Coference papers from the X National Seminar of Theory and History of the Art carried out in Medellín to address certain implications that the question entails, for both art and philosophy. For art: Why and since when do we think that art without aesthetics is something reprehensible or desirable? For philosophy: Is it irremovable or not the turn that the philosophical aesthetic took towards the experience of art from the eighteenth century? At the heart of these questions is a basic (...) concern: Who needs more aesthetics (taste, pleasure, beauty): art or human life?. (shrink)

In this book, Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian consider the relationship between consciousness and attention. The cognitive mechanism of attention has often been compared to consciousness, because attention and consciousness appear to share similar qualities. But, Montemayor and Haladjian point out, attention is defined functionally, whereas consciousness is generally defined in terms of its phenomenal character without a clear functional purpose. They offer new insights and proposals about how best to understand and study the relationship between consciousness and attention (...) by examining their functional aspects. The book's ultimate conclusion is that consciousness and attention are largely dissociated. -/- Undertaking a rigorous analysis of current empirical and theoretical work on attention and consciousness, Montemayor and Haladjian propose a spectrum of dissociation—a framework that identifies the levels of dissociation between consciousness and attention—ranging from identity to full dissociation. They argue that conscious attention, the focusing of attention on the contents of awareness, is constituted by overlapping but distinct processes of consciousness and attention. Conscious attention, they claim, evolved after the basic forms of attention, increasing access to the richest kinds of cognitive contents. -/- Montemayor and Haladjian's goal is to help unify the study of consciousness and attention across the disciplines. A focused examination of conscious attention will, they believe, enable theoretical progress that will further our understanding of the human mind. (shrink)

This chapter subsumes David Marr’s levels of analysis account of explanation in cognitive science under the framework of mechanistic explanation: Answering the questions that define each one of Marr’s three levels is tantamount to describing the component parts and operations of mechanisms, as well as their organization, behavior, and environmental context. By explicating these questions and showing how they are answered in several different cognitive science research programs, this chapter resolves some of the ambiguities that remain in Marr’s account, and (...) shows that many different areas and traditions of cognitive scientific research can be unified under the mechanistic framework. (shrink)

Presentaré formalmente la reología como una filosofía precisa. Hoy hemos de habérnoslas con nuestras herramientas que no pueden ser, por razones que veremos, ni la epistemología ni la ontología clásicas; requerimos de «noología» y «reología», filosofías incoadas en el pensamiento de Xavier Zubiri. Teniendo a la noología por realismo de partida en el que «realidad es» modo de quedar las cosas en la aprehensión, y a la reología por realismo de llegada en el que la constitución estructural de las cosas (...) «es realidad», la metafísica queda purgada de lastres vetustos. Todo se presenta en dos partes: I) Escasez de reólogos, expondremos qué se entiende por «noología» y por «reología». II) Realidad, expondremos el problema de los «dos» realismos («de partida» y «de llegada»), lo concretizaremos en la filosofía de Zubiri y veremos que «ambos» son más bien uno solo. Concluiremos que, si queremos tener una filosofía pertinente para el conocimiento contemporáneo del mundo sin limitarnos a un estudio escolar de un autor, hemos de hacer reología. (shrink)

Cuando ahora las formas de hacer historia materializan una multiplicidad de grafías, y el giro reflexivo y el giro historiográfico nos permiten idear las historias de las teorías de la historia en una posibilidad más, en este ensayo se presenta un deseo, una promesa cuya llave de acceso precisa saber lo que pretende la locución arqueoescritura. Esbozos y trazas de la teoría de la historia en cuestión: ¿qué cabe esperar en las escrituras diferidas de la arqueoescritura? Escrituras equívocas en clave (...) derridiana de la teoría de la historia como historiografía. Una posibilidad imposible aplazada. Escrituras para examinar la metafísica de la presencia en la historiografía, conscientes de que no podrán formular una teoría de la historia en la única firma derridiana, porque lo real se resiste a ser domado e incorporado al impar filosófico derridiano. (shrink)

