This study analyzes shells of marine gastropods of a zoological museum and the Latin epithets expressing perceptual and connotative attributes that they have received in the standard, Linnaean nomenclature. Making use of the Osgood semantic differential, we presented the subjects with digital 3-D reproductions of the shell specimens to be subjectively evaluated according to 17 pairs of attributes. The results show that, overall, the subjective evaluations given by the subjects are consistent, which suggests that an intersubjective characterization of the shells (...) as wholes according to their qualitative and morphological traits is possible and scientifically explicable. This may apply to other biological items as well. The results also show that the epithets given to the shells by taxonomists do not always reflect the perceptual evaluation of the general population, being a product of the well-known ambiguity in taxonomic categorization and naming. (shrink)

This study analyzes shells of marine gastropods of a zoological museum and the Latin epithets expressing perceptual and connotative attributes that they have received in the standard, Linnaean nomenclature. Making use of the Osgood semantic differential, we presented the subjects with digital 3-D reproductions of the shell specimens to be subjectively evaluated according to 17 pairs of attributes. The results show that, overall, the subjective evaluations given by the subjects are consistent, which suggests that an intersubjective characterization of the shells (...) as wholes according to their qualitative and morphological traits is possible and scientifically explicable. This may apply to other biological items as well. The results also show that the epithets given to the shells by taxonomists do not always reflect the perceptual evaluation of the general population, being a product of the well-known ambiguity in taxonomic categorization and naming. (shrink)

El secreto en todas sus vertientes, en todas sus facetas, vericuetos, senderos. Pero sobre todo el Secreto en la literatura, pues como dice Luisa Valenzuela, en su estilo mordaz, agudo, siempre entre guinos y complicidades: "No hay literatura sin secreto."Detras de cada palabra se esconde el misterio, un laberinto en el que todo puede suceder: de la pasion a la ternura; del crimen a la sublimacion. Encontrar el hilo conductor, salvador, descifrador, o ahondar sus diversidades, es papel de quien (...) aspira a lo literario, bien como escritor, bien como lector.Precisas, directas, divertidas, las palabras de Luisa Valenzuela se deslizan sobre las paginas de un libro lleno de humor del mas fino, de ironia inteligente, como sucede en sus novelas, en sus cuentos, pero ahora provenientes del ciclo de conferencias y el dinamico taller de escritura breve que impartio en el marco de la Catedra Alfonso Reyes del Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico. (shrink)

An interaction between the ways morality and society develop in the face of the challenges they are exposed to seems consistent with empirical evidence. However, within this frame man's instinct of self preservation and his individualism seem to play an important part. The former by its influence on the evolution of what I refer to as 'our social morality'. The latter by finding its expression in conservative and radical ideologies whose political confrontation appears to give rise to an evolutionary develop (...) ment. The paper draws attention to the fact that in the face of contemporary challenges the evolutionary development of our morals may determine whether the corresponding evolutionary development of our societies will approach the patterns of those of insects, or whether our highly developed individual istic traits will result in new moral trends creating a society which is better suited to the present characteristics of humankind. It is also argued that the present growth of international organizations for cooperation and peaceful co-existence should make it possible to build a society worthy of the human race, but that it could be done only if we are able to develop a sufficient sense of responsibility to deliberately keep over-consumption and human population within a natural balance. (shrink)

Das Heilige hat Konjunktur: Im Zuge des religious turn der Kulturwissenschaften erscheint es nicht mehr als Gegensatz zu einer säkularisierten Moderne, sondern als eines ihrer konstitutiven Momente. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes untersuchen Denkfiguren des Sakralen im 20. Jahrhundert - von Nietzsches Diagnose des ”Todes Gottes“ über geschichtsphilosophische Aneignungen jüdisch-christlicher Glaubensinhalte bis hin zu sprachphilosophischen Reflexionen über das Heilige. Sie arbeiten heraus, wie sich die ästhetische Moderne in Auseinandersetzung mit dem Traditionsbestand sakraler Erfahrungen bildet.

En el presente trabajo analizaré la tensión que se propone en las novelas Mano de obra de Diamela Eltit y Los cuerpos del verano de Martín Felipe Castagnet, entre la aceleración y los límites de la corporalidad, resto humano que emerge en un mundo de deshumanización y que recuerda el vínculo del cuerpo con el animal y la finitud. En este sentido, el cansancio y la depresión son consideradas patologías del sistema que necesitan corrección, en tanto estados que la sociedad (...) no tolera y de los que se hace responsable al individuo ante el peligro de significar un atasco en el proceso de producción. (shrink)

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Contents " -- "Preface to the English Edition" -- "Introduction" -- "1. The Substitute" -- "2. Animals, Machines, Cyborgs, and the Taxi " -- "3. Mind, Emotions, and Artificial Empathy " -- "4. The Other Otherwise " -- "5. From Moral and Lethal Machines to Synthetic Ethics " -- "Notes" -- "Works Cited" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Credits.

