The traditional presentation about historical time-passing consists in a linear succession of facts in which some aspects of the lifeworld evolve from others in anirreversible manner. The presentation of change is connected to the presentation of gradual or revolutionary linear changes that areirrevocable. I believe that this presentation could be considered correct for living organisms, but does not take account of some important aspects of demonstrative presentations about artefacts and technologies. For example, we can ontologically assume that “hammer-beating” evolved from (...) “stone-beating”. In this sense, the “hammer-beating-time” could be considered contemporary-time and the “stone-beating-time” could be considered past-time. However, we still beat things with stones and stone-like artefacts. The technology of the stone-beating is still been used. That means that relationship between the stone and the hammer cannot be seen as “evolutive” in the same sense that organisms “evolve” from each other. We must assume then, that the stone and the hammer must be interchangeable technologies which do not overshadow each other. This family of technologies and artefacts are contemporary to each other. Time-passing metaphors must then be substituted with metaphors of a “technological instability” that can be associated to a foundational cultural explosion. (shrink)

Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide audience, (...) not just those professionals involved in computer design or artificial intelligence. It represents an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a machine, and what it means to be human. Book jacket. (shrink)

Both the commonsensical and leading theoretical accounts of entrepreneurship, democracy, and solidarity fail to describe adequately entrepreneurial, democratic, and solidarity?building practices. These accounts are inadequate because they assume a faulty description of human being. In this article we develop an interpretation of entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity?building that relies on understanding human beings as neither primarily thinking nor desiring but as skillful beings. Western human beings are at their best when they are engaged in producing large?scale cultural or historical changes (...) in the way people and things are dealt with. The three domains of human activity where these historical changes are most clearly accomplished are entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity. Section I, guided by a roughly Kuhnian notion of holding on to an anomaly until it re?gestalts the way we see things, offers a general interpretation of how skillful human beings open up new worlds by changing their shared background practices in three ways: reconfiguring, which makes a marginal practice central; cross?appropriation, in which one domain of practices takes over useful practices from another domain; and articulating, whereby dispersed or confused practices are brought into clearer focus. An entrepreneur creates a product which reconfigures the practices. This interpretation of entrepreneurial skills is contrasted with current accounts that overlook ehtrepreneurship to concentrate on instrumental or theoretical models of business activities. Section II claims that the most exemplary kind of political action in a liberal democracy is that of political action groups. Such groups produce a change in a nation's background practices through a kind of speaking that leads to massive cross?appropriation. We describe Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and suggest that it both satisfies the requirements for genuine democratic action that we have established in our examination of other views and lacks their disadvantages. We conclude that the relatively detached action suggested by current theories of liberal democracy fail to do justice to democratic practice. The final section argues that those who claim that a single highest value or procedure provides a source of solidarity that satisfies all the competing interests in a multi?cultural nation always arrive at a solidarity that is too thin to provide for the serious sort of commitments that one would be willing to die for. We propose that solidarity in multi?cultural states implies commitment to a set of thick values, and that when one realizes that these thick values construct one's identity one is willing to die for them. While political action concerns itself with ordering values, solidarity involves the cultivation of them in such a way that no ordering of them matters. But solidarity is not to be understood as a subjective feeling. It is rather the experience of a group identity, a ?we?, that sees things and deals with things in terms of shared concerns. This ?we? comes to recognize itself when the actions it engages in transform it. The paradigmatic action that transforms such a ?we? occurs when a culture figure articulates some forgotten concern or value. As in the cases of entrepreneurship and democratic action, a culture figure cultivates solidarity by changing the background practices in a historical manner. It is concluded that traditional theoretical accounts, by overlooking the primacy of involved skillful activities and the importance of background change, fail to capture the source, the function, and the point of entrepreneurship, liberal democracy, and solidarity. (shrink)

