: Frege's philosophical writings, including the "logistic project," acquire a new insight by being confronted with Kant's criticism and Wittgenstein's logical and grammatical investigations. Between these two points a non-formalist history of logic is just taking shape, a history emphasizing the Greek and Kantian inheritance and its aftermath. It allows us to understand the radical change in rationality introduced by Gottlob Frege's syntax. This syntax put an end to Greek categorization and opened the way to the multiplicity of expressions producing (...) their own intelligibility. This article is based on more technical analyses of Frege which Claude Imbert has previously offered in other writings (see references). (shrink)

By taking into account those operations of modernity initiated by Stendhal and Cézanne, Manet and Proust, which were continued by Merleau-Ponty and Lévi-Strauss, this paper considers Claude Imbert's writings from the perspective of the formative role that literature and painting had and still have in mapping a new rationality. The aim is to show how the philosopher reintegrates such priceless experiences, captured by peculiar literary forms, syntagms, and juxtaposition of genres or pictorial manners, into a conceptual and stylistic invention affecting (...) the very core of philosophical activity. (shrink)

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and (...) literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

In this brilliant book, one of the world's most provocative feminist theorists and political philosophers introduces a new word? horrorism?to capture the experience of violence.

This essay answers two questions that continue to drive debate in moral and legal philosophy; namely, ‘Is a risk of harm a wrong?’ and ‘Is a risk of harm a harm?’. The essay’s central claim is that to risk harm can be both to wrong and to harm. This stands in contrast to the respective positions of Heidi Hurd and Stephen Perry, whose views represent prominent extremes in this debate about risks. The essay shows that there is at least one (...) category of risks – intentional impositions of risk on unconsenting agents – which can be both wrongful and harmful. The wrongfulness of these risks can be established when, on the balance of reasons, one ought not to impose them. The harmfulness of these risks can be established when the risks are shown to set back legitimate interests. In those cases where risks constitute a denial of the moral status of agents, risks set back agents’ interest in dignity. In these ways, the essay shows that there are instances when a risk can constitute both a wrong and a harm. (shrink)

_Relating Narratives_ is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, _Relating Narratives_ is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and (...) literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

In For More than One Voice, Adriana Cavarero argues that “voice” has primacy over other concepts characterizing human existence.1 She introduces this claim through an exegesis of Italo Calvino’s text “A King Listens”.2 The fictitious king, paranoid, insomniac, has reduced himself to a “great ear.” He no longer pays attention to the content of what his courtiers say to him. His ear picks up only the “vocal timbre of their voices.” This timbre is “artificial, false, ‘cold,’ like death.” But (...) it is sufficient for the king’s fanatical vigilance to distinguish between fawning fidelity and furtive betrayal. One day, however, the king’s auditory world is disturbed by the singing of a woman whose voice he hears... (shrink)

The human voice does not deceive. The one who is speaking is inevitably revealed by the singular sound of her voice, no matter “what” she says. We take this fact for granted—for example, every time someone asks, over the telephone, “Who is speaking?” and receives as a reply the familiar utterance, “It’s me.” Starting from the given uniqueness of every voice, Cavarero rereads the history of philosophy through its peculiar evasion of this embodied uniqueness. She shows how this history—along with (...) the fields it comprehends, such as linguistics, musicology, political theory, and studies in orality—might be grasped as the “devocalization of Logos,” as the invariable privileging of semantike over phone, mind over body. Female figures—from the Sirens to the Muses, from Echo to opera singers—provide a crucial counterhistory, one in which the embodied voice triumphs over the immaterial semantic. Reconstructing this counterhistory, Cavarero proposes a “politics of the voice” wherein the ancient bond between Logos and politics is reconfigured, and wherein what matters is not the communicative content of a given discourse, but rather who is speaking. (shrink)

Voltada ao enfoque mais específico de pensar a condição da Filosofia na universidade, esta obra traz diversas contribuições de professores e pesquisadores que têm se dedicado ao assunto. Em linhas gerais, seu conteúdo discute a noção de Estado republicano em relação à Filosofia e às instituições de ensino. Pensa os currículos, a especificidade da aprendizagem e do saber filosóficos, bem como os parâmetros da pesquisa em Filosofia na universidade. Além disso, reflete sobre as condições de inserção da Filosofia na Educação (...) Básica e no contexto das novas tecnologias, que traz a modalidade do ensino a distância. (shrink)

