time representations through anthropological and archeological case studies, focusing on Upper Paleolithic material culture. We argue that calendars complement and extend internal time representations, because they enable humans to project past events into the future more accurately than is possible with (...) episodic memory alone, making them one of the factors that significantly improved foraging success during the Upper Paleolithic. We discuss the implications of the epistemic use of material culture for our understanding of the causes of shifts in human behavior during the Upper Paleolithic. (shrink)

The paper adopts an inter-theoretical socio-cultural and -material perspective on the relationship between human + machine learning to propose a new way to investigate the human + machine assistive assemblages emerging in professional work (e.g. medicine, architecture, design and engineering). Its starting point is Hutchins’s (1995a) concept of ‘distributed cognition’ and his argument that his concept of ‘cultural ecosystems’ constitutes a unit of analysis to investigate collective human + machine working and learning (Hutchins, Philos Psychol 27:39–49, 2013). It argues (...) that: (i) the former offers a way to reveal the cultural constitution of and enactment of human + machine cognition and, in the process, the limitations of the computational and connectionist assumptions about learning that underpin, respectively, good old-fashioned AI and deep learning; and (2) the latter offers a way to identify, when amplified with insights from Socio-Materialism and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, how ML is further rearranging and reorganising the distributed basis of cognition in assistive assemblages. The paper concludes by outlining a set of conjectures researchers that could use to guide their investigations into the ongoing design and deployment of HL + ML assemblages and challenges associated with the interaction between HL + ML. (shrink)

Esse texto é um escrito que, ao final, é um termo médio entre um Artigo e um Ensaio. O objetivo é expor nossa compreensão sobre o sentido d“o material” e as implicações onto(epistemo)lógicas desta concepção no pensamento de Karl Marx. Em plano geral, primeiramente, nosso texto discorre sobre o que nomeamos de “a questão primeira”, qual seja: o que é “o material” no interior e no contexto dos escritos de Marx? Para cumprir essa tarefa procedemos com leituras de (...) textos marxianos visando identificar, neles, passagens importantes aonde o conceito de “material” é pressuposto, citado ou implicado. No segundo momento do texto, afirmamos que os resultados das análises do sentido d“o material” nos possibilitam induzir e/ou deduzir que o materialismo de Marx é dialético. Por fim, apresentamos algumas conclusões que decorrem do aceite da validade e veracidade da tese de que Marx pensa dialeticamente, de que seu materialismo é dialético. (shrink)

Following in the hylomorphic tradition of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas holds that all material substances are composed of matter and form. Like Aristotle, Aquinas also recognizes two different types of forms that material substances can be said to possess: substantial forms and accidental forms. Of which form or forms, then, are material substances composed? This paper explores two competing models of Aquinas’s ontology of material substances, which diverge on precisely this issue. According to what the author refers (...) to as the “Standard Model,” Aquinas’s view is that a material substance is composed of prime matter and substantial form. According to the “Expanded Model,” Aquinas’s view is that a material substance is composed of prime matter, substantial form, and all of its accidental forms. After outlining the main claims of each of the two competing models and considering two arguments in favor of the Standard Model, the author offers two arguments in favor of the Expanded Model. He argues that, given the way in which Aquinas argues for God’s simplicity in question three of the Prima pars, and the way in which he consistently describes the difference between an essence and a suppositum, or individual substance, throughout his works, there is good reason to believe that Aquinas thinks that the accidental forms of a material substance are included among its metaphysical parts. (shrink)

Medical schools are among the most important spaces for the history of the body. It is here that students come to know the anatomical bodies of their future patients and, through a process of cognitive and embodied practice, that the knowing bodies of future clinicians are also shaped. Practical and theoretical understandings of medicine are formed in these affective and historied buildings and in collaboration with a broad material culture of education. Medical schools are, however, both under-theorised and under-historicised. (...) This article integrates ‘materialist’ considerations of the body with Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of space and rhythm in order to compare two markedly different spaces – the 19th-century Anatomy Department at Semmelweis University in Hungary and the mid-20th-century ‘skills laboratory’ at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. This comparison suggests that biomedical bodies are variously shaped by the agential and affective material histories present in the everyday experience of contemporary medical education. (shrink)

Jeffrey E. Brower presents and explains the hylomorphic conception of the material world developed by Thomas Aquinas, according to which material objects are composed of both matter and form. In addition to presenting and explaining Aquinas's views, Brower seeks wherever possible to bring them into dialogue with the best recent literature on related topics. Along the way, he highlights the contribution that Aquinas's views make to a host of contemporary metaphysical debates, including the nature of change, composition, (...) class='Hi'>material constitution, the ontology of stuff vs. things, the proper analysis of ordinary objects, the truthmakers for essential vs. accidental predication, and the metaphysics of property possession. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on causation has focused on distinctions across types of causal relationships. This paper argues for another distinction that has yet to receive attention in this work. This distinction has to do with whether causal relationships have “material continuity,” which refers to the reliable movement of material from cause to effect. This paper provides an analysis of material continuity and argues that causal relationships with this feature are associated with a unique explanatory perspective, are studied (...) with distinct causal investigative methods, and provide different types of causal control over their effects. (shrink)

