This paper responds to the issues raised by D. Chalmers by offering a research direction which is quite radical because of the way in which methodological principles are linked to scientific studies of consciousness. Neuro-phenomenology is the name I use here to designate a quest to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience, thereby placing myself in the lineage of the continental tradition of Phenomenology. My claim is that the so-called hard problem that animates these Special (...) Issues can only be addressed productively by gathering a research community armed with new pragmatic tools for the development of a science of consciousness. I will claim that no piecemeal empirical correlates, nor purely theoretical principles, will really help us at this stage. We need to turn to a systematic exploration of the only link between mind and consciousness that seems both obvious and natural: the structure of human experience itself. In what follows I motivate my choice by briefly examining the current debate about consciousness at the light of Chalmer’s hard problem. Next, I outline the phenomenological strategy. Finally I conclude by discussing some of the main difficulties and consequences of this strategy. (shrink)

This paper starts with one of Chalmers’ basic points: first-hand experience is an irreducible field of phenomena. I claim there is no ‘theoretical fix’ or ‘extra ingredient’ in nature that can possibly bridge this gap. Instead, the field of conscious phenomena requires a rigorous method and an explicit pragmatics for its exploration and analysis. My proposed approach, inspired by the style of inquiry of phenomenology, I have called neurophenomenology. It seeks articulations by mutual constraints between phenomena present in experience and (...) the correlative field of phenomena established by the cognitive sciences. It needs to expand into a widening research community in which the method is cultivated further. (shrink)

El Espacio Ultraterrestre está cobrando más importancia que nunca no solamente como dominio operacional, sino también por sus vulnerabilidades intrínsecas. La OTAN no busca una confrontación directa en el Espacio Ultraterrestre, sino garantizar el acceso a las capacidades espaciales necesarias para que pueda seguir cumpliendo con el mandato encomendado por sus Estados Miembros. Para ello, tanto el fomento de la interoperabilidad como de la arquitectura jurídica de la Alianza serán fundamentales. La Inteligencia Artificial supone un desafío importante en el marco (...) de las relaciones internacionales no solamente por la posible asimetría entre Estados, sino también por el riesgo de impunidad y falta de atribución de posibles comportamientos “autónomos” que puedan resultar perjudiciales tanto en objetos como personas. (shrink)

The aim of this writing is to show the similarities between the philosophy of a modern author, like Leibniz, and the philosophy of a medieval jewish author, like Maimonides. I am going to write about the concept of "substance" in both authors, looking into the similarity between the "monad" of Leibniz and the idea of "angel" of Maimonides. Both of them, "monad" and "angel", settle, not only the concept of "substance", but also the concept of "Structure of living" besides some (...) more interesting cognitive notions which I am going to inguire into. (shrink)

In 2016, Béziau introduces a restricted notion of paraconsistency, the so-called genuine paraconsistency. A logic is genuine paraconsistent if it rejects the laws $\varphi,\neg \varphi \vdash \psi$ and $\vdash \neg (\varphi \wedge \neg \varphi)$. In that paper, the author analyzes, among the three-valued logics, which of them satisfy this property. If we consider multiple-conclusion consequence relations, the dual properties of those above-mentioned are $\vdash \varphi, \neg \varphi$ and $\neg (\varphi \vee \neg \varphi) \vdash$. We call genuine paracomplete logics those rejecting (...) the mentioned properties. We present here an analysis of the three-valued genuine paracomplete logics. A very natural twist structures semantics for these logics is also found in a systematic way. This semantics produces automatically a simple and elegant Hilbert-style characterization for all these logics. Finally, we introduce the logic LGP which is genuine paracomplete is not genuine paraconsistent, not even paraconsistent and cannot be characterized by a single finite logical matrix. (shrink)

La pregunta por el sentido de la filosofía ha sido un denominador común desde sus inicios, cobrando una fuerza inusitada con la expansión omnímoda del capitalismo en el «mundo de la vida», hasta el punto de «naturalizarse» como el único mundo posible. Reducida a la mera función de legitimar el imperativo de la equivalencia/acumulación, se impone la necesidad de elevar la filosofía a la altura del acontecimiento, en el afán por vislumbrar e implementar modos de vida alternativos a la dictadura (...) del capitalismo absoluto. En este contexto, exploramos el potencial emancipatorio del «_ethos_ barroco» en el pensamiento de Bolívar Echeverría, con el objeto de mostrar, desde esta perspectiva, las condiciones y los límites actuales para transcender lo que denominamos «capitalismo neobarroco», implantando en su lugar una suerte inaudita de «neobarroco postcapitalista». (shrink)

