In this essay we argue that the notion of machine necessarily includes its being designed for a purpose. Therefore, being a mechanical system is not enough for being a machine. Since the experimental scientific method excludes any consideration of finality on methodological grounds, it is then also insufficient to fully understand what machines are. Instead in order to understand a machine it is first required to understand its purpose, along with its structure, in clear parallel with Aristotle’s final and formal (...) causes. Obviously, purpose and structure are not machine components that can physically interact with other components; nonetheless they are essential to understanding their operation. This casts an interesting light on the relationship between mind and body: for just as an artifact’s finality and structure explain its operation, so also consciousness is the explanation—not the efficient cause—of specifically human behavior. What machines and human beings have in common is that, in order to understand them, it is necessary to appeal to the principle of finality. Yet while finality is given and extrinsic in the case of machines, we human beings are characterized by the ability to self-propose our own ends. Since the principle of finality is essential to understanding the production of machines, the traditional view in modern Western philosophy that finality lies beyond the scope of objective/scientific knowledge should be rectified to allow for a genuine science of the artificial. We think a correct understanding of final causality will overcome current resistance to this principle. (shrink)

In this article we will argue that given certain conditions for the evolution of bi- ological controllers, these will necessarily evolve in the direction of incorporating consciousness capabilities. We will also see what are the necessary mechanics for the provision of these capabilities and extrapolate this vision to the world of artifi- cial systems postulating seven design principles for conscious systems. This article was published in the journal Neural Networks special issue on brain and conscious- ness.

El siguiente artículo hace un recuento sobre las ciencias tradicionales del Islam: de dónde se originan y como las presenta Ibn Jaldún en sus Prolegómenos a la historia universal. Se plantean y destacan algunas de las principales características de dichas ciencias, y finalmente, se hace un comentario con respecto al carácter epistemológico de las mismas y con respecto a cómo pueden concebirse y fundarse unas ciencias asentadas sobre un principio de autoridad.

El artículo analiza la teoría de todos y partes de Carl Stumpf. Por un lado, se presentan los elementos básicos de su psicología descriptiva de la experiencia. Por otro lado, se analiza el desarrollo de la teoría de todos y partes sobre la base de dicha psicología descriptiva. El trabajo pretende probar dos tesis complementarias: primero, si bien la teoría mereológica de Stumpf es aún incipiente y no del todo explícita, constituye un auténtico punto de partida. Segundo, dicha mereología surge (...) a partir de una atenta descripción de la experiencia dada y no es algo impuesto a ésta. The article focuses on Carl Stumpf's theory of parts and wholes. On the one hand, I present the basic elements of his descriptive psychology of experience. On the other hand, I analyze the development of his theory of parts and wholes, which is based upon his descriptive psychology. The article aims to prove two different, yet complementary theses: firstly, despite the fact that Stumpf's mereological theory is still incipient and not quite explicit, it represents an authentic point of departure; secondly, this mereology arises out of an attentive description of given experience and not as an imposition to it. (shrink)

La masacre de obreros ocurrida en la escuela de Santa María de Iquique en el año 1907 es un hecho histórico que hasta los días de hoy sigue siendo revisitado desde distintas disciplinas. A partir de una perspectiva filosófica, en este artículo se plantea el rol que tiene “el perdón”, a más de cien años del acontecimiento, y las posibilidades que tendría la literatura de representar la violencia o el trauma que subyace en él. Para ello, se ha tomado como (...) objeto de estudio la novela Hijo del Salitre, del escritor chileno Volodia Teitelboim, en la cual se aborda como temática central los funestos hechos ocurridos en Iquique a inicios del Siglo XX. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo se propone analizar críticamente la concepción clásica y monológica de la imparcialidad del juez, su respectivo correlato institucional y las consecuencias para interpretar el vínculo que debería tener con los afectados. Para ello se realiza un análisis reconstructivo de El Federalista de Hamilton, Madison y Jay. En primer lugar, se analiza en tal documento el concepto de imparcialidad y sus supuestos teóricos. En segundo lugar, se señala el modelo constitucional derivado. En tercer lugar, se muestra cómo, a (...) pesar de los giros y la distancia teórica del "nuevo constitucionalismo", algunas de las ideas subyacentes en El Federalista permanecen vigentes. Finalmente, el trabajo intenta poner en práctica el marco teórico-normativo de la democracia deliberativa para el análisis histórico reconstructivo de la teoría constitucional. The following work intends to critically analyze the classic and monological conception of the Judge´s impartiality, its respective institutional correlate and the consequences to understand the bond that should have with those affected. For this, a reconstructive analysis of The Federalist by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay is made. In the first place, the concept of impartiality and its theoretical assumptions are analyzed in such document. Second, it shows how, despite the turns and transformations of the "new constitutionalism", some of this assumptions remain applicable. Finally, the paper attempts to put into practice the normative theoretical framework of deliberative democracy for the historical reconstructive analysis of constitutional theory. (shrink)

