RESUMENEl autor resume la situación del os estudios relativos a la unidad de la Metafísica aristotélica, desde Jaeger a Düring; expone los motivos por los que le parece superada la fragmentación del pensamiento del filósofo griego defendida durante decenios, y propone una solución especulativa al problema, con base en la consideración de la metafísica como una realidad viva y dinámica.PALABRAS CLAVEARISTÓTELES-METAFÍSICAABSTRACTThe author offers a summary of the studies on the unity of Aristotle's Methaphysics from Jaegger to Düring; he defends the (...) thesis that the treaty is not completely fragmented, but offers a certain degree of cohesion. Finally, he proposes a theoretical solution for the question bases on the consideration of metaphysics as something alive and dynamic.KEYWORDSARISTOTLE-METHAPHYSICS. (shrink)

El análisis fenomenológico caracteriza a la dignidad humana mediante tres notas: elevación, intimidad y autonomía. La filosofía la describe como la su-perior bondad de lo absoluto. Y la ontología hace residir esa nobleza en la peculiar subsistencia del sujeto humano, que recibe en el alma espiritual, in-mortal y necesaria, el propio actus essendi.

Este ensayo plantea el estudio de la libertad desde una perspectiva metafísica; más en concreto, a la luz del acto personal de ser. Se subraya la elección concreta del Fin Último como momento constitutivo de la libertad humana y, desde semejante punto de vista, como su fundamento. La libertad no es estática, sino un poder susceptible de desarrollarse constantemente hasta desembocar en la plena adhesión, fácil y gozosa, a lo que es bueno y en la proporción en que lo es; (...) en este sentido, la plenitud de la libertad humana puede considerarse como necesidad conquistada o necesidad por exceso. (shrink)

Phenomenological analysis yields three characteristics of human dignity: elevation, intimacy and autonomy. Philosophy describes human dignity as the superior good of the absolute. And ontology locates such nobility in the peculiar subsistence of the human subject that receives its own actus essendi in the spiritual soul, both immortal and necessary.

The present paper was written as a contribution to ongoing methodological debates within the NCC project. We focus on the neural correlates of conscious perceptual episodes. Our claim is that the NCC notion, as applied to conscious perceptual episodes, needs to be reconceptualized. It mixes together the processing related to the perceived contents and the neural substrate of consciousness proper, i.e. mechanisms making the perceptual contents conscious. We thus propose that the perceptual NCC be divided into two constitutive subnotions. The (...) main theoretical idea that emerges as a consequence of this reconceptualization is that the neural correlate of a perceptual episode is formed in the neural interaction between content-processing and consciousness-conferring mechanisms. The paper elaborates this distinction, marshals some initial arguments in its favour, and tests it against some of the most debated theories of consciousness. (shrink)

With the emergence of Olympic internationalism, scholarly networking in East Central Europe came to be dominated by the idea of scholars representing their nations, which replaced the previously leading pattern of private elite scholars with extensive international contacts. This also formalised trans-border contacts, which became increasingly seen as international. In this article, we trace the relationship between these formal and informal networks from the late 19th century to the end of the socialist period, showing that even as formalisation grew, it (...) depended heavily on a variety of informal connections. Even during the period of socialism, when the state sought to control international exchange, scholars used informality to circumvent politically determined constraints. Nevertheless, these informal contacts were not outside the system, but were an integral part of it and depended on formal preconditions. Concentrating on Czechoslovak-Polish relations we argue that in addressing the issue of the relationship between the formal and the informal, a combination of sources must be used, which should then be scrutinised for the stories their authors wish to tell. While archival sources are used for the formal part, oral histories or memoirs reveal the informal part. In East Central Europe, formal sources are likely to ignore informality, especially when it was associated with illegality, whereas ego-documents, especially those produced after 1989, are likely to ignore or downplay connections to the state and overemphasise informality as a means of acting outside politics. Thus, writing the history of informality in socialist scholarship, not only in terms of international contacts but also in terms of everyday practices, is a way of developing counter-narratives to the state-centeredness of current research, which must be linked to a critical study of the contemporary memory of socialist scholarship that shapes the narratives told in oral history. (shrink)

