Introdução a Levinas a partir da discussão sobre a problemática da subjetividade.

The representation of a quantum system as the spatial configuration of its constituents evolving in time as a trajectory under the action of the wave-function, is the main objective of the de Broglie–Bohm theory. However, its standard formulation is referred to the statistical ensemble of its possible trajectories. The statistical ensemble is introduced in order to establish the exact correspondence between the probability density on the spatial configurations and the quantum distribution, that is the squared modulus of the wave-function. In (...) this work we explore the possibility of using the pilot wave theory at the level of a single Bohm’s trajectory, that is a single realization of the time dependent configuration which should be representative of a single realization of the quantum system. The pilot wave theory allows a formally self-consistent representation of quantum systems as a single Bohm’s trajectory, but in this case there is no room for the Born’s rule at least in its standard form. We will show that a correspondence exists between the statistical distribution of configurations along the single Bohm’s trajectory and the quantum distribution for a subsystem interacting with the environment in a multicomponent system. To this aim, we present the numerical results of the single Bohm’s trajectory description of the model system of six confined planar rotors with random interactions. We find a rather close correspondence between the coordinate distribution of one rotor, the others representing the environment, along its trajectory and the time averaged marginal quantum distribution for the same rotor. This might be considered as the counterpart of the standard Born’s rule when the pilot wave theory is applied at the level of single Bohm’s trajectory. Furthermore a strongly fluctuating behavior with a fast loss of correlation is found for the evolution of each rotor coordinate. This suggests that a Markov process might well approximate the evolution of the Bohm’s coordinate of a single rotor and, under this condition, it is shown that the correspondence between coordinate distribution and quantum distribution of the rotor is exactly verified. (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, “Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness”, a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a critical (...) survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. (shrink)

Rorty saw the course of philosophy in the twentieth century as an effort to part from two major philosophical trends, namely historicism and naturalism, only to inevitably return at the end of a tortuous path to these very same tendencies. If we can concede without major objections Rorty’s diagnosis of the trends in contemporary continental and analytical philosophy, which seem to reveal the exhaustion of modern philosophy, based as it has been on epistemology, we must, on the other hand, examine (...) carefully the three main questions that this diagnosis leaves open: How does Rorty reconcile continental idealist subjectivism with materialistic behaviorism? Is it really inevitable that philosophy blinded by Geist are unable to question prevalent beliefs? Finally, is the acceptance of a liberalism that is not able to give reasons for itself the most effective and pragmatic liberalism? In answering these questions, it may not be possible to avoid a non-dogmatic, but pragmatic, metaphysics: a vocabulary of vocabularies that allows Rorty to speak of the problems of justice in Plato and Rawls, of the soul in Aristotle and Descartes, of the dystopias in Moro and Orwell. On pragmatic terms, perhaps a modest version of a metaphysic’s “vocabulary” turns out to be as legitimate and practical as any other vocabulary. (shrink)

In this article the chief lines of current American epistemological thought are outlined, as are the criticisms which each of these perspectives has received. A special emphasis is placed on the distinction between internalism and externalism. Mutual criticisms are made between the foundationalists and the coherentists, and the reliabilist standpoint is developed in detail in order to show that Virtue Epistemology is able to capture some of the best intuitions arising from the justification of belief.

In this paper, we argue that our moral concern for future well-being should reduce over time due to important practical considerations about how humans interact with spacetime. After surveying several of these considerations (around equality, special duties, existential contingency, and overlapping moral concern) we develop a set of core principles that can both explain their moral significance and highlight why this is inherently bound up with our relationship with spacetime. These relate to the equitable distribution of (1) moral concern in (...) a universe that we can only causally affect in one temporal direction; (2) access to the benefits from using spacetime as a resource; and (3) the burdens of care given (1) and (2). We conclude by considering the practical implications of our argument and find that, while it is often assumed that a preference for present over future well-being weakens the case for existential risk mitigation, this likely is not the case. (shrink)

In the academic year 1920-1921 at the University of Freiburg, Martin Heidegger gave a series of extraordinary lectures on the phenomenological significance of the religious thought of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The publication of these lectures in 1995 settled a long disputed question, the decisive role played by Christian theology in the development of Heidegger’s philosophy. The lectures present a special challenge to readers of Heidegger and theology alike. Experimenting with language and drawing upon a wide range of now (...) obscure authors, Heidegger is finding his way to Being and Time through the labyrinth of his Catholic past and his increasing fascination with Protestant theology. A Companion to Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religious Life is written by an international team of Heidegger specialists. (shrink)

En física, el infinito aparece vinculado al problema de lo continuo de las representaciones matemáticas usadas por las diversas teorías y, por lo tanto, a la posibilidad de la infinita divisibilidad y de la infinita extensión de la geometría del espaciotiempo y de los conceptos y magnitudes físicas mensurables. El modelo estándar de las partículas considera que las partículas elementales son «infinitamente» pequeñas, donde surgen cálculos con resultados infinitos para determinadas cantidades físicas y, para eliminarlos, se utilizan métodos de renormalización, (...) usados también en la cosmología clásica y en el modelo estándar cosmológico del Big Bang con la finalidad de domesticar los infinitos. La investigación en gravedad cuántica considera que el espacio no sea infinitamente divisible y los modelos de multiversos suponen tiempos y espacios infinitos para el Universo. Siendo nuestras teorías siempre limitadas y perfectibles, parece que no podemos probar, en física, que el Universo sea físicamente infinito. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we (...) examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research. (shrink)

This article examines the regalist reforming critique and the curial defence of papal temporal dominion in the eighteenth-century Italian peninsula. The discussion examines the little-explored links between the justification for papal supremacy in the Church and the historico-theological defence of its theocratic rule. The refusal of the Curia to grant reform gave rise to a radical reforming movement which produced some astoundingly bitter anti-curial polemics little known outside Italian studies, but of some significance in the history of political thought.

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: Although accepting Urrestarazu’s view of how autopoietic dynamics can be sought in the domain of the non-living, we see no reason to trace the social to autonomy. Rather, we stress that social systems happen all the time: they arise as people coordinate while also using the peculiarities of human languaging.

The purported failures of ergodic theory (seen in its often proved ineptitude to ground a mechanical explanation of thermodynamics) are shown to arise from misconception of the functions served by scientific explanation. In fact, the predictive failures of ergodic theory are precisely its points of greatest physical utility, where genuinely new knowledge about actual physical systems can be obtained, once the links between explanation and reconstructive estimation are recognized.