Presentamos la traducción con comentario de un fragmento en lengua armenia, publicado por primera y única vez, con traducción al inglés, por Abraham Terian, en 1984, sin paralelo en el corpus griego de Filón. Describimos el largo camino que recorrió el texto desde su traducción desde la lengua original al armenio en el siglo VI hasta llegar a nuestro conocimiento y hacemos una breve referencia a la importancia de la concepción filónica sobre la década propia de la aritmología pitagórica. Concluimos (...) con las razones de la adscripción de este fragmento al tratado perdido _De numeris_. (shrink)

La providencia divina en los textos de Filón de Alejandría es un concepto filosófico o religioso que señala el cuidado de Dios por sus criaturas. Como fuente primera debemos acudir al Timeo para encontrar la idea platónica de la providencia sostenida por el axioma de que Dios no es la causa del mal, un principio que Filón sigue en su teodicea. Los filósofos estoicos tomaron de Platón la idea de la providencia divina y la adaptaron a su propia filosofía materialista. (...) Conjugando elementos platónicos y estoicos Filón expresa en varios lugares su idea sobre la providencia de Dios. Escribió dos tratados titulados Sobre la Providencia -probablemente en la última etapa de su vida-, que aquí comentaremos someramente. En La creación del mundo según Moisés 171-172, Filón ofrece un compendio de su teología donde aparece su idea de Dios, y por tanto su teoría de la creación y el concepto de providencia. El análisis se concentrará en la explicación de la providencia en los tratados históricos y en la particular construcción del concepto en la sociedad patriarcal judeohelenística. Divine providence in the texts of Philo of Alexandria is a philosophical or religious concept that points at the care of God for his creatures. As a first source we must consult the Timaeus to find the Platonic idea of providence sustained by the axiom that God is not the cause of evil, a principle that Philo follows in his theodicy. The Stoic philosophers took from Plato the idea of divine providence and adapted it to their own materialistic philosophy. Combining Platonic and Stoic elements Philo expresses in various places his idea of God’s providence. Philo wrote two treatises with the title On providence -probably at the end of his life-, which we will briefly discuss here. In On the Creation of the World according to Moses 171-172, Philo offers a compendium of his theology where his idea of God appears, and therefore his theory of the creation and the concept of providence. The analysis will focus on the explanation of providence in historical treatises and on the particular construction of the concept in the Hellenistic Jewish patriarchal society. (shrink)

Presentamos la traducción con comentario de un fragmento en lengua armenia, publicado por primera y única vez, con traducción al inglés, por Abraham Terian, en 1984, sin paralelo en el corpus griego de Filón. Describimos el largo camino que recorrió el texto desde su traducción desde la lengua original al armenio en el siglo VI hasta llegar a nuestro conocimiento y hacemos una breve referencia a la importancia de la concepción filónica sobre la década propia de la aritmología pitagórica. Concluimos (...) con las razones de la adscripción de este fragmento al tratado perdido _De numeris_. (shrink)

The article reviews the successive symbolic dimensions that the figure of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, acquires, from its biblical origins in Genesis of LXX to the comments of the Fathers of the Church, focusing especially in the interpretations of Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus. Sarah symbolizes in Philo virtue–ἀρετή– and wisdom –σοφία– and, by means of a particular exegesis of Gn 18. 11, virginity in its pure state. Paul’s version of the story of Sarahand Hagar displaces the Jews from (...) the inheritance of the promise and places Christians on that pedestal, and Sarah as the mother of Christianity. (shrink)

El artículo rastrea brevemente las propiedades del sumo sacerdote en el AT y resume el modo en que esta figura se presenta en la obra de Filón. El sumo sacerdote se presenta en los textos filónicos con tres características: 1.- como mediador (Fug. 108-115); 2.- exento de pecado por completo (Fug. 117-118; Spec. 1. 80-81); 3.- investido por los cuatro elementos (Mos. 2. 117-130; Spec. 1. 84-96). La teología de Clemente Alejandrino va a proyectar a Jesucristo, poco más de un (...) siglo después, las características simbólicas del sumo sacerdote que Filón había adjudicado a Moisés. The paper traces briefly the properties of the high priest in the OT and summarizes how this figure is presented in the works by Philo. The high priest is presented in the Philonic texts with three characteristics: 1.- as a mediator (Fug. 108-115); 2.- completely sinless (Fug. 117-118; Spec. 1. 80-81); 3.- invested by the four elements (Mos. 2. 117-130; Spec. 1. 84-96). Clement of Alexandria will project to Jesus Christ, a century and a half later, the symbolic features of the high priest of Israel that Philo had awarded to Moses. (shrink)

