The author examines Heidegger's conception of the history of Philosophy as “the history of Being.” An authentic philosopher does not look at the history of philosophy as a more or less accurate description of philosophers' thoughts, chronologically ordered. The thoughts of the great philosophers are not “products” in a process of thinking; in fact, what is most original in each of the great philosopher's thinking is Being's “property.” Philosophers or, rather, “thinkers,” ask questions in order to open the way for (...) questioning. They do not think many thoughts, but just one which is constantly “repeated.” Repetition is here “recollection” and “re-sumption” of the ways in which Being has made itself patent. Heidegger's original plan for the “destruction of the history of ontology” has been carried on in his later works by means of a recollection of what had been forgotten. A softening of the crust of the history of philosophy in order to discover Being “within” characterizes Heidegger's “dialogue” with the great thinkers of the past. Thus, the history of philosophy is to be interpreted in the light of the experience of the oblivion of Being. Thinkers, as well as poets, are concerned with Being in their attempt to fathom the original essence of speech, but whereas the former are trying to find the unique word to speak about Being, the latter lay down Being in their poetic words. Yet, in the last resort, thinking is the same as “proto-poetizing”; thought precedes poetry in so far as through the “poetizing essence of thinking” the thinker becomes the custodian of the truth of Being. (shrink)

Presentación del dosier “En torno a la obra de Mario Presas en sus 90 años”.

El propósito del trabajo es comparar las trayectorias filosóficas de Paul Ricoeur y Mario Presas. Se sostiene que una adecuada comprensión del giro de la fenomenología a la hermenéutica, en el cual ubicamos a ambos, implica poner en relieve su pertenencia inicial a la fenomenología existencial francesa de la primera mitad del siglo XX. Se precisará la denominación fenomenología existencial y el impacto que tuvo en la concepción de la hermenéutica que fue desarrollada a partir de ella. Para (...) concluir, proponemos una periodización de la producción de Presas en relación con su lectura de la obra de Ricoeur. (shrink)

En el presente artículo analizaremos los artículos publicados por Mario Presas en la Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía, en el período que va de 1975 a 2000. El propósito es esbozar una aproximación de conjunto a este corpus, distinguiendo básicamente dos períodos de su desenvolvimiento intelectual. El primero se centra en aspectos fenomenológicos y existenciales de la temporalidad y la corporalidad en el contexto de investigación del mundo de la vida. El segundo se aboca al análisis de problemas estéticos (...) y hermenéuticos de la recepción textual y artística, con particular énfasis en las operaciones constitutivas de la actividad lectora. En conformidad con el autor, puede resumirse esa evolución como una reflexión que lleva del ser a la palabra. En el trabajo sostenemos que el trayecto filosófico de Mario Presas, mediante un despliegue coherente de la temática que conecta el mundo de la vida con la identidad narrativa pasando por el acto de leer, permite comprender que la experiencia estética es una dimensión esencial del existente humano. (shrink)

Del Ser a la Palabra es una recopilación de artículos que transitan unos cuarenta años de reflexión filosófica. El eje temático es la experiencia estética, su urgencia, su densidad y relevancia para la existencia. En este trabajo me arriesgo a analizar algunos de los conceptos centrales del texto. Desde luego, muchos quedarán de lado. El recorrido comienza con un sobrevuelo del concepto husserliano de Lebenswelt, y culmina con un análisis de la catarsis (su relación con la retórica y la hermenéutica). (...) En el medio me detendré, brevemente, en el aspecto de nuestra existencia que torna necesaria a la experiencia estética. En otras palabras, la experiencia estética viene a colmar una carencia estructural del hombre, por lo que conviene articular (hacer sentir) dicha carencia. Luego de una breve estadía en la idea del arte como recuperación y retorno, me vuelco a dos de las nociones sobre las que Presas insiste: la mímesis y la catarsis. De la primera destaco dos cosas: el efecto que tiene sobre la temporalidad, y la rehabilitación del poder de la aisthesis. Con respecto a la catarsis, la pongo en relación con la noción retórica del flectere y con la noción jurídica y teológica de applicatio. (shrink)

En La Verdad de la Ficción, Mario Presas compila nueve artículos de su autoría que, aunque fueron escritos en distintos momentos de su carrera y sin una conexión sistemática, están estrechamente ligados entre sí por una misma problemática filosófica: la apertura, a través del arte, a un tipo de saber que es propio de la experiencia estética. La tesis central que atraviesa a todos los capítulos consiste en sostener que el arte habilita una vía de acceso a la (...) realidad que no puede subsumirse ni reducirse a otros tipos de saber, en particular, al conocimiento científico. El autor sostiene que el saber que brinda la experiencia estética es insustituible en relación a la ciencia, sin que por ello uno de los dos tenga primacía sobre el otro. (shrink)

Filosofía de la existencia agrupa un conjunto de textos que Mario Presas había publicado con anterioridad, y de manera separada, en distintas revistas académicas entre 1959 y 1962. El período enmarcado por estas fechas constituye el inicio de la actividad filosófica de Presas, dos años después de obtener el título de Profesor en Filosofía por la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, y un año antes de su primer viaje a Alemania para realizar una estadía de investigación en (...) la Facultad de filosofía de la Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität, en la ciudad de Maguncia, patrocinado por el Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. (shrink)

Nota biobibliográfica sobre Mario A. Presas.