Two important questions arise concerning the properties that constitute the phenomenal characters of our experiences: first, where these properties exist, and, second, whether they are tied to our consciousness of them. Such properties can either exist externally to the perceiving subject, or internally to her. This article argues that phenomenal characters, and specifically the phenomenal characters of colours, may exist independently of consciousness and that they are internal to the subject. We defend this combination of claims against a recent criticism (...) according to which the unconscious phenomenal character of colours exists externally to the subject. We defend internalism about (potentially unconscious) phenomenal character by appealing to recent neuroscientific and behavioural evidence, and by rejecting the claim that externalism about phenomenal character is dialectically in a better position than internalism. In addition, we briefly present certain difficulties for externalist views of phenomenal character. These concern cases where the perceptual relation fails, but a perceptual experience still results. These points suffice to defuse the externalist critique of our view, and support the internalist variant of the consciousness-independence claim as the most plausible account of the unconscious phenomenal character of colours. (shrink)

Tato kritická studie se zabývá dvěma současnými knihami o epistemickém relativismu, Boghossianovou Fear of Knowledge a Halesovou Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy. První z těchto prací se přesvědčivě pokouší vyvrátit populární relativistické a konstruktivistické teze, zatímco ta druhá předkládá obhajobu specifické formy relativismu zaměřené na filosofické propozice.

This article critically analyses the notion of intentionality from several philosophical cognitive points of view. The authors argue that the notion of mental representation in the wider sense and intentionality in the narrower sense remains elusive despite accommodated paradoxes, improved semantic precision and more sophisticated strategies in dealing with intentionality. We will argue that different approaches to intentionality appear to be coherent in their inferences. However, most of them become contradictory and mutually exclusive when juxtaposed and applied to borderline questions. (...) While the explanatory value of both philosophy of mind as well as cognitive psychology should not be underestimated, we must note that not even hard-core neuroscience has been able to pin point what is going on in our minds, let alone come up with a clear cut explanation how it works or a definition of what thought really is. To date, however, intentionality is the best of all explanatory models regarding mental representations. (shrink)

Dealing with phonological variations is important for speech processing. This article addresses whether phonological variations introduced by assimilatory processes are compensated for at the pre-lexical or lexical level, and whether the nature of variation and the phonological context influence this process. To this end, Swedish nasal regressive place assimilation was investigated using the mismatch negativity component. In nasal regressive assimilation, the coronal nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of a following segment, most clearly with a velar or labial place (...) of articulation, as in utan mej “without me” > [ʉːtam mɛjː]. In a passive auditory oddball paradigm, 15 Swedish speakers were presented with Swedish phrases with attested and unattested phonological variations and contexts for nasal assimilation. Attested variations – a coronal-to-labial change as in utan “without” > [ʉːtam] – were contrasted with unattested variations – a labial-to-coronal change as in utom “except” > ∗[ʉːtɔn] – in appropriate and inappropriate contexts created by mej “me” [mɛjː] and dej “you” [dɛjː]. Given that the MMN amplitude depends on the degree of variation between two stimuli, the MMN responses were expected to indicate to what extent the distance between variants was tolerated by the perceptual system. Since the MMN response reflects not only low-level acoustic processing but also higher-level linguistic processes, the results were predicted to indicate whether listeners process assimilation at the pre-lexical and lexical levels. The results indicated no significant interactions across variations, suggesting that variations in phonological forms do not incur any cost in lexical retrieval; hence such variation is compensated for at the lexical level. However, since the MMN response reached significance only for a labial-to-coronal change in a labial context and for a coronal-to-labial change in a coronal context, the compensation might have been influenced by the nature of variation and the phonological context. It is therefore concluded that while assimilation is compensated for at the lexical level, there is also some influence from pre-lexical processing. The present results reveal not only signal-based perception of phonological units, but also higher-level lexical processing, and are thus able to reconcile the bottom-up and top-down models of speech processing. (shrink)

According to recent empirical research (Transparency International, 2013), nearly 15% of people worldwide admitted to having paid a bribe in an educational setting. Given the nature of corruption,...

