O artigo discute passagens importantes da obra de Santo Agostinho e argumenta que muitas são as antecipações de teses comumente atribuídas a Descartes. Entre elas, uma clara antecipação à célebre fórmula “penso, logo existo” na obra do Bispo de Hipona, assim como de outras teses importantes distribuídas ao longo de sua obra. Na segunda parte, culmina o texto com outro dado praticamente desconhecido: o fato de que o estilo meditativo empregado por Descartes também já fora antecipado por uma autora cuja (...) obra era amplamente conhecida na Europa da metade do século XVI e do século XVII. Trata-se da freira Teresa D’Ávila que fora canonizada quando o jovem Descartes estudava com os jesuítas em La Flèche. Levanta-se, assim, a necessidade de repensarmos a historiografia acadêmica à que a maioria de nós fomos submetidos quando iniciamos os estudos filosóficos sem termos sido expostos às verdadeiras fontes das teses centrais que encontramos em muitas obras clássicas do pensamento filosófico. (shrink)

Neste artigo quero mostrar o pesado lastro da tradição no antitradicionalismo do jovem Wittgenrtein.

Neste artigo procuro mostrar o alcance de vários e fundamentais lampejos da República de Platão.

Este artigo tem reflexões que tratam da criatividade na arte e na filosofia.A questão de fundo é a dos valores que as tradições artística e filosófica querem impor às novas gerações de artistas e filósofos.

Se não se ensina filosofia, mas a filosofar (Kant), como se ensina a filosofar? Obviamente, filosofando. Por outro lado, se a filosofia não se define por um objeto próprio nem a distingue um só método privilegiado, em que consiste, então, essa ação que o filosofar aponta? Que a filosofia não se define por um objeto nem por um método parece claro. No entanto, algo, em geral, deve caracterizar o filosofar. O que parece caracterizá-lo, mesmo que negativamente, é a tentativa de (...) resolução de problemas que com o resultado de outras ciências ou do conhecimento obtido em outras áreas da atividade humana é impossível resolver. Isso nos leva ao objeto desta comunicação: discutir como, efetivamente, é possível ensinar a filosofar e não simplesmente ensinar [história da] filosofia. Ensina-se a filosofar como se ensina outra atividade qualquer: pelo exemplo. Neste caso, pelo exemplo de um agir filosofante, ou seja, discutindo, avaliando e procurando respostas aos problemas que a cada um de nós, filosoficamente, nos preocupam. (shrink)

Neste artigo apresento vários argumentos para provar que toda tentativa de definir a filosofia está fadada ao fracasso.

Este artigo procura explicar por que a dependência cultural dos países 'em vias de desenvolvimento' faz parte das diretrizes neoliberais para o mundo globalizado.

Este artigo é uma reflexão sobre o alicerce metafísico da concepção de história que prevalece no fim do século XX.

Neste artigo trato da relação que a metafísica e a Ontologia guardam com a Linguagem, discuto duas abordagens sobre o assunto e proponho soluções à vários problemas que o tema apresenta.

Este artigo analisa o argumento de Peirce contra o ceticismo e mostra algumas fragilidades do argumento cartesiano.

Gostaria de discutir algumas idéias de um filósofo brasileiro que muito admiro e sobre quem já escrevi anteriormente. Trata-se de Oswaldo Porchat Pereira, professor do Departamento de Filosofia da USP e criador do Centro de Lógica, Epistemologia e História da Ciência (CLE) da Unicamp. Recebi de um estudante de pós-graduação em Sociologia Política da UFSC a cópia de uma conferência que Oswaldo Porchat ministrara em maio de 1998 sob o título “Discurso aos estudantes de Filosofia da USP sobre a pesquisa (...) em Filosofia”. Leva um subtítulo instigador: “Gênero: provocatio.” A conferência fazia parte do II Encontro de Pesquisa na Graduação em Filosofia. Diz o professor Porchat: “E a pergunta imediatamente nos acode: pesquisa em Filosofia ou pesquisa em História da Filosofia?” (Grifos do autor) A questão de fundo está posta, mesmo que implicitamente: queremos formar filósofos ou historiadores da filosofia? E isto nos leva a outra questão: como formar filósofos e como formar historiadores da filosofia? (shrink)