Revisión del libro Situación de la filosofía de Karl Jaspers. Con especial consideración de su base kantiana por M. A. Presas.

While ancient civilizations worshipped strong, active emotions, modern societies have favored more peaceful attitudes, especially within the democratic process. We have largely forgotten the struggle to make use of _thymos_, the part of the soul that, following Plato, contains spirit, pride, and indignation. Rather, Christianity and psychoanalysis have promoted mutual understanding to overcome conflict. Through unique examples, Peter Sloterdijk, the preeminent posthumanist, argues exactly the opposite, showing how the history of Western civilization can be read as a suppression and return (...) of rage. By way of reinterpreting the _Iliad_, Alexandre Dumas's _Count of Monte Cristo_, and recent Islamic political riots in Paris, Sloterdijk proves the fallacy that rage is an emotion capable of control. Global terrorism and economic frustrations have rendered strong emotions visibly resurgent, and the consequences of violent outbursts will determine international relations for decades to come. To better respond to rage and its complexity, Sloterdijk daringly breaks with entrenched dogma and contructs a new theory for confronting conflict. His approach acknowledges and respects the proper place of rage and channels it into productive political struggle. (shrink)

The disease brought about by the SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 coronavirus has had an unprecedented global impact. Confinement to control the outbreak may have mental health consequences for the most vulnerable in the population, including adolescents. This study aims to describe and analyze the relationships between the stress variables, Emotional Intelligence and the intention to use cannabis in healthy adolescents, before and after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic containment stage. A comparative correlational study was carried out with validated self-completed questionnaires through (...) an online platform. The sample is made up of adolescents aged 13–17 from two different schools in Ponferrada. The analysis of correlation and differences between the groups indicate that confinement has had effects on the mental health of the adolescents, specifically on the emotional manifestations of stress. Furthermore, significant gender differences were found for stress values and Emotional Intelligence. However, no differences have been found for cannabis use intention. (shrink)

pt. I. Matter: 1. Philosophy as worldview ; 2. Classical matter: bodies and fields ; 3. Quantum matter: weird but real ; 4. General concept of matter: to be is to become ; 5. Emergence and levels ; 6. Naturalism ; 7. Materialism -- pt. II. Mind: 8. The mind-body problem ; 9. Minding matter: the plastic brain ; 10. Mind and society ; 11. Cognition, consciousness, and free will ; 12. Brain and computer: the hardware/software dualism ; 13. Knowledge: (...) genuine and bogus -- pt. III. Appendices: 14. Appendix A: Objects ; 15. Appendix B. Truths. (shrink)

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

Summary The aim of this paper is to analyse the scientific relations between Germany and Spain during the Entente Boycott (1919–1926) and the German academic policy that fostered it. The study of the international relations of German science during the 1920s has been carried out using as a basis the archives of scientific institutions. Personal initiatives by individual scientists to establish relations have therefore not been taken into account. The relations between the scientific communities of Germany and Spain during the (...) 1920s indicate the importance of such personal relationships and from their transcendence at a political level. They also offer an example of how political strategies could dictate the politics of academic recognition. This paper is based on the analysis of sources found at the Foreign Office Archives in Berlin. It gives us a clear idea about the role of scientific relationships between the two countries in shaping their scientific policies. (shrink)

Classical philosophical Daoism as it is expressed in the Dao-De-Jing and the Zhuang-Zi is often interpreted as lacking a capacity for critique and resistance. Since these capacities are taken to be central components of Enlightenment reason and action, it would follow that Daoism is incompatible with Enlightenment. This interpretation is being refuted by way of developing a constructive dialogue between the enlightenment traditions of critical theory and recent philosophy of action from a Daoist perspective. Daoism's normative naturalism does neither rest (...) on a primitivist call for a return to the past, nor does it suggest future-directed activism. By way of reconstructing its descriptive, explanatory and emancipatory dimensions, it is shown that Daoism constitutes an alternative form of critical theory. In contrast to future-directed purposive action or blind rule-following, Daoism's key normative concept of "wu-wei" emphasizes effortless non-calculative responsiveness in the present. Drawing on recent insights in the philosophy of action, a reconstruction of wu-wei allows to conceive of a promising form of emancipatory agency. (shrink)