En este trabajo ofrecemos la traducción del latín al español del Liber de convenientia fidei et intellectus in obiecto de Ramón Llull, con introducción y notas. Se trata de una obra en la que el filósofo mallorquín efectúa una síntesis de su pensamiento en torno de las relaciones entre fe y razón, así como de su posición respecto de la defensa de la fe católica y la conversión de los no cristianos. El opúsculo, que se muestra como un trabajo definitivo (...) en cuanto al establecimiento de la relación mencionada, hecha mano de los elementos fundamentales de su sistema, el Ars magna, pero aun así es una rara avis dentro de la opus luliana: está pleno de citas bíblicas y alusiones a las auctoritates eclesiásticas más renombradas, unas y otras ausentes en la mayoría de las obras lulianas. In this paper we offer the translation from Latin to Spanish of Ramón Llull´s Liber de convenientia fidei et intellectus in obiecto with introduction and notes. This is a work where the mallorcan philosopher makes a synthetic framework of his thinking on the relationship between faith and reason, as well as of his position towards the defense of catholic faith and conversion of non-christian people. The text, which is shown as a definitive work in the setting of this relationship, uses the most characteristic principles of his system, Ars magna, but still is a rara avis inside the opus lulliana: is full of biblical quotations and allusions to the most renowned ecclesiastical auctoritates, all these absents in most lullian woks. (shrink)

Lejos de la interpretación de Leon Battista Alberti como prototipo del "hombre universal", GARIN ha reconocido el carácter contradictorio del pensamiento albertiano. En efecto, en la extensa y polifacética obra del humanista genovés coexisten dos visiones antagónicas del hombre y el mundo. A una le corresponde la confianza en la razón, a la otra la constatación del carácter absurdo de la existencia. Este Alberti "sombrío" se expresa en las páginas de Momus y las Intercenales. En ellas, la apelación a una (...) existencia simulada es abordada a través de una risa desacralizadora del ideal humano que alumbró el temprano Renacimiento italiano. Far from the interpretation of Leon Battista Alberti as a prototype of the "universal man", GARIN has analyzed the contradictory nature of Alberti's thought. In fact, in the extensive and versatile work of the Genoese humanist two opposite visions of man and the world coexist: one believes in the power of reason, the other acknowledges the absurdity of life. It is in Momus and the Intercenales that this "somber Alberti" is present. In these texts the appeal to a simulated life is addressed through a form of laughter that demystifies the human ideal of the early Italian Renaissance. (shrink)

The article reviews the successive symbolic dimensions that the figure of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, acquires, from its biblical origins in Genesis of LXX to the comments of the Fathers of the Church, focusing especially in the interpretations of Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus. Sarah symbolizes in Philo virtue–ἀρετή– and wisdom –σοφία– and, by means of a particular exegesis of Gn 18. 11, virginity in its pure state. Paul’s version of the story of Sarahand Hagar displaces the Jews from (...) the inheritance of the promise and places Christians on that pedestal, and Sarah as the mother of Christianity. (shrink)

Nuestra publicación está cumpliendo un cuarto de siglo en contacto continuo con investigadores locales y de países extranjeros, tanto en calidad de colaboradorescomo de receptores de nuestros artículos y reseñas. Esperamos haber cumplido en estos veinticinco años nuestro objetivo principal, que siempre fue consolidar el carácter participativo de la revista.

El De dogmatibus ecclesiasticis de Genadio de Marsella se encuentra próximo a la tradición de los símbolos, compilaciones doctrinarias de consulta ágil, por su estructura interna y contenidos. El examen del tratado genadiano contribuye a delimitar su contexto de composición, así como las preferencias dogmáticas de su autor. The De dogmatibus ecclesiasticis of Gennadius of Massilia is close to the tradition of symbols, easy to read doctrinal compilations, because of its structure and contents. The exam of Gennadius’ book contributes to (...) define its composition context and its author’s dogmatic choices. (shrink)

A complete, illustrated survey of Etienne-Jules Marey's work that investigates the far reaching effects of her inventions on stream-of-consciousness literature, psychoanalysis, Bergsonian philosophy, and the art of cubists and futurists.

Autobiographical memory is a specific kind of memory concerning events and issues related to yourself. Your conception of your own life involves narratives in which all of yours experiences are interrelated. Autobiographical memory connects your present self with your past experiences (that’s why it’s important for theories about continuity of self). In this article I will analyse autobiographical texts of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the context of autobiographical memory theories.