Há várias maneiras em que podemos conceber o ensino da filosofia. Tradicionalmente, os cursos de filosofia se organizam em torno da História da Filosofia e os professores se limitam a comentar seus textos. Em alguns casos, os alunos já são informados, desde o início do curso, que a filosofia já está completa ou, no pior dos casos, ficam sabendo que eles, simples estudantes, não têm a menor chance de chegar a filosofar ou a ser filósofos. Sendo essas formas de conceber (...) o ensino da filosofia algumas das causas para que um povo não filosofe, discutirei neste texto o que me parece uma aproximação correta ao ensino da filosofia que consiste, em poucas palavras, em provocar no contato com os alunos problemas a serem debatidos e a comparar as soluções dadas pelos alunos com as que foram e ainda são oferecidas pelos filósofos que um dia contribuíram e os que hoje estão contribuindo para o debate filosófico contemporâneo. (shrink)

Careerism refers to an individual’s propensity to achieve their personal and career goals through nonperformance-based activities. We investigated the role of several dispositional predictors of careerism, including Five-factor model personality traits, primary psychopathy, and exchange ideology. Based on data from 131 respondents, as expected, we observed that emotional stability was negatively correlated with careerism. Primary psychopathy and exchange ideology explained additional variance in careerism after accounting for FFM traits. Relative importance analyses indicated that psychopathy and exchange ideology were equally important (...) in predicting careerism. We highlight the need for future research efforts investigating the combined effects of contextual factors—particularly, human resource practices—and individual differences to understand careerism in the workplace. (shrink)

BackgroundThe nature of a woman’s orgasm has been a source of scientific, political, and cultural debate for over a century. Since the Victorian era, the pendulum has swung from the vagina to the clitoris, and to some extent back again, with the current debate stuck over whether internal sensory structures exist in the vagina that could account for orgasms based largely on their stimulation, or whether stimulation of the external glans clitoris is always necessary for orgasm.MethodWe review the history of (...) the clitoral versus vaginal orgasm debate as it has evolved with conflicting ideas and data from psychiatry and psychoanalysis, epidemiology, evolutionary theory, feminist political theory, physiology, and finally neuroscience.ResultsA new synthesis is presented that acknowledges the enormous potential women have to experience orgasms from one or more sources of sensory input, including the external clitoral glans, internal region around the “G-spot” that corresponds to the internal clitoral bulbs, the c... (shrink)

BackgroundAlthough humans experience orgasms with a degree of statistical regularity, they remain among the most enigmatic of sexual responses; difficult to define and even more difficult to study empirically. The question of whether animals experience orgasms is hampered by similar lack of definition and the additional necessity of making inferences from behavioral responses.MethodHere we define three behavioral criteria, based on dimensions of the subjective experience of human orgasms described by Mah and Binik, to infer orgasm-like responses in other species: 1) (...) physiological criteria that include pelvic floor and anal muscle contractions that stimulate seminal emission and/or ejaculation in the male, or that stimulate uterine and cervical contractions in the female; 2) short-term behavioral changes that reflect immediate awareness of a pleasurable hedonic reward state during copulation; and 3) long-term behavioral changes that depend on the reward state induced by the OLR, including sexual sat... (shrink)

