El objetivo a perseguir por el presente artículo, es analizar tres de las principales teorías humanístico-filosóficas, respecto a la concepción del ciclo vital de que han sido participes diversas comunidades humanas a lo largo de la historia. Con base en tres propuestas de periodización histórica, se expondrán los enfoques temporales sobre los procesos y el fin de la historia teorizados por los filósofos e historiadores Giambatista Vico, Oswald Spengler y Arnold Joseph Toynbee.

El objetivo a perseguir por el presente artículo, es analizar tres de las principales teorías humanístico-filosóficas, respecto a la concepción del ciclo vital de que han sido participes diversas comunidades humanas a lo largo de la historia. Con base en tres propuestas de periodización histórica, se expondrán los enfoques temporales sobre los procesos y el fin de la historia teorizados por los filósofos e historiadores Giambatista Vico, Oswald Spengler y Arnold Joseph Toynbee.

The autopoietic theory and the enactive approach are two theoretical streams that, in spite of their historical link and conceptual affinities, offer very different views on the nature of living beings. In this paper, we compare these views and evaluate, in an exploratory way, their respective degrees of internal coherence. Focusing the analyses on certain key notions such as autonomy and organizational closure, we argue that while the autopoietic theory manages to elaborate an internally consistent conception of living beings, the (...) enactive approach presents an internal tension regarding its characterization of living beings as intentional systems directed at the environment. (shrink)

Building on the original formulation of the autopoietic theory (AT), extended enactivism argues that living beings are autopoietic systems that extend beyond the spatial boundaries of the organism. In this article, we argue that extended enactivism, despite having some basis in AT’s original formulation, mistakes AT’s definition of living beings as autopoietic entities. We offer, as a reply to this interpretation, a more embodied reformulation of autopoiesis, which we think is necessary to counterbalance the (excessively) disembodied spirit of AT’s original (...) formulation. The article aims to clarify and correct what we take to be a misinterpretation of AT as a research program. AT, contrary to what some enactivists seem to believe, did not (and does not) intend to motivate an extended conception of living beings. AT’s primary purpose, we argue, was (and is) to provide a universal individuation criterion for living beings, these understood as discrete bodies that are embedded in, but not constituted by, the environment that surrounds them. However, by giving a more explicitly embodied definition of living beings, AT can rectify and accommodate, so we argue, the enactive extended interpretation of autopoiesis, showing that although living beings do not extend beyond their boundaries as autopoietic unities, they do form part, in normal conditions, of broader autopoietic systems that include the environment. (shrink)

In this paper we will demonstrate that a computational system can meet the criteria for autonomy laid down by classical enactivism. The two criteria that we will focus on are operational closure and structural determinism, and we will show that both can be applied to a basic example of a physically instantiated Turing machine. We will also address the question of precariousness, and briefly suggest that a precarious Turing machine could be designed. Our aim in this paper is to challenge (...) the assumption that computational systems are necessarily heteronomous systems, to try and motivate in enactivism a more nuanced and less rigid conception of computational systems, and to demonstrate to computational theorists that they might find some interesting material within the enactivist tradition, despite its historical hostility towards computationalism. (shrink)

