In this passage, Zavaleta describes the connections between the moment of real subsumption, social totalisation, the production of social-scientific knowledge that takes the resultant totality as its object, including Marxist theory, and finally, the emergence of a broad intersubjectivity with the capacity to become a revolutionary historical actor.

Como muy bien lo dice el autor, su interesante libro fue fruto de una discusión a mitad del camino del último gobierno de 6 años que, en la multiplicidad de ensayos institucionales postdictadura, ha tenido el país: el de Ricardo Lagos. Este es un tema de debate en todos los países que han adoptado un sistema económico de más o menos libre mercado, y no lo es en los demás porque en ellos no se discute lo que sus gobiernos (...) hacen.Finalmente, como se recordará, dicho período presidencial concluy.. (shrink)

This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely ‘apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official (...) establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole. Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime. (shrink)

This text is an introduction to the new English translation of critical theorist René Zavaleta Mercado’s Towards a History of the National-Popular in Bolivia: 1879–1980. It surveys principal themes in the book and discusses why Zavaleta is a pertinent thinker for the global South and capitalist periphery today.

René Zavaleta set out to deepen the explanation of the history of Bolivia by developing a set of ideas about long-term structures of pre-Hispanic and colonial origin and their forms of overlap. This paper analyses the conceptual structure of Zavaleta’s proposal and the place of history within it.

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

This dissertation argues for Semantic Variance, the thesis that nearly every utterance is such that there is no proposition that more than one languge user takes to be that utterance's truth-conditional content. I argue that Semantic Variance is problematic for standard theories concerning the nature of communication, the epistemic significance of ordinary disputes, the semantics of speech reports, and the nature of linguistic competence. In response to the problems arising from the truth of Semantic Variance, I develop new accounts of (...) the transmission of relevant information, ordinary disputes, and the semantics of speech reports. Towards the end of the dissertation I outline a pluralistic account about the nature of communication and linguistic competence. (shrink)

This paper develops a puzzle about non-merely-verbal disputes. At first sight, it would seem that a dispute over the truth of an utterance is not merely verbal only if there is a proposition that the parties to the dispute take the utterance under dispute to express, which one of the parties accepts and the other rejects. Yet, as I argue, it is extremely rare for ordinary disputes over an utterance’s truth to satisfy this condition, in which case non-merely verbal disputes (...) are extremely rare. After examining various responses to the puzzle, I outline a solution using the framework of truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

Say that an audience understands a given utterance perfectly only if she correctly identifies which proposition (or propositions) that utterance expresses. In ideal circumstances, the participants in a conversation will understand each other’s utterances perfectly; however, even if they do not, they may still understand each other’s utterances at least in part. Although it is plausible to think that the phenomenon of partial understanding is very common, there is currently no philosophical account of it. This paper offers such an account. (...) Along the way, I argue against two seemingly plausible accounts which use Stalnaker’s notion of common ground and Lewisian subject matters, respectively. (shrink)

If Amelia utters ‘Brad ate a salad in 2005’ assertorically, and she is speaking literally and sincerely, then I can infer that Amelia believes that Brad ate a salad in 2005. This paper discusses what makes this kind of inference truth-preserving. According to the baseline picture, my inference is truth-preserving because, if Amelia is a competent speaker, she believes that the sentence she uttered means that Brad ate a salad in 2005; thus, if Amelia believes that that sentence is true, (...) then she must believe that Brad ate a salad in 2005. I argue that this view is not correct; on pain of irrationality, normal speakers can’t have specific beliefs about the meaning of the sentences they utter. I propose a new account, relying on the view that epistemically responsible speakers utter sentences assertorically only if they believe all the propositions which they think those sentences might mean. (shrink)

According to standard assumptions in semantics, ordinary users of a language have implicit beliefs about the truth-conditions of sentences in that language, and they often agree on those beliefs. For example, it is assumed that if Anna and John are both competent users of English and the former utters ‘grass is green’ in conversation with the latter, they will both believe that that sentence is true if and only if grass is green. These assumptions play an important role in an (...) intuitively compelling picture of communication, according to which successful communication through literal assertoric utterances is normally effected thanks to our shared beliefs about the truth-conditions of the sentences uttered in the course of the conversation. Against these standard assumptions, this paper argues that the participants in a conversation rarely have the same beliefs about the truth-conditions of the sentences involved in a linguistic interaction. More precisely, it argues for Variance, the thesis that nearly every utterance is such that there is no proposition which more than one language user believes to be that utterance’s truth-conditional content. If Variance is true, we must reject the standard picture of communication. Towards the end of the paper I identify three ways in which ordinary conversations can be communication-like despite the truth of Variance and argue that the most natural amendments to the standard picture fail to explain them. (shrink)

I was first taken to Mr Gurdjieff's flat at a time very different from the present. Paris during the war, under German occupation, was in the grip of the ...