La emigración es un derecho humano, eso nadie lo discute. Ahora bien, que la emigración sea un derecho humano no significa que la decisión de emigrar escape a la crítica moral. El presente trabajo evalúa los argumentos esgrimidos en contra de la llamada deslocalización fiscal, que consiste en trasladar la actividad profesional a otro país con el objetivo de pagar menos impuestos. En concreto, se analizan los argumentos de la justicia distributiva, la reciprocidad y la solidaridad. Para ello, se compara (...) el caso de los _youtubers_ españoles con el del trabajador a jornada parcial, el graduado universitario que no ejerce de aquello para lo que ha estudiado y el rico hedonista, y se concluye que la única diferencia moralmente significativa es que los primeros se trasladan a otro país para pagar menos impuestos, mientras que los demás no. Sin embargo, esto presupone precisamente aquello que pretende demostrar, a saber, que la deslocalización fiscal es moralmente reprobable. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende mostrar la lectura política que hace Miguel Abensour de Lévinas cuando analiza el sentido del eje conceptual levinasiano de la responsabilidad-para-elotro y sus vinculaciones ético-políticas. Así, podemos redescubrir la irreductibilidad de lo político como una dimensión que requiere de lo humano, todo esto bajo el lema de la extravagante hipótesis. Lo humano –a la luz de Lévinas y en lo cual Abensour se ancla– instala su propia irreductibilidad que hace renovar lo político y deja aparecer una filosofía (...) política crítica que quiere pensar de otro modo el Estado y la justicia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 35-53 [Access article in PDF] "Truth Is What Works": Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism—A Conversation Francisco J. Varela Bernhard Poerksen Institut für Journalistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Universität Hamburg Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a (...) dissertation on the insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35]Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001.In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why?Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it... (shrink)

El principal cometido del presente trabajo es examinar el nivel productivo-infraestructural y subjetivo del régimen neoliberal, en contraste con la lógica puramente económica-empresarial del modo de producción capitalista en la era industrial y disciplinaria. En primer lugar, examinamos la noción foucaultiana de “biopolítica” y su recepción en el pensamiento de Deleuze, analizando el papel pretendidamente esencial que juegan los deseos humanos para el funcionamiento del capitalismo de consumo. A la luz de las averiguaciones logradas, indagamos en perspectiva histórica las principales (...) tecnologías donde se cifra la eficacia del “psicopoder” emergente, con el objeto de dilucidar, a la luz de las nuevas formas de producción inmateriales y en red, su sentido y sus efectos en las subjetividades y las formas de vida. (shrink)

El cometido del presente trabajo es examinar la actualidad del “ethos barroco” en nuestro mundo histórico, concebido como un mundo “neobarroco”. Para ello, comenzaremos indagando en perspectiva histórica los rasgos esenciales del “ethos barroco”, por oposición al “ethos protestante” que se impone en la modernidad capitalista, en relación al proyecto de Restauración católica de la Compañía de Jesús y su política cultural. En segundo lugar, desarrollaremos a grandes rasgos la imagen del mundo como representación (theatrum mundi) en el Barroco histórico, (...) haciendo especial hincapié en su dimensión sociológica (a tenor de la importancia crucial de “saber aparecer”), pero también en el plano ontológico (en relación a la dialéctica ser/apariencia). A continuación, probaremos la hipótesis de un “capitalismo neobarroco” en el presente, a la luz del actual fenómeno de “estetización social” (del mundo y de la vida humana). El objetivo último de la investigación es caracterizar desde una perspectiva eminentemente crítica la “vida en la imagen” que se deriva de este proceso planetario, en la medida en que se constituye como una impostura radical y ontológica, consistente en negar el carácter onírico de la vida, escapando a la conciencia del sueño. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo analizaremos, a través de una serie de actividades diseñadas para implementar en el aula, el modo en el que un grupo de jóvenes gallegos co-construyen el conocimiento metalingüístico y metapragmático acerca de las diferentes variedades locales del español y gallego. La exposición de su trayectoria biográfica permite que afloren diversos saberes y conocimientos metalingüísticos que los estudiantes han ido adquiriendo a lo largo de su escolarización y, además, surgen diversas categorizaciones sobre lenguas y variedades que ponen (...) de manifiesto sus ideologías lingüísticas, pp. 157–174). A través del análisis de las prácticas metalingüísticas y metapragmáticas comprobaremos cómo se reproducen las ideologías lingüísticas de estos jóvenes; por una parte, las ideologías de la institución académica y escolar; y por otra, las ideologías lingüísticas de los jóvenes presentes en el aula, en donde etiquetan, clasifican y establecen jerarquizaciones y valoraciones de su repertorio comunicativo. Finalmente, se comprueba cómo las diferentes variedades del español y del gallego actúan como índices de identidad social diferente de la reconocida en el ámbito institucional y académico, con distintos valores en el mercado lingüístico. (shrink)

