Razón, poesía, historia.--La cuestión del estoicismo español.--El querer.

Dibujar el pensamiento de Seneca es dibujar su figura viva, trazar el esquema de su persona. Seneca es un mediador que para alzarse sobre nosotros necesita de nuestra necesidad, pues solo apoyado en nuestra indigencia tiene sentido. Maria Zambrano lleva a cabo un lucido estudio de la figura y significacion del pensador cordobes y presenta una seleccion de sus escritos.

Hilary Putnam is one of the world’s leading philosophers. His highly original and often provocative ideas have set the agenda for a variety of debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His now famous philosophical thought experiments, such as the ‘Twin earth’ and ‘the brains in the vat’ have become part of the established canon in philosophy and cognitive science. _Reading Putnam_ is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of (...) international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including: Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy Putnam’s developing views on perception. Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, _Reading Putnam_ is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each (...) condition [(self-compassion: n = 36, benefit-focused: n = 39) or a control condition (n = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups (p <.001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood (p <.019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed. (shrink)

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

Within the discipline of psychology, the conventional history outlines the development of two fundamental approaches to the scientific study of emotion—“basic emotion” and “appraisal” traditions. In this article, we outline the development of a third approach to emotion that exists in the psychological literature—the “psychological constructionist” tradition. In the process, we discuss a number of works that have virtually disappeared from the citation trail in psychological discussions of emotion. We also correct some misconceptions about early sources, such as work by (...) Darwin and James. Taken together, these three contributions make for a fuller and more accurate account of ideas about emotion during the century stretching from 1855 to just before 1960. (shrink)

Within the discipline of psychology, the conventional history outlines the development of two fundamental approaches to the scientific study of emotion—“basic emotion” and “appraisal” traditions. In this article, we outline the development of a third approach to emotion that exists in the psychological literature—the “psychological constructionist” tradition. In the process, we discuss a number of works that have virtually disappeared from the citation trail in psychological discussions of emotion. We also correct some misconceptions about early sources, such as work by (...) Darwin and James. Taken together, these three contributions make for a fuller and more accurate account of ideas about emotion during the century stretching from 1855 to just before 1960. (shrink)

Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy (...) has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called “analytic and continental” camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and an increasingly large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which “relativism” has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

_Jane and Louise Wilson_ With Essays by Jeremy Millar and Claire Doherty London: Ellipsis, 2000 ISBN 1-84166-027-2 84 pp., inc. 120 b/w photograph.

Probability is the subject of considerable attention by Nagel, who devoted to it several writings. In the 1930s, Nagel put forward his “truth frequency” view of probability intended as a variant of the frequency theory minus the flaws to which this latter was susceptible. This paper illustrates how, according to Nagel, the issue of the meaning of probability should be addressed; Nagel’s criticism of the major interpretations of probability advanced in the literature, and the main traits of his “truth-frequency” theory.

Psychological research on emotion perception anchors heavily on an object perception analogy. We present static “cues,” such as facial expressions, as objects for perceivers to categorize. Yet in the real world, emotions play out as dynamic multidimensional events. Current theoretical approaches and research methods are limited in their ability to capture this complexity. We draw on insights from a predictive coding account of neural activity and a grounded cognition account of concept representation to conceive of emotion perception as a stream (...) of synchronized conceptualizations between two individuals, which is supported and shaped by language. We articulate how this framework can illuminate the fundamental need to study culture, as well as other sources of conceptual variation, in unpacking conceptual synchrony in emotion. We close by suggesting that the conceptual system provides the necessary flexibility to overcome gaps in emotional synchrony. (shrink)

Beginning with a historical overview of relativism, from Pythagoras in ancient Greece to Derrida and postmodernism, Maria Baghramian explores the resurgence of relativism throughout the history of philosophy. She then turns to the arguments for and against the many subdivisions of relativism, including Kuhn and Feyerabend's ideas of relativism in science, Rorty's relativism about truth, and the conceptual relativism of Quine and Putnam. Baghramian questions whether moral relativism leads to moral indifference or even nihilism, and whether feminist epistemology's concerns (...) about the very notion of objectivity can be considered a form of relativism. She concludes the relativism debate by assessing the recent criticisms such as Quine's argument from translation and Davidson's claim that even the motivations behind relativism are unintelligible. Finding these criticisms lacking, Baghramian proposes a moderate form of pluralism which addresses the legitimate worries that give rise to relativism without incurring charges of nihilism or anarchy. (shrink)

