This article examines the link between death and politics in the work of Elias Canetti. We will study this relation starting from the search for the political problem of universality in Canetti, in orden to show how death appears in his texts as that that simultaneously habilitates and makes impossible the search for the universal. The unfolding of this aporia unveils, at the same time, the primacy of a certain bond between politics and temporality, insofar if politics supposes the tie (...) of humanity with the dead and the non-born, this link can only emerge from a time that is unhinged, from a beyond-of-the-living-present. (shrink)

El autor trabaja en este artículo una de las obras más citadas y controvertidas del Hegel de su periodo maduro cual es los Principios de la Filosofía del Derecho o Derecho Natural y Ciencia Política, comúnmente conocida como Filosofía del Derecho y desarrolla algunos temas que permanecen como cuestiones abiertas al debate o como aspectos objetables, tanto en su teoría del espíritu objetivo como en su interpretación.

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods have resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems (...) using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed. (shrink)

El autor sigue a Ana Arendt para examinar el tema de la responsabilidad personal bajo dictadura. Ante el argumento de que no había opciones pues se era una ‘ruedecilla del engranaje’, afirma que el mal menor no deja de ser un mal, y que la verdadera pregunta moral no es ‘por qué obedeciste’ sino ‘por qué ayudaste’.

The contribution describes some aspects related to the representation of special curves; recalling mechanisms created specifically for the design of these curves, which have particular characteristics. Through the construction of a simple apparatus, consisting of two pendulums—which oscillate at the same time- it is possible to graphically reproduce Lissajous’ experiments on the commuting vibrations of the diapasons. This equipment was first built by Samuel Charles Tisley (London 1829-Unknown), under the name of harmonographer. The contribution aslo illustrates the essential characteristics of (...) the harmonograph—born as a means of analysing vibrations—but which, by its principle belongs to mechanics, for its applications to acoustic science and geometry for the ability to draw “harmonious” curves. (shrink)

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, is (...) meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)

Con una belleza literaria incomparable, la Comedìa refleja la cosmovisión católica que vertebra la Cristiandad medieval, que tuvo su máximo exponente filosófico y teológico en santo Tomás. A lo largo de todo el itinerario poético, vemos la impronta del Aquinate presente en el meollo de la narración. Aquí analizaré cómo la cuestión teológica fundamental del gobierno divino del mundo permea la Comedìa, tanto en su estructura formal como en ciertos aspectos concretos del viaje de Dante. A partir de dicha premisa, (...) estudiaré las consecuencias que ello tiene en ese orden jurídico manifestado en la «arquitectura» del infierno, cuyo dintel es elocuente: «Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; / fecemi la divina podestate, / la somma sapienza e ‘l primo amore». Finalmente, abordaré la proporcionalidad de las penas que sufren los condenados, como indicador de la medida natural de los castigos dictados por justicia divina. (shrink)

La polarización, los populismos y la posverdad forman tres fenómenos sociopolíticos fundamentales para comprender cómo se está orientando la política en los sistemas demoliberales. La polarización política se suele entender como un proceso dinámico de activación de las divisiones entre dos o más grupos sociales en el transcurso de los debates públicos que puede terminar con una ruptura comunicativa o una comunicación fallida. Si bien los especialistas no coinciden a la hora de definir el populismo, se puede comprender como una (...) forma concreta de construir el pueblo mediante un discurso que contrapone este al anti-pueblo. La posverdad se referiría a una tendencia cultural donde las verdades de hecho sufren una merma en favor de las verdades vivenciadas subjetivamente. Estos fenómenos tienden a ser percibidos por una buena parte de la sociedad y del mundo académico como una amenaza grave para las bases pluralistas y reflexivas de la democracia. Sin embargo, esa consideración está decantada normativamente. Este artículo trata de explorar un marco referencial diferente, el emotivismo, y cómo, desde este ángulo, toman sentido los tres conceptos clave: polarización, populismo y posverdad. (shrink)

La perspectiva de la amistad en la antigüedad tardía constituye un considerable horizonte de reflexión y análisis. Este trabajo pretende delimitar las características singulares de la amistad en el mundo cristiano del s. IV d. C. y, más concretamente, ahondar en el legado epistolar de Paulino de Nola, considerado uno de los grandes referentes de la época patrística, y cuyos postulados reflejan una incidencia notoria de la amistad. Por eso, en un primer momento, ofreceré una visión general de su vida; (...) a continuación, examinaré el tema de la amicitia en su epistolario; finalmente, desentrañaré la noción de amistad epistolar con Agustín de Hipona. (shrink)

