Charles S. Peirce held a view of human reason as creative. The objective of this article is to explore more deeply the Peircean conception of imagination, indispensable for the correct functioning of reason. The connection of reason and imagination is necessary in order to be able to interpret the world, to advance towards the truth and to direct our own actions. In this paper I will explain the principal forms in which these faculties interact, and will provide examples taken from (...) the Peircean corpus. (shrink)

This paper develops an inquiry about creativity through the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. The author deals, first of all, with the general characteristics of the creative pheno - mena. Later, the notion of abduc tion is explai - ned, which constitutes for Peirce the engine of creativity. Th..

A surprising fact about the Hispanic philosophical historiography2 of the 20th century is its almost complete ignorance of the American philosophical tradition. This disconnect is even more surprising when one takes into account the striking affinities between the topics and problems treated by the most relevant Hispanic thinkers (Unamuno, Ortega, Vaz Ferreira, Ferrater Mora, Xirau) and the central questions raised in the most important native current of American thought in the late 19th and 20th centuries, pragmatism. In recent years there (...) has been a resurgence of pragmatist philosophy in contemporary culture, which is producing a deep renovation and transformation. One of the important features of this process is precisely the recuperation and improved understanding of the thought of Charles S. Peirce, who offers suggestions for dealing with some of the most persistent problems in contemporary philosophy, and who in addition can help us to reassume our responsibilities as philosophers, responsibilities that a good part of the philosophy of the 20th century had renounced. We can confidently say, as will be clear from what follows, that Spain and the Latin American countries are playing an important role in this increased understanding and diffusion of Peircean thought throughout the world. (shrink)

While Peirce claimed that he was not well acquainted with aesthetics, he always was interested in that field. In spite of the fact that Peirce did not develop the issue in depth, aesthetics is located in his general framework as the foundation for the other normative sciences. Perhaps the trips through Europe and the contemplation of so many works of art and of historic places left in his memory the impressions that are at the basis of the importance that Peirce (...) would assign to art and aesthetics in his later years. (shrink)

In this report the history and main activities of the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos at the University of Navarra is presented. It was created in 1994 to promote the study of the work of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), especially in Spain and in the Spanish-speaking countries. An outstanding result of the work of this group is the massive installment in the web of Peirce's texts translated into Spanish.

Peirce's relationship with religion, both in his personal life and in his thought, was deeper than has been considered so far. The question of God was for him more important than it might seem at first glance. His writings contain numerous references to religious issues, closely linked to his most important notions of philosophy and science. In this article, the most important biographical data to understand Peirce's relationship with religion are provided; his main notions about God are also examined and, (...) finally, a brief analysis of the most important Peircean writings on religion is made. (shrink)

"I do not call the solitary studies of a single man a science. It is only when a group of men, more or less in intercommunication, are aiding and stimulating one another by their understanding of a particular group of studies as outsiders cannot understand them, that call their life a science”. (MS 1334: 12–13, 1905). This beautiful quotation from Charles S. Peirce comes from his “Lecture I to the Adirondack Summer School 1905” and was catalogued as MS 1334 (Robin (...) 1967). In 1986 Kenneth L. Ketner chose fifteen pages (7–22) of the Notebook I of these lectures to represent Peirce’s conception of science in the volume Classical American Philosophy (Stuhr 1987: 46–48). “The Nature of Science” was the appropriate title assigned to that selection, which up to then had been almost unknown to the majority of Peirce scholars. Sara Barrena translated the piece into Spanish in 1996 (Barrena 1996: 1435–1440) and we chose the quotation above as the motto for our then incipient group of Peirce scholars in the Spanish- speaking world because it so finely expressed the aim of our undertaking. Against the traditional image of the philosopher as a solitary thinker near the stove, we wanted, following Peirce, to encourage cooperation and communication between our researchers not only as something useful, but as something essential for the real development of science. (shrink)

