Of all the thinkers of the century of genius that inaugurated modern philosophy, none lived an intellectual life more rich and varied than Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Maria Rosa Antognazza's pioneering biography provides a unified portrait of this unique thinker and the world from which he came. At the centre of the huge range of Leibniz's apparently miscellaneous endeavours, Antognazza reveals a single master project lending unity to his extraordinarily multifaceted life's work. Throughout the vicissitudes of his long life, Leibniz (...) tenaciously pursued the dream of a systematic reform and advancement of all the sciences. As well as tracing the threads of continuity that bound these theoretical and practical activities to this all-embracing plan, this illuminating study also traces these threads back into the intellectual traditions of the Holy Roman Empire in which Leibniz lived and throughout the broader intellectual networks that linked him to patrons in countries as distant as Russia and to correspondents as far afield as China. (shrink)

A Philosophy to Live By highlights Murdoch's distinctive conception of philosophy as a spiritual or existential practice and enlists the resources of her thought to explore a wide range of thinkers and debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics.

The scientist Richard Lovell Edgeworth, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, was a Member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, where he exchanged ideas with other scientists, including James Watt, and was known for his significant mechanical inventions. However, Edgeworth's real interest was education: in this 1788 two-volume work, written with his daughter, the poet Maria Edgeworth, he draws on his own experience of raising twenty children, from which the work derives its authority and innovative character. The work (...) was very influential, and led to his Essays on Professional Education. The two volumes discuss the theories of philosophers and educationalists, while in general arguing for the importance and formative character of early childhood experiences. Volume 1 deals with different areas of childhood education, including play, learning, and obedience and good behaviour. (shrink)

QUESTIONS DE METHODE I. Au contraire de Sartre qui, a partir de quelques elements cueillis dans les ecrits de HusserI concernant la conscience ima geante, a bllti sa propre doctrine de!'imagination, nous nous proposons de reconstituer, a partir de ces m~mes elements, ce qu'on pourrait appeler la theort:e husserlienne de l'imagination, c'est-a-dire la theorie que HusserI eut lui-m~me construite, s'il avait reuni en une synthese les elements qu'il a laisses epars. Une entreprise de ce genre est toujours delicate et souleve (...) des prob!emes difficiles - a commencer par celui de sa legitimite. N ous ecartons d'emblee l'objection d'ordre general qui contesterait Ie droit de systematiser dans l'reuvre d'un auteur ce que lui-m~me a laisse disperse et eventuellement inacheve. Par un tel scrupule, on sacrifie sans doute a la rigueur historique mais on est beaucoup moins soucieux de penetrer une pensee dans son dynamisme in terne et profond et, en derniere analyse, on protege les droits de l'archeologie mais non pas ceux de la culture et de son progreso Nous pensons a une difficulte beaucoup plus serieuse; de sa so lution depend l'attitude a adopter en face des textes dont nous devons nous servir dans notre etude. Nous utilisons des ouvrages qui couvrent la totalite de la car riere philosophique de HusserIl. (shrink)

El escrito continúa una discusión mantenida por Macarena Marey, María Julia Bertomeu y Nuria Sánchez Madrid en torno a la capacidad de los principios del republicanismo kantiano para transformar el espacio social en un ámbito en el que la autosuficiencia material constituya una de las condiciones fundamentales para que la igualdad formal ante la ley y la libertad política puedan actualizarse. En estas coordenadas se manifiestan también algunas discrepancias en lo concerniente a la percepción kantiana de las injusticias sociales y (...) políticas propias de su tiempo, si bien se alcanza el acuerdo de que el diseño institucional del republicanismo kantiano constituye un dispositivo conceptual suficiente para eliminar la desigualdad económica que comporta pasividad civil y política. (shrink)

Despite many attempts to achieve an adequate definition of living systems by means of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, the opinion that such an enterprise is inexorably destined to fail is increasingly gaining support. However, we believe options do not just come down to either having faith in a future success or endorsing skepticism. In this paper, we aim to redirect the discussion of the problem by shifting the focus of attention from strict definitions towards a philosophical framework (...) that allows conceiving of living systems as a natural kind, but whereby natural kinds are not to be defined by fixed necessary and sufficient conditions. We argue for a property-cluster kind approach according to which living systems constitute a natural kind with vague boundaries, capable of changing, and whose members do not need to instantiate every property. We draw from Boyd’s homeostatic property-cluster theory and introduce two modifications, one regarding homeostatic mechanisms and another related to the scientific role of kinds. Thus, our view overcomes some difficulties of Boyd’s theory and we are able to account for the natural kindhood of living things. We also emphasize the most appealing features of our approach for specific research fields and address three objections to this sort of approach. (shrink)

Background:Essential for the help relation, empathy is the ability to understand, share, and perceive the subjective experience of other human beings.Objective:The objective in this non-experimenta...