Pragmatism, taken not just as a philosophical movement but as a way of addressing problems, strongly influenced the debate on the foundations of probability during the first half of the twentieth century. Upholders of different interpretations of probability such as Hans Reichenbach, Ernest Nagel, Rudolf Carnap, Frank Ramsey, and Bruno de Finetti, acknowledged their debt towards pragmatist philosophers, including Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Clarence Irving Lewis, William Dewey and Giovanni Vailati. In addition, scientist-philosophers like Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henri (...) Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, and Karl Pearson, who heralded a conception of science and knowledge at large that was close to pragmatism, were very influential in that debate. Among the main interpretations of probability – frequentism, propensionism, logicism and subjectivism -, the latter is no doubt the closest to the pragmatist outlook. This paper concentrates on three representatives of the subjective theory, namely Frank Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti and Émile Borel. (shrink)

Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, ‘relativism’ covers views which maintain that—at a level of high abstraction—at least some class of things have properties they have not simpliciter, but only relative to a given framework of assessment, and correspondingly, that the truth of (...) claims attributing these properties holds only once the relevant framework of assessment is specified or supplied. Relativists characteristically insist, furthermore, that if something is only relatively so, then there can be no framework-independent vantage point from which the matter of whether the thing in question is so can be established. Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called ‘analytic and continental’ camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and a still developing large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which ‘relativism’ has been defined, explained, defended and criticized. (shrink)

One of the first to criticize the verifiability theory of meaning embraced by logical empiricists, Reichenbach ties the significance of scientific statements to their predictive character, which offers the condition for their testability. While identifying prediction as the task of scientific knowledge, Reichenbach assigns induction a pivotal role, and regards the theory of knowledge as a theory of prediction based on induction. Reichenbach's inductivism is grounded on the frequency notion of probability, of which he prompts a more flexible version than (...) that of Richard von Mises. Unlike von Mises, Reichenbach attempts to account for single case probabilities, and entertains a restricted notion of randomness, more suitable for practical purposes. Moreover, Reichenbach developed a theory of induction, absent from von Mises's perspective, and argued for the justification of induction. This article outlines the main traits of Reichenbach's inductivism, with special reference to his book Experience and prediction. (shrink)

One of the first to criticize the verifiability theory of meaning embraced by logical empiricists, Reichenbach ties the significance of scientific statements to their predictive character, which offers the condition for their testability. While identifying prediction as the task of scientific knowledge, Reichenbach assigns induction a pivotal role, and regards the theory of knowledge as a theory of prediction based on induction. Reichenbach’s inductivism is grounded on the frequency notion of probability, of which he prompts a more flexible version than (...) that of Richard von Mises. Unlike von Mises, Reichenbach attempts to account for single case probabilities, and entertains a restricted notion of randomness, more suitable for practical purposes. Moreover, Reichenbach developed a theory of induction, absent from von Mises’s perspective, and argued for the justification of induction. This article outlines the main traits of Reichenbach’s inductivism, with special reference to his book Experience and prediction. (shrink)

Most of us are familiar with the phenomenology of mental effort accompanying cognitively demanding tasks, like focusing on the next chess move or performing lengthy mental arithmetic. In this paper, I argue that phenomenology of mental effort poses a novel counterexample to tracking intentionalism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a matter of tracking features of one’s environment in a certain way. I argue that an increase in the phenomenology of mental effort does not accompany a change in any of (...) the following candidate representational contents: representation of externally presented features, e.g. brightness, contrast, and so on representation of task difficulty, representation of the possibility of error, representation of trying to achieve some state of affairs, representation of bodily changes like muscle tension, or representation of change in cognitive resource availability and lost opportunity cost. While tracking intentionalism about some phenomenal experiences like pains might obtain, it does not seem to obtain for all phenomenal experiences. This puts the intentionalist into an uncomfortable position of trying to explain why some phenomenal experiences have representational content and not others. Since many believe that tracking intentionalism or something like it provides the best chance of naturalizing consciousness, these arguments deserve detailed consideration. (shrink)

Scholars have long been intrigued by the Buddha's defining action (karma) as intention. This book explores systematically how intention, agency, and moral psychology were interpreted in all branches of early Theravada thought, paying special attention to the thought of the 5th-century commentator Buddhaghosa.