I. INTRODUCTIONThe Parshall Flume, which was invented in 1920 by R. Parshall, is mostly used in wastewater and crop supply. Utilizing equations, Parshall established dimensions that fit the design, one of the advantages is the conversion of position energy to velocity energy since in other measurement structures there are minimum energy losses in this one it does not allow sedimentation. The structuring of the project is adhered to by different models that define its behavior and limit its use. This is (...) the case of an approach length of the channel entrance, which is nothing more than a primary distance for the action of the flow within the channel. Throughout history, some studies were conducted in an attempt to establish an approximate and realistic value of the length at the time of measurements, but the theories put forward were lost. Some people link this length with the narrowing of the gorge, and others suggest flow conditions before entering the flume. For the development of the project established with its respective objectives, the respective structuring was carried out: For the measurement, the points already established in the field will be taken with the help of a total station, GPS, to verify the respective measurements of the Parshall flume. For the calculations and the design, the points will be introduced in the civil 3D to be able to verify if the points taken are the correct ones and what distances they have between them, through this, we can apply different methods to be able to verify the design that has this Parshall flume. For the evaluation and layout of the gutter, if it is the case, we will carry out a layout in plan with the data already calculated in the office and we will evaluate the situation in which it is so that we can apply a possible solution so that a defect does not occur. In this report, we focus on the design and redesign of a hydraulic irrigation channel where we find a Parshall section, which has the function of measuring the flow found in that section. The measurements found in the field can be verified in the office using formulas and software to verify if the data are correct, if so we can say that it is well designed, otherwise we will look for a possible solution by doing a field study. (shrink)

The proposal that the earth has entered a new epoch called “the Anthropocene” has touched a nerve . One unsettling part of having our ecological finitude thrust upon us with the term “Anthropocene” is that, as Nietzsche said of the death of God, we ourselves are supposed to be the collective doer responsible here, yet this is a deed which no one individual meant to do and whose implications no one fully comprehends. For the pessimists about humanity, the implications seem (...) rather straightforward: humanity will die. Yet, as we will explore in this paper, the death that we may be facing cannot be assumed to be simply biological death or extinction. Indeed, even if we are not running headlong into a mass extinction and biological demise, we do seem to be facing an ontological death. Our ecological finitude is the harbinger of our ontological finitude. The vulnerability we confront in the Anthropocene is what Jonathan Lear, in a different context, called ontological vulnerability. Worlds die too; the ways of life they sustain can become impossible, ceasing to make sense and matter. The constitutive susceptibility of all human worlds to their eventual collapse is what we mean by ontological finitude. This is what we face as presumed denizens in a dawning Anthropocene. (shrink)

We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ?Disclosing New Worlds?. We will respond to the concerns raised by grouping them under three general themes. First, a number of questions arise from lack of clarity about how the matters we undertook to discuss ? especially solidarity ? appear when one starts by thinking about the primacy of skills and practices. Under this heading we consider (a) whether we need more case studies to make our points, and (b) whether national (...) and other solidarities require willingness to die for the values that produce that solidarity. Second, we take up questions concerning the historical character of the skills of entrepreneurs, virtuous citizens, and culture figures. Here we shall (a) emphasize how we distinguish ourselves from earlier writers on these subjects, (b) consider essentialism, relational identities, and exclusion, (c) answer a number of Habermasian concerns raised by Hoy, (d) speak to Taylor's concern regarding the contingency of solidarity and forgetting, and (e) take up Grant's objection that we are both formalists and relativists. Third, we shall take up the concern, raised mostly by Borgmann, that historical disclosing, that is to say history as the West has known it, is over, and that now all that can be done by those who transform the practices is to make them more and more technological. (shrink)

This book studies the technognomies of memory in scripto as in texts, lists, dictionaries and databases and less the technognomies of memory in vivo (as in remembering). There are of course some relations between these two kinds of memories, being memory-in-scripto a development parallel to the development of written language. We notice that the historical presentation is built upon both forms of memory. We notice that the historical explanation is tied to the concrete experience of persons belonging to a culture. (...) In the history of memory then, it is necessary to distinguish two important aspects, the development of spoken memory and the development of written memory. The essential characteristic of written memory is its muteness. Muteness is also associated to spatiality and to stability. On the other hand, audial presentations are inseparable of the notions of movement and time passing. According to Don Ihde the spheres of the invisible and the silent, limit the spheres of the visual and the audial. These two spheres overlap partially in visual presentations that also are audial presentations; however, their natural being is to be independent from each other. [Ihde, Don. Listening and Voice. Phenomenologies of Sound; State University Press; 2007; p. 50-51.] In our time, which is also the time of the globalization and digitalization of culture, a new philosophical paradigm is going on characterized by the fragmentation of experience. This fragmentation does not allow an overview of the totality of a field of experience, which is only possible to reduce to singular analytical moments. The fragmentation of experience is the result of a new jump of the capability to concretion. Inside this new paradigm, the world becomes multistable. The multistability of the world creates a gap between intention and implementation that distinguishes the “full” history as Natural history from the “broken” history as Cultural history. (shrink)