Any complete account of morality should be able to account for its characteristic normativity; we show that enactivism is able to do so while doing justice to the situated and interactive nature of morality. Moral normativity primarily arises in interpersonal interaction and is characterized by agents’ possibility of irrevocably changing each other’s autonomies, that is, the possibility of harming or expanding each other’s autonomy. We defend that moral normativity, as opposed to social and other forms of normativity, regulates and, in (...) some cases, constitutes this very possibility. Agents are thus morally responsible for caring about their own and others’ autonomies in interaction. In our conception, moral normativity is embodied, situated, and deeply affective, and is constituted in social practices and maintained in interaction. We identify at least two necessary conditions for moral normativity to arise as a social practice. The first is our embodied constitution as living beings who are precarious and therefore vulnerable and in need of interaction with others and with the environment. The second is our sociolinguistic nature, which allows us to exponentially expand our possibilities for action and normatively distinguish among them. We finish by drawing a distinction between moral character and the moral content of interactions, which allows us to universally recognize the ethical dimensions of all human interaction while doing justice to the situated character of morals. (shrink)

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research – “Can machines have emotions?” – in the context of “social robots”, a new class of machines designed to function as “social partners” for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question “Can robots have emotions?” Rather we argue that the “robotics of emotion” moves us to reformulate it into a different one – “Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?” Developing a series of (...) arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as “synthetic ethics”, rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as “cheating” technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination. (shrink)

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents - social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic (...) projections in users. The objective is to give robots "social presence" and "social behaviors" that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of ’applied anthropomorphism’ as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a "cheating" technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns "anthropomorphism-based" social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, "synthetic ethics," which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth. (shrink)

How a human observer perceives duration depends on the amount of events taking place during the timed interval, but also on psychological dimensions, such as emotional-wellbeing, mindfulness, impulsivity, and rumination. Here we aimed at exploring these influences on duration estimation and passage of time judgments. One hundred and seventeen healthy individuals filled out mindfulness (FFMQ), impulsivity (BIS-11), rumination (RRS), and depression (BDI-sf) questionnaires. Participants also conducted verbal estimation and production tasks in the multiple seconds range. During these timing tasks, subjects (...) were asked to read digits aloud that were presented on a computer screen. Each condition of the timing tasks differed in terms of the interval between the presentation of the digits, i.e., either short (4-s) or long (16-s). Our findings suggest that long empty intervals (16-s) are associated with a relative underestimation of duration, and to a feeling that the time passes slowly, a seemingly paradoxical result. Also, regarding more mindful individuals, such a dissociation between duration estimation and passage of time judgments was found, but only when empty intervals were short (4-s). Relatively speaking, more mindful subjects showed an increased overestimation of durations, but felt that time passed more quickly. These results provide further evidence for the dissociation between duration estimation and the feeling of the passage of time. We discuss these results in terms of an alerting effect when empty intervals are short and events are more numerous, which could mediate the effect of dispositional mindfulness. (shrink)

Les dictionnaires et documents, tirés de la littérature ou des archives, qui sont examinés dans cet ouvrage disent plus de mal que de bien de la séduction. La séduction c'est « l'élan qui porte l'un vers l'autre », mais cet élan est dévié par la tromperie. La séduction peut être située dans la polémique de longue durée contre le maquillage et la vanité des femmes. Leon Battista Alberti compare la femme, qui a la déplorable habitude de se maquiller, à l'artiste (...) qui aurait l'habitude, to... (shrink)

It is well known that experts’ opinion and testimony take on a decisive weight in judicial fact-finding, raising issues and perplexities that have long been under scholarly scrutiny. In this paper I argue that expert’s opinions have a much wider impact on legal decision-making. In particular, they may generate a problem that I will call ‘the opacity of law’. A legal text, such as a statute or regulation, becomes opaque if a legal authority is not able to grasp its full (...) linguistic content but is nevertheless in a position to use it, thanks to an expert’ opinion, in legal decision-making. When this occurs, not only do experts contribute to fact-finding but also to determining the content of the law. In the paper I analyse the linguistic and cognitive sources of this phenomenon, its characteristics and troublesome consequences, and the different kinds of opacity that may affect legal decision-making. (shrink)