Context: The majority of contemporary enactivist work is influenced by the philosophical biology of Hans Jonas. Jonas credits all living organisms with experience that involves particular “existential” structures: nascent forms of concern for self-preservation and desire for objects and outcomes that promote well-being. We argue that Jonas’s attitude towards living systems involves a problematic anthropomorphism that threatens to place enactivism at odds with cognitive science, and undermine its legitimate aims to become a new paradigm for scientific investigation and understanding of (...) the mind. Problem: Enactivism needs to address the tension between its Jonasian influences and its aspirations to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. By relying on Jonasian phenomenology, contemporary enactivism obscures alternative ways in which phenomenology can be more smoothly integrated with cognitive science. Method: We outline the historical relationship between enactivism and phenomenology, and explain why anthropomorphism is problematic for a research program that aspires to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. We examine the roots of Jonas’s existential interpretation of biological facts, and describe how and why Jonas himself understood his project as founded on an anthropomorphic assumption that is incompatible with a crucial methodological assumption of scientific enquiry: the prohibition of unexplained natural purposes. We describe the way in which phenomenology can be integrated into Maturana’s autopoietic theory, and use this as an example of how an alternative, non-anthropomorphic science of the biological roots of cognition might proceed. Results: Our analysis reveals a crucial tension between Jonas’s influence on enactivism and enactivism’s paradigmatic aspirations. This suggests the possibility of, and need to investigate, other ways of integrating phenomenology with cognitive science that do not succumb to this tension. Implications: In light of this, enactivists should either eliminate the Jonasian inference from properties of our human experience to properties of the experience of all living organisms, or articulate an alternative conception of scientific enquiry that can tolerate the anthropomorphism this inference entails. The Maturanian view we present in the article’s final section constitutes a possible framework within which enactivist tools and concepts can be used to understand cognition and phenomenology, and that does not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. Constructivist content: Any constructivist approach that aims for integration with current scientific practice must either avoid the type of anthropomorphic inference on which Jonas bases his work, or specify a new conception of scientific enquiry that renders anthropomorphism unproblematic. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a philosophical and theoretical account of biological communication grounded in the notion of organisation. The organisational approach characterises living systems as organised in such a way that they are capable to self-produce and self-maintain while in constant interaction with the environment. To apply this theoretical framework to the study of biological communication, we focus on a specific approach, based on the notion of influence, according to which communication takes place when a signal emitted by a (...) sender triggers a change in the behaviour of the receiver that is functional for the sender itself. We critically analyse the current formulations of this account, that interpret what is functional for the sender in terms of evolutionary adaptations. Specifically, the adoption of this etiological functional framework may lead to the exclusion of several phenomena usually studied as instances of communication, and possibly even of entire fields of investigation such as synthetic biology. As an alternative, we reframe the influence approach in organisational terms, characterising functions in terms of contributions to the current organisation of a biological system. We develop a theoretical account of biological communication in which communicative functions are distinguished from other types of biological functions described by the organisational account (e.g. metabolic, ecological, etc.). The resulting organisational-influence approach allows to carry out causal analyses of current instances of phenomena of communication, without the need to provide etiological explanations. In such a way it makes it possible to understand in terms of communication those phenomena which realise interactive patterns typical of signalling interactions – and are usually studied as such in scientific practice – despite not being the result of evolutionary adaptations. Moreover, this approach provides operational tools to design and study communicative interactions in experimental fields such as synthetic biology. (shrink)

The work is a philosophical essay that deals with the human condition - "subjugated to unprecedented levels of uncertainty" - and contemporary art as a form of knowledge. Author Ramiro Garavito is an art curator, artist, philosopher and promoter of contemporary art in Bolivia.

Se analizan los desafíos de futuro de la sociedad digital. Desde perspectiva fenomenológico-hermenéutica, la idea de una ética de la tecnología considera la sociedad digital como dispositivo técnico. La literatura pertinente permite, primero, estudiar la tecnología disruptiva como generadora de cambios sociales, los cuales, a su vez, transforman las formas de la facticidad de la vida. De esta manera, la ética de la sociedad material, sirve de argumento para analizar la ética en la sociedad digital. Tomando la bioética filosófica como (...) instrumento, se concluye que la sociedad digital antepone retos para la vida, los cuales debe afrontar para la supervivencia. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the prospects for an aesthetically informed assessment-sensitive semantic account of thick aesthetic predicates (TAPs) such as 'intense', 'sombre', ‘balanced’, ‘harmonious’, etc. We distinguish two meaning dimensions concerning TAPs, truth-conditional and use-conditional or expressive, and provide a dualist semantics that posits assessment sensitivity at both levels. Then we evaluate the extent to which assessment sensitivity is an apt rendition of aesthetic discourse involving TAPs. We distinguish between experiential TAPs (‘intense’, ‘sombre’) and theoretical TAPs (...) (‘balanced’, ‘dynamic’), and argue that there is evidence for a relativistic construal both at the truth-conditional and the expressive level for experiential TAPs, but not for theoretical TAPs. Thus, an upper bound is found on how much assessment sensitivity characterises aesthetic discourse. (shrink)

An account of assertion along truth-relativistic lines is offered. The main lines of relativism about truth are laid out and the problematic features that assertion acquires in the presence of relative truth are identified. These features are the possibility of coherently formulating norms of assertion and the possibility of grounding a rational practice of assertion upon relative truth. A solution to these problems is provided by formulating norms for making and assessing assertions that employ a suitably relativized truth predicate and (...) a perspectival notion of correctness. Two potential objections to this proposal are addressed. (shrink)

