In der gegenwartigen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema Tierschutz fehlt es an uberzeugenden Begrundungen; ungenugende Argumente fuhren zu uneinlosbaren Forderungen und schaden der Sache mehr als sie ihr nutzen. VOn entscheidender Bedeutung ist dabei die Frage, welches Verstandnis wir vom Tier haben. DIe philosophische Herausforderung einer Tierschutzethik beginnt mit der Einsicht, daSS das Tier weder als Sache noch als Person begriffen werden kann. DIe vorgelegte Tierschutzethik diskutiert das Thema auf philosophischem Niveau, bedenkt den Umgang des Menschen mit dem Tier in seiner (...) Vielschichtigkeit und leistet eine fundierte Begrundung der notigen Beschrankungen menschlicher Willkur zugunsten des Tieres. (shrink)

Bruno Liebrucks hat eine eigenständige, an Vico, Herder, Hamann, Humboldt und Cassirer anknüpfende Philosophie von der Sprache her“ entwickelt, welche Sprache als Medium der Welterschließung begreift. Zu dieser gelangt er durch eine fundamentalphilosophische Auseinandersetzung mit jenen drei Revolutionierungen im Denken des Denkens, die mit den Namen Platon, Kant und Hegel verknüpft sind. Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen diesen „Revolutionen der Denkart“ nach und entfalten grundlegende Perspektiven, die sich von Liebrucks her für das Verständnis der Logik, der Philosophischen Anthropologie, der Ethik (...) und Politischen Philosophie, der Kunstphilosophie sowie der Philosophischen Theologie ergeben. Die Autoren sind: Leo Dorner, Max Gottschlich, Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Klaus Honrath, Simone Liedtke, Theodoros Penolidis, Brigitte Scheer, Werner Schmitt, Josef Simon, Maria Woschnak, Werner Woschnak und Fritz Zimbrich. (shrink)

Of all the thinkers of the century of genius that inaugurated modern philosophy, none lived an intellectual life more rich and varied than Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Maria Rosa Antognazza's pioneering biography provides a unified portrait of this unique thinker and the world from which he came. At the centre of the huge range of Leibniz's apparently miscellaneous endeavours, Antognazza reveals a single master project lending unity to his extraordinarily multifaceted life's work. Throughout the vicissitudes of his long life, Leibniz (...) tenaciously pursued the dream of a systematic reform and advancement of all the sciences. As well as tracing the threads of continuity that bound these theoretical and practical activities to this all-embracing plan, this illuminating study also traces these threads back into the intellectual traditions of the Holy Roman Empire in which Leibniz lived and throughout the broader intellectual networks that linked him to patrons in countries as distant as Russia and to correspondents as far afield as China. (shrink)

A Philosophy to Live By highlights Murdoch's distinctive conception of philosophy as a spiritual or existential practice and enlists the resources of her thought to explore a wide range of thinkers and debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics.

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.

El escrito continúa una discusión mantenida por Macarena Marey, María Julia Bertomeu y Nuria Sánchez Madrid en torno a la capacidad de los principios del republicanismo kantiano para transformar el espacio social en un ámbito en el que la autosuficiencia material constituya una de las condiciones fundamentales para que la igualdad formal ante la ley y la libertad política puedan actualizarse. En estas coordenadas se manifiestan también algunas discrepancias en lo concerniente a la percepción kantiana de las injusticias sociales y (...) políticas propias de su tiempo, si bien se alcanza el acuerdo de que el diseño institucional del republicanismo kantiano constituye un dispositivo conceptual suficiente para eliminar la desigualdad económica que comporta pasividad civil y política. (shrink)

Organizado em quatro partes, divididas em dezoito capítulos, este livro articula análise filosófica e hermenêutica literária, apresentando um fio condutor que reside nos processos criativos ou «poiéticos» onde o «si-mesmo» se forma e transforma como configuração de símbolos e obra de linguagem, no atelier da memória e da imaginação (auto)biográficas. O livro evidencia o carácter aberto, exploratório, experimental da literatura, em geral, e das experiências da escrita e da narração, em particular, mas também a característica fugidia, instável, e talvez nunca (...) totalmente capturável destas experiências na primeira pessoa. Nele, são explorados os processos de construção da subjetividade e da identidade (pessoal ou coletiva) e interrogados os mecanismos da interpretação da vida e do mundo. (shrink)

