How can dispute records shed light on the study of dispute settlement processes and their social and political underpinnings? This volume addresses this question by investigating the interplay between record-making, disputing process, and the social and political contexts of conflicts. The authors make use of exceptionally rich charter materials from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia, including different types of texts directly and indirectly related to conflicts, in order to contribute to a comparative survey of early medieval dispute records and (...) to a better understanding of the interplay between judicial and other less formal modes of conflict resolution. Contributors are Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade, François Bougard, Warren C. Brown, Wendy Davies, Julio Escalona, Kim Esmark, Adam J. Kosto, Juan José Larrea, André Evangelista Marques, Josep M. Salrach, Igor Santos Salazar, and Francesca Tinti. (shrink)

La atenci n de este estudio se centra en la vertiente metodol gica de la econom a, ya que su desarrollo ha motivado una creciente reflexi n metodol gica que ata e tanto a la disciplina en conjunto como a sus distintas ramas. el inter s que puede suscitar se dirige tanto a fil sofos preocupados por el devenir de la ciencia como de economistas abiertos al aspecto humano de su saber.

La filosofía moderna se ha caracterizado por un interés especial hacia el método científico. Su propuesta se ha constituido como un novum organum contra el vetus organon de Aristóteles. Sin embargo, tras cuatro siglos de esfuerzos, sólo hallamos anarquía o ineficacia en los métodos propuestos; por eso, se ha intentado una rehabilitación del método aristotélico.En el presente texto se investiga, en primer lugar, si los procedimientos cognitivos, propuestos en los Analytica, son el método de la filosofía o si, más bien, (...) describen procedimientos propios de otras ciencias; y entonces el auténtico método de la filosofía —y de la episteme en general— habría que buscarlo en los Tópicos: «El fin de este tratado es encontrar un méthodos, que nos permita argumentar […] sobre cualquier problema propuesto» (Topica, A 1, 100 a 18-21). En segundo lugar, se expone en qué consiste y cómo procede la dialéctica aristotélica como método de la filosofía, «aplicada a las ciencias filosóficas» (Topica, A 2, 101 a 26-27). (shrink)

El presente texto se articula en tres partes. En la primera, se reseña que la metafísica en el siglo XX ha sufrido una crisis que ha llevado a considerarla una disciplina muerta, una quimera. La crítica realizada por la filosofía analítica –concretada aquí en Quine– y por Heidegger ha concluido en que la metafísica es imposible, un absurdo. En la segunda parte, se analiza qué metafísica o, mejor, cuál es la idea de metafísica que Quine y Heidegger tenían y contra (...) la que dirigían sus críticas. Se concluye que la tarea de ambos pensadores es eficaz, puesto que la metafísica objetivista –criticada por Quine– y la ontoteología –criticada por Heidegger– son efectivamente imposibles. Sin embargo, no con eso se termina el juicio sobre la metafísica, puesto que, en la tercera parte de este escrito, se indaga por una nueva forma posible de metafísica, una forma que apenas ha sido explorada. Se muestra que un saber en el que la fusión de gnoseología y ontología sea total es la única posibilidad de construir una filosofía primera. Se trata no de la consideración de la ontología y la gnoseología como dos partes o secciones de la metafísica, sino como dos dimensiones presentes en cada tema, en cada una de las proposiciones de la metafísica. Esta propuesta conecta con la visión que Aristóteles ofrece de su próte filosofía a través de la segunda aporía de Metafísica B, que implica la lectura simultánea del Órganon y la Metafísica , y que quizás nunca ha sido investigada como la autentica concepción de la filosofía primera. (shrink)

El presente artículo es una propuesta de una nueva lectura del capítulo quinto del libro tercero del De anima de Aristóteles. Por lectura se entiende no una interpretación, sino una cuidadosa atención al momento filológico: qué dice literalmente el texto, antes de las interpretaciones filosóficas. Para esto, se atiende minuciosamente a la semántica de los términos, al modo de adjetivación de la lengua griega, y al contexto general, gramatical y semántico de este capítulo quinto. El resultado de este análisis filológico (...) es una es una nueva comprensión del texto, que permite una nueva traducción, que se ofrece al final. (shrink)

In Book IV of the Metaphysics Aristotle argues that first philosophy investigates not only being qua being but also the axioms or principles of demonstration. In the same place he establishes which principles are first. The first among these is the principle of contradiction. The thesis I defend in my communication is that the principle of contradiction in Aristotle is not merely formal in the style of modern symbolic logic, but is the constituent law of all discourse. As such, the (...) most precise sense in which it is a 'first principle' is that of a condition of the possibility of significance: terms and judgments have significance if they comply with the condition; if they violate it they signify nothing and are vacuous. If my interpretation is correct, various consequences will be derivable from a first principle, of which the most important is its link with essence and substance. (shrink)

This paper presents reasons against semantic relativism. Semantic relativism is motivated by intuitions that are presumed to raise problems for traditional or contextualist semantics in contested domains of discourse. Intuition-based arguments are those based on competent speakers’ putative intuitions about seeming faultless disagreement, eavesdropper, and retraction cases. I will organize the discussion in three parts. First, I shall provide a brief introduction to the intuition-based arguments offered in favor of semantic relativism. Second, I shall indicate that there are ways for (...) contextualism to explain the (appearance of) intuitions that support semantic relativism. Third, I shall review some experimental results and independent arguments that put into question the appeal of semantic relativism. (shrink)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and (...) cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. -/- This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue the practice of procreation is immoral regardless of the consequences of human presence such as climate change and overpopulation; the lack of consent, interests and moral desert on the part of nonexistent individuals means someone could potentially suffer in the absence of moral justification. Procreation is only morally justified if there is some method for acquiring informed consent from a non-existent person; but that is impossible; therefore, procreation is immoral.