Indirect speech reports can be true even if they attribute to the speaker the saying of something weaker than what she in fact expressed, yet not all weakenings of what the speaker expressed yield true reports. For example, if Anna utters ‘Bob and Carla passed the exam’, we can accurately report her as having said that Carla passed the exam, but we can not accurately report her as having said that either it rains or it does not, or that either (...) Carla passed the exam or pandas are cute. This paper offers an analysis of speech reports that distinguishes weakenings of what the speaker expressed that yield true reports from weakenings that do not. According to this analysis, speech reports are not only sensitive to the informational content of what the speaker expressed, but also to the possibilities a speaker raises in making an utterance. As I argue, this analysis has significant advantages over its most promising competitors, including views based on work by Barwise and Perry : 668–691, 1981), views appealing to recent work on the notion of content parthood by Fine :199–226, 2016) and Yablo, and Richard’s : 605–616, 1998) proposal appealing to structured propositions. (shrink)

A dual-language edition presenting Descartes's original Latin text of his greatest work, with a facing-page authoritative English translation.

The propositional view of communication states that every literal assertoric utterance of an indicative sentence expresses a proposition, and the audience understands those utterances only if she entertains the proposition(s) the speaker expressed. According to an important objection due to Ray Buchanan, the propositional view is ill‐equipped to handle meaning underdeterminacy. Using resources from situation semantics and MacFarlane's nonindexical contextualism, this article develops a view of literal communication close to the propositional view which overcomes Buchanan's underdeterminacy considerations while accounting for (...) the kind of indifference that typically characterizes speakers' intentions. (shrink)

Hydrogen is troublesome in any periodic table classification. This being so it may as well be placed in a position that confers desirable attributes to the arrangement of the elements, while notionally recognising its lineage to the group 1 alkali metals and the group 17 halogens. Since the noble gases bridge the halogens and the alkali metals, and hydrogen encompasses the transition from the alkali metals to the halogens, there is more to the idea of hydrogen over helium. (Meyer 1870, (...) p. 357) (Proust 1927, p. 559). (shrink)

According to the Kripke-Putnam orthodoxy, a term like 'water' refers to samples of the same substance as the items on the basis of which the term was introduced. However, observations due to Needham and Leslie cast doubt on the idea that there is a uniquely privileged notion of substance relevant to the determination of reference, in which case it would seem at best indeterminate what the word `water' refers to. In response to this problem, Gómez-Torrente has argued that there is (...) a privileged notion of substance that plays a role in the determination of reference, namely, the ordinary notion of substance. This paper argues that Gómez-Torrente's proposal is not successful. Contrary to what Gómez-Torrente supposes, there is no uniquely privileged ordinary notion of substance; rather, there are many notions of substance compatible with the meaning of 'substance' none of which seems privileged over the rest. (shrink)

I argue that inferences from highly probabilifying racial generalizations are not solely objectionable because acting on such inferences would be problematic, or they violate a moral norm, but because they violate a distinctively epistemic norm. They involve accepting a proposition when, given the costs of a mistake, one is not adequately justified in doing so. First I sketch an account of the nature of adequate justification—practical adequacy with respect to eliminating the ~p possibilities from one’s epistemic statespace. Second, I argue (...) that inferences based on demographic generalizations tend to disproportionately expose group members to the risks associated with mistakenly assuming stereotypical propositions, and so magnify the wrong involved in relying on such inferences without adequate justification. (shrink)

