This paper presents a specific concept of the legal system, bringing a contribution to the Theory of Law, from the line of analysis of the Semiotics of Law. The entire methodological approach of this concept is based on the contributions of the École de Paris, from a theoretical-semiotic perspective derived from the studies of Algirdas Julien Greimas. The analysis seeks to further and qualify previous studies and publications, and focuses on the task of presenting the concept of juridicity, deriving the (...) description of the concept of the legal system from it, understood as a set of connections between legal texts. Consequently, the paper presents a Mesh Model for the description of the legal system, replacing the positivist concept of the Pyramid Model, through restoring the relationship between Law and Moral, between Law and Society and Law and Justice. Throughout the theoretical explanation, the paper tries to trace, develop and qualify the main points with arguments that distinguish the operation of the legal system, such as the concentric movement, micro-universes of meaning, discursive practices, the task of legal actors, dynamic inter-textuality, the role of interpretation, the process of the production of legal meaning and the search for textual justice. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The present text follows three general objectives, which, at the same time, build its structure. Firstly, I would like to present and question Bernard Williams’ description of the virtue of accuracy. Secondly, I´ll try to complement Williams’ description by analyzing two dimensions of accuracy: care, on one side, and what I call “proximity to the problem”, on the other side. Related to that last issue, I add an excursus about writing. The third and last part of this article is an (...) attempt to relate the discussion about the so called virtues of truth —sincerity as well as accuracy— with the issue of self-deception. Specifically, I try to a) support Mele´s deflationary account of self-deception as motivationally biased belief, b) make an adjustment to this conception, and c) complement it with another aspect which has not received enough consideration in the discussion about self-deception, namely some beliefs we don´t generate or that manifest a high lack of accuracy. (shrink)

“On Why in Philosophy Examples Matter”. The purpose of the article is to show the need of using examples in philosophy, associating to them four functions: to illustrate, explain, argue and show. Among other assertions, we attempt to justify the following: a) Examples are, as well as illustrations, evidences; such that what may be seen as an act of didactic generosity may be considered properly as the response to an always possible demand. b) The introduction of philosophical concepts requires frequently (...) a mutual cooperation between definition and example; the need of the latter in conceptual explanation is condoned by a reflection on the following of rules. c) A certain overrating of the counterexample and underrating of the example are tokens of a notion of philosophy put here into question. d) In Wittgenstein and other authors, a little heeded function of some examples is detected: of showing an alternative way of viewing the matter, of re-describing ancient philosophical themes. Towards the end, the issue of the example is assumed –this time– as an example of a more general issue: that of the relation between rhetoric and philosophy. (shrink)

To overcome the paradoxical situation in which the modern subject finds itself, on conceptualizing nature in such a way that its very presence in nature becomes inconceivable, modernity supplied at least four alternatives: a) the first is to defend dualism ; b) the second option is to support a monism of nature ; c) the third alternative is to defend a monism of subjectivity ; d) the fourth and last alternative is to support a dialectical monism. It is well known (...) that, of these four alternatives to the self-interpretation crisis of modern subjectivity, the first ultimately had a more lasting influence on the philosophical scene, marking, point to point, this last breath of modernity that some call post-modern and flowing into the present situation of “hyperincommensurability” between subjectivity and nature diagnosed by Bruno Latour. The crisis of subjectivity thus becomes a crisis of philosophy, which ends a hostage to the syndrome of the house taken. (shrink)