It appears at least intuitively appropriate to claim that we owe it to victims to punish those who have wronged them. It also seems plausible to state that we owe it to society to punish those who have violated its norms. However, do we also owe punishment to perpetrators themselves? In other words, do those who commit crimes have a moral right to be punished? This work examines the sustainability of the right to be punished from the standpoint of the (...) two main theories of rights—the will and the interest conceptions. The right to be punished is shown to be largely indefensible on both accounts: on the will theory, the right to be punished conflicts with autonomy, and it can neither be claimed nor waived by a perpetrator; on the interest theory, a perpetrator’s interest in punishment, inasmuch as it exists, is not sufficient to ground a duty on the part of the state. (shrink)

Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine offer here a history and interpretation of the reception of Darwinism in Argentina, illuminating the ways culture shapes ...

This short contribution is written on the occasion of the book discussion of Sophie Loidolt’s Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. It presents an attempt to read the two key notions Loidolt elaborates in her book – spaces of meaning and spaces of the public and private – from a critical perspective offered by Judith Butler’s taking up of Arendt’s work. Offering Butler’s conception of social ontology through several major points (...) of contestation with Arendt, I argue against an all too simple reduction of her understanding of the political and normativity to poststructuralist ones. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of 4 single subject experiments aimed to investigate whether children with autism show more social engagement when interacting with the Nao robot, compared to a human partner in a motor imitation task. The Nao robot imitates gross arm movements of the child in real-time. Different behavioral criteria (i.e. eye gaze, gaze shifting, free initiations and prompted initiations of arm movements, and smile/laughter) were analyzed based on the video data of the interaction. The results are mixed (...) and suggest a high variability in reactions to the Nao robot. The results are as follows: For Child2 and Child3, the results indicate no effect of the Nao robot in any of the target variables. Child1 and Child4 showed more eye gaze and smile/laughter in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the human partner and Child1 showed a higher frequency of motor initiations in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the baselines, but not with respect to the human-interaction. The robot proved to be a better facilitator of shared attention only for Child1. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive robotics; autism. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como pretensão discutir o processo de formação de professores pelo registro de narrativas de suas experiências em estágio curricular nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental, a partir do trabalho pedagógico realizado em 2015. A temática central é o papel das narrativas como forma de produção de conhecimento, em especial na construção de um processo de profissionalização ética e responsável do futuro professor. Assume-se o estágio curricular como espaço de vivência e implicação dos estudantes na sua futura profissão, (...) numa visão de intrínseca relação entre teoria e prática. Os questionamentos centrais que eram realizados junto aos estudantes e que potencializaram a discussão deste artigo foram: Como, enquanto futuros professores, são pensados os posicionamentos em situações dilemáticas do cotidiano escolar? Como estão sendo compreendidos os princípios pedagógicos que se enredam nos processos formativos? Enfim, como estão se tornando professores? A partir de uma das narrativas construídas, há a articulação da ideia de como a escrita proporciona espaço para o reconhecimento do conhecimento construído sobre ser professor na dimensão da particularidade e na relação com a resposta necessariamente responsável dos sujeitos que vivem suas histórias. (shrink)

This paper analyses how the Cold War influenced the discourses on basic research and on Science and Technology Policies of some leaders of the Argentine research community. It explores two key intersections to study the Cold War: the first between politics and policies; the second between the global and the regional/national. The basic assumption is that, just as there was no one Cold War, specific regional and national traits lent specific meanings to basic research. In dialogue with the literature on (...) Latin American history of STPs, on Cold War and on the conceptual history of science, the paper identifies three discursive configurations around S&T: the first refers to the semi-peripheral scientific context; the second is associated with the ‘democracy-totalitarianism’ dichotomy, and the third is linked to the ‘development-dependence’ dichotomy. Finally, the paper also traces some connections between these discourses and the institutional models proposed by different key actors of the research community to implement STPs. (shrink)

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole (...) edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking. Cavarero develops a philosophical narrative which, by re-interpreting each of the four figures of ancient thought, uncovers several images of the female desire for self-representation. Plato himself had not forseen that one day female subjectivity would assert its autonomy, plundering and throwing into confusion the patriarchal text in order to tell another story. (shrink)