La reciente firma del Acuerdo sobre Víctimas en la Habana el pasado 15 de diciembre de 2015 por parte del Gobierno colombiano y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia pone de presente una vez más la difícil tensión entre los propósitos por lograr una coexistencia pacífica y las exigencias normativas relacionadas con el deber de rendir de cuentas por parte de quienes han cometido graves violaciones de derechos humanos e infracciones al Derecho Internacional Humanitario.Pero, además, presenta un reto adicional: la (...) posibilidad de articular los principios de justicia restaurativa y de justicia transicional. (shrink)

Este artículo busca establecer un diálogo con la literatura internacional sobre justicia transicional y ofrecer un marco teórico crítico que permita analizar la experiencia reciente en Colombia. Para tal efecto, en la primera parte del artículo sostengo que la idea de justicia transicional es una construcción discursiva relativamente reciente en el escenario político y académico internacional, pero que, a su vez, ha experimentado diferentes momentos y transformaciones. En la segunda parte, el artículo ofrece un marco teórico que permita reflexionar sobre (...) la construcción de sentidos democráticos sobre la justicia transicional y los derechos de las víctimas en un escenario complejo como el colombiano. En tal sentido, con base en la perspectiva de campos sociales expuesta por Pierre Bourdieu, sostengo que la justicia transicional es un espacio de confrontación y lucha entre sujetos sociales que cuentan con distintos acumulados de poder. Así mismo, me baso en perspectivas críticas en materia de derechos humanos y justicia transicional para resaltar la relevancia de sujetos sociales, como los movimientos sociales y las redes de derechos humanos, en la construcción de una justicia transicional “desde abajo”. (shrink)

El tema principal es sugerir la continuidad entre las diferentes maneras de entender la reducción fenomenológica en la fenomenología de Husserl. A fin de presentar esta posibilidad argumento a favor de la importancia de la intencionalidad de horizonte como guía del análisis trascendental que parte de la fenomenología del mundo de la vida. Es posible entender el análisis fenomenológico como un método explicitativo que descubre paso a paso las diferentes capas de sentido, tomando como guía la descripción de la estructura (...) del mundo como horizonte implícito de nuestras vivencias. (shrink)

The quantum state of a d-dimensional system can be represented by a probability distribution over the d 2 outcomes of a Symmetric Informationally Complete Positive Operator Valued Measure (SIC-POVM), and then this probability distribution can be represented by a vector of $\mathbb {R}^{d^{2}-1}$ in a (d 2−1)-dimensional simplex, we will call this set of vectors $\mathcal{Q}$ . Other way of represent a d-dimensional system is by the corresponding Bloch vector also in $\mathbb {R}^{d^{2}-1}$ , we will call this set of (...) vectors $\mathcal{B}$ . In this paper it is proved that with the adequate scaling $\mathcal{B}=\mathcal{Q}$ . Also we indicate some features of the shape of $\mathcal{Q}$. (shrink)

Nietzsche utiliza gran parte de los argumentos empleados por él mismo contra la metafísica en general para criticar el cogito cartesiano. La afinidad señalada por el propio Descartes entre el cogito y la conciencia hace que el estudio se centre en el análisis nietzscheano del problema de la conciencia, prestando especial atención a sus implicaciones antropológicas. Frente al raciocentrismo cartesiano, Nietzsche sostiene que, dado que la conciencia no es una entidad ajena al mundo natural, es posible presentar una antropología estrictamente (...) naturalista, que no necesita recurrir a hipótesis dualistas tribu-tarias de la metafísica o de la teología. (shrink)

