Nossa pesquisa tem por intuito lançar considerações acerca da ideia de suicídio como prática de responsabilidade ética em determinados países asiáticos, nominalmente China e Japão, além disso, tratamos de lançar luz sobre as consequências dessa mentalidade em um mundo que atravessa mudanças de forma constante como nunca vimos antes.

In the city of Elche, every year, on the 14th and 15th of August, a sacred musical play about the death, the Assumption and the Coronation of the Virgin Mary is held. This event, known as the “Misterio de Elche”, is unique in the world. Since the middle of the 15th century it has been performed in the Basilica of Santa Maria and in the streets of the ancient city of Elche, located in the Valencian Community. In this work, classified (...) as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the interior of the temple is transformed into 2 main stages, the scaffold, located in the lower part, and the aerial stage, located in the dome at a height of 27 m. The structure and the traction mechanisms located on the aerial stage allow the aerial devices that take part in the play, “El Araceli”, “La Mangrana” and “La Santísima Trinidad”, to be raised and lowered. It should be noted that between 2 and 5 singing actors are embarked on these devices. This article describes the main characteristics of the aerial stage structure, the 3 apparatus and the mechanical systems used. In addition, the age and modifications of “El Araceli” are analysed, as well as the results of a non-destructive test carried out on this device. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

We welcome a computational theory on social groups, yet we argue it would benefit from a broader scope. A neuroscientific perspective offers the possibility to disentangle which computations employed in a group context are genuinely social in nature. Concurrently, we emphasize that a unifying theory of social groups needs to additionally consider higher-level processes like motivations and emotions.

In Clark’s thoughtful analysis of the evolution of the two facets of pride, he suggests that the concurrent existence of hubristic and authentic pride in humans represents a “persistence problem,” wherein the vestigial trait (hubristic pride) continues to exist alongside the derived trait (authentic pride). In our view, evidence for the two facets does not pose a persistence problem; rather, hubristic and authentic pride both likely evolved as higher-order cognitive emotions that solve uniquely human—but distinct— evolutionary problems. Instead of being (...) conceptualized as serial homologues, with one the vestigial form of the other, we argue that hubristic and authentic pride are both derived homologues of a vestigial proto-pride emotion that existed in our shared ancestry with other primates. (shrink)

This research examines the necessary condition of emotions in predicting consumer ethical decision-making, using a new multiplicative method for identifying and measuring the necessary condition in data sets—Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA). Based on a sample of over four hundred individuals, and combining three different consumption scenarios involving ethical issues, our findings demonstrate that emotions are a necessary condition for consumer ethical decisions and behaviours. In addition, the results show that higher levels of consumer ethical decisions can only be achieved if (...) happiness, gladness and satisfaction increase towards a minimum level of necessity. The findings provide empirical support for the essential role of emotions in predicting consumer ethical decision-making. Furthermore, this research identifies the emotional thresholds without which ethical choices cannot occur and then explains why individuals sometimes behave ethically but other times do not. In addition, this is a first contribution applying NCA to consumer ethics. (shrink)

The weaver ant, Oecophylla smaragdina Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), has long been known as perhaps the first example of human manipulation of a natural predator population to enhance the natural biological control of insect pests. The practice of ant husbandry in Vietnamese citrus orchards and the knowledge associated with the use of weaver ants in the Mekong delta are described. In contrast to other regions of Asia, where weaver ants are noted for their role in the protection of citrus from insect (...) damage, citrus farmers in the Mekong delta explain the benefits of ant husbandry in terms of an improvement in fruit quality, likened to the influence of fertilizers, that occurs in direct response to excretory products deposited by the weaver ants as they patrol the fruit. A series of tests, carried out in 1993–94, rated the external shine, sweetness, juiciness, and overall appeal, as characteristics of fruit quality, for paired comparisons of sweet orange, mandarin, and pummelo fruit that had been grown in the presence of weaver ants or from which ants had been excluded. The tests indicate a strong influence of the presence of the weaver ant on external shine, juiciness, and overall appeal for each of the citrus fruits, but particularly for mandarin. The significance of these results and ant husbandry practices in the Mekong delta are discussed in relation to the development of citrus production in Vietnam. (shrink)

