El ámbito de la cultura popular ha privilegiado una visión técnica de sus objetos en el sentido que Aristóteles dio al término téchne. Este enfoque ha prevalecido hasta hoy en la forma de un determinismo económico y tecnológico que enfatiza la estructura social frente a la acción cultural. Se trata de un presupuesto racionalista que comparten las teorías sociológicas y culturales dominantes en el área: la teoría crítica, los análisis de economía política y, en menor medida, los estudios culturales. Este (...) trabajo profundiza en los presupuestos filosóficos de estas corrientes con el objetivo de advertir la misma explicación racionalista, extrínseca, que definió la crítica de Adorno y Horkheimer a la cultura de masas mediado el siglo XX. Este concepto de cultura de masas suscitó una reflexión diferente en Hannah Arendt, coincidiendo con el periodo en el que los teóricos de Frankfurt asentaron el juicio dominante acerca de la cultura de masas. Esta otra visión de Arendt ofrece, a nuestro juicio, un presupuesto no-racionalista e intrínseco, que permite una teorización adecuada al carácter cultural de los objetos que conforman el campo de la popular culture. The field of popular culture has privileged a technical view of its objects in the sense that Aristotle gave to the term téchne. This approach has prevailed until today in the form of an economic and technological determinism that emphasizes the social structure in front of cultural activity. It is a rationalist presupposition which it is shared by the cultural and sociological theories dominant in the area: critical theory, political economy analysis and, to some extent, cultural studies. This study examines the philosophical assumptions of these current theories in order to understand how they incorporate the same rational and extrinsic explanation which defined the criticism of Adorno and Horkheimer to mass culture at mid-twentieth century. This phenomenon of mass culture gave rise to Hannah Arendt’s alternative reflection, coinciding with the period in which the Frankfurt’s theorists settled the dominant view of contemporary culture. In our view, Arendt offers a non-rationalist and intrinsic perspective that allows an adequate understanding of the cultural and symbolical character of the objects that shape the field of popular culture. (shrink)

This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary "crisis of journalism." Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments (...) rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these "objective" changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms. (shrink)

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.

El artículo de Alejandro Pidal y Mon sobre "La doctrina científica de santo Tomás" en el primer número de la Revista ofrece la oportunidad de volver a la intuición de fondo del aprecio por el maestro dominico. Es cierto que santo Tomás se coloca en la estela de los grandes maestros de la razón. En su afán por reivindicar el valor de la razón humana otorga a la doctrina sagrada el calificativo de ciencia. Pero es preciso, ya desde el comienzo, (...) advertir que aquí habla de la doctrina sagrada, no de los métodos. Con su tesis sobre el carácter científico de la sagrada doctrina pretende reivindicar el valor de la misma en el ámbito del saber. Pero en sus métodos mantiene que, entre las referencias, la primera es la Sagrada Escritura, aunque sin renunciar, por supuesto, a otras argumentaciones como probables. Por eso, reducir la teología una ciencia de conclusiones no es lo más característico de la doctrina de santo Tomás.Alejandro Pidal y Pon’s article on "St Thomas scientific doctrine" in the first issue of the magazine gives us the opportunity of returning to the basic intuition of the esteem for the Dominican master. It is true that St Thomas followed the steps of the reason great masters. Trying to claim responsibility for the value of the human reason, he labels the sacred doctrine as science. But it is necessary from the beginning to tell that here he is talking of the sacred doctrine, not of the methods. With his thesis of the scientific character of the sacred doctrine, he tries to claim its value in the ground of knowing. But in his methods, he holds that, among his references, the Sacred Scripture is the first, without renouncing of course to other arguments as probable. So, reducing Theology to a science of conclusions is not St Thomas’ most characteristic. (shrink)

I propose a hypothesis, called the systems convergence-divergence hypothesis, which attempts to explain how the existence and evolution of supraindividual systems (social, political or economic) might be predicted from an analysis of the basic structures that make up their individual entities (molecules and cells) and how, reciprocally, study of these individuals and of their evolution might be approached from knowledge of such systems.