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases (...) to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood. (shrink)

This article analyzes the legal-philosophical situation of Artificial Intelligence and the intelligent robot on being a subject of Law to be considered a creative person or author. The contradiction involved in allowing an object to present the legal duality of being protected as an object that it is and at the same time being considered a subject by the resulting work is analyzed, an impairment or vulgarization for the subject of Law as a moral subject when proposing the fictio legis (...) de a moral object, which is not conceivable. Instead, an alternative to such an aporia is proposed, more fictitious than real. (shrink)

El texto intenta mostrar los rasgos que señalan la vinculación de la obra cosmológica de Bruno con el acontecimiento histórico cultural denominado Revolución Copernicana, y se centra en una primera fase que documenta las relaciones entre infinitismo y astronomía copemicana. El horizonte de la argumentación lo constituye la intención de situar el pensamiento de Bruno entre las primeras aportaciones teóricas a la modernidad.

This introduction to a special issue of Topoi introduces and summarises the relationship between three main varieties of 'enactivist' theorising about the mind: 'autopoietic', 'sensorimotor', and 'radical' enactivism. It includes a brief discussion of the philosophical and cognitive scientific precursors to enactivist theories, and the relationship of enactivism to other trends in embodied cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

In contrast to Capra’s interpretation of Maturana’s work, I argue that the autopoietic theory does not establish an intrinsic, necessary link between life and cognitive/mental phenomena, and that given its functionalist approach, the theory helps very little to overcome the Cartesian division between mind and body.

Neutral Counterpart Theories of slurs hold that the truth-conditional contribution of a slur is the same as the truth-conditional contribution of its neutral counterpart. In, DiFranco argues that these theories, even if plausible for single-word slurs like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’, are not suitable for complex slurs such as ‘slanty-eyed’ and ‘curry muncher’, figurative slurs like ‘Jewish American Princess’, or iconic slurring expressions like ‘ching chong’. In this paper, we argue that these expressions do not amount to genuine counterexamples to neutral (...) counterpart theories of slurs. We provide a positive characterization of DiFranco's examples that doesn't deviate from the core of those theories. (shrink)

The study explores communication strategies of ethno-nationalist terrorists with respect to their framing and identity building. Strategies of eight ethno-nationalist terrorist groups were analyzed using 70 articles published on the groups’ websites. Three cluster-analytic procedures and a correlational analysis were applied to strategies of problem definition, cause and responsibility attribution, treatment recommendations, and identity building. The analysis revealed various dimensions on which terrorists frame their content. No group-specific strategies of framing and identity building have been found yet, suggesting that the (...) strategies were universal across terrorist groups, and they were applied on a case-by-case basis. Knowledge about these strategies should advance counter-terrorism efforts, and assist in development of alternative identities among ethnic groups at risk of conflict. (shrink)

Abrevando de la filosofía de la mente y de la ética filosófica, el perceptualismo moral argumenta que podemos tener experiencias perceptuales de propiedades morales, como “bueno” o “malo”, de la misma forma en que tenemos experiencias perceptuales de colores y formas. Es decir: el perceptualismo moral argumenta que podemos, literal, directa y simplemente ver la maldad, por ejemplo. A pesar de su amplio campo de estudio, estas perspectivas se han topado con objeciones formidables, como la objeción de las apariencias o (...) las críticas de corte humeano, para las cuales no se han dado respuestas satisfactorias. Este texto se propone sostener que gran parte de los problemas a los que se enfrenta el perceptualismo moral son producto de una vaga caracterización de las propiedades morales a las que pretendidamente se aplica la percepción, y postular un tipo de propiedad alternativa que pueda ser, al mismo tiempo, moralmente relevante y aprehensible por la experiencia perceptual. Para ello, se van a postular las llamadas propiedades de persona como opción alternativa, y se fundamentará su valor ético y su pertinencia para el perceptualismo moral mediante la noción de superveniencia ética. Se destacará que esta ruta merece ser explorada en virtud de su potencial para superar las críticas usuales que se le oponen al perceptualismo moral. (shrink)