What is mathematics about? And if it is about some sort of mathematical reality, how can we have access to it? This is the problem raised by Plato, which still today is the subject of lively philosophical disputes. This book traces the history of the problem, from its origins to its contemporary treatment. It discusses the answers given by Aristotle, Proclus and Kant, through Frege's and Russell's versions of logicism, Hilbert's formalism, Gödel's platonism, up to the the current debate on (...) Benacerraf's dilemma and the indispensability argument. Through the considerations of themes in the philosophy of language, ontology, and the philosophy of science, the book aims at offering an historically-informed introduction to the philosophy of mathematics, approached through the lenses of its most fundamental problem. (shrink)

Although pride has been central to philosophical and religious discussions of emotion for thousands of years, it has largely been neglected by psychologists. However, in the past decade a growing body of psychological research on pride has emerged; new theory and findings suggest that pride is a psychologically important and evolutionarily adaptive emotion. In this article we review this accumulated body of research and argue for a naturalist account of pride, which presumes that pride emerged by way of natural selection. (...) In this view, pride is prevalent in human life because of the functional and adaptive role it has played in the attainment, maintenance, and communication of social status throughout our evolutionary history. (shrink)

En este estudio se presentan las líneas directrices de una investigación que se propone analizar el sentido y el significado que se otorga a los conceptos de “bien común” e “interés general” en la retórica de los poderes públicos de nuestro tiempo. A continuación, trata de dar respuesta al interrogante de si ambos conceptos son perfectamente intercambiables en el debate público o, por el contrario, estamos ante conceptos que proceden de presupuestos antagónicos.

An intermediate stage in Hrushovski’s construction of flat strongly minimal structures in a relational language L produces ω-stable structures of rank ω. We analyze the pregeometries given by forking on the regular type of rank ω in these structures. We show that varying L can affect the isomorphism type of the pregeometry, but not its finite subpregeometries. A sequel will compare these to the pregeometries of the strongly minimal structures.

We investigate the isomorphism types of combinatorial geometries arising from Hrushovski's flat strongly minimal structures and answer some questions from Hrushovski's original paper.

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be a (...) necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

Sartre maintains that “all consciousness is consciousness of something.” Idiosyncratically, he also understands this “intentionality principle” to entail that what consciousness is “of” is necessarily distinct from it (or “outside of” it, or “transcendent to” it). Nonetheless, he also maintains that all consciousness is necessarily conscious of—or rather, “(of)”—itself in a non‐intentional (in his terms: “non‐positional/non‐thetic”) manner. Given that this non‐positional/thetic self‐consciousness is not intentional, it is evidently immune to the “difference” principle, but this is less clear with respect to (...) self‐reflection (which Sartre simply calls “reflection”). It seems impossible for reflection to be “intentional” because intentionality entails difference—yet it also seems problematic to consider reflection “non‐intentional” because it then becomes difficult to distinguish reflection from non‐positional/thetic self‐consciousness as such (which is inherently “unreflective”). This can be called Sartre's “dilemma of reflection.” While Sartre seems to alternate between portraying reflection as intentional and as non‐intentional (it generally appears like the former), this paper argues that it should be conceived as both according to different respects. By piecing together various passages of Sartre's texts and drawing out their implications, Sartre can be shown to have the resources for an answer to his own dilemma. (shrink)

In the last decades it has become clear that medicine must find some way to combine its scientific and humanistic sides. In other words, an adequate notion of medicine requires an integrative position that mediates between the analytic-reductionist and the normative-holistic tendencies we find therein. This is especially important as these different styles of reasoning separate “illness” (something perceived and managed by the whole individual in concert with their environment) and “disease” (a “mechanical failure” of a biological element within the (...) body). While the demand for an integrative view has typically been motivated by ethical concerns, we claim that it is also motivated, perhaps even more fundamentally, by epistemological and methodological reasons. Evidence-based bio-medicine employs experimental and statistical techniques which eliminate important differences in the ways that conscious humans evaluate, live with, and react to disease and illness. However, it is precisely these experiences that underpin the concepts and norms of bio-medicine. Humanistic disciplines, on the other hand, have the resources to investigate these experiences in an intersubjectively testable way. Medicine, therefore, cannot afford to ignore its nature as a human science; it must be concerned not only with disease and illness, but also with the ways in which patients as persons respond to malady. Insofar as attitudes and expectations influence the criteria of illness and disease, they must be studied as part of the genuine subject matter of medicine as a human science. In general, we urge that this is a necessary step to overcome today's trend to split evidence-based and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Munch-Jurisic’s book thoroughly describes several cases of severe distresses reported and expressed by perpetrators of tremendous acts such as mass murders. Arguing against a simplistic reading according to which these signs of distress are straightforward manifestations of some innate moral nature, and against the optimistic reading according to which they will lead to prosocial behaviors, Munch-Jursic offers compelling reasons to adopt a more complex theory of emotion. In this commentary, I aim to stress the implications of her book for the (...) debate on moral enhancement and for emotion theory in general. However, while I concur with Munch-Jurisic that emotion theory must make room for complexity and indeterminacy, I challenge her claim that motivational theories of emotion are ill-equipped to face the challenges she poses. (shrink)

