El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar el significado del papel de la madre, en el desarrollo social, para tres iniciativas de la Renovación de la Pedagogía: la Institución Libre de Enseñanza, las Escuelas del Ave María y la Escuela Moderna de Barcelona. Las fuentes primarias, analizadas para alcanzar dicho fin, son publicaciones de revistas con fines socioeducativos, en su gran mayoría. Y nos advierten de un discurso dispar entre los tres proyectos. Determinando como conclusión principal que las propuestas examinadas (...) tuvieron sus propios planteamientos sobre el significado de madre, pero todas ellas sabían de su importancia como figura educadora. (shrink)

This collection of ten essays elucidates some of the more challenging aspects of Anscombe’s work and affirms her reputation as one of our most original ...

Our memories elicit, in us, both beliefs about what the external world was like in the past, and beliefs about what our own past experience of it was like in the past. What explains the power of memories to do that? I tackle this question by offering an account of the content of our memories. According to this account, our memories are ‘token-reflexives’, in that they represent their own causal origin. My main contention will be that our memories are able (...) to provide us with evidence for the two types of beliefs due to the self-referential nature of their content. First, I will put forward a series of thought-experiments intended to raise several intuitions about the veridicality of memories. Next, I will introduce the view that memories are token-reflexives, and I will motivate it by pointing out that the view accommodates the relevant intuitions. And, then, I will return to the two types of beliefs prompted by our memories, and argue that conceiving memories as token-reflexives allows us to explain why memory has the power to elicit the two types of beliefs in us. (shrink)

This paper introduces and discusses three models of future: a determinist model, a stochastic model, and the model of True Prophetic Knowledge. All three models coexist in natural languages and are represented both in their grammatical systems and in the text-building discourse strategies speakers and authors apply to.

Musical flutes constructed from bird bone and mammoth ivory begin to appear in the archaeological record from around 40,000 years ago. Due to the different physical demands of acquiring and working with these source materials in order to produce a flute, researchers have speculated about the significance—aesthetic or otherwise—of the use of mammoth ivory as a raw material for flutes. I argue that biological signaling theory provides a theoretical basis for the proposition that mammoth ivory flute production is a signal (...) of increasing social differentiation in Upper Palaeolithic human life. (shrink)

You think you're human. But what does that mean? How can humanity be defined? Felipe Fernandez-Armesto takes us on an enlightening and provocative journey through the history of humankind to reveal the challenges to our most fundamental belief - that we are, and have always been, human. Fernandez-Armesto investigates advances in artificial intelligence and genetics, and asks what these mean for the future of human values, human rights, and the defence of human dignity. The book illustrates how our concept of (...) humankind has changed over time and how our current understanding of this has been shaken by new challenges from science and philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of how existential phenomenology has influenced qualitative research methods across a range of disciplines across the social, health, educational, and psychological sciences. It focuses specifically on how the concepts of “existential structures,” or “existentials”—such as selfhood, temporality, spatiality, affectivity, and embodiment—have been used in qualitative research. After providing a brief introduction to what qualitative research is and why philosophers should be interested in it, the chapter provides clear, straightforward examples of how qualitative researchers have used (...) existentials to analyze qualitative data and design qualitative studies. The chapter is intended to introduce philosophers to existential approaches to phenomenological qualitative research, with the aim of facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. (shrink)

When it comes to communication of pain, Anna Wierzbicka (2012) takes issue with the scientific definition of pain and turns to natural semantic metalanguage (NSM). However, “pain” is not one of the 64 semantic primes in NSM, and therefore Wierzbicka suggests words such as “body,” “bad,” and “don’t want.” This blurs the boundaries between pain and other aversive sensations and it also challenges certain clinical features of the pain experience.