A fundamental characteristic of human visual perception is the ability to group together disparate elements in a scene and treat them as a single unit. The mechanisms by which humans create such groupings remain unknown, but grouping seems to play an important role in a wide variety of visual phenomena. I propose a neural model of grouping; through top-down control of its circuits, the model implements a grouping strategy that involves both a connection strategy (which elements to connect) and a (...) selection strategy (spatiotemporal properties of a selection signal that segments target elements to facilitate identification). With computer simulations I explain how the circuits work and show how they can account for a wide variety of Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping. Additionally, I extend the model so that it can simulate visual search tasks. I show that when the model uses particular grouping strategies, simulated results closely match empirical results from replication experiments of three visual search tasks. In these experiments, perceptual grouping was induced by proximity and shape similarity (Palmer & Beck, 2007), by the spacing of irrelevant distractors and size similarity (Vickery, 2008), or by the proximity of dots and the proximity and shape similarity of line figures (Trick & Enns, 1997). Thus, I show that the model accounts for a variety of grouping effects and indicates which grouping strategies were likely used to promote performance in three visual search tasks. (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 this book, a general type ontology of works is defended and developed in detail. A wide concept of “work” is used here, such that “work” roughly corresponds to “artefact”. Though the focus is on works of art, the theory is meant to be applicable, in principle, to works of science and technology and to everyday items of all sorts as well. Among others, the following questions are discussed: To what ontological category or categories do works belong? Is there a (...) principled ontological divide between linguistic and musical works, on the one hand, and works of the visual arts on the other? What is the relationship between works and such diverse things as performances, manuscripts, scores, blueprints, stagings, film screenings, printing plates, data carriers, and others? What is the relationship between works and interpretations? In what way do works come into existence? Can works, once they are finished, be changed and/or cease to exist, and if so, under what conditions? Which sorts of parts can be distinguished within a work? Is the context of origin constitutive of a work’s identity? Can a translation be identical with the original linguistic work? Who is the author of a computer-generated work? The central thesis is that works of all kinds are abstract artefacts, i. e., types that are instantiated in concrete particulars, that is, in material or mental objects and events. The relationship between works and their “realizations” is defined by means of a modes of predication distinction, as it is used in a variety of Meinongian logics. An extensive chapter is dedicated to the relation between “representing works” and their represented worlds, with a focus on fictitious worlds and their objects. The latter are modeled as parts of fictional works. (shrink)

This Teacher Education Project is an intervention research aimed at creating new school roles for educating students as readers and writers as well as citizens. The methodological framework was based on Vygotsky’s discussions of method as praxis, as well as on both the Marxist practical–materialistic–revolutionary activity and Engeström’s extensions of Cultural Historical Activity Theory. The work at school was motivated by students’ limited awareness of reading and writing. The goal was to involve the school as a community in understanding and (...) transforming the ways in which reading and writing were addressed in classrooms. The methodology used for organizing and carrying out the project was devised so as to allow for three activity systems that partially interact with their objects – that is, reading and writing as tools for teaching-learning in different areas in order to constitute students as citizens. However, for this paper, we will focus solely on the Teacher Education Activity System, which we termed Teacher Support Team. Three episodes are discussed in this paper: Two video sessions with the Teacher Support Team, the first of which took place in 2010, and the second in 2011; and a classroom reading class session that was videotaped in 2011 as part of the Teacher Support Team work. The theoretical and practical work developed was targeted at creating a mutual Zone of Proximal Development that supported teachers, coordinators, and the principal, through the appropriation of reading and writing as processes. The results show that the organization of the project as interrelated activity systems enhanced the entire school’s prospects of appropriating the reading and writing teaching-learning processes, by focusing on the same object, in the diverse systems that framed the project. (shrink)

GABRIEL BELLO REGUERA: Emigración y ética. Humanizar y deshumanizar, Madrid, Plaza y Valdés, 2011, 341 pp.