We investigated motor resonance in children using a priming paradigm. Participants were asked to judge the weight of an object shortly primed by a hand in an action-related posture or a non action-related one . The hand prime could belong to a child or to an adult. We found faster response times when the object was preceded by a grasp hand posture . More crucially, participants were faster when the prime was a child’s hand, suggesting that it could belong to (...) their body schema, particularly when the child’s hand was followed by a light object . A control experiment helped us to clarify the role of the hand prime. To our knowledge this is the first behavioral evidence of motor simulation and motor resonance in children. Implications of the results for the development of the sense of body ownership and for conceptual development are discussed. (shrink)

The modern world was in part born as a reaction against Aristotelianism. However, the image of Aristotle to which modern philosophers reacted was partial, to say the least. Paradoxical though it may seem, today, more than twenty-three centuries on, we may now be in the most advantageous position for understanding the Stagirite's philosophy and applying it to contemporary problems. The present book contributes to the forming of an idea of Post-modern reason inspired by a constellation of Aristotelian concepts, such as (...) prudence (phronesis), practical truth (aletheia praktike), science in act (episteme en energeiai), metaphor (metaphora), similarity (homoiosis) and the imitation-creation pair (mimesis-poiesis). They all form an interconnected network and together they make up an idea of reason that may prove suitable for the present. These concepts offer the most promising basis for undertaking a series of urgent reconciliations: of facts and values, of means and ends, of theoretical and practical reason, of intelligence and emotion. Aristotle's notions could help solve many dualisms of modern times. He offers a third way between identity and difference in ontology and politics, between algorithm and anarchism in methodology, between naïve realism and plain relativism in epistemology, between equivocity and univocity in language, between Enlightenment and Romanticism in culture... On the way, this shift facilitates the relationships between science, arts and ethics - the three parts of the sphere of culture which Modernity had separated - as well as the integration of the sphere of culture itself with the world of life. (shrink)

Nel suo pionieristico lavoro Conditions in Königsberg and the Making of Kant's Philosophy, Giorgio Tonelli lamentava l'assenza di un'indagine approfondita sul contesto intellettuale di Königsberg e sull'eventuale influenza che esso esercitò su alcuni aspetti del pensiero di Kant. Questo libro vuole colmare questa lacuna prestando particolare attenzione alla tradizione aristotelica, alla Schulphilosophie, e alla corrente dell'eclettismo, che dominarono l'ambiente regiomontano sino all'avvento della filosofia critica kantiana. Il lavoro mostra come dai fallimenti dei progetti logici e metafisici precritici, legati alle influenze (...) ricevute dall'ambiente di Königsberg, Kant abbia tratto le idee e gli spunti per la stesura della Kritik der reinen Vernunft. (shrink)

This book fills a major gap in the ever-increasing secondary literature on Hannah Arendt's political thought by providing a dedicated and coherent treatment of the many, various and interesting things which Arendt had to say about law. Often obscured by more pressing or more controversial aspects of her work, Arendt nonetheless had interesting insights into Greek and Roman concepts of law, human rights, constitutional design, legislation, sovereignty, international tribunals, judicial review and much more. This book retrieves these aspects of her (...) legal philosophy for the attention of both Arendt scholars and lawyers alike. The book brings together lawyers as well as Arendt scholars drawn from a range of disciplines (philosophy, political science, international relations), who have engaged in an internal debate the dynamism of which is captured in print. Following the editors' introduction, the book is split into four Parts: Part I explores the concept of law in Arendt's thought; Part II explores legal aspects of Arendt's constitutional thought: first locating Arendt in the wider tradition of republican constitutionalism, before turning attention to the role of courts and the role of parliament in her constitutional design. In Part III Arendt's thought on international law is explored from a variety of perspectives, covering international institutions and international criminal law, as well as the theoretical foundations of international law. Part IV debates the foundations, content and meaning of Arendt's famous and influential claim that the 'right to have rights' is the one true human right. (shrink)