Tras ser restaurado en el Vaticano II, urge entender cuáles son sus funciones propias. Los autores analizados en este estudio coinciden en que el diaconado se basa de igual manera en los tres pilares de la Liturgia, la Palabra y la Caridad. Tanto B. Elbs como C. Wessely destacan la importancia de trabajar con los pobres del mundo industrializado del siglo XXI. La jerarquía es entendida como triangular, en la que el obispo como cabeza tiene sus colaboradores en función del (...) grado del sacramento que han recibido. El diácono permanente está llamado non ad sacerdotium sed ad ministerium episcopi. Su lugar eclesial y eclesiológico queda claro y, sin embargo, quedan todavía muchas dudas, críticas y actitudes de desconfianza hacia el diaconado. Por ello analizamos algunas publicaciones recientes, así como experiencias concretas de otro. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics rests upon a criticism of the method of natural sciences that, by establishing a monopoly of what might be deemed as true knowledge, would exclude different forms of non-scientific experiences of truth. Thus, the article aims first at examining this assumption based on an analysis of his hermeneutic dialectics and ontology of language, which he develops in the third part of Truth and Method. This analysis reveals that his criticism of scientific method (...) rests upon the idea that the being is related to the happening of meaning and of human beings as individuals whose understanding of the world is questioned and caused by such happening. These ontological approaches make possible to characterize what might be thetrue method of thinking and access to truth. Secondly, the article aims at identifying three methodologicalprinciples that would guide a genuine exercise of hermeneutic thinking: a) The principle of determining the topos of understanding, which demands to reveal the relations of meaning that connect us to what we desire to understand; b) Principle of correction, which makes possible that understanding continuously “improves” both our interpretations and self-descriptions that actors provide of their own actions; and c) Principle of sensitivity towards happening, which demands to carefully listen to every possible relation of meaning that shape phenomena, as well as to the variations and mutations of meaning they experience. (shrink)

O artigo começa com uma conversa entre Frege e Wittgenstein. Frege fala primeiro, e apresenta o seu ponto de vista sobre os fundamentos da lógica. Daí, Wittgenstein responde em três momentos: (a) primeiro ele brinca e experimenta com as ideias de Frege para examinar o seu significado, (b) depois ele começa a apresentar as suas próprias ideias sobre a lógica, desafiando o ponto de vista de Frege, (c) e finalmente ele busca um acordo com Frege, deixando um quebra-cabeça para nós: (...) a ideia de uma técnica do pensamento. Daí, é a nossa vez de entrar na conversa, e a nossa participação se desenrola em dois momentos: (a) primeiro nós introduzimos ideias de Turing para articular a noção de um mecanismo de duas alavancas, (b) e depois nós esboçamos um entendimento da técnica do pensamento em termos desse mecanismo. (shrink)

In this article, based on a critical metaphor analysis, we identify and describe multimodal metaphors involving the human body and its conceptualizations in five auteur films of the 2010s. Studies on the human body in cinema have documented how it changes according to underlying ideologies. Our research focuses on the role of image schemas and metaphors as they embody meanings and sociocultural paradigms. Metaphors also frame how the body is conceptualized according to dominating ideological practices such as (a) commodification, (b) (...) the integration between artificial and organic, (c) dissatisfaction, (d) dynamics of beautification and idealization, and (e) politicization of the human body. We show how metaphors are creative tools to reframe meanings and representations of the body and how the body is a construct refashioned within the cinematic discourses of these films. (shrink)

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical.

The development of a compositional model shows the incoherence of such notions as levels of being and both bottom-up and top-down causality. The mathematization of nature through the partial considerations of physics qua quantities is seen to lead to Pythagoreanism, if what is not included in the partial consideration is denied. An ontology of only probabilities, if not Pythagoreanism, is equivalent to a world of primitive dispositionalities. Problems are found with each. There is a need for properties as well as (...) quantities and these properties must be qualitative as well as dispositional. So there is a need for physical qualia (qualities) for the depiction of the intrinsic character of the finest interstices of nature. (shrink)

This work provides an interesting, though sometimes rather sweeping, demonstration that the metaphysical problem of the same and the other is also the central problem of literature and literary criticism. The author defends the analogical imagination as the symbolic counterpart of participation in Platonic metaphysics.--D. C. B.

After an exceedingly short treatment of six theories of tragedy, the author concludes that while each has emphasized a necessary component of the tragic, none has really come to grips with its basic "paradox": the fact that while the art of tragedy attempts to explain the mystery of human suffering, such an attempt is doomed to failure.--D. C. B.