The relationship between phenomenology and the sciences is of complex nature. In particular, the transcendental phenomenological position seems to promote skeptical reservations about the scientific attitude. Phenomenological anthropology and psychology, however, are an exception. The work of the Spanish philosopher Javier San Martin addresses the relationship of Husserlian phenomenology to these two particular sciences. In this paper, the work of Navarrese will be revisited as an occasion to reflect on the relationship between phenomenology and the sciences. In the first part, (...) San Martin’s philosophical approach is presented and put in relation to its counterpart, namely ratiovitalism, which has dominated phenomenological research in the Spanish-speaking world throughout the last decades. The second part is devoted to the question of whether phenomenological transcendentalism is compatible with anthropological research. It also describes San Martin’s contribution to cultural philosophy. The relationship between phenomenology and psychology is discussed in the third part. San Martin develops a critical account of empiricist psychology which he confronts with his proposal for a ’posttranscendental’ psychology that is based on the critique of psychologism and representationalism. The last section compares San Martin’s idea of anthropological and psychological science with other forms of scientific theory which contribute to phenomenological methodology in empirical research. (shrink)

Desde o ano de 1643, Descartes (1596-1650) e a princesa Elizabeth (1618-1680) já trocavam cartas a respeito da geometria, da metafísica e até da física cartesiana. Todavia, no ano de 1645, por conta de um grave estado melancólico da princesa, houve uma intensa correspondência entre ambos. À princípio, o debate se mantinha em torno das condições especificas da princesa. O tema central girava em torno de questões fisiológicas e morais (ou psicofisiológicas). À medida, porém, em que a troca de correspondência (...) se intensificava, o debate ia tornando-se cada vez mais teórico, passando pela discussão da Vida Beata, de Sêneca, até forçar Descartes a apresentar os primeiros esboços de sua própria concepção moral. Dessa troca de correspondência, escolhemos duas cartas de setembro de 1645: uma do filósofo a Elizabeth (carta CDIII) e outra da princesa a Descartes carta (CDVI). (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

The article Disagreement lost, written by Martín Abreu Zavaleta, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 16 September 2020 without open access. The copyright of the article changed on 18 September 2020 to © The Author 2020 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution.

Although inclusion in formal value chains extends the prospect of improving the livelihoods of rural small-scale producers, such a step is often contingent on compliance with internationally-promoted food safety standards. Limited research has addressed the challenges this represents for small rural producers who, grounded in culturally-embedded food safety conceptions, face difficulties in complying. We address this gap here through a multiple case study involving four public school feeding programs that source meals from local rural providers in the Bolivian Altiplan. Institutional (...) logics theory is used to describe public food safety regulations and to compare them to food safety conceptions in the local indigenous Aymara rural setting. We identify a value-based conflict that leads to non-compliance of formal food safety rules that jeopardizes the participation of small farmers in the market. These include: partial adoption of formal rules; selective adoption of convenient rules; and ceremonial adoption to avoid compliance. Decoupling strategies allow local actors to largely disregard the formal food safety regulations while accommodating traditional cultural practices and continuing to access the market. However, these practices put the long-term sustainability of the farmers’ participation in potentially favorable opportunities at risk. (shrink)

Se presenta un estudio sobre las razones de profesores de matemáticas en servicio para estudiar una Maestría en Ciencias en Matemática Educativa. La investigación fue realizada analizando expedientes de cuatro procesos de admisión. Se consideraron 316 casos de los años 2018-2021. Los participantes respondieron en entrevista “¿Por qué decidiste estudiar la Maestría en Ciencias en Matemática Educativa?” Los resultados indican que buscar su desarrollo profesional fue la razón más declarada; esta predominancia se mantuvo (excepto en 2019); otras razones populares fueron (...) la modalidad del posgrado, el prestigio de la institución y su gusto por la enseñanza de la matemática. (shrink)

Several authors have recently suggested that moral factors and norms `encroach' on the epistemic, and because of salient parallels to pragmatic encroachment views in epistemology, these suggestions have been dubbed `moral encroachment views'. This paper distinguishes between variants of the moral encroachment thesis, pointing out how they address different problems, are motivated by different considerations, and are not all subject to the same objections. It also explores how the family of moral encroachment views compare to classical pragmatic encroachment accounts.

Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

Presentamos 2 casos de docentes de matemáticas activos, mientras estudian una Maestría en Matemática Educativa en línea y asincrónica; y las complicaciones que vivieron con el cierre de las escuelas donde imparten clases debido a la pandemia del COVID-19. El cambio de clases presenciales a clases en línea les exigió aprender nuevas herramientas y desarrollar nuevas habilidades, obligándolos a pasar más tiempo preparando sus clases y menos tiempo en sus estudios de maestría. El resultado fue que, en lugar de graduarse (...) en 4 semestres, los estudiantes tardaron 6 semestres en completar su investigación y escribir su tesis. (shrink)

Some, but not all, of the mistakes a person makes when acting in apparently necessary self-defense are reasonable: we take them not to violate the rights of the apparent aggressor. I argue that this is explained by duties grounded in agents' entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by a social signaling norm, and offer some moral constraints on the form such a norm can (...) take. (shrink)

The Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, is the most widely studied of all Descartes' writings. This authoritative translation by John Cottingham, taken from the much acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of the Philosophical Writings of Descartes, is based upon the best available texts and presents Descartes' central metaphysical writings in clear, readable modern English. As well as the complete text of the Meditations, the reader will find a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies (which were originally (...) published with the Meditations) containing Descartes' replies to his critics. These extracts, specially selected for the present volume, indicate the main philosophical difficulties which occurred to Descartes' contemporaries and show how Descartes developed and clarified his arguments in response. This edition contains a new comprehensive introduction to Descartes' philosophy by John Cottingham and the classic introductory essay on the Meditations by Bernard Williams. (shrink)

Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder in which an individual is unable to speak in certain social situations though may speak normally in other settings (Hua & Major, 2016 ). Selective mutism in adults is rare, though people with this condition might have other methods of communicating their needs outside of verbal communication. Healthcare professionals rely on a patient’s ability to communicate to establish if they have decision-making capacity. This commentary responds to a case of a young adult patient with (...) selective mutism and social anxieties that significantly limited his ability to communicate with anyone in the healthcare team. This required a creative, patient-centered approach to engage in meaningful communication. (shrink)

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

A Egmond, le 16 avril 1648, un peu moins de deux ans avant sa mort, Descartes s'entretient avec un étudiant hollandais en théologie, Frans Burman. Le jeune homme de vingt ans présente au philosophe de courts extraits de ses principales oeuvres publiées (Méditations métaphysiques, Principes de la philosophie, Discours de la méthode) que l'auteur en personne se charge d'expliquer, répondant aussi aux objections de son interlocuteur. Ce texte possède donc un statut décisif dans le corpus cartésien car il s'agit d'un (...) commentaire des points les plus délicats de la philosophie de Descartes par lui-même. Ce faisant, il ne se contente pas de répéter ce qu'il a déjà écrit sur le doute, la connaissance sensible, l'existence de Dieu, le mouvement de la matière ou encore la santé du corps, il ne cesse au contraire d'approfondir, de nuancer, voire de transformer les thèses sur lesquelles il est interrogé. Ce texte interdit ainsi de faire de la pensée de Descartes une "doctrine" stable et immuable. Il donne plutôt à voir de manière éclatante une pensée en marche, celle d'un philosophe majeur et reconnu qui accepte pourtant de remettre sur la table de travail les points essentiels d'une oeuvre déjà constituée en fonction des questions précises qui lui sont posées. Bien plus qu'un simple résumé de sa philosophie, cet Entretien montre l'inlassable exigence de l'effort de la pensée cartésienne à la conquête de sa propre clarté. (shrink)

Presentation times of study words presented in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm varied from 20 to 2000 ms per word in an attempt to replicate the false memory effect following extremely short presentations reported by . Both in a within-subjects design (Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (Experiment 2) subjects showed memory for studied words as well as a false memory effect for related critical lures in the 2000-ms condition. However, in the conditions with shorter presentation times (20 (...) ms in Experiment 1; 20 and 40 ms in Experiment 2) no memory for studied words, nor a false memory effect was found. We argue that there is at present no strong evidence supporting the claim for a nonconscious basis of the false memory effect. (shrink)

In Descartes's Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, the thinker rejects all his former beliefs in the quest for new certainties. Discovering his own existence as a thinking entity in the very exercise of doubt, he goes on to prove the existence of God, who guarantees his clear and distinct ideas as a means of access to the truth. He develops new conceptions of body and mind, capable of serving as foundations for the new science of nature. (...) Subsequent philosophy has grappled with Descartes's legacy, questioning many of its conclusions and even his basic approach, but his arguments set the agenda for many of the greatest philosophical thinkers, and their fascination endures.This new translation includes the Third and Fourth Objections and Replies in full, and a selection from the rest of Descartes's exchanges with contemporaries that helped to shape and expound his philosophy. (shrink)

These two 1985 volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the (...) widespread demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