This paper examines a fundamental philosophical difference between two radical postcognitivist theories that are usually assumed to offer the same view of cognition; namely the autopoietic theory and the enactive approach. The ways these two theories understand cognition, it is argued, are not compatible nor incompatible but rather incommensurable. The reason, so it is argued, is that while enactivism, following the traditional stance held by most of the cognitive theories, understands cognitive systems as constituting a natural kind, the autopoietic theory (...) understands them as constituting only a conventional kind. Additionally, the paper shows that AT’s conventionalist stance about cognition, far from being an undesirable or useless position, offers some methodological virtues that might be timely and welcome in the agitated and revolutionary climate of current cognitive science. (shrink)

Many current problems surrounding science revolve around the complex epistemological framework that shapes a new vision of knowledge about reality. The traditional epistemological positions are characterized by the explanation of nature by means of concatenated facts; that is, as bricks attached to each other giving shape to the edifice of science. A conception of this nature showed that the idea of certainty was nothing more than a mere illusion, opening the way, on the contrary, to the idea of the uncertainty (...) of knowledge based on the descriptions of quantum physics, also a product of the non-reductionist conception of reality, thus criticizing the specular representation. This article addresses the main problems surrounding the critical conceptions that the emerging epistemology reveals about knowledge, pointing towards a much more complex vision of reality. (shrink)

El presente artículo es la primera traducción española de un artículo del jurista alemán Hermann Heller titulado "¿Liberalismo autoritario?", en el que pretende dar cuenta de una nueva forma de articulación política que se desarrolla al comienzo de los años 30 en Alemania y que combina el autoritarismo político con el liberalismo económico.

Perner and Roessler Causing human action: new perspectives on the causal theory of action, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 199–228, 2010) hold that children who do not yet have an understanding of subjective perspectives, i.e., mental states, explain actions by appealing to objective facts. In this paper, we criticize this view. We argue that in order to understand objective facts, subjects need to understand perspectives. By analysing basic fact-expressing assertions, we show that subjects cannot refer to facts if they do (...) not understand two types of perspectivity, namely, spatial and doxastic perspectivity. To avoid conceptual confusion regarding different ways of referring to facts, we distinguish between reference to facts de re and de dicto. (shrink)

Political communication in modern democratic societies often requires the speaker to address multiple audiences with heterogeneous values, interests and agendas. This creates an incentive for communication strategies that allow politicians to send, along with the explicit content of their speech, concealed messages that seek to secure the approval of certain groups without alienating the rest of the electorate. These strategies have been labeled dogwhistling in recent literature. In this article, we provide an analysis of overt intentional dogwhistling. We recognize two (...) main stages within the OIDs’ way of conveying a concealed message: the expression of a perspective together with the transmission of an accompanying positioning message vis-à-vis the OID targeted sub-audience, and the inferential extraction of a set of cognitive and non-cognitive contents inferred on the basis of the former stage. Furthermore, we identify three linguistic mechanisms whereby these contents may be transmitted: conventional meaning, conversational implicature and perlocutionary inferencing. Hence, on our view OIDs are not a uniform category, as they may differ as to what extent the concealed content is speaker-meant, and thus actually communicated by the speaker. (shrink)

Traditionally, computational theory (CT) and dynamical systems theory (DST) have presented themselves as opposed and incompatible paradigms in cognitive science. There have been some efforts to reconcile these paradigms, mainly, by assimilating DST to CT at the expenses of its anti-representationalist commitments. In this paper, building on Piccinini’s mechanistic account of computation and the notion of functional closure, we explore an alternative conciliatory strategy. We try to assimilate CT to DST by dropping its representationalist commitments, and by inviting CT to (...) recognize the functionally closed nature of some computational systems. (shrink)

Resumen A partir de una de las últimas novelas de la escritora brasileña, Clarice Lispector, A hora da estrela (1977), y de la problematización de la relación entre literatura, representación y pobreza, este trabajo intenta dos cosas: (1) mostrar el complejo mecanismo utilizado por Lispector en la elaboración de su novela, como un trabajo de des-narrativización que interrumpe el proceso representacional desde una elaboración minimalista de la trama y del personaje; y (2) mostrar cómo, a partir de dicha presentación de (...) la vida precaria de su protagonista, Macabea, también refe-rida como la nordestina, se hace posible una nueva relación entre literatura, crítica e historia. (shrink)