Starting with Aristotle and moving on to Darwin, Marco Solinas outlines the basic steps from the birth, establishment and later rebirth of the traditional view of living beings, and its overturning by evolutionary revolution. The classic framework devised by Aristotle was still dominant in the 17th Century world of Galileo, Harvey and Ray, and remained hegemonic until the time of Lamarck and Cuvier in the 19th Century. Darwin's breakthrough thus takes on the dimensions of an abandonment of the traditional (...) finalistic theory. It was a transition exemplified in the morphological analysis of useless parts, such as the sightless eyes of moles, already discussed by Aristotle, which Darwin used as a crowbar to unhinge the systematic recourse to final causes. With many excerpts, a chronological sequence and an analytical approach, this book follows the course of the two conceptions that have shaped the destiny of living beings in western culture. (shrink)

The Unconscious in Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis presents a unique and provocative approach to the assimilation of these two disciplines while offering a thorough assessment of the Unconscious from a neuropsychoanalytic and Lacanian perspective. Marco Máximo Balzarini offers a comprehensive overview of Freud's theory of the unconscious and its importance within psychoanalysis, before looking to how it has been integrated into contemporary neuropsychoanalytic work. Paying close attention to the field-defining work of neuropsychoanalysts such as Mark Solms, Francois Ansermet and Pierre (...) Magistretti, Balzarini considers the dichotomy between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, and the omnipresent debate on if and how they should be integrated when working with the unconscious. Throughout, he provides a fascinating Lacanian interpretation, showing how the work of Lacan can offer a new way of developing the dialogue and understanding around this vital topic. Part of the Routledge Neuropsychoanalysis Series, this book will be of interest to any psychoanalyst seeking to explore the foundations of the relationship between neuropsychoanalytic and Lacanian ideas in their clinical and theoretical work. (shrink)

Enactive approaches to cognition argue that cognition, including pretense, comes about through the dynamical interaction of agent and environment. Applied to cognition, these approaches cast cognition as an activity an agent _performs_ interacting in specific ways with her environment. This view is now under significant pressure: in a series of recent publications, Peter Langland-Hassan has proposed a number of arguments which purportedly should lead us to conclude that enactive approaches are unable to account for pretense without paying a way too (...) severe theoretical price. In this paper, we will defend enactive approaches to pretense, arguing that they can in fact explain pretense without incurring in the negative theoretical consequences Peter Langland-Hassan fears. To this effect, we start by exposing Langland-Hassan’s challenge (§2), to then highlight its core assumptions and demonstrate their falsity (§3). Having done so, we argue that none of the theoretical consequences Langland-Hassan fears follow (§4), and in fact enactive approaches to cognition may be explanatorily superior to the one Langland-Hassan favors (§5). A brief conclusion will then follow (§6). (shrink)

Presentación inaugural. Semblanza de Suárez. Dos opúsculos inéditos y una carta auténtica. Por T. Andrés Marcos.--Suárez y el pensamiento inglés contemporáneo, por F. Elías de Tejada.--Suárez, maestro de metafisica para teólogos, por M. Solana.--Conceptos dinámicos en la metafisica de Suárez, por J. Iturrioz.--La igualdad jurídica según Suárez, por E. Elorduy.--El sentido de la realidad en la metafisica suareciana, por F. García Martínez.--Palabras de clausura, por N. Rodríguez Aniceto.