We are strongly inclined to believe in moral responsibility - the idea that certain human agents truly deserve moral praise or blame for some of their actions. However, recent philosophical discussion has put this natural belief under suspicion, and there are important reasons for thinking that moral responsibility is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism, therefore potentially rendering it an impossibility. Presenting the major arguments for scepticism about moral responsibility, and subjecting them to sustained and penetrating critical analysis, _Moral Responsibility_ (...) lays out the intricate dialectic involved in these issues in a helpful and accessible way. A well-written and lively account, the book then goes on to suggest a way in which scepticism can be avoided, arguing that excessive pre-eminence given to the will might lie at its root. Offering an alternative to this scepticism, Carlos Moya shows how a cognitive approach to moral responsibility that stresses the importance of belief would rescue our natural and centrally important faith in the reality of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The essays in this volume address crucial questions about the function and significance of religious accounts of transcendence in Taylor’s overall philosophical project; the critical purchase and limitations of Taylor’s assessment of the centrality of codes and institutions in modern political ethics; the possibilities inherent in Taylor’s brand of post-Nietzschean theism; the significance and meaning of Taylor’s ambivalence about modern destiny; the possibility of a practical application of his insights within particular contemporary religious communities; and the overall implications of Taylor’s (...) thought for theology and philosophy of religion. Although some commentators have referred to a recent religious “turn” in Taylor’s work, the contributors to _Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age _examine the ways in which transcendence functions, both explicitly and implicitly, in Taylor’s philosophical project as a whole._ "Carlos D. Colorado and Justin D. Klassen have gathered thoughtful, intelligent essays that address Charles Taylor's emergent theological views and their role in his thought and work. All of the contributions thoughtfully and clearly explore what Taylor says about the role of a transcendentally oriented religious commitment in the modern, secular world. They also show where Taylor's analysis of human existence and modern identity exposes an opening for theologically serious thinking within the context of philosophical, ethical, and even political thought." — Michael L. Morgan, Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Indiana University_. (shrink)

Badain Jaran is a desert, more than 19,000 square miles of endless openness, with innumerable sand dunes up to 1,600 feet tall and mysterious salt-water lakes. It is part of the Alashan desert, south-west to the Gobi in the Inner Mogolia province of China. A place that has been discovered by American scientists on satellite images in the 1980s only that miraculously has been kept hidden to most people since. In 2009-12 Carlos Crespo realised a vast photo essay on (...) the unique, spectacular, and very remote landscape of Badain Jaran. (shrink)

It has been commonplace to equate Foucault’s 1979 series of lectures at the Collège de France with the claim that for neoliberalism, unlike for classical liberalism, the market needs to be artificially constructed. The article expands this claim to its full expression, taking it beyond what otherwise would be a simple divulgation of a basic neoliberal tenet. It zeroes in on Foucault’s own insight: that neoliberal constructivism is not directed at the market as such, but, in principle, at society, arguing (...) that the value of this insight goes beyond the critique of a neoliberal present. The neoliberal rationale rather helps him to reveal a unique historical architecture, a latent approach to the social dissimilar to the one that has long predominated in the human sciences. The inversion of homo œconomicus in neoliberal theory amounted to the unearthing of a ‘social subject of interest’ within civil society. Such a subject, barely recognized by neoliberals who simply instrumentalize it for the sake of the market, demonstrates that the social is not necessarily the natural product of ethical subjects; that society may also need to be constructed. (shrink)

In game-theoretic signaling models, evolution tends to favor perfectly precise signaling systems, but in the natural world communication is almost always imprecise. I argue that standard explanations for this discrepancy are only partially sufficient, and I show that communication is often ambiguous because signal senders take advantage of context sensitivity. As evidence, I make two additions to the signaling model: a cost for more complex signaling strategies and the ability to combine information in signals with independent information. Analysis and simulation (...) of the altered model shows that it leads to the predicted outcome of evolution favoring ambiguous signaling. (shrink)