Memories are mental states with a number of interesting features. One of those features seems to be their having an intentional object. After all, we commonly say that memories are about things, and that a subject represents the world in a certain way by virtue of remembering something. It is unclear, however, what sorts of entities constitute the intentional objects of memory. In particular, it is not clear whether those are mind-independent entities in the world or whether they are mental (...) entities of some kind. The purpose of this chapter is to map the different positions on this issue, and to highlight the virtues and difficulties for each of the options. In Section 2, I will specify the question of what the intentional objects of memory are by clarifying the relevant notions of memory and intentional object. In Section 3, I will motivate the significance of identifying the intentional objects of memory by exploring the relations between, on the one hand, the intentionality of memory and, on the other hand, the phenomenology and the epistemology of memory. In Section 4, I will consider two natural candidates for being the intentional objects of memory, namely, worldly entities and mental entities, and I will raise some concerns for each of the two candidates. A promising alternative will emerge, in Section 5, as preserving the virtues of the two original candidates while avoiding their difficulties. The alternative will concern a certain combination of worldly and mental entities; a combination that involves both causal and truth-making relations. I will conclude by sketching how the alternative candidate can shed some light on the phenomenological and epistemological issues raised in the third section. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to introduce a new concept of “pain-related bodily doubt,” which complements current concepts currently in use, such as pain-related fear, pain catastrophizing, and pain self-efficacy. This new concept, adapted from recent philosophical work on illness experience, has the potential to positively contribute to pain research and clinical practice by providing a vocabulary for clinicians and patients to discuss implicit or tacit dimensions of pain-related experiences.

Fernandez examines the lives and ideas of sociologists who shaped the main contours of the discipline. Weber, Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel fashioned the early ideas and approaches of sociology, and their ideas are still central to the discipline. Veblen, Mead, Goffman, and Berger added crucial conceptual approaches; they also serve to underscore the length and breadth of Sociology as a science.

Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy grew out of an interdisciplinary conference on the Upper Palaeolithic, “Digging Deeper: Archaeological and Philosophical Perspectives”, held on Miami Beach, Florida, in December 2017. The previous decade had seen increasing numbers of publications on topics of interest to both philosophers and archaeologists, so the time was ripe for a conference which served to generate constructive dialogue between researchers from both disciplines. Themes discussed included art, music, the mind, symbols, mortuary practices, and archaeological methodology. This volume (...) draws from several contributors to that conference as well as other leading researchers at the forefront of the intersection of archaeology and philosophy. Its scope is expanded from the Upper Palaeolithic to archaeological research in general—adopting a broad conception inviting many perspectives from philosophy and interdisciplinary evolutionary studies to the table—and is organized by topics into four sections: Theory and Inference; Interdisciplinary Connections; Cognition, Language and Normativity; Ethical Issues. (shrink)

In the current context of widespread environmental collapse, ecological grief—the sense of loss that arises from experiencing environmental destruction—has become a burgeoning topic of inquiry across psychology, geography, and anthropology. The central challenge in the study of ecological grief is that its theoretical foundations remain underdeveloped. Recent discussions in philosophy of emotions elucidate that a central element in this theoretical challenge is determining what the object of ecological grief is. In turn, our understanding of the object of ecological grief goes (...) hand in hand with our understanding of the nature of ecological grief. This paper develops a phenomenological analysis of cross‐cultural subjective reports that identifies crucial themes in the experience of ecological grief. This phenomenological analysis reveals the object of ecological grief as the loss of the life possibilities that are sustained by dwelling. The resulting view is that ecological grief corresponds to a crisis in dwelling—a disturbance in the very way we inhabit our home environment. (shrink)