Corruption in higher education has raised concern among governments, citizens, and the education community worldwide. However, few papers have sought to explore the students’ willingness to engage in corrupt practices at the university level. The present study aimed to examine the influence of different corrupt behaviours and perceived corruption among peers on the corrupt intention of university students. 120 undergraduate students participated in a quasi-experimental design divided in 3 treatments to rate their willingness to engage in favouritism and embezzlement behaviours. (...) Results pointed out that students were more prone to committing a non-monetary behaviour favouritism– than a monetary behaviour –embezzlement–. Furthermore, there were not significant differences between the groups of control and high-corruption acceptance; while only the group of low-corruption acceptance showed significant lower rates when compared to the control and the high-corruption acceptance’s group. Practical recommendations need to address students’ perceptions of different corrupt practices, focusing on designing ethical training programmes aimed to raise awareness on the negative consequences of non-monetary activities. Future research directions could generate empirical support to prove if students are able to recognize the underlying mechanisms of subtle corrupt practices. (shrink)

[The conception of the intellect in the older Franciscan school].

[Charles Darwin, Philosopher for the 21st Century] This is, by and large, a review paper which discusses the current situation and future prospects of a philosophy based on the Darwinian view of life. The first section reflects on Wittgenstein's aversion to Darwinism, which was a symptom of his construal of philosophy as conceptual analysis free from empirical inquiry. The contemporary turn to Darwinian considerations in philosophy is a consequence of the Quinean rejection of conceptual analysis in favour of a continuity (...) between philosophy and empirical science. The second section synthesizes some recent views on the character of Darwin's theory -- the structure of his argument and the evidence for his premises. The third section moves on to a Darwinian epistemology, where the main contention concerns the possibility of deriving epistemic norms from evolutionary history. Appeals to evolution in an attempt to account for the possibility of misrepresentation and the debate over original versus derived intentionality both play a central role in philosophy of mind, explored in the fourth section. Finally, the fifth section turns to ethics, in particular a recent research into the evolutionary origins of moral behaviour. (shrink)

[Externalism, or, the Persistence of Cartesianism].

[Socialism, essentialism and externalism] The paper defends two assumptions in Burge's externalist argument against materialism. One assumption is that the content of a belief is determined by the rules that govern its expression in a shared language. Hence, I call this principle "linguistic socialism." According to the other assumption, a belief survives as long as it keepds its content. Content is regarded hee as essential to a belief, so I call this principle "semantic essentialism." The critics of socialism such as (...) Davidson and Bilgrami reject it in favor of "individualism," claiming that the mental cotnent is idependent of conventionally fixed meaning. The opponents of essentialism such as Gibbons prefer "accidentalism," arguing that content is inessential to a belief. I argue that individualism and accidentalism contradict empirical facts and modal intuitions about belief ascriptions, respectively. (shrink)

This paper addresses the subject of textual creativity by drawing on work done in classical literary theory and criticism, specifically new criticism, structuralism and early poststructuralism. The question of how readers and writers engage creatively with the text is closely related to educational concerns, though they are often thought of as separate disciplines. Modern literary theory in many ways collapses this distinction in its concern for how literariness is achieved and, specifically, how ‘literary quality’ is accomplished in the textual and (...) the social dimension. Taking literary and aesthetic creativity as a point of departure in the reading of five central authors in classical literary criticism, the paper identifies the processes of narrative imagination and emotional identification as central to the role that the textual dimension plays in the creative process of the author/reader—particularly in the way it provides a space for experimentation and self-reflexion through ‘storying’. (shrink)

This article has two objectives: (1) to map some of the structural limitations to scientific or rational public planning; and (2) to explore the implications of this for a reconceptualization of the legitimacy of public planning. It is argued that some of the limitations to planning are inherent to the planning process in the sense that they cannot be fully mitigated through the refinement of procedures. They come to represent sources of “basic boundedness” that have to be addressed through a (...) radical reinterpretation of the policy process itself. (shrink)