Three philosophical attitudes in dialogue are suggested in answering the question posed by the Journal. An inviting, First Inner Voice undeerstands philosophy as a shareable theoretical task that can be explained and understood even across distant philosophical paradigms. A Second Inner Voice, sometimes termed in the dialogue as sceptic, distrusts any metaphilosophical definition of what philosophy is and what it should do, but would, nevertheless, aspire to retain a certain universalistic understanding of its own work, though it cannot be strongly (...) and conceptualy rendered. A Third Inner Voice, regarded in the text as somewhat Hegelian, insists in the unavoidability of strong philosophical definitions both in historical and in conceptual terms. No proposal or conclusion is forwarded regarding what should be done in contemporary philosophy, though an analysis of harm experiences is taken as an example of philosophical work. (shrink)

La presente obra constituye el esfuerzo por rastrear la historia del pensamiento cosmovisional y filosófico latinoamericano, desde las cosmovisiones pre-colombinas hasta las corrientes filosóficas más actuales: las filosofías de la liberación, la postmodernidad y la postcolonialidad. Aunque el autor ha procurado en su voluminosa obra hacer referencia a todas las numerosas corrientes de pensamiento que se han ido dando en el amplio panorama cultural latinoamericano, se ha centrado sobre todo en rastrear la denominada filosofía americanista.

The modern view of logical reasoning as modeled by a consequence operator has allowed for huge developments in the study of logic as an abstract discipline. Still, it is unable to explain why it is often the case that the same designation is used, in an ambiguous way, to describe several distinct modes of reasoning over the same logical language. A paradigmatic example of such a situation is ‘modal logic’, a terminology which can encompass reasoning over Kripke frames, but also (...) over Kripke models, and in any case either locally or globally . Herein, we adopt a novel abstract notion of logic presented as a lattice-structured hierarchy of consequence operators, and explore some common proof-theoretic and model-theoretic ways of presenting such hierarchies through a collection of meaningful examples. In order to illustrate the usefulness of the notion of hierarchical consequence operators we address a few questions in the theory of combined logics, where a suitable abstract presentation of the logics being combined is absolutely essential. We show how to define the operation, in general, and we achieve a number of interesting preservation results for fibring within the context of 2-hierarchies. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Mineral species are, at first glance, an excellent candidate for an ideal set of natural kinds somewhere beyond the periodic table. Mineralogists have a detailed set of rules and formal procedure for ratifying new species, and minerals are a less messy subject matter than biological species, psychological disorders, or even chemicals more broadly—all areas of taxonomy where the status of species as natural kinds has been disputed. After explaining how philosophers have tended to get mineralogy wrong in discussions of natural (...) kinds, I show how minerals species don’t behave like natural kinds. They are defined on the basis of human intentionality, not merely natural distinctions. They aren’t ideal grounds for inductive inference. And they don’t form a system that divides nature along a set of equivalent joints. While this is a regrettable outcome to those of us who like the idea of science relying on natural kinds, I contend that mineralogy is doing just fine without a natural kind-based taxonomy, and may in fact be better off without one. (shrink)

De quelqu'un qui supporte la douleur avec courage, on dit qu'il fait preuve de stoïcisme. Un bon vivant est souvent qualifié d'épicurien, et notre époque se voit parfois reprocher son scepticisme. Le langage courant conserve ainsi comme un écho lointain et déformé des doctrines philosophiques hellénistiques, celles apparues après qu'Alexandre eut imposé son pouvoir à une grande partie du monde. Longtemps ces systèmes, dont l'influence sur la pensée philosophique et religieuse de l'Occident fut en réalité immense, ont été considérés comme (...) le parent pauvre de la philosophie ancienne, parce que l'injustice de la transmission des œuvres du passé a fait que nous ne possédons que des témoignages lacunaires ou tardifs. Mais dans ces dernières décennies le scepticisme, l'épicurisme et le stoïcisme ont suscité un vif intérêt, qui s'est traduit par la publication d'un grand nombre d'éditions et de recherches. Il n'est pas excessif de dire que l'image de la philosophie hellénistique en a été ainsi considérablement renouvelée. Cet ouvrage a pour finalité de présenter le plus clairement possible des doctrines que l'on aurait pu croire réservées à quelques spécialistes et qui, au fur et à mesure que nous les connaissons mieux, apparaissent de plus en plus proches des inquiétudes et des espoirs des hommes de notre temps. (shrink)

