An argument proposed by Steglich-Petersen (2012) establishes that while contrastive causation can be applied to general causation and causal explanation, it is a mistake to consider it in cases of singular causation. I attempt to show that there is no mistake. Steglich-Petersen’s argument does not seem to be strong enough and is actually circular. Furthermore, I briefly argue that even if we take his argument to be valid, there is still a response from the side of contrastive causation.

One of the principal presuppositions in the extended mind account of Clark and Chalmers establishes that extended and non-extended cognitive systems have somehow the same structure and that the distinctions between them can only be superficial. In contrast, this work presents some arguments for the idea that it is possible to find fundamental differences between both, mainly on the basis that a criterion that does not include the notion of knowledge is not strong enough to define cognitive processes. A brief (...) analysis on the non-transitivity of trust and the notion of causal dependence between information and cognitive systems might be helpful to support this position. It will be argued that the counterfactual block which supports the extended mind building does not seem to be firm. (shrink)

The events of nature are, at first glance, related to each other in a necessary way, as if they were subject to certain rules, a fact that is closely linked with the ontology of natural laws. However, there are several conflicting theories about their existence, such as the Humean view as well as realism. Mumford proposes a third way: to accept natural regularity, but deny that this is due to the real existence of natural laws. Finally, some ideas about a (...) possible combination between nomological realism and Lewis’s counterpart theory will be considered in order to improve the first. I will defend realism about regularities as well as about laws and show that such a point of view is not only compatible with counterparts, but that it could be supported by them. (shrink)

This work presents a defense of causal contrastivism based on causal contexualism. As argued, our proposal on causal contextualism is compatible with both causal contrastivism and causal binarism, including explanations of why and in which sense secondary counterfactuals are relevant.

What is exactly the emergence relation? In which sense is irreducibility associated with it besides being assumed by definition? Although in many cases the explanatory role of emergent states does not exceed the explanatory role of more basic states, this does not speak against the fact that, for some relevant explanatory contexts, emergent states are irreducible. On this basis, an epistemic concept of the emergence relation that does not depend strictly on irreducibility is here offered.

: The notion of growth is one of the most studied notions within economic theory and, traditionally, it is accounted for based on a positivist thesis according to which assumptions are not relevant, if economic models have acceptable predictive power. Following this view, it does not matter whether assumptions are realistic or not. Arguments against this principle may involve a defence of the realistic assumptions over highly idealized or false ones. This article aims in a different direction. Instead of demanding (...) more realism, we can accept the spirit of the mentioned thesis, but, instead, criticize the circularity that may arise by combining different assumptions that are necessary for the explanation of economic growth in mainstream economics. Such a circularity is a key aspect of the well-known problem of providing microfoundations for macroeconomic properties. It is here suggested that the notion of emergence could be appropriate to arrive at a better understanding of growth, clarifying the issues related to circularity, but without totally rejecting the usefulness of unrealistic assumptions. (shrink)

This work responds to a criticism of effective complexity made by James McAllister, according to which such a notion is not an appropriate measure for information content. Roughly, effective complexity is focused on the regularities of the data rather than on the whole data, as opposed to algorithmic complexity. McAllister’s argument shows that, because the set of relevant regularities for a given object is not unique, one cannot assign unique values of effective complexity to considered expressions and, therefore, that algorithmic (...) complexity better serves as a measure of information than effective complexity. We accept that problem regarding uniqueness as McAllister presents it, but would not deny that if contexts could be defined appropriately, one could in principle find unique values of effective complexity. Considering this, effective complexity is informative not only regarding the entity being investigated but also regarding the context of investigation itself. Furthermore, we argue that effective complexity is an interesting epistemological concept that may be applied to better understand crucial issues related to context dependence such as theory choice and emergence. These applications are not available merely on the basis of algorithmic complexity. (shrink)