I shall attempt to identify some of the main features of ‘religious materialism’, as I understand it, and indicate some of the thinkers and themes within modern European thought that I have drawn upon in my effort to formulate it thus far. The philosophical stance in question consists of an odd amalgam of thinkers and ‘Schools’ within post-Kantian European philosophy that are often considered to be radically incommensurable – in broad terms, post-Husserlian phenomenology and post-Nietzschean philosophical naturalism.

One persistent puzzle in the life sciences is the asymmetric lipid composition of the cellular plasma membrane: while the exoplasmic leaflet is enriched in lipids carrying predominantly saturated fatty acids, the cytoplasmic leaflet hosts preferentially lipids with (poly‐)unsaturated fatty acids. Given the high energy requirements necessary for cells to maintain this asymmetry, the question naturally arises regarding its inherent benefits. In this paper, we propose asymmetry to represent a potential solution for harmonizing two conflicting requirements for the plasma membrane: first, (...) the need to build a barrier for the uncontrolled influx or efflux of substances; and second, the need to form a fluid and dynamic two‐dimensional substrate for signaling processes. We hence view here the plasma membrane as a composite material, where the exoplasmic leaflet is mainly responsible for the functional integrity of the barrier and the cytoplasmic leaflet for fluidity. We reinforce the validity of the proposed mechanism by presenting quantitative data from the literature, along with multiple examples that bolster our model. (shrink)

ABSTARCT When people go shopping, they enter a building. But the shop cannot be identified with the building, because it would remain the same shop if it moved to another building or if it became an e-store. Daniel Korman [2019] uses these two observations to argue that establishments are immaterial objects. However, all that follows is that establishments are not buildings. I argue that establishments are organisations or corporate agents that are constituted by people. This entails that they are (...) class='Hi'>material objects. Korman’s observations can be accommodated in terms of the further observation that corporate agents can but need not own or rent buildings. (shrink)

While the focus examines multiple levels and perspectives on care, it will go beyond description and analysis to discuss ethical, intersectional, and life-sustaining ways in which care may be enhanced.

I have both a smaller and a larger aim. The smaller aim is polemical. Kit Fine believes that a material thing—a Romanesque statue, for example, or an open door—can be distinguished from its constituent matter—a piece of alloy, say, or a hunk of plastic—without recourse to modal or temporal considerations. The statue is Romanesque; the piece of alloy is not Romanesque. The door is open; the hunk of plastic is not open. I argue that these considerations, when combined with (...) a proper understanding of how the use of ‘not’ is functioning, entail that the statue is the piece of alloy, and that the door is the hunk of plastic. Far from challenging the doctrine that a material thing is its matter, Fine’s observations confirm the view. My larger aim is methodological. I will show that natural language semantics can guide inquiry in certain areas of metaphysics by helping us to advance lingering debates. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to a complex analysis of the “war texts”. Discursive features of the triad “war – author – text” are proposed to be researched through the prism of the holistic linguistic act of communication. Discourse analysis of “war texts” is carried out on the material of works of Oksana Zabuzhko, namely, the collection of essays “And Again I Crawl into the Tank” and “The Longest Journey”. The way the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war is understood and (...) interpreted in the public intellectual discourse is investigated. Such research gives a possibility to acquire data on how the author presents her/his own activity-in-the[1]world and transfers her/his attitude to the events described. It is reiterated that the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war can be researched within the boundaries of development of the discourse portrait of language personality, as the author’s texts are the information tracks of public discourse. Models of “war texts” of Oksana Zabuzhko are characterized with the help of three types of meaning: experiential (thematic sphere of communication), interpersonal (meaning of social roles), and textual (characterizes the channel of communication). The sense structure of the corresponding respective texts was scrutinized. That helped to acquire new data about their semiotic models. (shrink)

In the Postulates of Empirical Thinking, a section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents an account of the content and role of our concept of real possibility in terms of formal conditions of experience. However, much later in the Critique he introduces the idea of a material condition of possibility. What is this material condition of possibility, and how does it fit with the conception of possibility in terms of formal conditions? This essay argues that the (...) key to answering these questions—as well as to understanding Kant’s criticism of rational theology, in which the discussion of the material condition of possibility appears—is Kant’s account of how we can individuate objects. (shrink)