In business, politics, marriage, indeed in any significant relationship, trust is the essential precondition upon which all real success depends. But what, precisely, is trust? How can it be achieved and sustained? And, most importantly, how can it be regained once it has been broken? In Building Trust, Robert C. Solomon and Fernando Flores offer compelling answers to these questions. They argue that trust is not something that simply exists from the beginning, something we can assume or take (...) for granted; that it is not a static quality or "social glue." Instead, they assert that trust is an emotional skill, an active and dynamic part of our lives that we build and sustain with our promises and commitments, our emotions and integrity. In looking closely at the effects of mistrust, such as insidious office politics that can sabotage a company's efficiency, Solomon and Flores demonstrate how to move from naïve trust that is easily shattered to an authentic trust that is sophisticated, reflective, and possible to renew. As the global economy makes us more and more reliant on "strangers," and as our political and personal interactions become more complex, Building Trust offers invaluable insight into a vital aspect of human relationships. (shrink)

This book is a personal answer to the crisis of the left. The author of this text belongs to a generation habituated to live with global explanations. During our youth, the future of the world was the future of democracy and socialism. We belong to a generation of “leftist” that found in Marx and Freud, phenomenology and structuralism the most important answers that made sense of the everyday world. However, the developments of events during the last sixty years showed that (...) our confidence was ungrounded. The depreciation of the theoretical thought accelerated in direct proportion to the development of technologies, and among them the impact of the digital developments was devastating. One of the most notable consequences of the digitalization of culture was the depreciation of the Marxian thought, but also the less recognized depreciation of all kinds of political-economic thought. The collapse of the world created before the Second World War open for the end of the “grand narratives” and the enthronization of Postmodernism. The production of fragmentary explanations took over the historical perspective with an important influence on social and economic thought. After 60 years of postmodern thinking, we believe that the time of Postmodernism is over. Politicians and economists over the world cannot continue to produce results in small packages. The whole picture must be restituted. Of course it must be done incorporating the lessons of the past to avoid to make the same mistakes. Postmodernism has left behind lots of scattered modernist philosophical remnants. It left a chessboard with only few pieces to work with, and in this allegory, only as references. The philosophical schools remains, but the study of them is strictly for an education in the history of ideas. The situation is aggravating since the most important works from the 1960’s and forth, (post-structuralists) deliberately have avoided obvious identity patterns. A word in Rio de la Plata’s jargon language describes this situation, cambalache, a sort of “flea market” where everything lies higgledy-piggledy. Deconstruction and the focus on differences are vital to Postmodernism. Remaining is therefore the intersections, the contrasts, shadows, and sketches. When trying to orient in such an intellectual environment, the task reminds of patching scatterings, and building with tools of eclecticism. However, we believe that is time to reconstruct instead of deconstruct, moving back to Modernism that we will describe as Cyborgism. (shrink)

There are many possible definitions of “technology” and I will discuss some of these in this book. However, in this introduction let me use a definition of Svante Lindqvist who defines technology very intuitively as “those activities, directed towards the satisfaction of human wants, which produce change in the material world.” He says also “the distinction between human “wants” and more limited human “needs” is crucial, for we do not use technology only to satisfy our essential material requirements.” Consequently, from (...) this perspective, a technology that is “broken” could be defined as those activities, directed towards the satisfaction of human wants that are intended to produce changes in the material world that either do not manage to satisfy these wants or do not produce changes in the material world, or both. This is the third edition, updated October 2015. (shrink)

The manifesto of a new philosophy of technology.

This book is the result of a collective research effort performed during many years in both Sweden and Spain. It is the result of attempting to develop a new field of research that could we denominate «human act informatics.» The goal has been to use the technologies of information to the study of the human act in general, including embodied acts and disembodied acts. The book presents a theory of the quantification of the informational value of human acts as order, (...) opposing the living order against entropy. We present acting as a set of decisions and choices aimed to create order and to impose Modernity. Karl Popper’s frequency theory of probability is applied to characterize human acts regarding their degree of freedom and to set up a scale of order in human decisions. The traditional theory of economics and social science characterize the human act as rational, utilitarian and ethical. Our results emphasize that the unique significance of an act lies in its capacity to generate order. An adequate methodology is then presented to defend such hypothesis according to which, the rationality respective irrationality of acting, is in fact only a function of the act’s organizational capacity. From this perspective, it has been necessary to define «order» respective «disorder» as operative concepts that allowed the comparison of the organizational differences generated by each kind of act. According to the presented conclusions, the spontaneity of living, as unconscious thinking, dreaming, loving, etc. and the mainstream of the human acts, are utilitarian, but in an irrational way; they are rooted in unconscious drifts and therefore must be considered irrational-utility acts. (shrink)