In this paper Peirce's notion of sign is studied to try to characterize the artistic sign as representation. Then, some considerations about the work of art as a sign are developed involving three elements: experience, expression and interpretation. Finally it is concluded that beauty requires for Peirce a peculiar balance, the imaginative conjunction of the sensible and the reasonable in an artistic sign; it requires moreover the expression of something that transcends the sensible; it requires, as a sign, an interpretation (...) which is not exact and which implies growth. It requires, finally, love, because an artist will only reach beauty guided by agape updating and harmonizing possibilities through abduction, that is, creating new signs that give form to what does not have it; the artist only reaches beauty when he loves what he does and when he can express himself freely. -/- En este artículo se estudia, en primer lugar, la noción de signo de Peirce para tratar de caracterizar después el signo artístico como representación. Se desarrollan enseguida algunas consideraciones sobre la obra de arte como signo que como tal conlleva tres elementos: experiencia, expresión e interpretación. Finalmente se concluye que la belleza requiere para Peirce un peculiar equilibrio, la conjunción imaginativa de lo sensible y lo razonable en un signo artístico; requiere además la expresión de algo que trasciende lo sensible; requiere, en tanto signo, de una interpretación que no es exacta y que implica crecimiento. Requiere, por último, amor, pues el artista solo alcanzará lo bello cuando sea guiado por el ágape y a través de la abducción vaya actualizando y armonizando posibilidades, creando nuevos signos que den forma a lo que no la tiene, cuando ame lo que hace y se exprese libremente. (shrink)

In this article we wish to share the work in which the Group of Peirce Studies of the University of Navarra has been involved since 2007: the study of a very interesting part of the extensive correspondence of Charles S. Peirce, specifically, his European letters. Peirce wrote some of these letters over the course of his five trips to Europe (between 1870 and 1883), and wrote others to the many European scientists and intellectuals he communicated with over the course of (...) his life. The translation of those letters has been an excellent practical example of the creative and abductive nature of translation, as well as of the cooperative character of research. Translating Peirce's letters has allowed us a deep study of some theoretical aspects, and at the same time it has permitted us to work creatively and cooperatively to enrich the common vision of this scientist and philosopher. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce has been commonly identified as the most original and versatile intellect that America has ever produced (Weiss, 1934: 403; Fisch 1981a: 17; etc.). He was not only a philosopher, but a true polymath. His reflections cover a wide range of disciplines. Peirce’s thought combines a rich knowledge of the philosophical tradition and the history of science with his valuable personal experience as a logician and as an experimental researcher. His deep involvement in scientific activ...

La belleza en Charles S. Peirce: Origen y alcance de sus ideas estéticas is a clearly written and well-structured book on Peirce’s aesthetics. Barrena’s thesis is that aesthetics, conceived as a normative science, is central to Peirce’s philosophical system, and especially to his pragmaticism. The goal of the book is twofold: it aims to offer an analysis of the biographical and theoretical aspects of Peirce’s interest in aesthetics and the arts and purports to elaborate a pragmaticist aesthetics. Both objectives (...) can be said to be well achieved. The book is divided into four chapters. The first is devoted to... (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

RESUMENEn este trabajo se propone una física filosófica de causas como posible respuesta al problema del realismo que plantea la teoría de la ciencia actual. La clave de la respuesta estriba en la inactualidad y potencialidad de lo físico causal.PALABRAS CLAVESMETAFISICA – FISICA DE CAUSAS – REALISMOABSTRACTThe article defends a causal philosophical physics as a posible answer to the problema of realism set up by the current theory of science. The answers lies in the inactuality and potentiality of causal physics.KEYWORDSMETAPHYSICS (...) – CAUSAL PHYSICS – REALISM. (shrink)

Feminism is sensational -- On being directed -- Willfulness and feminist subjectivity -- Trying to transform -- Being in question -- Brick walls -- Fragile connections -- Feminist snap -- Lesbian feminism -- Conclusion 1: A killjoy survival kit -- Conclusion 2: A killjoy manifesto.

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which (...) is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

En este artículo, analizamos el modo en que se articulan distintas representaciones sobre la Causa Malvinas, la guerra de 1982 y la posguerra en las letras de las canciones de rock nacional, en tanto expresiones de la cultura popular que fijan sentidos y que pueden manifestar ideas coincidentes con las dominantes o, por el contrario, visiones que las cuestionen y pongan en juego su hegemonía. Para ello, tomando al conflicto bélico de 1982 como punto de inflexión, hemos relevado un corpus (...) de veintisiete canciones que explícitamente refieren a la Guerra de Malvinas y sus implicancias, y que han contribuido a articular distintas perspectivas acerca de esta cuestión en el imaginario social. (shrink)

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic (...) women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