Arthur Danto believed that “style has to be expressed immediately and spontaneously.” Danto writes that “the question of when is a thing an artwork becomes one with the question of when is an interpretation of a thing an artistic interpretation”. His extensive art criticism focuses, then, on the way artworks are about. The presence of a metaphor and the demand for interpretation are insufficient to draw the demarcation line between art and not‐art. A work of art ought to be “a (...) piece of visual thought”. Danto's own style was an invitation, almost intimate, to engage his enticing and entertaining way of thinking. His writing creates the impression that he is speaking and simply registering his thoughts and imaginings as they come. (shrink)

Original, or 'old', institutional economics (OIE) – also known as 'institutionalism' – played a key role in its early stages; it could be said that it was once the 'mainstream economics' of the time. This period ran approximately from the first important contributions of Thorstein Veblen in 1898 to the implementation of the New Deal in the early 1930s, where many institutionalists played a significant role. However, notwithstanding its promising scientific and institutional affirmation, institutional economics underwent a period of marked (...) decline that spanned from the mid-1930s to the late 1980s, when a new season for institutional economics was set in motion. In order to cast some light on this complex issue – without any claim of completeness – we have organised the work as follows: in the first section we consider the main interpretations of this phenomenon. In the subsequent sections we analyse a number of 'endogenous' aspects which might have played a significant role in the period of decline: (i) the relations of institutional economics with Keynes's macroeconomic theory; (ii) the links between theoretical and empirical analysis and the supposed lack of a clear theory; (iii) the interdisciplinary orientation. (shrink)

From the first books published by Jean-Paul Sartre, it is possible to observe the criticism that the French author makes to the Western metaphysical tradition, directed specifically at philosophers of modernity. For example, L'imagination and L'Imaginaire are two texts dedicated to questioning “the great metaphysical systems”. Furthermore, in these early investigations, Sartre discovers a principle that would allow him to elabo- rate his work Being and nothingness. What is this principle? The main objective of this essay is to determine this (...) principle and its importance in the elaboration of Being and nothingness. In order to achieve this purpose, I will analyze Sartre's criticism of modern philosophers (Descartes and Hume) and his proposal to overcome what Sartre himself calls: the “naive metaphysics of the image” (1978, p. 9), which is nothing more than the fact of reifying the image. (shrink)

The brain displays both the anatomical features of a vast amount of interconnected topological mappings as well as the functional features of a nonlinear, metastable system at the edge of chaos, equipped with a phase space where mental random walks tend towards lower energetic basins. Nevertheless, with the exception of some advanced neuro-anatomic descriptions and present-day connectomic research, very few studies have been addressing the topological path of a brain embedded or embodied in its external and internal environment. Herein, by (...) using new formal tools derived from algebraic topology, we provide an account of the metastable brain, based on the neuro-scientific model of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning. We introduce a “topodynamic” description that shows how the relationships among the countless intertwined spatio-temporal levels of brain functioning can be assessed in terms of projections and mappings that take place on abstract structures, equipped with different dimensions, curvatures and energetic constraints. Such a topodynamical approach, apart from providing a biologically plausible model of brain function that can be operationalized, is also able to tackle the issue of a long-standing dichotomy: it throws indeed a bridge between the subjective, immediate datum of the naïve complex of sensations and mentations and the objective, quantitative, data extracted from experimental neuro-scientific procedures. Importantly, it opens the door to a series of new predictions and future directions of advancement for neuroscientific research. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo tiene por finalidad explorar el concepto de exilio desde el enfoque filosófico. Se trata de un examen de la construcción teórica del concepto, a partir del análisis situado en pasajes de dos obras centrales en la cultura de Occidente: La Il íada de Homero y Las leyes de Platón. Se atiende a estas obras a la luz del exilio, para esclarecer una problemática que subyace a la propia constitución de la comunidad política en la historia jurídica, ética (...) y política. La construcción conceptual se ve procedida, en el artículo, por la propuesta final en la aproximación crítica del exiliado con otras figuras como el indigente, el vagabundo, el paria o el refugiado; las cuales comparten rasgos cercanos, en su situación jurídico-política y existencial cualitativa, que en el exilio se esperaba generar: el abandono de la comunidad respecto a quien formó parte de ella. (shrink)