Current views of the control of complex, purposeful movements acknowledge that organizational processes must reconcile multiple concerns. The central priority is of course accomplishing the actor's goal. But in specifying the manner in which this occurs, the action plan must accommodate such factors as the interaction of mechanical forces associated with the motion of a multilinked system (classical mechanics) and, in many cases, intrinsic bias toward preferred movement patterns, characterized by so-called “coordination dynamics.” The most familiar example of the latter (...) is the symmetry constraint, where spatial trajectories and/or temporal landmarks (e.g., reversal points) of concurrentlymoving body segments (limbs, digits, etc.) exhibit mutual attraction. The natural coordination tendencies that emerge through these constraints can facilitate or hinder motor control, depending on the degree of congruency with the desired movement pattern. Motor control theorists have long recognized the role of classical mechanics in theories of movement organization, but an appreciation of the importance of intrinsic interlimb bias has been gained only recently.Although detailed descriptions of temporal coordination dynamics have been provided, systematic attempts to identify additional salient dimensions of interlimb constraint have been lacking. We develop and implement here a novel method for examining this problem by exploiting two robust principles of psychomotor behavior, the symmetry constraint and the Two-Thirds Power Law. Empirical evidence is provided that the relative spatial patterns of concurrently moving limbs are naturally constrained in much the same manner as previously identified temporal constraints and, further, that apparent velocity interference is an indirect, secondary consequence of primary spatial assimilation. The theoretical implications of spatial interference are elaborated with respect to movement organization and motor learning. The need to carefully consider the appropriate dimensions with which to characterize coordination dynamics is also discussed. (shrink)

IT IS SHOWN IN DETAIL THAT RECENT ACCOUNTS FAIL TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN INTENTIONALITY AND MERELY CAUSALLY DISPOSITIONAL STATES OF INORGANIC PHYSICAL OBJECTS—A QUICK ROAD TO PANPSYCHISM. THE CLEAR NEED TO MAKE SUCH A DISTINCTION GIVES DIRECTION FOR FUTURE WORK. A BEGINNING IS MADE TOWARD PROVIDING SUCH AN ACCOUNT.

The _Second Treatise_ is one of the most important political treatises ever written and one of the most far-reaching in its influence. In his provocative 15-page introduction to this edition, the late eminent political theorist C. B. Macpherson examines Locke's arguments for limited, conditional government, private property, and right of revolution and suggests reasons for the appeal of these arguments in Locke's time and since.

The aim of this paper is to set out some of the ontologies amongst which some forms of anti-realism must select. This provides the appropriate setting for presenting an alternative realist ontology. The argument is that the choice between the varieties of anti-realism and realism is inevitably a choice between ontologies.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to gain attention atop the corporate agenda and is by now an important component of the dialogue between companies and their stakeholders. Nevertheless, there is still little guidance as to how companies can implement CSR activity in order to maximize returns to CSR investment. Theorists have identified many company-favoring outcomes of CSR; yet there is a dearth of research on the psychological mechanisms that drive stakeholder responses to CSR activity. Borrowing from the literatures on meansend (...) chains and relationship marketing, we propose a conceptual model that explains how CSR provides individual stakeholders with numerous benefits (functional, psychosocial, and values) and how the type and extent to which a stakeholder derives these benefits from CSR initiatives influences the quality of the relationship between the stakeholder and the company. The paper discusses the implications of these insights and highlights a number of areas for future research. (shrink)

'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their distinctive (...) accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