This paper aims to stablishes the sense in which propositions included under the perceptual use of ‘seeing-as’, developed by Wittgenstein in the Second Part of Philosophical Investigations, are justifiable from an epistemic point of view. To do this, first, it will be clarified the internal link between ‘visual experience’ and ‘interpretation’ for the type of mentioned cases. Second, it will be shown how the ‘seeing-as’ respects the rule-following paradox’s solution, as long as it does not presuppose any intermediary or need (...) anyone to account for what is perceived, highlighting the notions of ‘practice’, ‘familiarity’ and ‘context’ common both in the aforementioned solution and in the ‘seeing-as’ cases. Third, the general distinction between certainties or ‘hinges’ and ‘epistemic propositions’ presented by Wittgenstein in On Certainty will be applied to cases of aspect perception as a possible field of application of the so called Hinge Epistemology, showing how, in specific cases, the perceptual certainties that shape our way of life and that are groundless, can be recontextualized and merit reasonable justification.Keywords: Wittgenstein, aspect perception, seeing-as, hinges, certainty, justification. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam is one of the world’s leading philosophers. His highly original and often provocative ideas have set the agenda for a variety of debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His now famous philosophical thought experiments, such as the ‘Twin earth’ and ‘the brains in the vat’ have become part of the established canon in philosophy and cognitive science. _Reading Putnam_ is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of (...) international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including: Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy Putnam’s developing views on perception. Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, _Reading Putnam_ is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Asking students to generate a prediction before presenting the correct answer is a popular instructional strategy. This study tested whether a person’s degree of confidence in a prediction is related to their curiosity and surprise regarding the answer. For a series of questions about numerical facts, participants (N = 29) generated predictions and rated their confidence in the prediction before seeing the correct answer. The increase in pupil size before viewing the correct answer was used as a physiological marker of (...) curiosity, and the increase in pupil size after viewing the correct answer was used as a physiological marker of surprise. The results revealed that the pupillometric marker of curiosity was most pronounced if students were slightly more confident in their prediction than usual, and it was lower for predictions made with either very high or very low confidence. Furthermore, the results showed that high-confidence prediction errors and low-confidence correct responses yielded a pupillary surprise response, suggesting that highly unexpected results evoke surprise, independent of the correctness of the prediction. Together, results suggest that confidence in a prediction plays an important role in the occurrence of epistemic emotions such as curiosity and surprise. (shrink)

Although perceptual grouping has been widely studied, its mechanisms remain poorly understood. We propose a neural model of grouping that, through top-down control of its circuits, implements a grouping strategy involving both a connection strategy (which elements to connect) and a selection strategy (that defines spatiotemporal properties of a selection signal to segment target elements and facilitate identification). We apply the model to a letter discrimination task that investigated relationships among uniform connectedness and the grouping principles of proximity and shape (...) similarity. Participants reported whether small circles formed a global letter E or H, and these circles could be connected by a line or be embedded in a matrix of squares. In the model, a good grouping strategy for this task consists of a connection strategy that connects circles but not squares for all conditions and a selection strategy that uses a selection signal of varying size, depending on whether squares were present. Consistent with empirical results, which were verified in two replication studies, model performance is worse with distractor squares, and line connectors improve performance only in the condition with squares. Rather than relying on abstract grouping principles, we show how the empirical results can be explained in terms of observers implementing a task-dependent grouping strategy that promotes overall performance. (shrink)

En los últimos años se realizaron numerosos trabajos sobre el tema de la transferencia científico-tecnológica de la Universidad en función de los cambios de orientación en las políticas de Educación Superior implementadas en América Latina en la última década. La mayoría de los estudios sobre el tema parten de la consideración del fenómeno de la vinculación como la actuación de los tres sectores involucrados: sector universitario público, sector estatal y sector de la producción de bienes y servicios, y son escasos (...) los trabajos que abordan la perspectiva de análisis que explora la temática de la vinculación entre estos sectores como la expresión de los actores que se desenvuelven en el ámbito de esta institución. Siguiendo esta perspectiva, este estudio tiene como propósito el análisis de las percepciones y valoraciones generadas por los actores universitarios a partir de las actividades de vinculación Universidad-Estado-Sector productivo. En este trabajo presentamos algunas notas metodológicas sobre esta perspectiva de análisis. (shrink)

One of Julian Barbour’s main aims is to solve the problem of time that appears in quantum geometrodynamics (QG). QG involves the application of canonical quantization procedure to the Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity. The problem of time arises because the quantization of the Hamiltonian constraint results in an equation that has no explicit time parameter. Thus, it appears that the resulting equation, as apparently timeless, cannot describe evolution of quantum states. Barbour attempts to resolve the problem by allegedly eliminating (...) time from his interpretation of QG. In order to evaluate the efficacy of his solution, it is necessary to ascertain in what sense time has been eliminated from his theory. I proceed to do so by developing a form of conceptual analysis that is applicable to the concept of time in physical theories and applying this analysis to Barbour’s account. (shrink)