"Knowing how we know" is the subject of this book. Its authors present a new view of cognition that has important social and ethical implications, for, they assert, the only world we humans can have is the one we create together through the actions of our coexistence. Written for a general audience as well as for students, scholars, and scientists and abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and new social and cultural phenomena, this revised edition includes a new afterword (...) by Dr. Varela, in which he discusses the effect the book has had in the years since its first publication. (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

There is a broad consensus on the legitimacy of states to control immigration. However, this belief has recently been questioned, among other reasons, due to the contradiction with current practices in emigration and internal mobility. The principle of symmetry states that any restriction on immigration should also apply to emigration; or that, to the contrary, if there is a right to emigrate, there should be a corresponding right to immigrate. The principle of coherence posits that every reason one might have (...) for moving within a country also counts for moving between countries. This article proposes to extend the coherence principle from external to internal migration, arguing that the same reasons that justify restrictions on mobility across borders justify restrictions on mobility within borders too. Therefore, either freedom of movement is a fundamental right or the right of the political community to control mobility prevails. The interests at stake are in both cases the same, so asymmetry is not warranted. This leads us to an apagogical argument for open borders. (shrink)

The beating heart of democratic politics is a set of paradoxes revolving around the issues of popular identity and sovereignty. Populist ideology appeals to the sovereign people, consequently engaging the democratic paradox in a manner akin to either moving an immoveable object or catching something in constant flux. Marginal consideration has been given by scholars to populism’s relationship with the democratic paradox, with current notions of the former seeing it more as a result of the latter. Thus, by recasting the (...) democratic paradox as a question and analysing its relationship with populist ideology, this article seeks to clarify the supposedly ambiguous relationship between populism and democracy. In analysing the transformative processes within populism by using early Peronism and Italian Fascism as case studies, it argues that as the ideological embodiment of the democratic paradox populist ideology preserves and expresses the paradox in the public sphere. (shrink)

Esta conversación tuvo lugar durante una visita de varios días de Pablo Posada Varela a la casa de Marc Richir en Haut-Vaucluse en junio de 2012. He aquí tres extractos (de extensión variable) de una conversación del 8 de junio, y algunos otros fechados el 10 de junio.

Pedro Alvares Cabral's ships left Portugal on 9 March 1500 en route for the territory that he first named Terra de Vera Cruz and that later came to be known as Brazil. On the 22 March they called at the island of São Nicolau [Caminha, 1500], one of the northernmost islands of the Cape Verde group; this was about forty years after the discovery of the archipelago in 1460-62 [Albuquerque, 1991]. It is known that Vasco da Gama had stopped at (...) the island of Santiago in 1498 on his voyage to India, and also in 1499 on the return journey. Straight after the discovery of Brazil Cabral sailed for India and on the way back also dropped anchor at Santiago. Indeed, our archipelago, which is situated off Cape Verde in Senegal (the place from which it appears to take its name), was to become an important stopover point for maritime traffic between Europe, Asia and the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both to allow crews to rest and to take on water, wood and some food supplies. It also became important as a holding point for slaves (a large number of whom came from around thirty Guinean ethnic groups and subgroups). They were dispatched from Santiago, known then as Cape Verde island, to territories such as Brazil from the early sixteenth century onwards, since these territories, which had only recently been discovered and were little known, needed people to work and populate them. (shrink)