En el Nuevo Testamento griego, el término "kalós" (hermoso, bello) aparece 99 veces y el término "agathós" (bueno), 104. Casi con la misma frecuencia. Se ha traducido y se traduce "kalós" por bueno, lo cual no es exacto. Parece importante retener que Cristo hubiera utilizado tantas veces el concepto de belleza o hermosura, y que invitara al hombre a hacer obras hermosas, a realizar la belleza en su vida. Por eso, según el título de este libro (de 285 págs.), se (...) trata de la belleza no solo que corresponde a la persona de Cristo, sino también la que él comunica a las demás personas, la que se refiere a nosotros por ser obras suyas. Jesús habla de obras "kalá" (hermosas), de frutos "kaloùs" (hermosos) o de corazón "kalê kaì agathê" (hermoso y bueno). La Antigüedad griega también hablaba del hombre "kalòkagathós". Es verdad que todo lo bello es bueno, y viceversa, pero hay que matizar. El propio Jesús se autodenomina "kalós", hermoso, al hablar de sí mismo en el Evangelio diciendo que es el pastor bello. Una palabra clave del presente libro es “razonar”. Los Evangelios son muy escuetos, dicen solo lo imprescindible, fueron vertidos además en otro idioma distinto del que habló Jesús. Hay aspectos que no son comprendidos si no se tiene en cuenta lo razonable. Para comprender el Evangelio no basta con atender al estricto dato teológico contenido en sus textos, tan condensados, sino que es preciso hacer al mismo tiempo una sutil labor filosófica que permita descubrir lo que implícitamente se contiene en ellos. Esta necesaria tarea —liberada de todo fundamentalismo— muestra lo que es más razonable para saber quién y cómo es Cristo. Por ello el libro lleva como subtítulo "Una comprensión filosófica del Evangelio". Y lo hace sirviéndose principalmente de la filosofía de Marías y Ortega, lo cual —a pesar de ser el instrumento intelectual que mejor permite comprender el Cristianismo— no se había realizado todavía. Gracias a ese método, lo primero que se comprende es precisamente la extraordinaria belleza de Cristo y la que comunica a sus discípulos y a quien se hace su servidor, llamado por San Pablo "kalòs", hermoso. Circula la idea, incluso en algunos ambientes católicos, de que la razón y, por supuesto, la filosofía no son aptas para comprender el Evangelio. Este libro, más filosófico que teológico, reivindica el insoslayable papel de la razón, de la filosofía, de lo razonable, para comprender los Evangelios, y debe leerse como un "ensayo de Cristología según la razón vital". Sus consideraciones están hechas a la luz de la razón. No de la razón abstracta, propia del racionalismo, que poco o nada tiene que ver con ella, sino de la razón vital; de la razón sin más. De la razón que conduce a la fe; de la fe que conduce a la razón. El dato histórico, irrefragable, de los cuatro Evangelios postulaba que se estudiara iluminándolo con la razón, sin la cual la fe queda mutilada y coja, abstracta, sin luz propia. Pero la razón había sido frecuentemente vista en ámbitos clericales con malos ojos, con cierta sospecha, sin darse cuenta de que, si es auténtica —y no algo reduccionista—, ilumina, clarifica, disipa las tinieblas. Especialmente porque, en última instancia, la razón procede del Logos, Cristo, la Luz, la Razón por antonomasia, fuente y origen de ella. En el Prólogo de San Juan se unen la razón y la vida; se trata no de una razón abstracta, sino vital. El "Lógos" es entonces la Razón vital. Lejos de ser enemiga de la vida, como sostenían los irracionalistas, la razón es una función vital. Quien recibe al "Lógos" con fe fundada en el amor debe esforzarse por intentar entenderlo con la razón, por buscar su inteligencia. El "Lógos", Cristo, ilumina a quien lo recibe para que se produzca esa comprensión. Los griegos definían al hombre como "zôon lógon échon", el viviente que tiene logos, que tiene razón. Cristo se presenta como el Logos, la Vida ("Zoé") que ha creado a su imagen y semejanza a ese viviente que tiene logos. Luego la razón no se debe subestimar o despreciar, es algo divino; Dios, fuente y origen de toda razón, la Razón misma, desea ser comprendido mediante ella, depositada en cada hombre. «Si la Sabiduría es Dios, el verdadero filósofo es el que ama a Dios», escribe San Agustín. Porque el filósofo es el que ama la Sabiduría, Dios. Jesús dice que «la Sabiduría se ha justificado por sus obras», que «la Sabiduría se ha justificado por todos sus hijos». Los hijos de la Sabiduría, de Cristo, la aman, la justifican, la acreditan, la razonan porque son filósofos. Y la filosofía, el amor a la Sabiduría, es absolutamente necesaria e imprescindible para comprender a Cristo y su Evangelio, que siempre enseña lo razonable. (shrink)

Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical (...) licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture. (shrink)