The purpose of this article is to argue for a position holding that epigenetic responsibility primarily should be a political and not an individual responsibility. Epigenetic is a rapidly growing research field studying regulations of gene expression that do not change the DNA sequence. Knowledge about these mechanisms is still uncertain in many respects, but main presumptions are that they are triggered by environmental factors and life style and, to a certain extent, heritable to subsequent generations, thereby reminding of aspects (...) of Lamarckism. Epigenetic research advances give rise to intriguing challenges for responsibility relations between the society and the individual. Responsibility is commonly understood in a backwards-looking manner, identifying causally responsible actors to blame for a bad outcome. If only a backwards-looking responsibility model is applied, epigenetics might give rise to arduous responsibility ascriptions to individuals for their health and the health of their future descendants. This would put heavy responsibility burdens on actors constrained by unequal social and economic structures. In contrast, a forward-looking responsibility notion takes account of structural conditions and pay attention to who is best placed to do something about conditions contributing to bad outcomes. A forward-looking responsibility notion would partly free disadvantaged individuals from responsibility, and identify actors with power and capacity to do something about structural factors constraining genuine choice. (shrink)

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In (...) particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest. (shrink)

Situating narrative: philosophical and theological context -- Ethical being: the storied self as moral agent -- Reconciled being: narrative and pardon -- Pedagogies of pardon in praxis -- Towards a narrative pedagogy of reconciliation -- Ricoeur's legacy: A Praxis of Peace.

The cohesin complex is best known for its role in sister chromatid cohesion. Over the past few years, it has become apparent that cohesin also regulates gene expression, but the mechanisms by which it does so are unknown. Recently, three groups mapped numerous cohesin-binding sites in mammalian chromosomes and found substantial overlap with the CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF).1-3 CTCF is an insulator protein that blocks enhancer–promoter interactions, and the investigators found that cohesin also contributes to this activity. Thus, these studies demonstrate (...) at least one mechanism by which cohesin can control gene expression. BioEssays 30:715–718, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The effort to define the term “emotion” has a long history in the discipline of psychology. Izard’s survey (2010) canvassed prominent emotion theorists and researchers on their working definitions of emotion. The particular assumptions about emotion reported, as well as the conclusion that the term “emotion” lacks a consensus definition, both have historical precedent. In this commentary, I place Izard’s findings in this historical context and discuss the implications of his survey for the future of emotion research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the responsibility of AI experts for guiding the development of AI in a desirable direction. More specifically, the aim is to answer the following research question: To what extent are AI experts responsible in a forward-looking way for effects of AI technology that go beyond the immediate concerns of the programmer or designer? AI experts, in this paper conceptualised as experts regarding the technological aspects of AI, have knowledge and control of AI (...) technology that non-experts do not have. Drawing on responsibility theory, theories of the policy process, and critical algorithm studies, we discuss to what extent this capacity, and the positions that these experts have to influence the AI development, make AI experts responsible in a forward-looking sense for consequences of the use of AI technology. We conclude that, as a professional collective, AI experts, to some extent, are responsible in a forward-looking sense for consequences of use of AI technology that they could foresee, but with the risk of increased influence of AI experts at the expense of other actors. It is crucial that a diversity of actors is included in democratic processes on the future development of AI, but for this to be meaningful, AI experts need to take responsibility for how the AI technology they develop affects public deliberation. (shrink)

Los pacientes con somatoparafrenia reportan que una extremidad no les pertenece. En filosofía, esta psicopatología motiva la discusión sobre el autopercatamiento, entendido como el sentido de propiedad que acompaña nuestras experiencias mentales. También motiva reflexiones sobre el autopercatamiento corporal; es decir, sobre la experiencia de un miembro como parte del propio cuerpo. Propongo que la somatoparafrenia involucra una dimensión intercorporal anómala. A diferencia de otras patologías de la espacialidad del cuerpo, en la somatoparafrenia se gana alteridad dentro de los límites (...) del cuerpo orgánico: el miembro pertenece a otro. Desarrollo mi propuesta en dos partes: en la primera, retomo discusiones de la filosofía sobre la autopercatamiento corporal usando la somatoparafrenia como ejemplo. En la segunda parte, planteo algunas reflexiones para entender el problema de la alteridad en la somatoparafrenia, y por qué este trastorno puede ubicarse dentro de las discusiones actuales sobre las vivencias intercorporales. (shrink)