In a recent paper, Berger and Nanay consider, and reject, three ways of addressing the phenomenon of unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. Since these three approaches seem to exhaust the options open to naïve realists, and since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this is seen to present a problem for the view. We take this opportunity to show that all three approaches considered remain (...) perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. So far from undermining the credibility of naïve realism, Berger and Nanay simply draw our attention to an important question to be considered by naïve realists in future work. Namely, which of the approaches considered is most likely to provide an accurate account of unconscious perception in each of its purported incarnations? (shrink)

The aim of our experiment was to analyse the effect of the emotional valence (positive, negative, or neutral) on true and false recognition, matching the arousal, frequency, concreteness, and associative strength of the study and recognition words. Fifty younger adults and 46 healthy older adults performed three study tasks (with words of different valence: positive, negative, neutral) and their corresponding recognition tests. Two weeks later, they performed the three recognition tests again. The results show that words with a negative valence (...) produced less true recognition and less false recognition than words with a positive or neutral valence, in both younger and older adults, on the immediate recognition test. This pattern of results was also found in the younger adults on the delayed recognition test, whereas in the older participants, these differences disappeared. Thus, when arousal is controlled, both younger and older adults tend to recognise negative information worse than positive or neutral information, but they also commit fewer errors. Results would suggest that the greater arousal commonly associated with negative stimuli, rather than their own valence, could explain some of the contradictory results found in the literature. (shrink)

Mit dem Untertitel »Streitfragen« bringt dieser Band 44 der Fichte-Studien eine Gruppe von Beiträgen, die das Hauptthema »Fichte und seine Zeit« behandeln und es aus unterschiedlichen Gesichtspunkten entfalten.

Dieser Band ist in vier Teile gegliedert, die dem theoretischen, praktischen und politischen Gedanken des Philosophen gewidmet sind. Diesen folgen im vierten Teil Beiträge, die Fichtes philosophische Ansätze in den Dialog mit gegenwärtigen Autoren und Fragen der Philosophie bringen.

Die 38 im Jahre 1811 vorgetragen Vorlesungen über die Wissenschaftslehre sind eine vollkommene und besonders gut artikulierte Darstellung Fichtes Systems in der Zeit seiner Tätigkeit an der neu gegründeten Universität zu Berlin. Der Öffentlichkeit sind sie erst 1999 bekannt geworden, als sie in der_J. G. Fichte Gesamtausgabe_ der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aufgenommen wurden, denn bis dahin wurden sie von den jeweiligen Editoren des Fichte-Nachlasses nie erwähnt. Fichte nimmt in dieser Darstellung seines Systems gegen beide Formen des Nihilismus Stellung - (...) den theoretischen sowie den mit diesem zusammenhängenden praktischen. Um seine systematische Position formulieren und vertreten zu können, setzt er sich vor allem mit Spinoza und Kant nochmals auseinander. Spinoza stellt nämlich nach Fichte die Grundfrage der Philosophie, wie neben dem Sein auch ein Dasein denkbar sein kann, während Kant ihm im Begriff der Erscheinung den Weg zu ihrer Lösung aufzeigt. Aber zwei weitere Probleme ergeben sich für Fichte aus der kritischen Philosophie Kants: wie kann man das Bewußtsein beschreiben, wenn man sich nicht aus seinem Zirkel bewegen kann, und wie kann man die in dieser Beschreibung faktisch entdeckte Ursprünglichkeit der Synthesis rechtfertigen? Für Fichte hatte der Begründer der Transzendentalphilosophie die grundlegende synthetische Tätigkeit des Bewußtseins nur noch als ein Faktum des Bewußtseins angenommen. Der Beweis ihrer Möglichkeit ist nach Fichte letztlich nur zu führen, indem man sie auf eine Erscheinungsform der Freiheit als Inbegriff Gottes zurückführt. Diesen Beweisgang versteht nun Fichte als Vervollständigung des transzendentalphilosophischen Programms und zugleich als Mittel, um aus dem Wissen in die Weisheit überzugehen. (shrink)

This paper has two sections: first, I am going to analyze two criteria to differentiate between argumentation and formal demonstration. According to Perelman (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1989) argumentation is based on persuasion, and that is the reason why argumentation is polysemic, ambiguous; on the other hand, it is said that argumentation depends on the additional information that someone gives to us, while demonstration does not depend to the additional information. I will show that no criteria invoked to justify the disctintion (...) between demostration and argumentation is kept. In the second section I will show that persuasion is not necessarily associated to the speech act of argumentation, in the same way that the atempt of convincing is not necessarily associated with the act of asserting something. Thus, someone cannot use persuasion to define the argumentative exercise. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a visual method that I have created to demonstrate the validity of propositional arguments and predicates, based on the traditional Venn diagrams. This idea was born after becoming aware of how useful visual methods are in other scientific fields, such as geometrical representations of arithmetic and algebraic concepts. This method illustrates the relationship between propositional logic, predicate logic and set theory, and it can be used to explain linguistic semantic concepts such as synonymy, antonymy, (...) hyponymy, entailment, and lexical substitution. (shrink)

What ethical framework should be used as a basis for teaching business ethics? Should business ethics be taught by ethicists in a separate course, by business faculty in business courses, or perhaps by both? These are some of the issues this paper will address. The paper begins with a review of the literature concerning approaches to teaching business ethics. Next, some ethical frameworks for teaching business ethics are considered. Finally, the paper proposes that students should apply their own personal values (...) to business ethical issues in the classroom, thus providing future business leaders with a process for resolving ethical dilemmas. (shrink)