In cortical neurones, analogue dendritic potentials are thought to be encoded into patterns of digital spikes. According to this view, neuronal codes and computations are based on the temporal patterns of spikes: spike times, bursts or spike rates. Recently, we proposed an ‘action potential waveform code’ for cortical pyramidal neurones in which the spike shape carries information. Broader somatic action potentials are reliably produced in response to higher conductance input, allowing for four times more information transfer than spike times alone. (...) This information is preserved during synaptic integration in a single neurone, as back‐propagating action potentials of diverse shapes differentially shunt incoming postsynaptic potentials and so participate in the next round of spike generation. An open question has been whether the information in action potential waveforms can also survive axonal conduction and directly influence synaptic transmission to neighbouring neurones. Several new findings have now brought new light to this subject, showing cortical information processing that transcends the classical models. BioEssays 29: 178–187, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Los orígenes intelectuales del nacionalismo y de su idea de cultura hallan en la obra del pensador alemán Johann G. Herder (1744-1803) una referencia ineludible. Herder propuso una versión de la Ilustración contraria a la oficial, crítica con las políticas del reformismo burocrático del absolutismo y con el racionalismo filosófico kantiano. La versión de la Ilustración de Herder participa de un sentido de la historia abierto a la diversidad cultural. La lengua y la cultura emergen del planteamiento de Herder como (...) las cifras de un mundo popular utópicamente imaginado de espaldas a la lógica del poder monárquico y aristocrático. La idea nacionalista de cultura elaborada por el pensador alemán nos obliga a reconsiderar, de una manera crítica, los orígenes románticos del nacionalismo. (shrink)

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereya provides a new English translation of G. W. Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics, complete with a critical introduction and a comprehensive philosophical commentary. In this fundamental work, Leibniz sets out a metaphysics for Christianity and provides answers to the central metaphysical questions.

The scientific exploration of Mars might yield results of extraordinary importance for our own planet, particularly the search for extant or fossil Martian life, which would make it possible to understand terrestrial life in a more profound way. This potential scientific treasure places on us an ethical obligation to minimize the disruption of the Martian environment until our scientific exploration has been greatly advanced. We also have ethical obligations to the human scientific explorers of Mars, ethical obligations that require a (...) series of scientific investigations, e.g., about how the low Martian gravitation may affect those explorers’ physiology. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze’s research during the 1980s focused on the 17th century German thinker G. W. Leibniz. In 1988, Deleuze published Le Pli, which forms part of a series of works on modern philosophy. This book displays Deleuze’s attention to the interpretations of contemporary commentators on modern philosophy, in this case, on Leibniz. In this context, there occurred a brief and important dialogue between Deleuze and Christiane Frémont, the French commentator and translator of Leibniz, with regard to their respective interpretations of (...) the great German philosopher. This article intends to give an account of the main topics present in that conversation. Firstly, we can say they involve 1) the problem of body and the Leibnizian vinculum substantiale, 2) the question of singularities, 3) the principle of economy and incompossibility, and 4) the Deleuzian concept of vice-diction. Our hypothesis in this study is that the readings made by both authors of the German thinker are mutually involved. It is essential, in order to support this hypothesis, to make precise the demarcations of relations between such readings. For this reason, our research will focus on Frémont’s study Singularités, individus et relations dans le système de Leibniz (2003) and on Deleuze’s work Le Pli (1988). We hope to determine the topics that emerge in the relationship, and to specify convergences and divergences of interpretation. (shrink)

El libro de Osvaldo Torres Gutiérrez, es un trabajo descriptivo, bien documentado y fundamentado en el uso de fuentes y bibliografía general y específica sobre el tema en cuestión, siendo uno de los aspectos más importantes las entrevistas realizadas a dirigentes de las dos organizaciones político revolucionarias que son el centro de su análisis.En las primeras líneas, el autor deja establecida la pregunta sobre la cual girará su trabajo, “por qué dos organizaciones de la izquierda revolucion..

It was shown in Dirac A117, 610; A118, 351, 1928) that the ultra-violet divergence in quantum electrodynamics is caused by a violation of the time-energy uncertainly relationship, due to the implicit assumption of infinitesimal time information. In Wheeler et al. it was shown that Einstein’s special theory of relativity and Maxwell’s field theory have mathematically equivalent dual versions. The dual versions arise from an identity relating observer time to proper time as a contact transformation on configuration space, which leaves phase (...) space invariant. The special theory has a dual version in the sense that, for any set of n particles, every observer has two unique sets of global variables \\) and \\) to describe the dynamics, where \ is the canonical center of mass. In the \\) variables, time is relative and the speed of light is unique, while in the \\) variables, time is unique and the speed of light is relative with no upper bound. In the Maxwell case, the two sets of particle wave equations are not equivalent. The dual version contains an additional longitudinal radiation term that appears instantaneously with acceleration, leading to the prediction that radiation from a cyclotron will not produce photoelectrons. A major outcome is the dual unification of Newtonian mechanics and classical electrodynamics with Einstein’s special theory of relativity, without the need for point particles, without a self-energy divergency and, without need for the problematic Lorentz–Dirac equation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the dual theory of relativistic quantum mechanics. In our approach, we obtain three distinct dual relativistic wave equations that reduce to the Schrödinger equation when minimal coupling is turned off. We show that the dual Dirac equation provides a new formula for the anomalous magnetic moment of a charged particle. We can obtain the exact value for the electron g-factor and phenomenological values for the muon and proton g-factors. (shrink)