This paper explores and expands upon Jorge Gracia's reasons for the apparent lack of Hispanics in US philosophy. The point is to explain the underrepresentation of Hispanics in philosophy, with a focus on a specific subgroup of Hispanics, namely, "homegrown" US Hispanics. This group wasentirely missing from the "established" ranks in Gracia's census. I propose a phenomenological explanation for this lack, rooted in my experience as ahomegrown US Hispanic. This experience gives rise to a sense of identity described as "post-immigrant." (...) Those of us in the American philosophical establishment who share this identity, or who feel its pull, desire but hesitate to fully and authentically engage philosophy and the philosophical life, where thisrequires an uncompromising insertion of our cultural and historical identity into what we write and teach. The reason for the absence of homegrown Hispanicphilosophers who are willing to engage issues related to their circumstance as Hispanics is what I call, "the post-immigrant fear.". (shrink)

Excerpt from Conocimiento y AccionY bien: cuando se afirma que el dogmatismo es indis pensable [para laa accion, y que el escepticismo fatalmente la paraliza. no se hara una afirmacion falsa o extre madamente exagerada, basada en lo que podria. Suceder, c en lo que pareceria. Razonable que sucediera, mas que en lo que sucede de hecho; mas en el raciocinio que en la observacion? Es precisamente lo que sostengo.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic (...) books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora el concepto moral kantiano de autonomía a partir de su entorno conceptual, resaltando las diferencias y similitudes con los conceptos de independencia personal y autenticidad. A la luz de la filosofía moral kantiana, autenticidad e independencia personal parecen ser ideales de vida próximos a la autonomía; sin embargo, a partir de un análisis más detallado se revelan como sus patologías. La autonomía kantiana se define más bien como la capacidad del animal humano de autolegislarse de acuerdo con (...) las mejores razones, siempre abiertas a la crítica y sin otro límite en la argumentación que el de la dignidad de las personas. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated that ratings of the perceived pleasantness and quality of odors can be modulated by auditory stimuli presented at around the same time. Here, we extend these results by assessing whether the hedonic congruence between odor and sound stimuli can modulate the perception of odor intensity, pleasantness, and quality in untrained participants. Unexpectedly, our results reveal that broadband white noise, which was rated as unpleasant in a follow-up experiment, actually had a more pronounced effect on participants’ odor (...) ratings than either the consonant or dissonant musical selections. In particular, participants rated the six smells used as being less pleasant and less sweet when they happened to be listening to white noise, as compared to any one of the other music conditions. What is more, these results also add evidence to support the existence of a close relationship between an odor’s hedonic character and the perception of odor quality. So, for example, independent of the sound condition, pleasant odors were rated as sweeter, less dry, and brighter than the unpleasant odors. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the understanding of crossmodal correspondences between olfactory and auditory stimuli. (shrink)

Replies to commentators Respuestas a los comentarios críticos de Carlos Patarroyo, Mirja Pérez de Calleja y Pablo Rychter.