Frente a Descartes, y de acuerdo con autores como Nietzsche, Darwin o Chomsky, Pinker sostiene que el lenguaje es un instinto más de la naturaleza humana. Pero se separa de Chomsky al afirmar que el lenguaje es también el resultado del mecanismo de la selección natural. Recientes descubrimientos parecen respaldar la tesis de Pinker, en la medida en que se ha podido establecer una vinculación entre el gen FOXP2 y el lenguaje. La filosofía debería tomar buena nota de estos esultados, (...) pues afectan de lleno al estatuto del lógos: en adelante, es posible, sin necesidad de recurrir a ninguna instancia... (Leer más) trascendente, considerar al lenguaje como constitutivo de la sigularidad humana con respecto a las demás especies y, al mismo tiempo, como un avatar más de la evolución del mundo natural. (shrink)

Este trabajo expone resultados de un estudio sobre la influencia de las ideas contenidas en varias obras de Erasmo de Rotterdam (en especial su Elogio de la Locura) en el Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón de Alfonso de Valdés. Se destacan elementos principales que sustancian dicha influencia, y algunas diferencias entre las ideas de ambos autores que muestran los aportes que Valdés construyó sobre el pensamiento de Erasmo.

Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological psychology with (...) recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency. (shrink)

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In (...) this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. (shrink)

According to F. Adams [this journal, vol. 68, 2018] cognition cannot be realized in plants or bacteria. In his view, plants and bacteria respond to the here-and-now in a hardwired, inflexible manner, and are therefore incapable of cognitive activity. This article takes issue with the pursuit of plant cognition from the perspective of an empirically informed philosophy of plant neurobiology. As we argue, empirical evidence shows, contra Adams, that plant behavior is in many ways analogous to animal behavior. This renders (...) plants suitable to be described as cognitive agents in a non-metaphorical way. Sections two to four review the arguments offered by Adams in light of scientific evidence on plant adaptive behavior, decision-making, anticipation, as well as learning and memory. Section five introduces the ‘phyto-nervous’ system of plants. To conclude, section six resituates the quest for plant cognition into a broader approach in cognitive science, as represented by enactive and ecological schools of thought. Overall, we aim to motivate the idea that plants may be considered genuine cognitive agents. Our hope is to help propel public awareness and discussion of plant intelligence once appropriately stripped of anthropocentric preconceptions of the sort that Adams' position appears to exemplify. (shrink)

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, it is (...) argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (shrink)

According to ecological psychology, agency is a crucial feature of living organisms: therefore many ecological psychologists maintain that explaining agency is one of the core aims of the discipline. This paper aims to contribute to this goal by arguing that an ecological understanding of agency requires an account of intention. So far, intentions have not played a dominant role in ecological accounts of agency. The reluctance to integrate a notion of intention seems to be motivated by the widespread assumption that (...) intentions should be understood as internal states with representational content. This assumption goes against two main tenets of ecological psychology: its anti-representationalist stance and its claim that perception is direct (in the sense of not being mediated by inferential processes). Ecological psychology thus needs a different answer to the question what intentions are. In this paper, we aim to show that Elizabeth Anscombe’s theory of intention can be fruitfully brought to bear on an ecological theory of agency. We will argue that Anscombe’s account can meet the two challenges of bringing intentions into the framework of ecological psychology: firstly it can explain what intentions are, if not representational states; and, secondly, it can show how our perception of affordances is guided by intention without undermining the idea of direct perception. (shrink)

Although it is a common claim in the ecological psychology literature that our perception of the environment’s affordances is influenced by socio-cultural norms, an explanation of how this is possible remains to be offered. In this paper, I outline an account of this phenomenon by focusing on the ecological theory of perceptual learning. Two main theses are defended. First, I argue that to account for how socio-cultural norms can influence perception, we must pay attention not only to the education of (...) attention but to the education of intention too. Consequently, I offer some ideas about how intention can be socio-normatively educated. Secondly, I hold that the education of intention occurs via the acquisition of habit-based preferences for particular actions. I claim that once we understand how these habit-based preferences relate to socio-cultural norms, the hypothesis that norms must be represented in the individual’s mind for them to influence affordance perception is no longer needed. If this hypothesis is on the right track, we can have an explanation for how perception can be normatively shaped and direct (non-mediated by internal representations and inferences) at the same time. (shrink)

L. Polo es un buen maestro, más preocupado por descubrir la verdad que por ser entendido. Su pensar es paciente, la atención, concentrada. Mantiene la congruencia entre el nivel del método cognoscitivo que emplea y los temas reales conocidos que estudia. En él destacan tres cualidades: la audacia en el buscar, la convivencia con la verdad y la apertura universal al saber.

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, it is (...) argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (shrink)