The debate on love's reasons ignores unrequited love, which—I argue—can be as genuine and as valuable as reciprocated love. I start by showing that the relationship view of love cannot account for either the reasons or the value of unrequited love. I then present the simple property view, an alternative to the relationship view that is beset with its own problems. In order to solve these problems, I present a more sophisticated version of the property view that integrates ideas from (...) different property theorists in the love literature. However, even this more sophisticated property view falls short in accounting for unrequited love's reasons. In response, I develop a new version of the property view that I call the experiential view. On this view, we love a person not only in virtue of properties shaped by and experienced in a reciprocal loving relationship, but also in virtue of perspectival properties, whose value can be properly assessed also outside of a reciprocal loving relationship. The experiential view is the only view that can account not only for reciprocated love's reasons, but also for unrequited love's reasons. (shrink)

Envy is almost universally condemned. But is its reputation warranted? Sara Protasi argues envy is multifaceted and sometimes even virtuous.

In this paper I present a novel taxonomy of envy, according to which there are four kinds of envy: emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. An inquiry into the varieties of envy is valuable not only to understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but also to shed light on the nature of its alleged viciousness. The first section introduces the intuition that there is more than one kind of envy, together with the anecdotal and linguistic evidence that supports it. The (...) second section proposes and explains in detail a definition of envy tout court. The third section presents a recurring distinction between behavioral tendencies of envy, which has been explained in two distinct ways, one mostly proposed by psychologists, the other discernible in the philosophical tradition. The fourth section argues that these models of explanation track two variables, whose interplay is responsible for the existence of the four envies. The fifth section illustrates four paradigmatic cases, and provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenology, motivational structure, and typical behavioral outputs of each. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the taxonomy for moral education. (shrink)

This book tackles the most difficult and profound open questions about life and its origins from an information-based perspective.

The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they `take up' space, and what they `can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly (...) through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way. (shrink)

In this essay I identify a type of linguistic phenomenon new to feminist philosophy of language: biased evaluative descriptions. Biased evaluative descriptions are descriptions whose well-intended positive surface meanings are inflected with implicitly biased content. Biased evaluative descriptions are characterized by three main features: (1) they have roots in implicit bias or benevolent sexism, (2) their application is counterfactually unstable across dominant and subordinate social groups, and (3) they encode stereotypes. After giving several different kinds of examples of biased evaluative (...) descriptions, I distinguish them from similar linguistic concepts, including backhanded compliments, slurs, insults, epithets, pejoratives, and dog whistles. I suggest that the traditional framework of Gricean implicature cannot account for biased evaluative descriptions. I discuss some challenges to the distinctiveness and evaluability of biased evaluative descriptions, including intersectional social identities. I conclude by discussing their social significance and moral status. Identifying biased evaluative descriptions is important for a variety of social contexts, from the very general and broad (political speeches) to the very particular and small (bias in academic hiring). (shrink)

Structural proof theory is a branch of logic that studies the general structure and properties of logical and mathematical proofs. This book is both a concise introduction to the central results and methods of structural proof theory, and a work of research that will be of interest to specialists. The book is designed to be used by students of philosophy, mathematics and computer science. The book contains a wealth of results on proof-theoretical systems, including extensions of such systems from logic (...) to mathematics, and on the connection between the two main forms of structural proof theory - natural deduction and sequent calculus. The authors emphasize the computational content of logical results. A special feature of the volume is a computerized system for developing proofs interactively, downloadable from the web and regularly updated. (shrink)

Žižek’s recent commentaries on the topics of gender identity, sexuality, and consent have provoked outraged reactions from the politically correct neoliberal consensus. This paper argues these reactions emerge in part due to Žižek & Zupančič’s recent explorations into the ontological and political ramifications of Lacan’s thesis ‘ il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel’. Specifically, these explorations pose a threat to the contemporary definition of the subject as the subject of trauma, and the economy of moralistic outrage which sustains this (...) subjectivization. Following the recent commentaries by both Žižek and Zupančič, we argue this economy produces a valorization of affects, in which subjectivity becomes directly expressed in proportion to the subject’s expressed suffering. We argue the properly feminist question today must be how to escape what has become an economy of moralist satisfaction; an economy that seduces the subject into a cycle in which their own suffering becomes a currency – an end in itself – rather than a strategy to overcome the social inequalities that created the conditions for this very exploitation. This paper aims at offering an explanation of the traumatic reactions against Žižek and Zupančič’s recent investigations into sexuality, as well as to continue their investigation in the direction of trauma and subjectivity itself. (shrink)