A common and disabling consequence of stroke is the difficulty in processing contralesional space (i.e., hemispatial neglect). According to paper-and-pencil tests, neglect remits or stabilizes in severity within a few months after a brain injury. This arbitrary temporal limit, however, is at odds with neglect’s well-known dependency on task-sensitivity. The present study tested the hypothesis that the putative early resolution of neglect might be due to the insensitivity of testing methods rather than to the lack of spontaneous recovery at later (...) stages. A right hemisphere stroke patient was studied longitudinally for 3 years. According to paper-and-pencil tests the patient showed no symptom of hemispatial neglect 1 month post stroke. Awareness of spatially lateralized visual targets was then assessed by means of computer-based single- and dual-tasks requiring an additional top-down deployment of attention for the parallel processing of visual or auditory stimuli. Errorless performance at computer-based tasks was reached at month 12 and maintained until month 29 after stroke. A bottom-up manipulation was then implemented by reducing target diameter. Following this change, more than 50% of contralesional targets were omitted, mostly under dual-tasking. At months 40 and 41 the same task revealed a significant (but not complete) reduction in the number of contralesional omissions. Ipsilesional targets were, in contrast, still errorless detected. The coupling of a bottom-up (target change) and a top-down (dual-tasking) manipulation revealed the presence of a long-lasting spontaneous recovery from contralesional spatial awareness deficits. In contrast, neither manipulation was effective when implemented separately. After having excluded the potential confound of practice effects, it was concluded that not only the presence but also the time course of hemispatial neglect strongly depends on the degree of attentional engagement required by the task. (shrink)

I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but also by answering what-questions, that is, by providing what I call scientific descriptions. Based on this distinction, I develop three forms of understanding: understanding-what, understanding-why, and understanding-how. I argue that understanding-how is a particularly deep form of understanding, because it is based on mechanistic explanations, which answer why something happens in (...) virtue of what it is made of. I apply the three forms of understanding to two case studies: first, to the historical development of thermodynamics and, second, to the differences between the Clausius and the Boltzmann entropy in explaining thermodynamic processes. (shrink)

Let R be an o-minimal expansion of an ordered group R has no poles, R cannot define a real closed field with domain R and order R is eventually linear and every R -definable set is a finite union of cones. As a corollary we get that Th has quantifier elimination and universal axiomatization in the language with symbols for the ordered group operations, bounded R -definable sets and a symbol for each definable endomorphism of the group.

The ontological models framework distinguishes ψ-ontic from ψ-epistemic wave- functions. It is, in general, quite straightforward to categorize the wave-function of a certain quantum theory. Nevertheless, there has been a debate about the ontological status of the wave-function in the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics: is it ψ-epistemic and incomplete or ψ-ontic and complete? I will argue that the wave- function in this interpretation is best regarded as ψ-ontic and incomplete.

We investigate the possibility to characterize (multi) functions that are Σ b i -definable with small i (i = 1, 2, 3) in fragments of bounded arithmetic T 2 in terms of natural search problems defined over polynomial-time structures. We obtain the following results: (1) A reformulation of known characterizations of (multi)functions that are Σ b 1 - and Σ b 2 -definable in the theories S 1 2 and T 1 2 . (2) New characterizations of (multi)functions that are (...) Σ b 2 - and Σ b 3 -definable in the theory T 2 2 . (3) A new non-conservation result: the theory T 2 2 (α) is not ∀Σ b 1 (α)-conservative over the theory S 2 2 (α). To prove that the theory T 2 2 (α) is not ∀Σ b 1 (α)-conservative over the theory S 2 2 (α), we present two examples of a Σ b 1 (α)-principle separating the two theories: (a) the weak pigeonhole principle WPHP (a 2 , f, g) formalizing that no function f is a bijection between a 2 and a with the inverse g, (b) the iteration principle Iter (a, R, f) formalizing that no function f defined on a strict partial order ( $\{0,\dots,a\}$ , R) can have increasing iterates. (shrink)

Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the thermodynamic arrow of time can be grounded on typicality within statistical mechanics. This account, which I will call typicality frequentism, will evade the major criticisms raised against previous forms of frequentism. In this theory, probabilities arise within a physical theory from statistical (...) behavior of almost all initial conditions. The main advantage of typicality frequentism is that it shows which kinds of probabilities (that also have empirical relevance) can be derived from physics. Although one cannot recover all probability talk in this account, this is rather a virtue than a vice, because it shows which types of probabilities can in fact arise from physics and which types need to be explained in different ways, thereby opening the path for a pluralistic account of probabilities. (shrink)

What does it take to understand a phenomenon ideally, or to the highest conceivable extent? In this paper, we answer this question by arguing for five necessary conditions for ideal understanding: (i) representational accuracy, (ii) intelligibility, (iii) truth, (iv) reasonable endorsement, and (v) fitting. Even if one disagrees that there is some form of ideal understanding, these five conditions can be regarded as sufficient conditions for a particularly deep level of understanding. We then argue that grasping, novel predictions, and transparency (...) are not reasonable conditions for ideal understanding. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze time-asymmetric quantum mechanics with respect to the problems of irreversibility and of time's arrow. We begin with arguing that both problems are conceptually different. Then, we show that, contrary to a common opinion, the theory's ability to describe irreversible quantum processes is not a consequence of the semigroup evolution laws expressing the non-time-reversal invariance of the theory. Finally, we argue that time-asymmetric quantum mechanics, either in Prigogine's version or in Bohm's version, does (...) not solve the problem of the arrow of time because it does not supply a substantial and theoretically founded criterion for distinguishing between the two directions of time. (shrink)