Resumen: This is the first part of a three-part paper on incommensurability. Although incommensurability between theories has been object of study during many years, there does not seem to be a clear consensus regarding the notion of meaning according to which it should be characterised. Based on the notion of incommensurability proposed here, the common ground between incommensurable theories is neither determined by the sense nor by the reference of the relevant terms, but by a given phenomenon type, which fixes (...) the subject matter of inquiry. Phenomenon types are understood as expressions that are associated with some phenomenon and describable or understandable in some language. In this proposal, two theories can refer to a same phenomenon type even if they are mutually incommensurable about the concepts used in them to grasp it. This possibility may serve as a way of fixing the subject matter of an investigation and, thus, to characterise the common ground between incommensurable paths of inquiry.: This is the first part of a three-part paper on incommensurability. Although incommensurability between theories has been object of study during many years, there does not seem to be a clear consensus regarding the notion of meaning according to which it should be characterised. Based on the notion of incommensurability proposed here, the common ground between incommensurable theories is neither determined by the sense nor by the reference of the relevant terms, but by a given phenomenon type, which fixes the subject matter of inquiry. Phenomenon types are understood as expressions that are associated with some phenomenon and describable or understandable in some language. In this proposal, two theories can refer to a same phenomenon type even if they are mutually incommensurable about the concepts used in them to grasp it. This possibility may serve as a way of fixing the subject matter of an investigation and, thus, to characterise the common ground between incommensurable paths of inquiry. (shrink)

: This is the second part of a three-part paper. In part I, some of the main issues regarding theoretical incommensurability and meaning invariance were considered, introducing the notion of a phenomenon type. Phenomenon types can be treated as subject matters in order to tackle the mentioned issues. Here, I show how a subject matter can be conceived as a common ground of two conflicting theories. However, crucial problems about realism and scientific progress remain. These are introduced in this part (...) of the paper and will be tackled in part III. (shrink)

: This is the final part of a three-part paper. In the first part, it was proposed that a notion of phenomenon type could be relevant to tackle some crucial issues about incommensurability. Then, part II had a focus on some remaining problems associated with scientific realism and the possibility of scientific progress. In this part, some ways to solve them are offered, without abandoning the classical features of incommensurability. This can be done by showing that two rival theories may (...) refer to the same phenomenon type even if their ontologies are incompatible and assuming at the same time a non-naïve, moderate scientific realism. (shrink)

Although the interest about emergence has grown during the last years, there does not seem to be consensus on whether it is a non-trivial and interesting notion and whether the concept of reduction is relevant to its characterization. Another key issue is whether emergence should be understood as an epistemic notion or if there is a plausible ontological concept of emergence. The aim of this work is to propose an epistemic notion of contextual emergence on the basis of which one (...) may tackle those issues. Resumen Aunque el interés en torno a la emergencia ha crecido durante los últimos años, no parece haber un consenso sobre si es una noción no trivial e interesante ni sobre si el concepto de reducción es relevante para su caracterización. Otra cuestión clave es si la emergencia debería ser entendida como una noción epistémica o si hay un concepto ontológico plausible de emergencia. El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer una noción epistémica de emergencia contextual sobre cuya base uno podría abordar estos problemas. (shrink)

As a non-representationalist form of integrating methodological naturalism with ontological naturalism, this work proposes a distinction between phenomenic and rational intuitions. Since this is not a static distinction, it offers a way of observing in which sense the apparent circularity between mental and theoretical representations is not a vicious one. The argument’s plausibility will have to be reinforced through considerations about the unstability of ontologies and about how to conceive conflicting intuitions.

In a recent article in this journal, Esteban Céspedes (2015) seeks to defend the contrastive account of singular causation from my criticisms (Steglich-Petersen 2012). Céspedes objects to my argument on three counts: (1) it is circular in presupposing a principle that it seeks to establish; (2) that same principle is false; and (3) even if the principle were true, it would not speak against the contrastive account. In this note I argue that all three objections are unconvincing.