This paper presents a pilot study that explores instances of objectless awareness during sleep: conscious experiences had during sleep that prima facie lack an object of awareness. This state of objectless awareness during sleep has been widely described by Indian contemplative traditions and has been characterised as a state of consciousness-as-such; while in it, there is nothing to be aware of, one is merely conscious (cf. Evans-Wentz, 1960; Fremantle, 2001; Ponlop, 2006). While this phenomenon has received diferent names in the (...) literature, such as ‘witnessing-sleep’ and ‘clear light sleep’ among others, the specifc phenomenological profle of this state has not yet been rigorously studied. This paper aims at presenting a preliminary investigation of objectless consciousness during sleep using a novel tool in qualitative research that can guide future research. Five participants experiencing objectless consciousness during sleep were interviewed following the Micro-phenomenological Interview technique (MPI; Petitmengin, 2005, 2006). All participants reported an experience they had during sleep in which there was no scenery and no dream. This period labelled as ‘No Scenery/Void’ was either preceded by the dissolution of a lucid dream or by other forms of conscious mentation. The analysis of the results advances four experiential dimensions during this state of void, namely (1) Perception of absence, (2) Self-perception, (3) Perception of emotions, and (4) Perception of awareness. While the results are primarily explorative, they refer to themes found in the literature to describe objectless sleep and point at potential avenues of research. The results from this study are taken as indications to guide future operationalisations of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Adriana Ayers studies the evolution of kotex advertising, focusing specifically on the way in which African American women were figured into changing advertisers’ conceptions of womanhood. The article analyzes images featured in various women’s magazines to examine how ideas surrounding menstruation were packaged and sold to women.

This paper presents a series of 4 single subject experiments aimed to investigate whether children with autism show more social engagement when interacting with the Nao robot, compared to a human partner in a motor imitation task. The Nao robot imitates gross arm movements of the child in real-time. Different behavioral criteria were analyzed based on the video data of the interaction. The results are mixed and suggest a high variability in reactions to the Nao robot. The results are as (...) follows: For Child2 and Child3, the results indicate no effect of the Nao robot in any of the target variables. Child1 and Child4 showed more eye gaze and smile/laughter in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the human partner and Child1 showed a higher frequency of motor initiations in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the baselines, but not with respect to the human-interaction. The robot proved to be a better facilitator of shared attention only for Child1. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive robotics; autism. (shrink)

Several contemporary philosophical theories of introspection have been offered, yet each faces a number of difficulties in providing an explanation of the exact nature of introspection. I contrast the inner-sense view that argues for a causal awareness with the acquaintance view that argues for a non-causal or direct awareness. After critically examining the inner-sense and the acquaintance views, I claim that these two views are complementary and not mutually exclusive, and that both perspectives, conceived of as modes of introspective access, (...) actually broaden the notion of introspection. I then propose a useful distinction between stimuli-induced introspection—i.e., a receptive process whereby some specific mental states induce introspection—and self-triggered introspection—i.e., a selective process whereby the individual’s own interest and volition initiates introspection. I argue that that distinction may eliminate the false dichotomy which claims that only one of those types of awareness, either the causal one or the direct one, is conducive to introspection or is defined as introspection. (shrink)

This article discusses three major dilemmas embedded in women's labor migration by focusing on undocumented Latina migrants in Israel. The first is that to break the cycle of blocked mobility in their homelands, migrant women must take jobs that they would have never taken in their countries of origin, despite uncertainty about possible economic outcomes. The second dilemma is that the search for economic betterment leads Latina migrants to risk living and working illegally in the host country, forcing them to (...) remain on the margins of society. The third dilemma relates to the role of mothers who, to secure a better future for their children, are forced to leave them behind, thus subverting the traditional definition of motherhood. The absence of an egalitarian notion and the practice of citizenship for non-Jews leave undocumented labor migrants in Israel without prospects for incorporation into the society. (shrink)

We reconstruct “the classical transformational theory” of Chomsky, and fit it into the structuralist theory of science. We describe both the formal and the empirical features of this classical account, so that one basic hypothesis of this theory – where central notions are used – can be formulated, and in which Chomsky’s “classical” distinction between surface structure and deep structure is clarified. In the empirical claim of this theory are words, sentences and high-structured entities in an inseparable way intertwined. We (...) claim that the formal structure of a natural language is not approximately the same as that of an empirical theory in general. We clarify two special points which affect the structure of the notion of an empirical theory, namely: the delineation of intended applications and the fit between data and models. We hold that the concept of the empirical claim for a linguistic theory should be generalized in comparison with the “standard” structuralist approach. (shrink)