The 20th Century is the starting point for the most ambitious attempts to extrapolate human life into artificial systems. Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, Claude Shannon’s Information Theory, John von Neumann’s Cellular Automata, Universal Constructor to the Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence to Maturana and Varela’s Autopoietic Organization, all shared the goal of understanding in what sense humans resemble a machine. This scientific and technological movement has embraced all disciplines without exceptions, not only mathematics and physics but also biology, sociology, psychology, economics etc. (...) New terms were developed, such as “information”, “organization”, “entropy”, “communication”, “encryption”, “computation” and “algorithmics” to mention a few, all which had an enormous impact on artificial systems. Our work follows this historical track but with a reversed order of priorities. Instead of deducing a reduced group of human acts into an artificial environment, we deduce the human aspects of machines by extrapolating algorithmic methodologies into everyday life acts. The present informational theories were insufficiently powered to achieve this objective without developing a new theoretical approach. Hence, our research is directed towards an expansion of the current informational theories. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

The orthodox view in epistemology is that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive. I offer a novel argument for a version of this view, one that appeals to capacities to rationally respond to evidence. I do so by developing the Sellarsian idea that the concept of belief functions to mark the space of reasons in a non-intellectualist and naturalistic direction. The resulting view does justice to the role of belief in social interactions, joint deliberation, and rational persuasion, while including evidence-resistant beliefs and (...) animal beliefs as genuine beliefs. It has a range of further benefits: it helps us account for epistemic normativity, paves the way for better psychological models of belief revision, distinguishes beliefs from imaginings and mere acceptances, and helps us avoid noxious simplistic takes on human irrationality. (shrink)

Delusions are deeply evidence-resistant. Patients with delusions are unmoved by evidence that is in direct conflict with the delusion, often responding to such evidence by offering obvious, and strange, confabulations. As a consequence, the standard view is that delusions are not evidence-responsive. This claim has been used as a key argumentative wedge in debates on the nature of delusions. Some have taken delusions to be beliefs and argued that this implies that belief is not constitutively evidence-responsive. Others hold fixed the (...) evidenceresponsiveness of belief and take this to show that delusions cannot be beliefs. Against this common assumption, I appeal to a large range of empirical evidence to argue that delusions are evidence-responsive in the sense that subjects have the capacity to respond to evidence on their delusion in rationally permissible ways. The extreme evidence-resistance of delusions is a consequence of powerful masking factors on these capacities, such as strange perceptual experiences, motivational factors, and cognitive biases. This view makes room for holding both that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive and that delusions are beliefs, and it has important implications for the study and treatment of delusions. (shrink)

Epistemic agents interact with evidence in different ways. This can cause trouble for mutual understanding and for our ability to rationally engage with others. Indeed, it can compromise democratic practices of deliberation. This paper explains these differences by appeal to a new notion: epistemic styles. Epistemic styles are ways of interacting with evidence that express unified sets of epistemic values, preferences, goals, and interests. The paper introduces the notion of epistemic styles and develops a systematic account of their nature. It (...) then discusses the implications of epistemic styles for central questions in epistemology, in particular, for issues surrounding rational engagement and for the debate between virtue epistemologists and epistemic situationists. (shrink)

"Como pensar hoje na escrita da história? Como enfrentar a página em branco que não se apresenta como um espaço neutro, mas um espaço onde quem escreve - o historiador - deixa rastros do passado e também os seus próprios rastros? Essas são algumas das questões colocadas pelos ensaios que compõem "Arte e pensamento: operações historiográficas". Num primeiro momento, são fornecidos o ritmo, o tom e os compassos por meio de discussões e reflexões sobre uma teoria da experiência para a (...) escrita da história, sobre a historicidade do artístico, sobre o inespecífico do contemporâneo, sobre o pensamento na fronteira, sobre a nomeação dos anônimos em Machado de Assis. A partir dessas harmonizações dissonantes e consoantes, iniciam-se 3 operações que delineiam o segundo momento do livro, cuja intenção maior é fazer operar a escrita da história na imbricada conjunção história-arte-pensamento."--Contratapa. (shrink)