The meanings of utterances and thoughts are commonly regarded in philosophical semantics as abstract objects, called «propositions», which account for how different utterances and thoughts can be synonymous and which constitute the primary truth-bearers. I argue that meanings are instead natural properties that play causal roles in the world, that the kind of «One over Many» thinking underlying the characterization of shared meanings as abstract objects is misguided and that utterances and thoughts having truth-values in virtue of their meanings does (...) not entail that meanings themselves are truth-bearers. (shrink)

Basic Emotion theory has had a tremendous influence on the affective sciences, including music psychology, where most researchers have assumed that music expressivity is constrained to a limited set of basic emotions. Several scholars suggested that these constrains to musical expressivity are explained by the existence of a shared acoustic code to the expression of emotions in music and speech prosody. In this article we advocate for a shift from this focus on basic emotions to a constructionist account. This approach (...) proposes that the phenomenon of perception of emotions in music arises from the interaction of music’s ability to express core affects and the influence of top-down and contextual information in the listener’s mind. We start by reviewing the problems with the concept of Basic Emotions, and the inconsistent evidence that supports it. We also demonstrate how decades of developmental and cross-cultural research on music and emotional speech have failed to produce convincing findings to conclude that music expressivity is built upon a set of biologically pre-determined basic emotions. We then examine the cue-emotion consistencies between music and speech, and show how they support a parsimonious explanation, where musical expressivity is grounded on two dimensions of core affect (arousal and valence). Next, we explain how the fact that listeners reliably identify basic emotions in music does not arise from the existence of categorical boundaries in the stimuli, but from processes that facilitate categorical perception, such as using stereotyped stimuli and close-ended response formats, psychological processes of construction of mental prototypes, and contextual information. Finally, we outline our proposal of a constructionist account of perception of emotions in music, and spell out the ways in which this approach is able to make solve past conflicting findings. We conclude by providing explicit pointers about the methodological choices that will be vital to move beyond the popular Basic Emotion paradigm and start untangling the emergence of emotional experiences with music in the actual contexts in which they occur. -/- . (shrink)

A large part of technological advances, especially in the field of industry, have been focused on the optimization of productive processes. However, the detection of anomalies has turned out to be a great challenge in fields like industry, medicine or stock markets. The present work addresses anomaly detection on a control level plant. We propose the application of different intelligent techniques, which allow to obtain one-class classifiers using real data taken from the correct plant operation. The performance of each classifier (...) is assessed and validated with real created faults, achieving successful overall results. (shrink)

Nowadays, the quality standards of higher education institutions pay special attention to the performance and evaluation of the students. Then, having a complete academic record of each student, such as number of attempts, average grade and so on, plays a key role. In this context, the existence of missing data, which can happen for different reasons, leads to affect adversely interesting future analysis. Therefore, the use of imputation techniques is presented as a helpful tool to estimate the value of missing (...) data. This work deals with the academic records of engineering students, in which imputation techniques are applied. More specifically, it is assessed and compared to the performance of the multivariate imputation by chained equations methodology, the adaptive assignation algorithm based on multivariate adaptive regression splines and a hybridization based on self-organisation maps with Mahalanobis distances and AAA algorithm. The results show that proposed methods obtain successfully results regardless the number of missing values, in general terms. (shrink)

The use of batteries became essential in our daily life in electronic devices, electric vehicles and energy storage systems in general terms. As they play a key role in many devices, their design and implementation must follow a thorough test process to check their features at different operating points. In this circumstance, the appearance of any kind of deviation from the expected operation must be detected. This research deals with real data registered during the testing phase of a lithium iron (...) phosphate—LiFePO4—battery. The process is divided into four different working points, alternating charging, discharging and resting periods. This work proposes a hybrid classifier, based on one-class techniques, whose aim is to detect anomalous situations during the battery test. The faults are created by modifying the measured cell temperature a slight ratio from their real value. A detailed analysis of each technique performance is presented. The average performance of the chosen classifier presents successful results. (shrink)