An important debate in the current literature is whether “all truth-conditional effects of extra-linguistic context can be traced to [a variable at; LM] logical form” (Stanley, ‘Context and Logical Form’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (2000) 391). That is, according to Stanley, the only truth-conditional effects that extra-linguistic context has are localizable in (potentially silent) variable-denoting pronouns or pronoun-like items, which are represented in the syntax/at logical form (pure indexicals like I or today are put aside in this discussion). According to (...) Recanati (‘Unarticulated Constituents’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 25 (2002) 299), extra-linguistic context can have additional truth-conditional effects, in the form of optional pragmatic processes like ‘free enrichment’. This paper shows that Recanati’s position is not warranted, since there is an alternative line of analysis that obviates the need to assume free enrichment. In the alternative analysis, we need Stanley’s variables, but we need to give them the freedom to be or not to be generated in the syntax/present at logical form, a kind of optionality that has nothing to do with the pragmatics-related optionality of free enrichment. (shrink)

According to rule-consequentialism’s moral criterion, a given action is morally right if and only if it complies with an ideal code of rules, regardless of the consequences of that action. Rules are to be assessed by their consequences, not actions. This being so, one of the many accusations that have been made against rule-consequentialism is that it can turn suboptimal decisions into morally right decisions and optimal decisions into morally wrong decisions. After all, in certain circumstances, a rule that has (...) the best consequences overall can require an action that does less good or forbid an action that does more good. This is the core of the original rule-worship objection. However, recently, different versions of rule-consequentialism have been developed in order to address that challenge. This paper focuses on three of them, those offered by Brad Hooker, Susan Wolf, and David Copp. My claim is that their arguments, however ingenious, are unsuccessful, because they are innocuous if the charge is reformulated as it should be. (shrink)

El presente artículo desarrolla un análisis crítico de papel metodológico que desempeña la libre fantasía en Ideas I. Haciendo visible la estrecha relación entre las modalizaciones de conciencia y la estructura noético-noemática de los actos intencionales, se demostrará la necesaria complementariedad de los métodos de las reducciones eidética y fenomenológica para el proyecto de Husserl de una crítica fenomenológica del conocimiento. Con ello se busca poner de relieve que el rendimiento de la fantasía tuvo un impacto metodológico decisivo para la (...) conversión trascendental de la fenomenología. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of communicative intention on action. In Experiment 1 participants were requested to reach towards an object, grasp it, and either simply lift it or lift it with the intent to communicate a meaning to a partner . Movement kinematics were recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics was sensitive to communicative intention. Although the to-be-grasped object remained the same, movements performed for the ‘communicative’ condition (...) were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the ‘individual’ condition. These findings were confirmed in a subsequent experiment in which the communicative condition was compared to a control condition, in which the communicative exchange was prevented. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive pragmatics and current knowledge on how social behavior shapes action kinematics. (shrink)

En su infancia Mohamed Chukri se ve arrastrado por la miseria, la violencia intrafamiliar, consume prostitución y se prostituye, fuma kif, trasnocha en los bares, roba y trabaja con contrabandistas. Todo ello lo narra en la novela El pan a secas (1973). En este artículo se analiza la novela en clave de esperanza/desesperanza. La novela se divide en dos: episodios de infancia (negativos, desesperanza) y de adolescencia (positivos, esperanza recuperada). Resiliencia, libertad y esperanza están íntimamente ligadas.

El presente artículo defiende que las nociones de epojé y de modificación de neutralidad, a pesar de su aparente semejanza, deben mantenerse radicalmente diferenciadas. La razón de fondo es que ambas surgen en el seno de operaciones de la conciencia que son metodológica y jerárquicamente distintas. Para tal efecto, haré una descripción de sus funciones y estructura, de modo que se hagan visibles tanto sus respectivas esferas de aplicación como el alcance operativo de sus procedimientos.

Several legal arguments use the notion of ratio legis in order to sustain a normative conclusion, in particular the argument from analogy and some forms of teleological argumentation. However, determining the ratio is often a difficult and controversial task. In this paper we look firstly at the speech acts typically performed by legal practitioners in order to determine the ratio and, secondly, we take into account the argumentative commitments they undertake in so doing and the argumentative constraints put on them. (...) This will lead us to distinguish different uses of the notion of ratio legis and to ask on what conditions each of them is justified. (shrink)