The dominating theologian in Europe between Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent produced a massive Summa of Ordinary Questions as well as fifteen quodlibets during his long tenure at the University of Paris. His work constituted a new synthesis of faith and reason which competed with that of Thomas Aquinas and influenced the history of both philosophy and theology. The first five articles of the Summa, dealing with various issues associated with human knowledge, constitute an adequate introduction (...) to Henry's thought. In them we find his approach to fundamental principles and themes developed in detail in the rest of his corpus. Of the five, only article one has appeared as a whole in English translation. The next four articles reinforce and develop the findings of the first article, providing additional treatments that indicate Henry's principles and orientation. In fact, these four articles alone provide a condensed but remarkably rich portrait of Henry's basic thought, and so are an invaluable resource for beginning and advanced students alike. Articles 2-5 include important positions on knowledge and reality, a conception of humanity's ultimate purpose and the pursuits most conducive to it, and an approach to faith and reason. These four articles are presented here for the first time in English translation with an introduction and notes. Along with the translation, the volume includes the Latin text of the modern critical edition. --Book cover. (shrink)

This book analyses contemporary gay "pig" masculinities, which have emerged alongside antiretroviral therapies, online porn, and new sexualised patterns of recreational drug use, examining how they trouble modern European understandings of the male body, their ethics, and their political underpinnings. This is the first book to reflect on an increasingly visible new form of sexualised gay masculinity, and the first monograph to move debates on condomless sex amongst gay men beyond discourses of HIV and/or AIDS. It contributes to existing critical (...) histories of sexuality, pornography and other sex media at a crucial juncture in the history of gay male sex cultures and the HIV epidemic. The book draws from fieldwork, interviews, archival research, visual analysis, philosophy, queer theory, and cultural studies, using empirical, critical, and speculative methodologies to better think gay "pig" masculinities across their material, affective, ethical and political dimensions, in a future-oriented, politically-inflected, reflection on what queer bodies may become. Spanning historical context to empirical and theoretical study, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures will be of key interest to academics and students in sexuality studies, film, media, visual culture, cultural studies, and porn studies concerned with masculinities, sex and sexualities and their circulation across an array of media. (shrink)

What is philosophy? Why does it matter? How have philosophy and its relation to religion and science changed from the ancient to the medieval and modern periods and beyond? What are the central philosophical ideas, from Socrates to Nietzsche? Reexamining Love of Wisdom addresses these questions. It offers a new perspective by organizing the material under the theme of philosophical desire and shows the timeless importance of philosophy understood as the love of wisdom. Flores provides an historical introduction to (...) philosophy suitable for college students that is a resource for more advanced students or scholars interested in the history and nature of philosophy. -- back cover. (shrink)

La materia de este estudio, es la misma que preocupo a la humanidad desde sus albores, siendo abordada por grandes pensadores que van desde Aristoteles hasta Teilhard de Chardin. El presente ensayo propone una solucion cientifica a la coexistencia del libre albedrio humano inmerso en un mundo donde las leyes que rigen la causa-efecto no dejan margen al fenomeno de libertad. Como consecuencia primordial explica el mecanismo natural que sustenta la existencia de un alma inmortal y la existencia de un (...) creador. (shrink)

An instrument of wealth accumulation and racial segregation in housing markets, the intersections between zoning and labor are often overlooked. Extending theories of space, race, and class, and drawing on historical and archival evidence, I elaborate three ways that American land-use zoning emerged to shape labor markets in the early 20th century: (1) zoning constrained households from engaging in subsistence and direct market activity, acting as a regulatory source of labor commodification; (2) zoning first emerged as a xenophobic tool for (...) regulating labor competition; and (3) zoning introduced racialized boundaries distinguishing formal work from a sphere of economic informality. I illustrate these theoretical-historical propositions with a study of the frontier origins of American land-use zoning laws in late-19th -century Los Angeles. This first and influential approach to residential zoning emerged amid racial dynamics of western settlement and the class politics of a national “free” labor market. I demonstrate how efforts to regulate the settlement and labor practices of poor urban households and Chinese immigrants on in Los Angeles became the direct legal basis for the dichotomous categories of “residential” and “industrial” districts that the city first defended before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915. By theorizing the intersections of land-use zoning and labor markets, this paper provides a theoretical framework and historical genealogy for future work to consider entanglements of housing and labor politics amid the concurrent flexibilization of work and land use in the present. (shrink)