Ancient monism matters today because it reveals an alternative answer to a problem faced by ontology “after the death of god,” namely, how to distinguish between good and bad actions after the disappearance of transcendence. The modern answer in Continental philosophy was systematized by Heidegger and consists in positing that the everyday is permeated by instrumentality whereas there is a different kind of action that is noninstrumental, such as art or the thinking of being. By contrast, ancient monism holds that (...) all actions are instrumental and employs on a typology of action that relies on the distinction between techne and phronesis. Recognizing a different answer from the dominant Heideggerian one has the potential to renew the conception of the ethical and the political in Continental philosophy. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo analiza, en discusión con Joaquín García-Huidobro y Alejandro Miranda, la conveniencia de utilizar en moral sexual el argumento de la facultad pervertida, conforme al cual sería inmoral frustrar el fin natural de las facultades reproductivas. Según García-Huidobro y Miranda este argumento sólo puede utilizarse desde el “principio de totalidad”, pues su uso aislado llevaría a los absurdos denunciados por la New Natural Law Theory. Con vistas a una reconsideración de este argumento, se demuestra la importancia de considerar (...) la ética en su carácter tópico o contextual. Así, es en el ámbito de la templanza y de las inclinaciones sexuales donde el AFP cobra un papel normativo; en cambio, el “principio de totalidad” entra en juego cuando se está considerando el problema del límite de las intervenciones médicas.This paper focuses on the adequacy of using the so-called perverted faculty argument within the context of sexual morality. According to this argument, frustrating the reproductive faculty would be immoral. Professors García-Huidobro and Miranda think that this argument can be appropriately used only within the framework of the principle of totality. They argue that an unqualified use of the PFA would lead to the absurdities pointed out by the New Natural Law Theory. In order to see the PFA in a new light we demonstrate the importance of respecting the dialectical or contextual nature of Ethics. Thus, regarding temperance, and especially sexual inclinations, the PFA has a clear normative role. The principle of totality, instead, must be used when considering the problem of the moral limits of medical interventions. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta primero las objeciones que John Crosby y Josef Seifert han opuesto a la noción boeciana de persona. Responde después a dichas objeciones mediante (a) una crítica a la metafísica que esas objeciones presuponen, (b) un mostrar cómo se puede atender a las principales preocupaciones de los fenomenólogos sin abandonar la noción boeciana, (c) un señalar algunos problemas teológicos que podría suscitar la metafísica fenomenológica y que, sin duda, esos dos autores desearían evitar.

Este escrito considera y distingue dos objeciones que de ordinario se piensa que se dirigen contra una concepción ética realista: la falacia naturalista de G. E. Moore y la ley de Hume. Después de haber expuesto ambas objeciones, desplegado sus supuestos y consecuencias y respondido a todos ellos, concluye que es posible hoy sostener una ética realista. Se estructura a la manera de una cuestión disputada, dividida en seis artículos.

This paper first expounds the Aristotelian conception of universals. Afterwards, it determines (a) that in the metaphysics of the Stagirite there is place for divine Ideas as archetypes, and (b) which are the relations that exist between things and Ideas. It concludes, in the light of the above, with a reconsideration of the Aristotelian critique of Plato’s theory of anamnesis.

Este artículo muestra que el método adecuado de la disciplina jurídica es un método tópico, debido a la naturaleza práctica de la disciplina. Desde allí arroja luz sobre el problema de las lagunas legales. Al mismo tiempo, sin embargo, se esfuerza en mostrar que no equivale afirmar el carácter tópico de la disciplina y aceptar el activismo judicial que ha introducido la Corte Suprema de Justicia de los Estados Unidos en la interpretación-creación del Derecho Constitucional y que ha llegado al (...) paroxismo en la escuela del uso alternativo del Derecho. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relationship between divine knowledge and sense experience and the first three Thomistic ways to prove the existence of God. It reinforces the ways in the light of contributions and critiques coming from the realist-phenomenological and the analytic perspectives. To this end, it examines the insights of an important author of each of these two traditions, Josef Seifert and Richard Swinburne.