Based on an ethnographic case study, we describe the family experiences and the access to formal education of 30 Paraguayan women to show how these factors influence their labor insertion at the Paraná Tri-Border Area. We will start by reviewing the theoretical debates about gender inequality in labor insertion in border territories. Then, we will explain the study’s methodology and the profile of the interviewees. The analysis consists in describing the relationship between the rural origins of these women and gender (...) inequalities; we will establish how these inequalities are related to low access to formal education and the precariousness of their insertion into the job market. In addition, we will show how these circumstances imply a contradiction in their work experience on the border, between the abuses suffered and the autonomy gained; and we will analyze the expectations of transgenerational transformation that our protagonists project in their children. (shrink)

Vida Guerra is a Cuban model from northern New Jersey. She made her name in hiphop videos and in "gentlemen's magazines" but quickly became in intermediate supermodel, with her own calendars, making-of-the-calendar DVDs, official website, fan websites, television show, and controversy over a "leaked" nude photo. . . . Vida's popularity has caused one writer to suggest "You may now move over J-Lo, and make way for Vida;" in short, tiene culo, to borrow the Spanish slang that adorns one of (...) her virally distributed Internet images. . . .this information about Guerra's body explains her popularity by raising additional questions. If the shape of her body makes her popular, what makes that shape popular? Specifically, what accounts for the shift in body fashions that raises the stock of female cults--"rumps with bumps"--at the expense of "stick figures"? And what further shift requires J-Lo to "make way for Vida"? These are questions specifically about the conditions that make Vida Guerra a public figure and that constitute her body as beautiful. (shrink)

En este trabajo se pretende mostrar el sentido político que adquirió la defensa de la teoría por parte de Adorno en los últimos años de su vida. él empleó esta defensa como una respuesta a los imperativos de los estudiantes de izquierda de plegar la teoría crítica a la intervención práctica inmediata. Para justificar esta tesis se atiende no sólo a lo que decía, sino también, en un nivel discursivo diferente, a lo que estaba haciendo cuando empleaba concentraciones de términos (...) y enunciados densos y eruditos para manifestarse. Esto lleva a incluir las reflexiones y valoraciones de Adorno referentes a la actitud teorética y a la praxis, principalmente aquellas esbozadas en Dialéctica negativa, en un contexto más amplio. This work pretends to show the political sense that the defense of the theory by Adorno acquired in the last years of his life. He used this defense as an answer to the students's imperatives of applying the critical theory to the immediate practical intervention. In order to justify this thesis will be considered not only what Adorno said, but also, in a different discursive level, what he was doing on having used concentrations of terms and dense and erudite declarations. This entails, then, to relate Adorno's reflections and assessments concerning to the theoretical and practical approach -specially those outlined in Negative Dialectic- to a broader contextual framework. (shrink)

En partant de la notion de « jargon » mobilisée par Adorno dans son livre contre Heidegger, cet article entend contribuer à une histoire sociale du concept d’authenticité, dans une perspective critique qui s’intéresse à ses usages au sein de différents milieux musicaux et musicologiques. Le rock et la pop, les musiques ethniques et/ou traditionnelles, les musiques anciennes, sont autant de contextes où dans la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle ont pris forme de manière indépendante ce qu’on peut appeler des (...) querelles de l’authenticité. Nous faisons l’hypothèse que cela s’explique moins pour des raisons techniques communes à ces différents types de musiciens que parce que la diffusion de l’existentialisme et la vogue de la contreculture dans les années 1960 ont installé dans le sens commun l’idée qu’une vie authentique est l’un des noms contemporains de la vie bonne. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Body Awareness to Recognize Feelings: The Exploration of a Musical Emotional Experience” by Alejandra Vásquez-Rosati. Upshot: A complete account of musical emotions implies examining how factors in the music, the situation, and the person interact, producing objective and subjective changes on affective, bodily and cognitive levels simultaneously. Therefore, a first-person phenomenological method can only provide a limited understanding of these experiences.