Between the years 1643 and 1649, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes exchanged fifty-eight letters—thirty-two from Descartes and twenty-six from Elisabeth. Their correspondence contains the only known extant philosophical writings by Elisabeth, revealing her mastery of metaphysics, analytic geometry, and moral philosophy, as well as her keen interest in natural philosophy. The letters are essential reading for anyone interested in Descartes’s philosophy, in particular his account of the human being as a union of mind and body, as well (...) as his ethics. They also provide a unique insight into the character of their authors and the way ideas develop through intellectual collaboration. Philosophers have long been familiar with Descartes’s side of the correspondence. Now Elisabeth’s letters—never before available in translation in their entirety—emerge this volume, adding much-needed context and depth both to Descartes’s ideas and the legacy of the princess. Lisa Shapiro’s annotated edition—which also includes Elisabeth’s correspondence with the Quakers William Penn and Robert Barclay—will be heralded by students of philosophy, feminist theorists, and historians of the early modern period. (shrink)

The coming of bioethics -- The coming of bioethicists -- "Choices on our conscience": the inauguration of the Kennedy Institute of Education -- "Hello, Dolly": bioethics in the media -- Celebrating bioethics and bioethicists -- Thinking socially and culturally in bioethics -- Reminiscences of observing participants -- Bioethics circles the globe -- Bioethics in France -- The development of bioethics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan -- The coming of the culture wars to American bioethics.

El periodo de duelo tras la pérdida de un ser querido presenta experiencias y actitudes inusuales que juegan un papel importante en la vida cognitiva de las personas dolientes; por ejemplo, la sensación momentánea de que la persona difunta se encuentra presente, así como creencias de carácter religioso o espiritual. Frecuentemente esto involucra el mantenimiento activo de un vínculo con la persona difunta a través de diversas prácticas en la vida cotidiana. Tanto los estados mentales relacionados con el duelo como (...) las prácticas correspondientes al mantenimiento de vínculos tienen un valor epistémico, en la medida en que proveen un aporte a la funcionalidad del agente en su búsqueda por adquirir conocimiento, comprensión y otros bienes epistémicos. Esto tiene consecuencias éticas y sociales, ya que estos bienes epistémicos pueden ser destruidos o afectados por las intervenciones en el duelo, tanto clínicas como no-clínicas. A pesar de ello, esta dimensión no ha sido suficientemente reconocida por la literatura filosófica. Este trabajo busca motivar el interés por estudiar epistemológicamente el duelo de dos maneras. En primer lugar, ofreciendo una caracterización de los estados mentales asociados con el duelo en términos de estados subdoxásticos (como aliefs). Posteriormente, se muestra el papel que juegan dichos estados mentales en el espacio de affordances estructuradas en un nicho afectivo que permite el desempeño exitoso de la persona doliente en tanto agente epistémico. Con ello se busca proveer un marco de análisis que se pueda desarrollar y extender en futuros trabajos para estudiar los aspectos epistemológicos del duelo. (shrink)

As the eleventh volume in the New Directions in Cognitive Science series (formerly the Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science series), this work promises superb scholarship and interdisciplinary appeal. It addresses three areas of current and varied interest: common sense, reasoning, and rationality. While common sense and rationality often have been viewed as two distinct features in a unified cognitive map, this volume offers novel, even paradoxical, views of the relationship. Comprised of outstanding essays from distinguished philosophers, it considers what constitutes (...) human rationality, behavior, and intelligence covering diverse areas of philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science. Indeed, it is at the forefront of cognitive research and promises to be of unprecedented influence across numerous disciplines. (shrink)

This is the first book in which contemporary scientists and mystics share with us-in their own words-their views on space, time, matter, energy, life, consciousness, creation and on our place in the scheme of things. The book is also the story of an American philosopher who-with these dialogues-ventures into ground-breaking territory, and of her search in America, Europe, India and Nepal for people whose work is at the center of our understanding of reality.

Taylor's political proposal is based on a particular way of explaining human action. The modern ideal of authenticity is used to underline the role of responsibility in personal agency. Aristotelian prudence or phronesis is considered one of the best interpretations of practical reason for completing the ideal of authenticity because it includes the distinction among goods and their influence in everyone's life. The contemporary notion of horizon is an aid for understanding the role of cultural frames and dialogical exchange in (...) the construction of personal identity. (shrink)