This article proposes that the meditation on contemporary violence, in the Eduardo Nicol’s works, is part of a broad process of philosophical reflection of three decades, which questions the present and the future of humanity. Violence, for Nicol, is the display of a special rationality, born in Modernity, which he calls “force majeure reason” (razón de fuerza mayor) that is a change of life regime in the contemporary human being, sometimes to the basic need for survival, utility and a network (...) of forcedness that reduces possibilities and freedom. In this way, the article traces in Nicol´s work the conformation —from the notion, to the idea and the conceptual framework— of violence as a disposition, act and system. Political regulation, hate and intersubjective violence, hostility and war in a global world are the focus of this collaboration. Este artículo propone que la meditación sobre la violencia contemporánea, en la obra de Eduardo Nicol, está inscrita en un amplio proceso de reflexión filosófica de tres décadas, que interroga sobre el presente y el porvenir de la humanidad. La violencia, para Nicol, es el despliegue de una racionalidad peculiar —gestada en la Modernidad— por disolvente de la verdad, a la cual él llama “razón de fuerza mayor”. De este modo, el artículo rastrea en la obra de este filósofo la conformación —desde la noción, hasta la idea y marco conceptual— de la violencia en tanto disposición, acto y sistema. La regulación política, el odio y la violencia intersubjetiva, la hostilidad y la guerra en un mundo global son el foco de atención de este artículo. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo se propone la aproximación, desde la filosofía, a uno de los problemas contemporáneos más relevantes de la violencia política: el urbicidio, concepto que señala la destrucción de las ciudades. El análisis desarrollado deconstruye conceptualmente las implicaciones que tienen para los tiempos de globalización bélica y armamentos tecnológicos una serie de prácticas estructuradas, consensuadas y abiertamente aceptadas que, bajo los neologismos de renovación, modernidad y progreso aniquila las formas de habitar de una comunidad históricamente articulada, en la íntima (...) relación de los habitantes con una ciudad determinada. Este trabajo responde a la siguiente pregunta: ¿qué se acaba o qué se pierde cuando se destruye una ciudad? Esto es lo que el urbicidio nos permite comprender desde el enfoque filosófico en acercamientos categoriales como son el espacio, el cuerpo y el habitar, e irradia hacia temas de comprensión ontológica, cultural, política, social y ética. (shrink)

Physical and biological measurements might display range values extending towards infinite. The occurrence of infinity in equations, such as the black hole singularities, is a troublesome issue that causes many theories to break down when assessing extreme events. Different methods, such as re-normalization, have been proposed to avoid detrimental infinity. Here a novel technique is proposed, based on geometrical considerations and the Alexander Horned sphere, that permits to undermine infinity in physical and biophysical equations. In this unconventional approach, a continuous (...) monodimensional line becomes an assembly of countless bidimensional lines that superimpose in quantifiable knots and bifurcations. In other words, we may state that Achilles leaves the straight line and overtakes the turtle. (shrink)

El artículo trata sobre el paralelismo entre el cubismo pictórico y musical. Se exponen los principios teóricos del cubismo pictórico y las primeras nociones del cubismo musical, principalmente en la obra de Igor Stravinsky. Asimismo, se analiza la representación del espacio en la música en relación con la perspectiva lineal pictórica y la “perspectiva inversa”, o “composición multi-céntrica”, del antiguo arte bizantino y ruso.

This paper develops and introduces the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge into the current sports knowledge philosophical debate. This idea is based on my interpretation of Mark Rowlands’ Rilkean memory theory. Broadly speaking, Rowlands proposed that an embodied Rilkean memory is memory content that is then ‘woven into the body and its neural infrastructure’ resulting in new bodily or behavioral dispositions. I propose that elite-level sports knowledge may become contentless bodily and/or behavioral dispositions and take the form of embodied Rilkean sport-specific (...) knowledge. This version of sports knowledge enriches the current philosophy of sports debate that has centered on the analytical distinction between procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge. After presenting the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge concept and providing empirical evidence that supports its existence, I argue that the current distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing th... (shrink)