Spectroscopy is a scientific topic at the interface between Chemistry and Physics, which is taught at high school level in relation with its fundamental applications in Analytical Chemistry. In the first part of the paper, the topic of spectroscopy is analyzed having in mind the well-known Johnstone’s triangle of chemistry education, putting in evidence the way spectroscopy is usually taught at the three levels of chemical knowledge: macroscopic/phenomenological, sub-microscopic/molecular and symbolic ones. Among these three levels, following Johnstone’s recommendations the macroscopic (...) one is the most useful for high school students who learn spectroscopy for the first time. Starting from these premises, in the second part of the paper, we propose a didactic sequence which is inspired by the historical evolution of spectroscopic instruments from the first spectroscopes invented by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen in 1860 to the UV–vis spectrophotometers which became common since the 1960s. The idea behind our research is to analyze the conceptual advancements through the history of spectroscopy and to identify the key episodes/experiments and spectroscopic instruments. For each of them, a didactic activity, typically an experiment, is then proposed underlining the relevant aspects from the chemistry education point of view. The present paper is the occasion to reflect on the potentialities of an historical approach combined with a laboratorial one, and to discuss the role of historical instruments and related technological improvements to teach spectroscopy. (shrink)

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)

In the literature, the pragmatic dimension of metaphors has been clearly acknowledged. Metaphors are regarded as having different possible uses, especially pursuing persuasion. However, an analysis of the specific conversational purposes that they can be aimed at achieving in a dialogue and their adequacy thereto is still missing. In this chapter, we will address this issue focusing on the classical distinction between the explanatory and persuasive uses of metaphors, which is, however, complex to draw at an analytical level and often (...) blurred and controversial also from a theoretical point of view. Building on the analysis of explanation in different theories and fields of study, we show how it can be conceived as characterized by a cognitive and a pragmatic dimension, where the transference of understanding is used pragmatically for different dialogical goals - such as informing, making a joint decision, and most importantly persuading. In this sense, the cognitive effects of understanding are not incompatible with a persuasive dialogical purpose. This theoretical proposal will be applied to examples drawn from the medical context, to show how a pragmatic approach to explanation can account for the complexity of the cases that can be found in actual dialogical contexts. (shrink)

Previous research has focused on the relation between social class and prosocial behavior. However, this relation is yet unclear. In this work, we shed light on this issue by considering the effect of the level of empathy and the social class of the recipient of help on two types of prosociality, namely helping and caring. In one experimental study, we found that for high-class participants, empathy had a positive effect on helping, regardless of the recipient’s social class. However, empathy had (...) no effect for low-class participants. When it comes to caring, empathy had a positive effect for both high and low-class participants, but only when the recipient of help belonged to the same social class. This highlights that empathy by itself is not sufficient to promote cooperative relations and that the social class of the recipient of help should be taken into account to shed light on this issue. (shrink)

En el presente estudio se abordarán los crímenes cometidos por mujeres durante los últimos años de la España de la Restauración y la Dictadura de Primo de Rivera. De igual modo, se profundizará en la dicotomía espacial y discursiva que suponen estas acciones al ser cometidas en el ámbito de lo privado, pero pronto extrapoladas a lo público con fines sen­sacionalistas. Recortes de prensa, fragmentos literarios y pun­tualmente sentencias judiciales serán las fuentes de las que nos valdremos para desarrollar esta (...) investigación con el objeto de profundizar en esta difusa línea divisoria de actuación dialécti­ca. Contra los preceptos definidos por el discurso dominante en torno al «sexo femenino» que encasillaba a las mujeres en una concepción de perpetua debilidad, belleza y letargo, la trans­gresión nacida en el seno de lo privado se hará pública demos­trando que las idealizaciones creadas sobre ellas poco tenían que ver con la realidad. (shrink)