This paper examines a little studied type of perspective shift that I call protagonist projection, following Holton :625–628, 1997). PP is a way of describing the mental state of a protagonist that conveys, to some extent, her perspective. Similarly to its better known cousin free indirect discourse, the shift in perspective is achieved without an overt operator. Unlike FID, PP is not based on a presumed speech-act of a protagonist. Rather, it gives a linguistic form to pre-verbal perceptual content, sensations, (...) feelings or implicit beliefs. I propose to analyse PP in a bi-contextual framework, extending Eckardt’s approach to FID. Under the resulting analysis, FID and PP are two instances of a more general category of perspective shift. (shrink)

The central idea behind this paper is that presuppositions of soft triggers arise from the way our attention structures the informational content of a sentence. Some aspects of the information conveyed are such that we pay attention to them by default, even in the absence of contextual information. On the other hand, contextual cues or conversational goals can divert attention to types of information that we would not pay attention to by default. Either way, whatever we do not pay attention (...) to, be it by default, or in context, is what ends up presupposed by soft triggers. This paper attempts to predict what information in the sentence is likely to end up being the main point (i.e. what we pay attention to) and what information is independent from this, and therefore likely presupposed. It is proposed that this can be calculated by making reference to event times. The notion of aboutness used to calculate independence is based on that of Demolombe and Fariñas del Cerro (In: Holdobler S (ed) Intellectics and computational logic: papers in honor of Wolfgang Bibel, 2000). (shrink)

Some presuppositions are easier to cancel than others in embedded contexts. This contrast has been used as evidence for distinguishing two fundamentally different kinds of presuppositions, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. ‘Soft’ presuppositions are usually assumed to arise in a pragmatic way, while ‘hard’ presuppositions are thought to be genuine semantic presuppositions. This paper argues against such a distinction and proposes to derive the difference in cancellation from inherent differences in how presupposition triggers interact with the context: their focus sensitivity, anaphoricity, and (...) question–answer congruence properties. The paper also aims to derive the presuppositions of additive particles such as too, also, again, and of it-clefts. (shrink)

The relationship between philosophy and science has always been complementary. Today, while science moves increasingly fast and philosophy shows some problems in catching up with it, it is not always possible to ignore such relationships, especially in some disciplines such as philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and neuroscience. However, the methodological procedures used to analyze these data are based on principles and assumptions that require a profound dialogue between philosophy and science. Following these ideas, this work aims to raise the (...) problems that a classical connectionist theory can cause and problematize them in a cognitive framework, considering both philosophy and cognitive sciences but also the disciplines that are near to them, such as AI, computer sciences, and linguistics. For this reason, we embarked on an analysis of both the computational and theoretical problems that connectionism currently has. The second aim of this work is to advocate for collaboration between neuroscience and philosophy of mind because the promotion of deeper multidisciplinarity seems necessary in order to solve connectionism’s problems. In fact, we believe that the problems that we detected can be solved by a thorough investigation at both a theoretical and an empirical level, and they do not represent an impasse but rather a starting point from which connectionism should learn and be updated while keeping its original and profoundly convincing core. (shrink)

Cancer research is experiencing ‘paradigm instability’, since there are two rival theories of carcinogenesis which confront themselves, namely the somatic mutation theory and the tissue organization field theory. Despite this theoretical uncertainty, a huge quantity of data is available thanks to the improvement of genome sequencing techniques. Some authors think that the development of new statistical tools will be able to overcome the lack of a shared theoretical perspective on cancer by amalgamating as many data as possible. We think instead (...) that a deeper understanding of cancer can be achieved by means of more theoretical work, rather than by merely accumulating more data. To support our thesis, we introduce the analytic view of theory development, which rests on the concept of plausibility, and make clear in what sense plausibility and probability are distinct concepts. Then, the concept of plausibility is used to point out the ineliminable role played by the epistemic subject in the development of statistical tools and in the process of theory assessment. We then move to address a central issue in cancer research, namely the relevance of computational tools developed by bioinformaticists to detect driver mutations in the debate between the two main rival theories of carcinogenesis. Finally, we briefly extend our considerations on the role that plausibility plays in evidence amalgamation from cancer research to the more general issue of the divergences between frequentists and Bayesians in the philosophy of medicine and statistics. We argue that taking into account plausibility-based considerations can lead to clarify some epistemological shortcomings that afflict both these perspectives. (shrink)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Shame is shown to provide motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