The article proposes to further develop the ideas of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis by including into evolutionary research an analysis of phenomena that occur above the organismal level. We demonstrate that the current Extended Synthesis is focused more on individual traits (genetically or non-genetically inherited) and less on community system traits (synergetic/organizational traits) that characterize transgenerational biological, ecological, social, and cultural systems. In this regard, we will consider various communities that are made up of interacting populations, and for which the (...) individual members can belong to the same or to different species. Examples of communities include biofilms, ant colonies, symbiotic associations resulting in holobiont formation, and human societies. The proposed model of evolution at the level of communities revises classic theorizing on the major transitions in evolution by analyzing the interplay between community/social traits and individual traits, and how this brings forth ideas of top-down regulations of bottom-up evolutionary processes (collaboration of downward and upward causation). The work demonstrates that such interplay also includes reticulate interactions and reticulate causation. In this regard, we exemplify how community systems provide various non-genetic ‘scaffoldings’, ‘constraints’, and ‘affordances’ for individual and sociocultural evolutionary development. Such research complements prevailing models that focus on the vertical transmission of heritable information, from parent to offspring, with research that instead focusses on horizontal, oblique and even reverse information transmission, going from offspring to parent. We call this reversed information transfer the ‘offspring effect’ to contrast it from the ‘parental effect’. We argue that the proposed approach to inheritance is effective for modelling cumulative and distributed developmental process and for explaining the biological origins and evolution of language. (shrink)

This paper explores the hypothesis that proper names serve as anchors identifying the individuals in the possible or real world. This hypothesis is tested on Old Icelandic narratives. A prominent feature of Old Icelandic sagas is that the narrative matter is not quite new. A Saga is reliable iff it refers to the events relevant for its audience and accepted as true by the whole community. I argue that proper names must be regarded as references to the background knowledge of (...) the medieval audience. I follow two contemporary Sagas based on the fresh events and show that proper names in a Saga mind were arranged in form of a database, each type of a personal designation having its charachteristic text-building profile. The form of the name and its frequency in the Saga are linked with the rank of the character. The high number of people mentioned in the Sagas is explained by the fact that the Sagas aimed at describing the real world, where the names of the individuals and the events they were involved cross-identified each other. Every character had its rigid identifiers. The total amount of propria is always higher than the number of active figures. I classify the Saga characters into five ranks and discuss their information-structural profiles. (shrink)

El artículo propone una contribución al debate contemporáneo sobre el futuro de la educación, enmarcado en las discusiones entre la escuela crítica de J. Habermas y el transhumanismo de S. Sorgner. Se somete a crítica, desde una perspectiva crítica y decolonial, los olvidos y omisiones de las condiciones materiales en las cuales se realizan las relaciones de enseñanza/aprendizaje. En términos metodológicos optamos por una hermenéutica crítica y democrática que nos permitió diseñar un cuadro propositivo de ‘Dimensiones de transformación’. Estas pueden (...) contribuir en la democratización y universalización de las educaciones futuras, a través de la definición de cuatro dimensiones claves: ‘Relaciones con la comunidad y la otredad’, ‘Saberes y sentires éticos y políticos’, ‘Inclusión de agentes invisibilizados’ y ‘Herramientas de transformación social’. (shrink)

Pannekoek, Lenin, and the future of Marxist philosophy -- Note on the text -- Introduction -- Marxism -- Middle class materialism -- Dietzgen -- Mach -- Avenarius -- Lenin -- The criticism -- Natural science -- Materialism -- Plekhanov's views -- The Russian revolution -- The proletarian revolution.

Self-injury is a perilous and increasingly common behavior that is particularly prevalent among youth. Nonetheless, there is a deep-rooted public stigma towards people who self-injure. Consequently, people who engage in self-injury are reluctant to seek professional help or disclose their experiences to others. This article aims to combat stigma and promote help-seeking behavior by debunking the common myths surrounding self-injury in the Malaysian context. Specifically, this article aims to serve as an eye-opener for Malaysian counselors and other mental health professionals (...) to improve their multicultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes when working with those who self-injure. (shrink)

Feminist reflections on the sexual division of labour have given rise to a body of knowledge on the ethics of care from different disciplines, including philosophy, in which outstanding contributions to the topic have been formulated. This approach is applicable to the analysis of any phenomenon and particularly that of disasters. As various investigations have highlighted, the consequences on the population throughout all of a disaster’s phases (prevention, emergency, and reconstruction) require an analysis of differentiated vulnerabilities based on gender and (...) other identity categories, such as social class, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual identity, etc. The interrelation between all these variables gives rise to differentiated impacts that cannot be ignored in catastrophic contexts, where survival and sustaining life are at stake, so care becomes a central issue. Research on the topic has also identified that, along with the analysis of social vulnerability, we must consider the capacity for agency, both individual and collective, where care is once again of vital importance. Considering the gender approach and its multiple intersections is thus a fundamental theoretical-practical proposal for the study of disasters from philosophy, as it implies an unavoidable epistemic, ontological, and ethical reflection in the face of risk reduction. (shrink)