El artículo de Alejandro Pidal y Mon sobre "La doctrina científica de santo Tomás" en el primer número de la Revista ofrece la oportunidad de volver a la intuición de fondo del aprecio por el maestro dominico. Es cierto que santo Tomás se coloca en la estela de los grandes maestros de la razón. En su afán por reivindicar el valor de la razón humana otorga a la doctrina sagrada el calificativo de ciencia. Pero es preciso, ya desde el comienzo, (...) advertir que aquí habla de la doctrina sagrada, no de los métodos. Con su tesis sobre el carácter científico de la sagrada doctrina pretende reivindicar el valor de la misma en el ámbito del saber. Pero en sus métodos mantiene que, entre las referencias, la primera es la Sagrada Escritura, aunque sin renunciar, por supuesto, a otras argumentaciones como probables. Por eso, reducir la teología una ciencia de conclusiones no es lo más característico de la doctrina de santo Tomás.Alejandro Pidal y Pon’s article on "St Thomas scientific doctrine" in the first issue of the magazine gives us the opportunity of returning to the basic intuition of the esteem for the Dominican master. It is true that St Thomas followed the steps of the reason great masters. Trying to claim responsibility for the value of the human reason, he labels the sacred doctrine as science. But it is necessary from the beginning to tell that here he is talking of the sacred doctrine, not of the methods. With his thesis of the scientific character of the sacred doctrine, he tries to claim its value in the ground of knowing. But in his methods, he holds that, among his references, the Sacred Scripture is the first, without renouncing of course to other arguments as probable. So, reducing Theology to a science of conclusions is not St Thomas’ most characteristic. (shrink)

La teología de santo Tomás es una tarea de mediación entre la concepción cristiana del universo y el conocimiento de la cultura humana. El artículo presenta su originalidad en este cometido siguiendo la lectura de los textos. La primera parte presenta su vocación cristiana en el contexto de las innovaciones culturales del siglo XIII. La segunda, ofrece el contexto de los debates que santo Tomás mantuvo con teólogos y filósofos. Así puede ofrecer en la tercera parte la síntesis original del (...) maestro dominico, es decir, unir ambos campos sin confundirlos. El autor subraya la condición teológica de esta síntesis. En la cuarta parte aclara que esta posición no significa reducir la fe a una metafísica ni tampoco dejar la razón al arbitrio de la teología. (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)

_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.

This paper investigates the emotive (or expressive) meaning of words commonly referred to as “loaded” or “emotive,” which include slurs, derogative or pejorative words, and ethical terms. We claim that emotive meaning can be reinterpreted from a pragmatic and argumentative perspective, which can account for distinct aspects of ethical terms, including the possibility of being modified and its cancellability. Emotive meaning is explained as a defeasible and automatic or automatized evaluative and intended inference commonly associated with the use of specific (...) terms, which can be represented and assessed considering its logical structure and its defeasibility conditions. This automatic inference is conceived as part of the connotation of an ethical term, and is not necessarily stable. By means of quasi-definitions, it is possible to modify the emotive meaning while maintaining the descriptive one, automaticizing the inferences drawn from an ethical word. Through examples drawn from the recent US presidential campaign, we show how re-contextualization and emotive contexts can affect emotive meaning. (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.

Ignorance is often a perfectly good excuse. There are interesting debates about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake subvert obligation, but little disagreement about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake exculpate. What about agents who have all the relevant facts in view but fail to meet their obligations because they do not have the right moral beliefs? If their ignorance of their obligations derives from mistaken moral beliefs or from ignorance of the moral significance of the facts they have in (...) view, should they be excused for failing to meet their moral obligations? It is not obvious that they should. In this paper we argue that the best non-skeptical accounts of moral responsibility acknowledge that factual ignorance and mistake will diminish moral responsibility in a way that moral ignorance and mistake will not. That is because factual ignorance is often non-culpable so long as it meets certain merely procedural epistemic standards but the same is not true of moral ignorance. Our argument is that the assumption that it is gets the standards of culpability for moral ignorance wrong, and that the mistake is encouraged by the thought that culpability in general requires an instance of known wrongdoing: that acting wrongly requires de dicto unresponsiveness to one’s obligations at some stage. We deny this and conclude that, therefore, ignorance and mistaken belief are indeed often perfectly good excuses – but far less often than some philosophers claim. (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)