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Trata sobre los presupuestos metafísicos de aceptar la Biblia como Palabra de Dios. En particular, trata sobre la posibilidad de las intervenciones divinas, de los milagros y profecías. Responde al argumento de Hobbes por el determinismo, al principio de la clausura causal del mundo, a la crítica de Hume a la posibilidad de probar un milagro y a la negación de las profecías. This paper deals with the metaphysical presuppositions which underlie the acceptance of the Bible as the Word of (...) God. In particular, it deals with the possibility of divine interventions, miracles and prophecies. It answers to the Hobbesian argument for determinism, to the principle of the causal closure of the world, to Hume’s criticism of the possibility to prove miracles and to the negation of prophecies. (shrink)

El artículo trata sobre el objeto de las matemáticas, sobre si éste existe en la realidad o no. El artículo adopta una perspectiva intemporal y, por ello, incoa un diálogo entre físicos o matemáticos contemporáneos y algunas de las reflexiones clásicas sobre el tema. Entre estas últimas, incluye la platónica, la aristotélica, la empirista y la kantiana. Por otra parte, trae a colación la distinción clásica entre via inventionis y via demonstrationis en orden a distinguir las verdades matemáticas, los principios (...) en que ellas pueden resolverse y la forma concreta en que esos principios pueden ser relacionados para construir una demostración. Esto puede arrojar luces sobre por qué las verdades matemáticas pueden ser percibidas por los matemáticos como eternas, aunque los modos de demostrarlas o los contextos puedan ampliarse o variar.---“On Mathematics’ Reality”. The paper deals with the object of mathematics, and tries to show if it is real or not. It is written from an intended timeless point of view, and because of that it opens a dialogue between contemporary physicists or mathemat ics and classic ref lect ion on the mat ter. Among those reflections, it embraces the Platonic, Aristotelian, empiricist and Kantian. Moreover, it considers the classic distinction between via inventionis and via demonstrationis, in order to distinguish between mathematical truths, the principles or axioms in which they can be resolved and the concrete ways in which those principles can be interwoven for the construction of a demonstration. This can enlighten the problem of why mathematical truths are perceived by mathematicians as eternal, while the ways through which or the contexts in which they are demonstrated can be amplified or modified. (shrink)

The present paper describes the story of the development of a graphic novel—a story about superheroes—written by adolescent cancer patients on the Youth Project at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan. Nineteen patients from fifteen to twenty-five years old participated in a four month creative writing laboratory managed by a professional teacher. The output from the writing laboratory was a written text that was used as the script for a graphic novel drawn by professional cartoonists and working together with the (...) patients. Through their story, adolescent patients succeeded in voicing their dreams and fears. It was the adolescent patients themselves who explained how they had each tried to bring out the superhero inside them. This project describes the amazing powers of adolescents with cancer and opens a precious window on their inner world, enabling us to gain a better understanding of what they are really thinking and feeling through their own words. (shrink)

This book recovers Dionysus and Apollo as the twin conceptual personae of life's dual rhythm in an attempt to redesign contemporary theory through the reciprocal affirmation of event and form, earth and world, dance and philosophy.

This article aims at contributing to the contemporary reception of Heidegger’s thought in eco-philosophical perspective. Its point of departure is Heidegger’s claim, in his Bremen lectures and The Question Concerning Technology, that today the earth is submitted to permanent requisition and planned ordering, and that, having thus lost sight of its auto-poiesis, we are no longer capable of listening, tuning in, and singing back to what he calls in his course on Heraclitus the “song of the earth.” Accordingly, first we (...) examine how the inherently reciprocal dynamics of “earth” and “world,” as thematised by Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art, have become opaque. Second, we analyse whether it is possible to find those same dynamics at play behind Heidegger’s “Fourfold,” which we propose to reread in binary key in dialogue with contemporary anthropology, from Bateson and Lévi-Strauss to Wagner and Viveiros de Castro, and in light of Guattari’s notion of “trans-entitarian generativity.” Third, we stress the need to reposition Heidegger’s thought alongside contemporary concerns on “worlding” and we explore its plausible intersections with today’s object-oriented ethnography. Lastly, we discuss the possibility of rereading Heidegger’s Fourfold afresh against the backdrop of Heidegger’s non-foundational thinking, as a conceptual metaphor for the joint dynamics of Abgrund and Grund. (shrink)

En este texto se discuten los principales desarrollos de Alain Badiou en cuanto a las aportaciones de las matemáticas a una ontología materialista de lo múltiple, desde una perspectiva platónica; a través de éstas Badiou pretende enfrentar el reto que implica la antifilosofía de Jacques Lacan. Posteriormente, con base en la crítica que Slavoj Žižek realiza a las nociones de presentación y representación de Badiou, se juzgan los límites y las posibilidades de su propuesta ontológica.