According to Husserl, the mathematization of the lifeworld involves reducing it, as object of knowledge, to what is measurable, as well as excluding other forms of knowledge of it. This has important implications in relation to the modern conception of rationality, and, significantly, of practical rationality. More precisely, it issues in an impoverishment of the notion of reason. This article examines the idea that the process of commodification associated with the consolidation and expansion of capitalism has motivated another aspect of (...) the mathematization of nature to which Husserl alludes: the mathematization of value. Born from capitalist economy and from practical attitudes, this mathematization of value is a tendency to reduce all value to use value. In such context, this article offers a phenomenological reflection on the crisis of modern rationality, especially in relation to the difficulty to undertake collective actions that follow logics that are different from that of the accumulation of capital, based on the examination of this other aspect of the mathematization of the lifeworld. (shrink)

This article addresses the question raised by the Anthropocene of rethinking the concept of autonomy which, in the conditions of the new geological epoch, is subject to a crisis of legitimation. It explores the ‘strong hypothesis’ according to which nature is a necessary condition of our qualitative experience of the world and a constitutive relation of autonomy defined as the self-realisation of individual identity. With this aim in mind, the article attempts to rethink the concept of recognition in order to (...) conceive a recognising attitude of nature in the form of love of nature as a form of adequate recognition. Rethinking recognition can serve as foundation of an ‘objective’ theory of autonomy, that is, a theory that explains how nature can be defined as a condition and constitutive relation of autonomy. The article, therefore, proposes to reformulate the concept of autonomy as the self-realisation of an ecological or environmental identity in the form of the self-realisation of an ecological ethos, that is, an attitude of respect and care for nature. This enquiry, ultimately, is a contribution to the task of rethinking the basis of our conceptions of autonomy and freedom in the Anthropocene, so that the idea of autonomy can legitimately constitute the central value of the social transformation that is needed to face the ecological crisis. (shrink)

Este artículo tematiza la relevancia del Hamlet, de Shakespeare, para el pensamiento de T. W. Adorno, aun cuando este no haya escrito in extenso sobre aquel. El drama aparece sobre todo en su discurso oral como modelo para describir la relación de discontinuidad entre teoría y práctica. Aquí se desea mostrar cómo el teórico crítico del pensamiento moral abstracto piensa el paso del conocimiento a la praxis a partir del vínculo entre Hamlet y el llamado “factor añadido” (Das Hinzutretende). Desde (...) esta lectura, el Hamlet de Adorno representa un lugar clave de transiciones malogradas. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The focus of this essay is Kant's argument in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals III that regarding oneself as rational implies regarding oneself as free. After setting out an interpretation of how the argument is meant to go, I argue that Kant fails to show that regarding oneself as free is incompatible with accepting universal causal determinism. However, I suggest that the argument succeeds in showing that regarding oneself as rational is inconsistent with accepting universal causal determinism (...) if one accepts a certain, plausible view of the explanation of events. RESUMEN El ensayo se enfoca en el argumento de Kant en la Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres III según el cual considerarse racional implica verse a uno mismo como libre. Se interpreta la forma en que debe entenderse el argumento y se afirma que Kant no logra demostrar que considerarse libre es incompatible con la aceptación del determinismo casual universal. No obstante, se sugiere que el argumento sí logra demostrar que considerarse a uno mismo como racional es incompatible con la aceptación del determinismo casual universal, si se acepta una cierta versión plausible de la explicación de los eventos. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza relatos biográficos críticos acerca de las experiencias con profesionales y terapias del ámbito de la salud mental por problemas relacionados con depresiones. En un contexto de expansión y diversificación de los discursos y prácticas del campo psi, indaga en las perspectivas y cuestionamientos de usuarios/as de servicios psicoterapéuticos. La pregunta principal que lo orienta es: ¿En las narrativas biográficas cuáles son las críticas que realizan a las prácticas terapéuticas y a quienes la ejercen? Un segundo interrogante: ¿Es (...) posible localizar alguna relación de afinidad entre tipos particulares de críticas y de estilo de terapia psi? Estas cuestiones son abordadas a partir de una investigación empírica, realizada en la ciudad de Santa Fe, Argentina. Se analizan 42 entrevistas biográficas para indagar en el repertorio de objeciones que efectúan a las terapéuticas psi personas involucradas en procesos psicoterapéuticos. El artículo localiza un conjunto de relatos que cuestionan la falta de empatía; la falta de provisión de herramientas; la falta de credibilidad; la jerarquía en la relación; y, finalmente, la ilusión de recuperación. Cada uno de estos tipos de críticas suelen adquirir mayor presencia en determinadas prácticas terapéuticas. En estos estilos de objeciones se hallan críticas más singularizadas —orientadas a personas particulares que ejercen de terapeutas— y más generalizadas —dirigidas a los fundamentos de las terapias. El trabajo contribuye a los estudios sociales sobre el campo psi al producir conocimiento empírico acerca de los saberes críticos por experiencia de personas involucradas en diferentes terapias psi. (shrink)