In this article, the authors try to answer the following questions: How can an object/instance seen for the first time extend a category or update a concept? How is it possible to determine the reference of a concept that represents a behaviour? In the first case, the authors discuss the learning of inferential linguistic competence used to update a concept through an approach based on prototype theory. In the second case, the authors discuss the learning of referential linguistic competence used (...) to determine the reference of a concept (i.e., determination of an actual behaviour) through an approach based on embodied cognition. The authors show how combining prototype-based and embodied categorization in Wittgenstein’s rule-following praxis (the individual and community dimension), linguistic learning of a concept (inferential competence), and determination of its reference (referential competence) can be traced back to the same model. Keywords Action, Categorization, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Linguistic Inferential Competence, Linguistic Referential Competence, Perception, Prototype Theory, Reference, Sign. (shrink)

Humans have engaged in artistic and aesthetic activities since the appearance of our species. Our ancestors have decorated their bodies, tools, and utensils for over 100,000 years. The expression of meaning using color, line, sound, rhythm, or movement, among other means, constitutes a fundamental aspect of our species' biological and cultural heritage. Art and aesthetics, therefore, contribute to our species identity and distinguish it from its living and extinct relatives. Science is faced with the challenge of explaining the natural foundations (...) of such a unique trait, and the way cultural processes nurture it into magnificent expressions, historically and ethnically unique. How do the human mind and brain bring about these sorts of behaviors? What psychological and neural processes underlie the appreciation of painting, music, and dance? How does training modulate these processes? Are humans the only species capable of aesthetic appreciation, or are other species endowed with the rudiments of this capacity? Empirical examinations of such questions have a long and rich history in the discipline of psychology, the genesis of which can be traced back to the publication of Gustav Theodor Fechner's Vorschule der Aesthetik in 1876, making it the second oldest branch in experimental psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Aesthetics brings together leading experts in psychology, neuroimaging, art history, and philosophy to answer these questions. It provides the most comprehensive coverage of the domain of empirical aesthetics to date. With sections on visual art, dance, music, and many other art forms and aesthetic phenomena, the breadth of this volume's scope reflects the richness and variety of topics and methods currently used today by scientists to understand the way our mind and brain endow us with the faculty to produce and appreciate art and aesthetics. (shrink)

Robert S. Cohen and Zuzana Parusniková (Eds)Dordrecht, Springer, 2009xii + 431 pp., ISBN 9781402093371, €145.55 (hardback) Raphael Sassower Stocksfield, Acumen, 2006vii +151 pp., ISBN 9781844650668...

This chapter relates post-1918 Italy to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the ascent of the successor states, and analyses, from the Trieste’s vantage point, fascist projects, practices and networks of ‘empire’ in the Adriatic Sea, in Mitteleuropa and in the Balkans between 1918 and 1938. It focuses on three connected aspects. Firstly, the northern Adriatic was the first setting of the ascent of squadrismo, a model of violent action against ‘enemies within’ then replicated elsewhere. Secondly, Italian nationalism and (...) imperialism aimed to reconfigure the post-Habsburg economic space and to reconnect the Adriatic with Central and Balkan Europe. Thirdly, Italian nationalist (then Fascist) élites from Trieste played a critical role, by boosting processes of empire-building and defending Austria vis-à-vis the prospects of Anschluss. In sum, the Habsburg legacies kept on shaping the dynamics of Italianization and fascistization in northern Adriatic and on feeding the search for Italy’s informal empire in Central and Southeastern Europe. (shrink)

This paper examines the subversive role of statistics paleontology at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In particular, I will focus on German paleontology and its relationship with statistics. I argue that in paleontology, the quantitative method was questioned and strongly limited by the first decade of the 20th century because, as its opponents noted, when the fossil record is treated statistically, it was found to generate results openly in conflict with the Darwinian theory (...) of evolution. Essentially, statistics questions the gradual mode of evolution and the role of natural selection. The main objections to statistics were addressed during the meetings at the Kaiserlich-Königliche Geologische Reichsanstalt in Vienna in the 1880s. After having introduced the statistical treatment of the fossil record, I will use the works of Charles Léo Lesquereux, Joachim Barrande, and Henry Shaler Williams to compare the objections raised in Vienna with how the statistical treatment of the data worked in practice. Furthermore, I will discuss the criticisms of Melchior Neumayr, one of the leading German opponents of statistical paleontology, to show why, and to what extent, statistics were questioned in Vienna. The final part of this paper considers what paleontologists can derive from a statistical notion of data: the necessity of opening a discussion about the completeness and nature of the paleontological data. The Vienna discussion about which method paleontologists should follow offers an interesting case study in order to understand the epistemic tensions within paleontology surrounding Darwin’s theory as well as the variety of non-Darwinian alternatives that emerged from the statistical treatment of the fossil record at the end of the 19th century. (shrink)