Our purpose in this study – which stands at the crossroads of contemporary philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies – is to assess critically the plea for radical contingency in contemporary thought, with special attention to the work of Meillassoux, in light, among other things, of the symptomatic presence of Pauline motifs in the late twentieth to early twenty first-century philosophical arena, from Vattimo to Agamben and especially Badiou. Drawing on Aristotle’s treatment of τύχη and Hilan Bensusan’s neo-monadology (as well as (...) on the network biology of David George Haskell, Scott Gilbert’s holobiont hypothesis, and Terrence Deacon’s teleo-dynamics), we ask what is missing in such plea, from a theoretical standpoint. Next, we examine the relation between radical contingency and worldlessness in dialogue with Leroi-Gourhan’s theory of biocultural evolution, Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, Pierre Clastres’s ethnography, Heidegger’s philosophy of language, and contemporary authors like Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Patrice Maniglier. These two parallel lines of inquiry help us explore what radical contingency, in turn, prevents us from thinking: the intersection of ontology, cosmopolitics, and modality. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 45-68.

William Parry conceived in the early thirties a theory of entail-
ment, the theory of analytic implication, intended to give a formal expression to the idea that the content of the conclusion of a valid argument must be included in the content of its premises. This paper introduces a system of analytic, paraconsistent and quasi-classical propositional logic that does not validate the paradoxes of Parry’s analytic implication. The interpretation of the expressions of this logic will be given in terms of a (...) four-valued semantics,and its proof theory will be provided by a system of signed semantic tableaux that incorporates the techniques developed to improve the efficiency of the tableaux method for many-valued logics.
1. Introduction. (shrink)

This title provides an overview of the atomic nucleus and the theories that seek to explain it. Bringing together a systematic explanation of hadrons, nuclei, and stars for the first time, the author provides the core material needed by students of physics to acquire a solid understanding of nuclear and particle science.

Según Oliver Marchart, autores como Badiou, Lefort, Rancière o Laclau son parte de una misma corriente: el pensamiento político posfundacionalista. Su caracte-rística central no es el rechazo de todo fundamento del orden político, sino de todo fundamento que pretenda ser necesario. En oposición a esta postura y, a partir de un análisis del concepto de hegemonía, se busca mostrar cómo el pensamiento de Laclau no se libra de la metafísica, sino que, por el contrario, desarrolla políticamente la que es -según (...) Heidegger, el padre espiritual del posfundacionalismo- su forma consumada: la metafísica nietzscheana de la voluntad de poder. According to Oliver Marchart, authors such as Badiou, Lefort, Rancière or Laclau are representatives of postfoundationalist political thought, which does not reject all foundations of the political order, but rather those that claim to be necessary. In opposition to this viewpoint and on the basis of an analysis of the concept of hegemony, the paper seeks to show how Laclau's thought fails to free itself of metaphysics. Rather, it develops politically that which according to Heidegger, the "spiritual father" of postfoundationalism, is its consummated form: Nietzsche's metaphysics of the will to power. (shrink)

Como bien su título indica, el presente artículo busca dar cuenta de la génesis de la razón humana. Lo anterior se lleva a cabo, en primera instancia, a través del análisis de la Idea de Dios como lo que, según Schelling, es el contenido de la razón humana, aunque por ello, precisamente, él se constituye como algo racional. Es justamente este carácter racional de Dios lo que constituye el paso de lo absoluto a él, es decir, lo que Schelling denomina (...) la forma más primaria del espíritu. Esta búsqueda de la genealogía de la razón se lleva a cabo, en el presente texto, en los libros “Escrito sobre la libertad” (1809) y en las diferentes versiones de “Las edades del mundo” (1811-1815). En estos textos se elabora un análisis de la presencia de pensadores alemanes como Kant y Fichte en el pensamiento schellinguiano y, además, de conceptos como acto, a través del cual se busca dar cuenta de mejor manera de la llamada potencia originaria, es decir, del querer de aquello llamado ser originario. Así, a través de este análisis, se concluye, por ejemplo, que la potencia es lo siempre pensable que genera el acto pensar. Respecto a una teoría de la racionalidad esto significa lo siguiente: la razón, cuya forma ontologizada es Dios, se instituye espontáneamente a sí misma pero sobre una base que ella no ha puesto. (shrink)