In contrast to the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics is not yet based on a generally accepted conceptual foundation. It is proposed here that the missing principle may be identified through the observation that all knowledge in physics has to be expressed in propositions and that therefore the most elementary system represents the truth value of one proposition, i.e., it carries just one bit of information. Therefore an elementary system can only give a definite result in one specific measurement. The (...) irreducible randomness in other measurements is then a necessary consequence. For composite systems entanglement results if all possible information is exhausted in specifying joint properties of the constituents. (shrink)

This collection takes stock of J.M. Coetzee's impact from a number of interesting angles, Including animals, sexuality, race, and reason. The time is truly ripe for such a volume.

In this chapter the debate between Habermas and Rorty on the issue of relativism is discussed critically. The developments in Rorty's position are pointed out, for example, his current acceptance of the epithet “relativist” against his earlier rejection of this self‐description in view of his denial that a pragmatist like himself has any, including a relativist, epistemology. Attention is also paid to Rorty's current denial of the relevance of the idea of “metaphors of making rather than finding” for this debate, (...) against his earlier espousal of this distinction. His main effort is to create a vocabulary that might transcend the obsolete distinctions of “Platonism” such as truth–falsity, rational–irrational and subjective–objective. In contrast to this effort lurks Habermas's unmasking of the undeniable and unavoidable performative contradiction in Rorty's work, as well as his argument that Rorty indeed fails to develop a “new vocabulary”: but rather succumbs to the well‐known social Darwinism of the nineteenth century. The author shows why Habermas comes out of this debate much better than Rorty. (shrink)

Agency is a power, but what is it a power to do? The tradition presents us with three main answers: (1) that agency is a power to affect one’s own will, consequent upon which act further events ensue, beginning with the movement of a part of one's body; (2) that agency is a power to affect one’s own body, consequent upon which act further events ensue, beginning with the movement of an object that one touches; and (3) that agency is (...) a power to affect that material upon which one brings one's action to bear---e.g. the apple one is peeling (with a knife in one's hand). These three answers correspond to three increasingly expansive conceptions of the province of human agency. I refer to them, respectively, as volitionalism, corporealism and materialism. Only the first two are seriously considered in contemporary action theory. Favoring the third, and hoping to sharpen the conflict between the third and the first, I criticize the second. Corporealism has been a popular position—arguably, the default position in the philosophy of action—since Donald Davidson’s classic paper “Agency” (1971). Although it seems to occupy a sensible middle ground between volitionalism and materialism, corporealism is, I argue, indefensible: it shares the vulnerabilities of both its two rivals, without possessing the strengths of either. Nevertheless, reflection on corporealism lights the road to materialism, which, in the end, is the only possible alternative to volitionalism. (shrink)

Anscombe holds that a proper account of intentional action must exhibit “a ‘form’ of description of events.” But what does that mean? To answer this question, I compare the method of Anscombe’s Intention with that of Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic—another classic work of analytic philosophy that consciously opposes itself to psychological explanations. On the one hand, positively, I aim to identify and elucidate the kind of account of intentional action that Anscombe attempts to provide. On the other hand, negatively, I (...) hope to dispel the canard that Anscombe’s opposition to the causal theory of action is a product of “behaviorism.”. (shrink)

The conclusion of practical reasoning is commonly said to rest upon a diverse pair of representations—a “major” and a “minor” premise—the first of which concerns the end and the second, the means. Modern and contemporary philosophers writing on action and practical reasoning tend to portray the minor premise as a “means-end belief”—a belief about, as Michael Smith puts it, “the ways in which one thing leads to another,” or, as John McDowell puts it, “what can be relied on to bring (...) about what.” On this point there is little difference between followers of Davidson and followers of Anscombe, or between those who invoke Hume’s legacy and those who invoke Aristotle’s. But Aristotle himself held a very different position. According to him, the minor premise concerns particulars, a sphere controlled by perception. The perception of particulars—that is, of the really-existing people and things confronted in the field of action—plays no essential role in the modern account of rational agency. Because it does not, the modern account fails to explain how one could act for a reason, or how practical reasoning could deliver any conclusion. (shrink)