Recent pluralist accounts of the People and popular sovereignty, defining it as either a performance or a process, are divorced from the realities of mass disempowerment. By shifting emphasis from who to what, these notions of the People, though seemingly unconcerned with the problem of positing this entity as a collective agent, have actually posited the politically active as the concrete subject of the People. Consequently, I argue that these recent theories exclude the reality of mass disempowerment within contemporary democracies (...) by marginalizing agency, presupposing empowerment, and assuming the resonance of the various representations of the People. Simply put, they suffer from an activist-centric bias that renders the politically alienated, disempowered, and inactive as irrelevant entities, a nameless shadow lurking behind analyses of popular power. Hence, my task is to clear the ground for a more comprehensive theory of the People and Popular Sovereignty by exposing the roots, limits, and costs of this activist-centric bias. (shrink)

Autonomy is conceptualized as the need for agency, self-actualization and independence. Nowadays, financial independence and academic achievement for young populations may be considered as key aspects in the transition to adulthood in response to some contextual demands of different cultural environments. By means of a multi-level model, the present study aims to determine the influence and contribution of factors at individual-level (e.g. sex, age, socioeconomic status, family financial support, awarded scholarships, personal finance, student loans) and school-level (e.g. programme quality, online (...) programs, face to face programs) on the academic achievement of young higher education Colombian students. Data come from the scores of the national standardized academic achievement test administered in 2018 in Colombia. The sample included 234,386 students enrolled in 3,389 higher education institutions in Colombia. After controlling the effects of program quality, and the student's previous academic abilities and socio-economic conditions, results showed that students with scholarships had higher scores than financially-dependent students (those who had students loans) and financially-independent students (those who self-funded their studies or who worked during the week) who had low-scores in the national standardized academic achievement test. (shrink)

El presente trabajo propone tres principios de justicia en la política migratoria. En primer lugar, el principio de asistencia plantea que los Estados ricos tienen la obligación primaria de asistir a las personas pobres en sus países de origen, y solo una obligación secundaria de acoger a aquellas que no puedan ser asistidas donde viven. En segundo lugar, el principio de contención sostiene que el empleo de la coacción debe ser proporcional al fin perseguido, de manera que solo en situaciones (...) de riesgo inminente, directo y grave estarían justificadas las restricciones a la inmigración. Por último, el principio de restitución requiere que, cuando sea necesario restringir la inmigración, dicha restricción sea parcial y temporal; los Estados deben procurar vías de tránsito alternativas y restablecer la libertad de circulación lo antes posible. Además, el artículo considera algunas objeciones a los principios propuestos y concluye con una defensa de la gobernanza internacional de las migraciones. (shrink)

This ambitious work aims to shed new light on the relations between Husserlian phenomenology and the present-day efforts toward a scientific theory of cognition—with its complex structure of disciplines, levels of explanation, and ...

Según nuestra hipótesis, la physis cultural sufre un desfallecimiento por razón del cual se muestra incapaz de generar sentido y fuerza intensiva en aras de su autocrecimiento ilimitado. Desde esta perspectiva, nos proponemos examinar la vigencia de semejante “agenesia” en el incipiente capitalismo flexible, con el objeto de dilucidar sus expresiones mórbidas a la luz de los mecanismos ciegos que vertebran actualmente la esfera laboral; en la medida en que nos arrebata nuestras potencias creativas, la organización social de la intelectualidad (...) de masas termina generando, en efecto, una especie de locura carencial entregada a la aporética autófaga de la organización del vacío, por concurso de la cual buscamos saldar compulsivamente la deuda infinita contraída con la cultura. Por último, apuntamos contra la necedad concomitante a la pérdida del autoextrañamiento como principal inductor de la crisis, en un mundo histórico que acepta con indiferencia la dictadura invisible del Capital, sumido en una “ilusión de autonomía” que identifica libertad y flexibilidad. (shrink)

I discuss Aristotle’s opening argument against Platonic Forms in _Metaphysics_ A.9, ‘the Razor’, which criticizes the introduction of Forms on the basis of an analogy with a hypothetical case of counting things. I argue for a new interpretation of this argument, and show that it involves two interesting objections against the introduction of Forms as formal causes: one concerns the completeness and the other the adequacy of such an explanatory project.