Explorar la posibilidad de una nueva micropolítica crítica del signo a partir de Foucault, inspirada en la genealogía nietzscheana, y examinar las políticas y estrategias de alfabetización mediática e informacional necesarias para desarrollar competencias digitales en la transformación del ecosistema mediático es una tarea fundamental del quehacer filosófico actual. La pregunta por la posibilidad de la verdad retorna en un contexto en el que el pluralismo semiótico y la conducción mediática son dos elementos que rigen y ordenan la sociedad (...) actual, sociedad que se caracteriza por la abundancia de información y la omnipresencia de los medios de comunicación como tecnologías de poder. Desgranar su significado y vínculo nos conduce directamente al estudio del poder y el signo en relación con los efectos de la verdad de la posverdad. En este marco conceptual, la obra de Foucault proporciona herramientas teóricas valiosas para afrontar esta problemática. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the inferential configuration of arguments, generally referred to as argument scheme. After outlining our approach, denominated Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT, see Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2006, 2009; Rigotti 2006, 2008, 2009), we compare it to other modern and contemporary approaches, to eventually illustrate some advantages offered by it. In spite of the evident connection with the tradition of topics, emerging also from AMT’s denomination, its involvement in the contemporary dialogue on argument schemes should not be (...) overlooked. The model builds in particular on the theoretical and methodological perspective of pragma-dialectics in its extended version, reconciling dialectic and rhetoric; nevertheless, it also takes into account numerous other contributions to the study of argument schemes. Aiming at a representation of argument schemes able to monitor the inferential cohesion and completeness of arguments, AMT focuses on two components of argument scheme that could be distinguished, readapting pragma-dialectical terms, as procedural and material respectively. The procedural component is based on the semantic-ontological structure, which generates the inferential connection from which the logical form of the argument is derived. The material component integrates into the argument scheme the implicit and explicit premises bound to the contextual common ground (Rigotti 2006). In this paper, the comparison of the AMT to other approaches focuses on the inferential configuration of arguments and not on the typologies of argument schemes and on the principles they are based on, which the authors intend to tackle in a further paper. (shrink)

Tim Scanlon’s famous and important paper ‘The Diversity of Objections to Inequality’ sets out five reasons why those sympathetic to equality may object to inequality. This paper shows the origin of this approach to inequality in Scanlon’s earlier work, and its persistence in his later work. It also compares Scanlon’s position to earlier egalitarian writers, such as R.H. Tawney, and anti-egalitarians such as J.R. Lucas. It concludes by suggesting that there are interaction effects between the reasons for objecting to inequality (...) and hence they are more powerful if taken together. (shrink)

En este artículo defiendo que el problema humeano de la justificación racional de la inducción no ha contribuido a la comprensión filosófica de este tipo de inferencias. La teoría material de la inducción propuesta por Norton (2003) permite analizar el razonamiento inductivo más allá del laberinto justificativo humeano, pero con un corte demasiado alto: asumir que las inducciones dependen intrínsecamente de cómo es localmente la realidad. En su lugar, propongo una teoría de la inducción en la que las inducciones (...) dependen no de tesis ontológicas, sino de las capacidades cognitivas para comprimir información de un modo epistémicamente efectivo. (shrink)

Arguments for substance dualism—the theory that we are at least partly non-material beings—abound. Many such arguments begin with our capacity to engage in conscious thought and end with dualism. Such are familiar. But there is another route to dualism. It begins with our moral value and ends with dualism. In this article, we develop and assess the prospects for this new style of argument. We show that, though one extant version of the argument does not succeed, there may yet (...) be a deep problem for standard physical accounts of our nature. (shrink)

El profesor Sauca Cano parte en su trabajo de una premisa comúnmente admitida por la doctrina constitucionalista de nuestro país: la Constitución española de 1978 no recoge ninguna cláusula de intangibilidad material de carácter expreso. En el presente texto se intenta justificar, desde la óptica del derecho constitucional, por qué el artículo 2o. de la Constitución sí establece ese tipo de cláusula expresa cuando prescribe la condición indisoluble e indivisible del sujeto titular de la soberanía.

Wilfrid Sellars’s suggestion that there are valid material inferences entails that validity is not limited to formal inferences. Because material inferences are expressed in ordinary language and deal with both conceptual and empirical matters, an interesting prospect unfolds: valid reasoning is irreducibly plural. However, it is not clear what the validity of inferences composed of non-logical and descriptive vocabulary means. I argue that it is better to speak of the legitimacy rather than the validity of material inferences. (...) A material inference can be understood as legitimate when one has a pragmatic propriety to infer from an assertion A to an assertion B. Pragmatic propriety designates the social-normative entitlement of inferencing. Because pragmatic proprieties are discipline-specific and local, legitimate reasoning is plural. Nevertheless, the shared general feature of reasoning practices is to preserve and improve the coherence of one’s system of belief. (shrink)