Abstract: Using a critical review of the literature, we study a challenge from philosophical anarchism to J. Raz's theory of legal authority: it would be irrational to follow an order with which one disagrees, since it would mean acting against what is considered more justified. Through references from decision theory and epistemology, and deploying examples about tools for assisting in routine decision-making, we sketch two possible answers: first, it may be justifiable to put yourself in a situation that leads to (...) irrationally acting; second, according to the “blindspots” theory, we outline some restrictions from a theory of rationality to the authority. (shrink)

¿Dónde hallar al marxismo hoy? Contestar esta pregunta suscita el problema que Jacques Derrida (1995: 40) asume cuando sostiene: “hay más de uno, debe haber más de un (Marx)”. ¿Cuál es entonces el Marx que Althusser nos invita a leer y a llevar a la acción política? El objetivo de este texto es rastrear los lineamientos del Marx que sugiere Althusser (a través de los conceptos de práctica política y práctica teórica) en el pensamiento de Álvaro García Linera.Estos conceptos althusserianos (...) nos llevan a plantear a Álvaro García Linera como “heredero” (Derrida, 1995) de la filosofía marxista. Por su condición de militante y vicepresidente de Bolivia, su producción teórica se desarrolla dentro de una coyuntura muy particular. Es así como podemos entender que García Linera no hace más que abordar en su producción teórica un problema que está objetivamente planteado por el proceso en el que se encuentra: la potencia emancipadora del componente comunitario indígena.Pondremos el foco en la relectura del Manifiesto comunista que propone García Linera a través de estos conceptos althusserianos para adentrarnos en un pensamiento que invoca a Marx al mismo que tiempo que resalta la necesidad de pensar dentro de la coyuntura. De esta manera, no buscamos sacar conclusiones sobre su verdad o falsedad sino más bien producir un análisis político de su discurso con el fin de rastrear las contradicciones que surgen de leer a Marx a través de las variantes que propone la coyuntura, y así profundizar los análisis en comunicación y política.También nos valdremos de entrevistas, conferencias y otros escritos suyos para situar su pensamiento en la actualidad. Finalmente nos proponemos rastrear una serie de interlocutores con los que discute y argumenta para sentar las bases de un proyecto de investigación que profundice el análisis de su obra. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the enactive approach to ethics could benefit from engaging a dialogue with the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher who has given ethics a decisive role in the understanding of our social life. Taking the enactive approach of Colombetti and Torrance as a starting point, we show how Levinas’ philosophy, with the key notions of face, otherness, and responsibility among others can complement and enrich the enactive view of ethics. Specifically, we argue that Levinas can provide, (...) on the one hand, a phenomenological characterisation of ethics itself, of its nature and fundamental meaning, and on the other, an account of how sociality, affectivity and embodiment, as presented in Colombetti and Torrance’s work, combine to bring about the ethical experience. However, we also point out that introducing Levinas to the enactive approach could be challenging. It is not obvious how sense-making and value-making, as centred on the precariousness and potential death of the subject, would account for the ethical experience as grounded on the precariousness and potential death of the other. (shrink)

Kant emphatically denied the people’s right to resist legally established authority. Nevertheless, this posture leads to critical difficulties on his conception of politics. This paper encompasses such issue, attempting to show the tensions resulting from such denial, compared to other ideas focused on his political philosophy and to the value he assigns to modern revolutions. Moreover, some relevant interpretations of these discussions are critically analyzed and a way to appropriately understand the sense and scope of Kant’s point of viewis proposed.

Despite the availability of safe vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, some people will remain vulnerable because they will not be vaccinated. Who are these non-vaccinated people? We can distinguish two groups: (i) persons who cannot be vaccinated for clinical reasons and who, despite having been vaccinated, have not achieved immunity; (ii) persons who voluntarily refuse to get vaccinated. These groups have in common an immune system that will make them vulnerable to COVID-19. The reasons for their vulnerability and the ethical judgment they (...) deserve are different; the solutions offered to them are also different. In the case of those who voluntarily avoid vaccination, States are not compromised to introduce new protective policies. In the case of people who remain involuntarily vulnerable, instead, the response should be articulated on the same rules and principles that inform the social model of disability because they will live with an organic disability. (shrink)