A critical review of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra’s Two Arguments for the Identity of Indiscernibles.

Requiring family authorization for apnea testing subtracts health professionals control over death determination, a procedure that has traditionally been considered a matter of clinical expertise alone. In this commentary, we first provide evidence showing that health professionals’ (HPs) disposition to act on death determination without family’s prior consent could be much lower than that referred to by Berkowitz and Garrett (2020). We hypothesize that HPs may have reservations about their own expertise as regards death, and may thus hesitate to impose (...) their views on patients’ families. We then address the theoretical question of clinical expertise in death determination by distinguishing judgments about facts (e.g., the presence or absence of spontaneous breathing) from interpretations given of these facts (i.e., their meaning for the vital status of an individual). We argue that, while clinicians may claim some expert authority on the former, they hold no particular authority on the latter. (shrink)

Lorenzo Peña y Gonzalo has developed a logic, a legal philosophy and a political thought of a deeply neo-Leibnizian nature. The neo-Leibnizian mark characterizes both his philosophical thesis and the terms has coined in his contributions to the theory of knowledge, theodicy, ontology, political philosophy, etc. Above all, this mark is present in his conception of Law and of the logic of legal situations. Under the light of the political problems and crossroads of the present time, this interview allows (...) for an approach to some of the intellectual findings in his work. (shrink)

Agustín Serrano de Haro edita y presenta en el volumen colectivo Cuerpo vivido una selección de textos memorables en torno a lo que en 1925 fue denominado programáticamente por Ortega y Gasset una “topografía de nuestra intimidad”. La reflexión fenomenológica acerca del intracuerpo fue un tema que ha preocupado y preocupa de manera notoria a los filósofos cuyos trabajos reúne este colectivo: Ortega y Gasset, José Gaos, Joaquín Xirau, Leopoldo-Eulogio Palacios y Agustín Serrano de Haro. Pese a ello, tal (...) vez no sea tan conocido de todos nosotros el hecho de que las investigaciones filosóficas acerca del cuerpo humano (siempre sentido por uno mismo y reconocido por otros de modo intransferible) resultaron ser contribuciones pioneras y anticipaciones preclaras del tema actual del cuerpo y la corporalidad. (shrink)

La presente obra ofrece una perspectiva abierta de la filosofía de al-Andalus con enfoques diversos y complementarios a cargo de reconocidos especialistas del arabismo, el hebraísmo y el pensamiento medieval: Miguel Asín Palacios, Manuel Alonso, Roger Arnaldez, Miguel Cruz Hernández, Fernando Díaz Esteban, Salvador Gómez Nogales, David Gonzalo Maeso, Joaquín Lomba, Andrés Martínez Lorca y Juan Vernet. Novedad importante que reflejan estas páginas es la integración de los filósofos judíos y musulmanes en la casa común de al-Andalus, como (...) históricamente aconteció. En la primera parte se analizan las influencias clásicas y orientales que confluyeron en la vida intelectual de la España musulmana. En la segunda se traza un amplio y detallado panorama de los principales filósofos de al-Andalus. El editor ha reconstruido en la introducción el desarrollo del pensamiento andalusí dentro de su contexto histórico. Rigor histórico-filológico, contextualización social, profundización en las cuestiones especulativas y espíritu crítico constituyen rasgos comunes de estos ensayos. (Fuente: Almuzara). (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII Coda Appendix Acknowledgements.

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)