This article rereads some of Kant’s writings considered as pre-critical. It tries to investigate how in them the reflection about knowledge progressively takes a new direction against dogmatic positions. In order to do this, this article focuses on some of its specific aspects. We cannot assimilate these works to the revolution that the KrV will signify but we can read them as a preparation for that critical field. We share those interpretations which think that there is more continuity than breaking (...) off between the Kant considered pre-critical and his deployment clearly critical. (shrink)

Recent improvements in virtual reality allow for the representation of authentic environments and multiple users in a shared complex virtual world in real time. These advances have fostered clinical applications including in psychiatry. However, although VR is already used in clinical settings to help people with mental disorders, the related ethical issues require greater attention. Based on a thematic literature search the authors identified five themes that raise ethical concerns related to the clinical use of VR: reality and its representation, (...) autonomy, privacy, self-diagnosis and self-treatment, and expectation bias. Reality and its representation is a theme that lies at the heart of VR, but is also of specific significance in a clinical context when perceptions of reality are concerned, for example, during psychosis. Closely associated is the autonomy of VR users. Although autonomy is a much-considered topic in biomedical ethics, it has not been sufficiently discussed when it comes to applications of VR in psychiatry. In this review, the authors address the different themes and recommend the development of an ethical framework for the clinical use of VR. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop the notion of the experiential workspace, or the phenomenal setting generated by the coupling between the enactive body and its affordance-laden environment, in order to carry out a fine-grained analysis of enactive experiential phenomena, in particular those of ordinary lived experience. My purpose is to shed light on some of the ways that empirical methodologies are intrinsically limited in their ability to capture the native phenomena of enactive, embodied experience. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, (...) I argue that the experiential workspace is characterized by dynamic mutability, emergent norms, and epistemic openness - characteristics that are transphenomenal in nature and thus resistant to empirical measurement. Using concepts from the work of developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky and feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young, I will show how our embeddedness in an intersubjective world makes the experiential workspace a mercurial, labile phenomenon, characterized by inherently transphenomenal features that are resistant to naturalistic analysis or modelling. (shrink)

Using Leventhal’s (Social exchange: Advances in theory and research, Plenum Press, New York, 1980 ) rules of procedural justice as well as deontic justice (Folger in Research in social issues in management, Information Age, Greenwich, CT, 2001 ), we examine how personal value for diversity moderates the negative relationship between perceived discrimination against minorities (i.e., racial minorities and females) at work and the perceived procedural justice of minorities’ treatment by the organization. Through a field survey of 190 employees, we found (...) that observers high in personal value for diversity have stronger negative reactions to the mistreatment of women and racial minorities than observers low in personal value for diversity. These findings support and extend the deontic justice perspective because those who personally value diversity had the strongest negative reactions toward the discriminatory treatment of minorities. (shrink)

While sustainability is largely associated with do-gooders, this article discusses whether and how fraud might also be an issue in sustainability departments. More specifically, transferring the concept of the fraud triangle to sustainability departments I discuss possible pressures/incentives, opportunities, and rationalizations/attitudes for sustainability managers to commit fraud. Based on interviews with sustainability and forensic practitioners, my findings suggest that sustainability managers face mounting pressure and have opportunities to manipulate due to an immature control environment. Whether a presumably morality-driven attitude may (...) prevent them from committing and easily rationalizing fraud remains controversial. Even though cases of fraud happening in sustainability departments are still widely unknown, the interview analysis reveals that sustainability fraud is likely to occur at least to some extent—and presumably remains undetected. The study brings to light the importance of a clear commitment from executives to sustainability to prevent sustainability fraud and demonstrates adverse developments driven by external stakeholders, specifically the bonus relevancy of sustainability index scores. In particular, the study shows a lack of awareness for potential fraud in sustainability departments. (shrink)

This paper provides a provisional examination of Rod Watson ''s work and contributions to EM/CA/MCA, in part through a critique of misrepresentations of his arguments in secondary accounts of his work. The form of these misrepresentations includes adumbration and traducement of his arguments. Focusing on the reflexivity of category and sequence and turn-generated categories, we suggest that his analytic position within ethnomethodological fields is unique and remarkable, yet largely unacknowledged. We argue that a re-examination of the body of Watson ''s (...) work makes relevant explicit and appropriate acknowledgement of his contributions through his unconventional approach and his extension of prior works in novel and stimulating directions. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the identification of factors influencing the export trade flows of the Russian Federation to the EAEU member states. Gravity modeling (H. Linnemann's model) was used as a research tool. The introduction of dummy variables is justified. A comparative analysis of the identified factors is presented. A forecast of export trade flows of the Russian Federation to the EAEU countries for 2020-2022 has been made.