Le problème central des Recherches logiques est de déterminer le rapport entre deux types d’actes : les actes de signification et les actes d’in­tuition (perception et imagination), donc entre d’un part des actes dont les objets sont de l’ordre du langage et, d’autre part, les actes qui « accèdent » à la réalité, dans lesquels l’objet réel est présent lui-même. Ce rapport est introduit dans la I re R echerche logique sous le nom de « remplissement » mais sa vraie (...) nature deviendra claire seulement dans la VI e R echerche logique . Le remplissement sera alors la synthèse d’un acte de signification et d’un acte d’intuition visant un même objet. Ce modèle d’une intention vide qui se remplit par la suite pose cependant certains problèmes. Premièrement, les significations peuvent-elles jouer le rôle d’objets et, si oui, quelle est la nature de ceux-ci ? Deuxièmement, peut-on vraiment isoler des intentions de signification, dont l’objet ne serait ni réel (comme dans la perception) ni même possible (comme dans l’imagination), mais d’une tout autre nature ? Puisqu’une imagination peut aussi jouer le rôle d’intuition remplissante, toute intention de signification doit se remplir (aboutir à un objet réel ou, au moins, possible), sans quoi elle ne serait pas une signification du tout, elle n’aurait aucun sens. Enfin, si nous acceptons cette thèse de l’universalité du remplissement, ou au moins de sa possibilité, comment penser le cas des objets idéaux, dont le remplissement ne va pas de soi ? (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 areas such as play, obedience and behaviour, and Volume 2, with creativity, and public and private education. (shrink)

In this article, I will draw on my own work and related publications to present some intuitions and hypotheses about the nature of the self and the mechanisms that lead to the development of consciousness or self awareness in human infants during the first 6 months of life. My main purpose is to show that the origins of a concept of self include the physical and the mental selves. I believe that it is essential when trying to understand what a (...) mental state is, that one identifies the social and physical aspects of the person to whom the mental state belongs. How can one identify a mental state or thought without making reference to a subject who experiences it (Hobson, 1990)? The other important feature of the self is that it is distinguished from other people and inanimate objects. ‘One's concept of self is a concept of a person; one's concept of persons cannot be a concept applicable only to a single individual (oneself), for the reason that in this case it would no longer constitute a concept'(Hobson, 1990, p. 165). I would like to argue that infants must be able to represent their physical and social selves in order to recognize that they are similar and different from other people, and to develop expectations and predictions about the behaviour of others (theory of mind). Unlike Strawson, I do not believe that the social and physical aspects of the self are, or become redundant to the nature of the self. I posit that the mature conscious self is a unique mythical and constantly changing entity, the formation of which is created not by the individual alone, but through continuous dialectical inquiry with other people. (shrink)

El presente artículo, de carácter descriptivo, analiza los principales métodos científicos utilizados en las Ciencias Sociales para analizar la violencia audiovisual. Así, los experimentos de laboratorio, o investigación experimental., estudios de campo, estudios correlacionales, estudios de panel longitudinal, experimentos naturales, estudios de intervención y revisión de meta-análisis han sido los principales métodos empleados por los investigadores más destacados en el campo de las Ciencias Sociales. En este artículo se presentan las técnicas utilizadas así como las principales investigaciones realizadas,con las conclusiones (...) más importantes sobre la violencia audiovisual. (shrink)

La primera parte de este artículo se refiere a las reglas que definen la autoridad legislativa suprema de un orden jurídico. En esta primera parte, además, el artículo se ocupa de algunas distinciones: entre normas y meta-normas, entre reglas legisladas y reglas consuetudinarias, y entre reglas constitutivas y reglas regulativas; todo ello con el objetivo de determinar a cuál de estas categorías pertenecen las reglas que definen la autoridad legislativa suprema de un orden jurídico. La conclusión es que las reglas (...) básicas que definen las autoridades legislativas supremas de cada orden jurídico existente, son necesariamente meta-normas constitutivas con naturaleza consuetudinaria. En la segunda parte de este artículo se toman en consideración los diferentes contenidos posibles de las reglas últimas que definen la autoridad legislativa. Sobre esta base, se distinguen cuatro modelos de sistema jurídico y autoridad legislativa: los que se corresponden con la autoridad absoluta y con la autoridad moral, y los que se corresponden con el estado de derecho y con el estado constitucional. En este sentido, se ofrecen algunas consideraciones: por un lado, para hacer referencia a la específica noción de autoridad que opera dentro del estado constitucional; y, por otro lado, para formular una puntual crítica a la distinción teórica entre autoridad constituyente y autoridad constituida. Según el análisis provisto en este artículo, cada autoridad es una autoridad constituida. En particular, las autoridades legislativas supremas son constituidas por normas constitutivas consuetudinarias que están fuera del alcance de las propias autoridades y que no dependen de la decisión o de la voluntad de ningún individuo en particular. | El original en inglés de este artículo fue publicado en Revus 29: 33-60. (shrink)