The scientist Richard Lovell Edgeworth, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, was a Member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, where he exchanged ideas with other scientists, including James Watt, and was known for his significant mechanical inventions. However, Edgeworth's real interest was education: in this 1788 two-volume work, written with his daughter, the poet Maria Edgeworth, he draws on his own experience of raising twenty children, from which the work derives its authority and innovative character. The work (...) was very influential, and led to his Essays on Professional Education. The two volumes discuss the theories of philosophers and educationalists, while in general arguing for the importance and formative character of early childhood experiences. Volume 1 deals with different areas of childhood education, including play, learning, and obedience and good behaviour. (shrink)

In this article we explore the relationship between semiotic analysis of images and quantitative analysis of vast image corpora, in particular the work produced by Lev Manovich and the Cultural Analytics Lab, called “Media Visualization.” Media Visualization has been chosen as corpus because of its metavisual operation (images are visualized and analyzed by images) and its innovating way of conceiving analysis: by visual instruments. In this paper semiotics is used as an approach to Media Visualization and taken as an object (...) of study as well, especially visual semiotics. In this sense, a comparison between visual semiotics (close reading of small corpora) and quantitative analyses of images (distant reading of vast collections) are conducted from a semiotic point of view. Post-Greimassian semiotics guides this study with respect to the issue of the image-within-an-image and metavisual visualization; Peircean semiotics is employed to explain and develop the notion of diagram. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the topics of trust and expertise from the perspective of political epistemology. In particular, it addresses four main questions: (§1) How should we characterise experts and their expertise? (§2) How can non-experts recognize a reliable expert? (§3) What does it take for non-experts to trust experts? (§4) What problems impede trust in experts?

We argue that philosophers are competent to facilitate public discussion concerning restrictions on human migration across political borders. We also argue that presenting public audiences with a prima facie case for open borders offers a unique opportunity to elucidate important aspects of philosophical reasoning. Finally, we share resources and a lesson plan for those keen to examine the case for open borders with students, or to facilitate public discussion on these issues.

Relativism, an ancient philosophical doctrine, is once again a topic of heated debate. In this book, Maria Baghramian and Annalisa Coliva present the recent arguments for and against various forms of relativism. -/- The first two chapters introduce the conceptual and historical contours of relativism. These are followed by critical investigations of relativism about truth, conceptual relativism, epistemic relativism, and moral relativism. The concluding chapter asks whether it is possible to make sense of relativism as a philosophical thesis. -/- (...) The book introduces readers to the main types of relativism and the arguments in their favor. It also goes beyond the expository material to engage in more detailed critical responses to the key positions and authors under discussion. -/- Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary, Relativism is essential reading for students of philosophy as well as those in related disciplines where relativism is studied, such as anthropology, sociology, and politics. (shrink)

Probability as understood today, namely as a quantitative notion expressible by means of a function ranging in the interval between 0–1, took shape in the mid-17th century, and presents both a mathematical and a philosophical aspect. Of these two sides, the second is by far the most controversial, and fuels a heated debate, still ongoing. After a short historical sketch of the birth and developments of probability, its major interpretations are outlined, by referring to the work of their most prominent (...) representatives. The final section addresses the question of whether any of such interpretations can presently be considered predominant, which is answered in the negative. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to argue for a position holding that epigenetic responsibility primarily should be a political and not an individual responsibility. Epigenetic is a rapidly growing research field studying regulations of gene expression that do not change the DNA sequence. Knowledge about these mechanisms is still uncertain in many respects, but main presumptions are that they are triggered by environmental factors and life style and, to a certain extent, heritable to subsequent generations, thereby reminding of aspects (...) of Lamarckism. Epigenetic research advances give rise to intriguing challenges for responsibility relations between the society and the individual. Responsibility is commonly understood in a backwards-looking manner, identifying causally responsible actors to blame for a bad outcome. If only a backwards-looking responsibility model is applied, epigenetics might give rise to arduous responsibility ascriptions to individuals for their health and the health of their future descendants. This would put heavy responsibility burdens on actors constrained by unequal social and economic structures. In contrast, a forward-looking responsibility notion takes account of structural conditions and pay attention to who is best placed to do something about conditions contributing to bad outcomes. A forward-looking responsibility notion would partly free disadvantaged individuals from responsibility, and identify actors with power and capacity to do something about structural factors constraining genuine choice. (shrink)