El presente artículo se propone explorar la noción de mundo ficcional desde la filosofía de Edmund Husserl, destacando la potencialidad de la fenomenología para los campos de la estética y la teoría de la ficción. Para ello, partiré de la descripción de las estructuras sobre las que se erige la vivencia ficcional, que aquí será tratada como una vivencia de fantasía. Bajo este enfoque, el análisis muestra primero la correlación entre conciencia de fantasía y mundo de fantasía, pasando a continuación (...) a explicitar las estructuras de cada uno de los polos de experiencia. Para Husserl, esta correlación se sustenta lógicamente en la doctrina del idealismo trascendental y en su concepción del mundo de fantasía como mundo posible. (shrink)

Este artículo busca establecer en primer lugar una doble distinción: de un lado, entre fantasía y conciencia de imagen; y, por el otro, entre fantasía y conciencia estética, ambas a partir de los trabajos de Edmund Husserl. Las dos series de distinciones se encuentran ligadas una con otra por el especial estatuto fenomenológico que Husserl concede a la imagen, el cual debe ser también sometido a aclaración. El artículo propone tres conclusiones: que la así llamada “conciencia estética” no es resultado (...) de ninguna “epojé”; que la experiencia de la imagen entremezcla percepción y fantasía; y que esta conciencia estética exige como contrapolo a un sujeto que habita en la irrealidad del “como si”. (shrink)

This paper investigates young children's knowledge of scalar implicatures and downward entailment. In previous experimental work, we have shown that young children access the full range of truth-conditions associated with logical words in classical logic, including the disjunction operator, as well as the indefinite article. The present study extends this research in three ways, taking disjunction as a case study. Experiment 1 draws upon the observation that scalar implicatures (SIs) are cancelled (or reversed) in downward entailing (DE) linguistic environments, e.g., (...) in the scope of negation (Chierchia, 2000). Experiment 2 was designed to determine if scalar implicatures are used by children, like adults, to influence the interpretation of disjunction in non-DE contexts, yielding an implicature of exclusivity for disjunction. Whereas adult controls always rejected assertions of the form A or B in positive (non-DE) contexts in which assertions of the form A and B were also true, many children accepted assertions with disjunction in such contexts. To provide an interpretation to the findings from Experiment 2, a new experimental technique was devised and used in Experiment 3. The new technique presents pairs of assertions to children, who are asked to judge which assertion is a ‘better’ description of the context. The findings from Experiment 3 demonstrated children's awareness that A and B is more informative than A or B in positive contexts, where both statements are true. Taken together, the findings of Experiments 2 and 3 are compatible with the view that some children lack the computational resources to apply scalar implicatures when a single assertion is presented alone (see Reinhart, 1999). (shrink)

While scientists and engineers are designing and constructing ever more sophisticated space technology, and computer producers are pursuing a seemingly never ending race to store ever more knowledge on micro chips, western type democracies still live on 200 year old social and political ideas. The apparent disparity between technological innovation and socio?political innovation opens the door for a critical analysis of post modern society. How valid is Adam Smith's social paradigm on the role of self?interest in view of the fact (...) that the social and ecological external effects of the free market economy are threatening the well being of future generations? Can we much longer afford a political system that leaves the social and ecological to inefficient and bureaucratic state authorities undermining democratic virtues like political transparency and individual responsibility? The answer is no. New social paradigms have to be introduced to cope with the ruptures of post modern societies. To avoid suffocation from an overburdened state or the dissolution of society as a coherent and living community and indeed preserve freedom, social and ecological responsibility have to materialise as voluntary individual acts. Social paradigm innovation, it is argued, leads to a complete new role of individuals and institutions in modern society, where self?interest is not identified with egotism, but becomes compatible with altruism. By underlining the individuals role in bringing about change, institutional reforms are not a precondition, but the consequence of social paradigm innovation. A cultural revolution allows for changes of action now and any minute. Corporate cultures, e.g., can straightforwardly assimilate new social paradigms, leading to new forms of organisation, service philosophy, production and cooperation. (shrink)

This paper examines the modes of imperial interactions with Church councils, focusing on the emperor’s participation in episcopal meetings and its representation in late antique sources, both literary and documentary. The author argues that the availability and strategic dissemination of conciliar records could affect, for better or worse, the understanding of the imperial religious policy and attitude towards Church institutions. This is most clearly illustrated by Marcian’s behaviour at Chalcedon, and by the active steps he took to produce an official (...) and imperially endorsed edition of the conciliar acts. The significance of Marcian’s initiatives emerges more clearly when placed in the context of developing practices with respect to conciliar procedure and the circulation of conciliar information. After considering possible precedents in both these fields, the article reconstructs the early circulation and reception of the Chalcedonian acts, focusing particularly on the records of the sixth session, which was presided by the emperor himself. The author discusses the role played by the imperial initiative at the council and in its aftermath, and how it contributed to shape the reception of Marcian’s image as a Christian ruler. (shrink)