While inanimate objects can neither experience nor express emotions, in principle they can be expressive of emotions. In particular, music is a paradigmatic example of something expressive of emotions that surely cannot feel anything at all. The Contour theory accounts for music expressiveness in terms of those resemblances that hold between its external and perceivable properties and the typical contour of human emotional behavior. Provided that some critical aspects are emended – notably, the stress on the perception of similarity instead (...) of the more plausible hypothesis that the listener perceives manifestations that are similar – we are inclined to endorse contour theory. In particular, we share its basic idea that expressive properties are perceived. Although other kinds of processes – high-level conceptual inferences, imagination – sometimes characterize our encounters with music, still perception constitutes the standard process underlying the detection of expressiveness. Moreover, we propose to extend contour theory to visual arts. Taking into consideration, as a case study, depicted landscapes, we observe that they frequently cannot but express emotions such as joy, sadness, liveliness or melancholy. The fact that pictures, unlike music, lack any temporal dimension is a prima facie reason for doubting the extendibility of contour theory’s conceptual arsenal to them. Nevertheless, while being obviously unable to behave somehow, we claim that depicted landscapes can perfectly convey dynamic information. If this is the case, the extension of the notion of contour to visuals art via the stress on the notion of dynamism would represent a second interesting revision of contour theory. (shrink)

In March 2016, DeepMind's computer programme AlphaGo surprised the world by defeating the world‐champion Go player, Lee Sedol. AlphaGo exhibits a novel, surprising and valuable style of play and has been recognised as “creative” by the artificial intelligence (AI) and Go communities. This article examines whether AlphaGo engages in creative problem solving according to the standards of comparative psychology. I argue that AlphaGo displays one important aspect of creative problem solving (namely mental scenario building in the form of Monte Carlo (...) tree search), while lacking another (domain generality). This analysis has consequences for how we think about creativity in humans and AI. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

A natural landscape can look serene, a shade of colour cheerful and a piece of music might sound heartrending. Why do we ascribe affective qualities to objects that can't entertain psychological states? The capacity that objects, and especially artworks, have to express affective states is a bizarre phenomenon that needs to be clarified in numerous respects. Philosophers are still struggling with the phenomenon of expressiveness being a matter of imagination, perception, or mnemonic association, and usually do not agree on the (...) role that emotions and human bodily expressions play in it. Benenti questions the main theories that populate the aesthetics domain using the tools of philosophy of mind. This study deals with crucial debates concerning seeing-in, cognitive penetration, the relation between phenomenal character and representational content and between emotions and expressions. It aims at providing a viable account of the experience we have of expressive properties by casting light on its fundamentally perceptual nature. The outcome is an empirically informed and critical overview of a topic which has been rather neglected in the philosophy of mind. The book will be of interest to scholars of the philosophy of mind, aesthetics, the cognitive sciences, and psychology. (shrink)

Aristotle ’s claim that we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions raises a familiar problem: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? I reject deflationary accounts of the answer given in _Nicomachean Ethics_ 2.4 and argue instead that proper habituation involves doing virtuous actions with the right motive, i.e. for the sake of the noble, even though learners do not yet have virtuous dispositions. My interpretation confers continuity to habituation and explains in a non-mysterious way how (...) we become virtuous by doing virtuous actions in the right way. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, the origin of cancer is being explored from the point of view of the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT), focusing on genetic mutations and clonal expansion of somatic cells. As cancer research expanded in several directions, the dominant focus on cells remained steady, but the classes of genes and the kinds of extra-genetic factors that were shown to have causal relevance in the onset of cancer multiplied. The wild heterogeneity of cancer-related mutations and phenotypes, along with the increasing (...) complication of models, led to an oscillation between the hectic search of 'the' few key factors that cause cancer and the discouragement in face of a seeming 'endless complexity'. To tame this complexity, cancer research started to avail itself of the tools that were being developed by Systems Biology. At the same time, anti-reductionist voices began claiming that cancer research was stuck in a sterile research paradigm. This alternative discourse even gave birth to an alternative theory: the Tissue Organization Field Theory (TOFT). A deeper philosophical analysis shows the serious limits of both reductionist and anti-reductionist positions and of their polarization. This book demonstrates that a radical philosophical reflection is necessary to drive cancer research out of its impasses. At the very least, this will be a reflection on the assumptions of different kinds of cancer research, on the implications of what cancer research has been discovering over 40 years and more, on a view of scientific practice that is most able to make sense of the cognitive and social conflicts that are seen in the scientific community (and in its results), and, finally, on the nature of living entities with which we entertain this fascinating epistemological dance that we call scientific research. The proposed Dynamic and Relational View of carcinogenesis is a starting point in all these directions. (shrink)