We present an account of the evolutionary development of the experiences of empathy that marked the beginning of morality and art. We argue that aesthetic and moral capacities provided an important foundation for later epistemic developments. The distinction between phenomenal consciousness and attention is discussed, and a role for phenomenology in cognitive archeology is justified-critical sources of evidence used in our analysis are based on the archeological record. We claim that what made our species unique was a form of meditative (...) and empathic thinking that made large-scale human cooperation possible through pre-linguistic, empathic communication. A critical aspect of this proposal is that the transformation that led to the dawn of our species was not initially driven by semantic or epistemic factors, although clearly, these factors increased the gap between us and other species dramatically later on. Our proposal suggests that recent philosophy of mind and psychology might have "epistemicized" phenomenal consciousness too much by construing it in terms of semantic content rather than by describing it in terms of empathic and meditative thinking. Instead of the prevailing approach, we favor the type of subjectivity that is fundamentally "other-involving" as essential, because on our account, a necessary condition for subjectivity is the empathic understanding of other individuals' psychology, not through inference or judgment, but through immediate conscious engagement. (shrink)

We study the general problem of strengthening the logic of a given matrix with a set of axioms, using the idea of rexpansion. We obtain two characterization methods: a very general but not very effective one, and then an effective method which only applies under certain restrictions on the given semantics and the shape of the axioms. We show that this second method covers a myriad of examples in the literature. Finally, we illustrate how to obtain analytic multiple-conclusion calculi for (...) the resulting logics. (shrink)

Embree claimed that Schutz did not remain a methodological individualist during all of his academic life since he came to consider the individual as an abstractum abstracted from a concrete collective life. In this view, the socio-historical world cannot be understood as a mere structure of individuals because it also contains groups that are related one to another in diverse ways and which are the concrete subject of the social world. I stress three major contributions of Embree to social phenomenology: (...) to have shown the deficiencies of methodological individualism because it conceals that the social world is a world of groups; to have found a phenomenological way to speak of collective subjects not involving metaphysical mystifications; and to have found a different way to access phenomena by re-specifying the first person perspective as “first person plural.”. (shrink)

My aim is to depict Psathas’s position on ethnomethodology as a way of doing phenomenological sociology. On this, he contested with others who argued that ethnomethodology is not a phenomenological sociology at all. His claim was that ethnomethodology is a part of the phenomenological movement. In this dispute, he offered two kinds of arguments. On the one hand, he documented the strong phenomenological background of Garfinkel’s ideas. On the other hand, he found in Garfinkel’s own words expressions of gratitude to (...) Husserl, Gurwitsch, and Schutz, among other phenomenologists. However, having proved that there was a close relation of Garfinkel with ethnomethodology, Psathas went on to show that Garfinkel turned phenomenological ideas into something new; in particular, he turned phenomenology into an experimental science dealing with the natural attitude. This is a groundbreaking contribution that Psathas appreciated and comprehended as no one else. (shrink)

Entre el arte y la literatura se han generado múltiples reflexiones que han sido estudiadas por la historia del arte, la teoría literaria y la estética, entre otros. Igualmente, podemos considerar una larga tradición de artistas y escritores que se han empeñado, por medio de ensayos, críticas y manifiestos, en considerar los ámbitos y lugares de competencia de cada forma artística, así como sus lugares de similitud y diferencia en una larga tradición de préstamos interartísticos entre la palabra y la (...) imagen. En el seno de esta discusión, se quiere analizar el diálogo disciplinar entre la literatura y el arte que se da en torno a la figura del pintor post impresionista Paul Gauguin y el escritor Mario Vargas Llosa. Para ello, reflexionamos a partir de una de las obras fundamentales del pintor francés, que tiene su correspondencia y complementariedad en la obra literaria del escritor peruano. De esta manera, se presenta una revisión de una fuente literaria que propone no solo una alusión temática a la obra del pintor, sino que se enmarca bajo coordenadas estéticas, que superan los armazones de las teorías o historias meramente literarias. (shrink)

This paper examines accounts of the moral wrongness of killing persons in addition to determining what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from the morality of killing persons about the equality of persons, and vice versa. I will argue that a plausible way of thinking about the moral wrongness of killing implies that the permissibility of killing innocent, nonthreatening persons depends on a person’s age. I address objections to this conclusion and discuss some potential implications of the view.