In the debate surrounding the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing in prenatal screening programmes, the concept of routinisation is often used to refer to concerns and potential negative consequences of the test. A literature analysis shows that routinisation has many different meanings, which can be distinguished in three major versions of the concept. Each of these versions comprises several inter-related fears and concerns regarding prenatal screening and particularly regarding NIPT in three areas: informed choice, freedom to choose and consequences for (...) people with a disability. Three of the strongest arguments raised under the flag of routinisation are assessed for their validity: the threat that NIPT poses to informed choice, the potential increase in uptake of first-trimester prenatal screening and its consequences for social pressure to participate in screening or terminate affected pregnancies, and the negative consequences for disabled people. These routinisation arguments lack empirical or normative ground. However, the results of this analysis do not imply that no attention should be paid to possible problems surrounding the introduction of NIPT. At least two problems remain and should be addressed: there should be an ongoing debate about the requirements of informed choice, particularly related to an expanded scope of prenatal screening. Also, reproductive autonomy can only be achieved when expecting parents’ options are variegated, real and valuable, so that they can continue to choose whether or not to screen or to terminate a pregnancy. (shrink)

We introduce a deductive system Bal which models the logic of balance of opposing forces or of balance between conflicting evidence or influences. ‘‘Truth values’’ are interpreted as deviations from a state of equilibrium, so in this sense, the theorems of Bal are to be interpreted as balanced statements, for which reason there is only one distinguished truth value, namely the one that represents equilibrium. The main results are that the system Bal is algebraizable in the sense of [5] and (...) its equivalent algebraic semantics BAL is definitionally equivalent to the variety of abelian lattice ordered groups, that is, the categories of the algebras in BAL and of ℓ–groups are isomorphic (see [10], Ch.4, 4). We also prove the deduction theorem for Bal and we study different kinds of semantic consequence associated to Bal. Finally, we prove the co-NP-completeness of the tautology problem of Bal. (shrink)

A corpus of 60 articles published in Spanish, English, and Portuguese was analyzed to account for the integrative literature review on the concept of vulnerability from bioethics, identifying the following thematic trends: risk, susceptibility, autonomy, and culture in people and communities. The methodological approach has been mainly qualitative. We found that the disciplines that most addressed the concept belong to the human and social sciences. The authors recommend conducting studies of the concept from people’s perspectives and that ethics committees review (...) the informed consent and information guides according to these results. The categories give way to the concept of vulnerability, which must be analyzed beyond principlism in bioethics. (shrink)

La paz y la seguridad internacionales no sólo son el resultado de la ausencia de guerras, es decir, no son únicamente el fundamento de la preservación del orden o ausencia de violencia, sino que incluyen también, para ser alcanzadas, aspectos diversos, tales como la seguridad alimentaria. Dentro del abanico de los nuevos riesgos y amenazas a la paz y seguridad internacionales, cada vez más se está teniendo en consideración las repercusiones negativas que tienen las crisis alimentarias y el hambre que (...) sufren en torno a 800 millones de personas en todo el mundo. La preocupación y abordaje de estos temas hizo que por primera vez, el 30 de marzo de 2016, la FAO se dirigiese al Consejo de Seguridad con el objetivo de reafirmar la necesidad de mejorar la seguridad alimentaria como aspecto fundamental para la consolidación de una paz y seguridad internacional sostenibles. (shrink)

In On Nature and Language Noam Chomsky develops his thinking on the relation between language, mind and brain, integrating current research in linguistics into the burgeoning field of neuroscience. This 2002 volume begins with a lucid introduction by the editors Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi. This is followed by some of Chomsky's writings on these themes, together with a penetrating interview in which Chomsky provides the clearest and most elegant introduction to current theory available. It should make his Minimalist (...) Program accessible to all. The volume concludes with an essay on the role of intellectuals in society and government. Nature and Language is a significant landmark in the development of linguistic theory. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive science and politics, as well as anyone interested in the development of Chomsky's thought. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of 4 single subject experiments aimed to investigate whether children with autism show more social engagement when interacting with the Nao robot, compared to a human partner in a motor imitation task. The Nao robot imitates gross arm movements of the child in real-time. Different behavioral criteria were analyzed based on the video data of the interaction. The results are mixed and suggest a high variability in reactions to the Nao robot. The results are as (...) follows: For Child2 and Child3, the results indicate no effect of the Nao robot in any of the target variables. Child1 and Child4 showed more eye gaze and smile/laughter in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the human partner and Child1 showed a higher frequency of motor initiations in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the baselines, but not with respect to the human-interaction. The robot proved to be a better facilitator of shared attention only for Child1. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive robotics; autism. (shrink)