This article analyses three works or sets of works by Zubiri that I have edited. They are: “The concept of matter” and “The living being”, the “theologic trilogy” and Science and Reality. We analyze their “genesis”, and how this generates some “novelties” in Zubiri’s thinking. The article shows that in order to go deeper into what a philosopher “thinks”, it is necessary to know how his thought is progressing.

In this paper we propose to analyze the representations that Compañero sought to build in the 1963-1964 biennium about two key actors in the peronist movement: Juan D. Perón himself and his union wing. Specifically, we intend to investigate the incidence that notions of hegemonic masculinities had in said representations. To do this, we will focus our attention on the discursive modalities displayed by the journal, using the theoretical-methodological tools provided by Discourse Analysis.

This article presents a detailed exposition of Celsus’ criticism for Christianity, for the first time in Spanish. Celsus was the first known philosopher in Antiquity, who lashed against the dawning Christianity from the point of view of the Greek tradition, the Alethes Logos. The paper shows, first, the metaphysical and philosophical perspective of Celsus’ criticism. Secondly, it brings us inside the ethical and political stirs of Christianity, from Celsus’ own point of view and how this has affected his civil world. (...) This criticism marks the starting point of a philosophical vindication of European paganism, with Giordiano Bruno and Friedrich Nietzsche as its greatest advocates. (shrink)

El presente escrito pretende explicar la relevancia y actualidad ética del pensamiento personalista comunitario de Emmanuel Mounier contextualizándolo en medio de los desafíos del post-humanismo. De este modo, la exposición se centrará en un primer momento en el mundo actual y la “muerte del ser humano”, para luego detallar en qué consiste el post-humanismo y el personalismo comunitario. Finalmente, se confrontarán las ideas provenientes del post-humanismo con la propuesta de Mounier.

We explore the relationship between evidence and knowledge when knowledge is described by a standard partition over a finite state space, and evidence is represented by a state-dependent collection of finite sets of messages. When the collection is measurable with respect to the partition, there is evidence for an event only if the event is self-evident—i.e., known at every one of its states. Thus, an event is commonly known in and only if there is _mutual_ evidence that implies that the (...) event has occurred, and all knowledge can be proved only when the agent is informed about the state or knows nothing. The existence of partial provability outside these two extremes hinges on the non monotonic nature of provability. (shrink)

"A philosophical exploration of Miguel de Unamuno's theory of reality, in regard to man, nature, and God, by examining the famed Spanish philosopher-writer's published works and his correspondence.".