CHARLES LESLIE STEVENSON, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan, though an American, has an important place in the evolution of British ethics in this century. It was in Mind that his first papers on ethics were published in 1937-8. They had considerable influence in Britain in promoting the emotive-persuasive theory of moral language. The author of the theory that much of philosophy and ethics is persuasive rhetoric, was himself a plausible illustration of his own theory. His breeziness (...) of style seemed to sweep difficulties out of the way. His papers had an unconventionality which appealed all the more to the younger generation of philosophers because it shocked the older. He seemed to discredit critics by not appearing able to understand the archaic language they were talking. The ideas of these early papers were taken up into a book, Ethics and Language published in 1944. The book is more ponderous and indeed somewhat pedantic. In it, Stevenson’s ideas lose in freshness what they gain in professorial gravity. But the impressive size of the book, the number and variety of the examples of moral argument which it discussed, the apparently wide range of the treatment, made the book for some time a sort of bible of emotivism. The book was also important as the first major study of ethics based on the neo-Wittgensteinian slogan that moral philosophy is the analysis of moral language. (shrink)

CHARLES LESLIE STEVENSON, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan, though an American, has an important place in the evolution of British ethics in this century. It was in Mind that his first papers on ethics were published in 1937-8. They had considerable influence in Britain in promoting the emotive-persuasive theory of moral language. The author of the theory that much of philosophy and ethics is persuasive rhetoric, was himself a plausible illustration of his own theory. His breeziness (...) of style seemed to sweep difficulties out of the way. His papers had an unconventionality which appealed all the more to the younger generation of philosophers because it shocked the older. He seemed to discredit critics by not appearing able to understand the archaic language they were talking. The ideas of these early papers were taken up into a book, Ethics and Language published in 1944. The book is more ponderous and indeed somewhat pedantic. In it, Stevenson’s ideas lose in freshness what they gain in professorial gravity. But the impressive size of the book, the number and variety of the examples of moral argument which it discussed, the apparently wide range of the treatment, made the book for some time a sort of bible of emotivism. The book was also important as the first major study of ethics based on the neo-Wittgensteinian slogan that moral philosophy is the analysis of moral language. (shrink)

CHARLES LESLIE STEVENSON, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan, though an American, has an important place in the evolution of British ethics in this century. It was in Mind that his first papers on ethics were published in 1937-8. They had considerable influence in Britain in promoting the emotive-persuasive theory of moral language. The author of the theory that much of philosophy and ethics is persuasive rhetoric, was himself a plausible illustration of his own theory. His breeziness (...) of style seemed to sweep difficulties out of the way. His papers had an unconventionality which appealed all the more to the younger generation of philosophers because it shocked the older. He seemed to discredit critics by not appearing able to understand the archaic language they were talking. The ideas of these early papers were taken up into a book, Ethics and Language published in 1944. The book is more ponderous and indeed somewhat pedantic. In it, Stevenson’s ideas lose in freshness what they gain in professorial gravity. But the impressive size of the book, the number and variety of the examples of moral argument which it discussed, the apparently wide range of the treatment, made the book for some time a sort of bible of emotivism. The book was also important as the first major study of ethics based on the neo-Wittgensteinian slogan that moral philosophy is the analysis of moral language. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, published in 1988, offers a balanced and comprehensive account of philosophical thought from the middle of the fourteenth century to the emergence of modern philosophy. This was the first volume in English to synthesise for a wider audience the substantial and sophisticated research now available. The volume is organised by branch of philosophy rather than by individual philosopher or school, and the intention has been to present the internal development of different aspects of the (...) subject in their own historical context. The structure also naturally emphasises the international nature of philosophy in the Renaissance. (shrink)

In answering the question, “How is the concept of a person possible?”, Strawson lays great stress upon a particular class of predicate.He says, “They are predicates, roughly, which involve doing something, which clearly imply intention or a state of mind or at least consciousness in general, and which indicate a characteristic pattern, or range of patterns, of bodily movement, while not indicating at all precisely any very definite sensation or experience …. Such predicates have the interesting characteristic of many P-predicates, (...) that one does not, in general, ascribe them to oneself on the strength of observation, whereas one does ascribe them to others on the strength of observations. But, in the case of these predicates, one feels minimal reluctance to concede that what is ascribed in these two different ways is the same. This is because of the marked dominance of a fairly definite pattern of bodily movement in what they describe, and the marked absence of any distinctive experience. (shrink)