The outsourcing and offshoring of clinical trials has expanded a global field of experimental activity. This essay addresses the competitive logic and social norms by which a field of human subjects research for drug development has taken form. The clinical trials industry and its move to low- and middle-income countries serve as a telescope into the global clinical trial and how it is crafted and made to work in different locales. Lives often depend on new medical commodities as they enter (...) the value chains of transnational medicine and capital. Transparency remains a key problem. The essay explores the politics of creating centralized registries through which the scope of this experimental enterprise might be known. As the engine of pharmaceutical research molds itself to international and national regulatory norms, detection of adverse risk can be deferred or minimized. The essay also points to policy gaps with respect to how the benefits and insecurities of global experiments are distributed as well as to emergent political practices of care and accountability. (shrink)

This article combines thoughts about childhood, visual culture and education. It is known that we live among multiple images that shape the way we see our reality, and researchers in the visual culture field investigate how this role is played out in our culture. The goal is to make some applications those ideas, to think about the relationship between the images and education. This article tries to grasp what visual culture is and in what ways presumptions about childhood generate and (...) are generated by this association. It also discusses the genesis of these presumptions and the images they generate through a philosophical approach, questioning the role of education in a culture tied to the media, and about how children, who are familiar with multiple screens, presage a new visual literacy. We see how images play a fundamental role in the way children give meaning to the world around them and to themselves, in the context of their local culture. Given this context, it is necessary to consider how visual culture is tied to the elementary school, and what challenges confront the generation of wider and more creative ways to approach visual framing in children’s education. (shrink)

Chakravartty puts forward a view of scientific knowledge that conceives of properties attributed to objects by scientific models as dispositions. Those dispositions refer to the capacity of an object to behave differently in different circumstances. This pluralism of behaviour is intended to show that perspectivalism does not exclude the possibility of non-perspectival knowledge. To support this claim, he offers an analogy between conflicting models and contrastive explanations. I examine the strength of the purported analogy between conflicting models and contrastive explanations. (...) Then, I analyse this dispositionalist account of properties in order to assess whether ontological pluralism can meet the challenge that conflicting models pose to the scientific realism. To conclude, I contend that to accomplish this goal, a more detailed account of dispositional properties should be provided, as well as a theory of explanatory relevance. (shrink)

Medellín has been a privileged subject in Colombian cinema. In films whose stories take place in Medellín and movies' plots that revolve around the production of Medellín’s space, themes like social exclusion and violence become representational elements associated to marginality and segregation, as well as to struggles over the control of the urban territory and its correlates expressed on female and male bodies. By drawing on emotional geography, this article examines these films to explain how Medellín is constructed visually and (...) discursively to elaborate stories based on segregation, exclusion along race and class, and the armed conflict that Colombia has experienced in its recent history, a conflict of which Medellín has been a battleground. Additionally, it becomes clear that social conflict in Medellín is a multi-scalar process. The ways in which political and social tensions have been experienced in the city—and their correlates in the production of urban spaces—are fundamentally shaped by the nature and structure of the urban territories where conflict materializes. In visual narratives, stories unfold at these multiple sites of urban conflict. These topics are representations built on dichotomies like inclusion/exclusion, center/periphery, and masculine/feminine, depicting Medellín as an ill city, an urban collection of geographies that suffer from an illness of which drug trafficking is its main cause and violence its main symptom. (shrink)

This article analyzes how scientific thinking evolved in Argentina during the 1820s and 1830s. I will focus on liberals’ association of science with the emergence of a new male sensibility that feminized the role of men in society. This gendered scientific culture explains how liberals clashed in the 1830s with the policies of the governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, whose hyper masculinist model based on the authority of the father was perceived not only as anti-civilization, but also (...) as anti-science. This association of gender and science helps us to explain how the introduction of Darwinian ideas that seemed to support a more masculinist representation of evolution, now ruled by laws of survival and competition, was perceived as a contradiction of past ideas by the 1870s. (shrink)