The distinction between perception and fantasy is not a cliché among others. Tracing the path to its correct elaboration even allows us to think this distinction as the engine of the early Husserlian phenomenology. For this reason, this brief article aims to contrast Brentano and Husserl's vision of this subject. For the former, fantasy is an improper representation [Vorstellung] with an intuitive nucleus; for the latter, it has a properly intuitive character. In this transit, it will be shown that this (...) opposite view is mainly due to Husserl's general critique of Brentano's idea, according to which intentionality has essentially two objects and this critique is in turn rooted in Husserl's well-known theory of Auffassung. Thus, we will finally show that the dispute of both authors regarding fantasy and perception must be understood as one of the consequences of the theory of apprehension, elaborated by Husserl in the VI Logical Investigation. (shrink)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

This article presents a scientometric study regarding entrepreneurship and its relationship with wellbeing. The study presents a systematic review and measures impact and relational character to identify the relevance of countries, research organizations, and authors in the field of entrepreneurial wellbeing. The study poses the following research questions: What is the nature of the evolution of scientific knowledge in the entrepreneurial wellbeing field? What is the nature of the concentration in terms of geographical distribution and co-authorship level of knowledge production (...) in the entrepreneurial wellbeing field? What are the knowledge trends in knowledge production for entrepreneurial wellbeing literature? The contribution of this research is two-fold. First, in terms of methodology, it contributes study into the use of a more robust approach to search for the scientometric trends about entrepreneurship wellbeing in addition to the PRISMA review tools and the PICOS eligibility criteria. Secondly, the study presents research updates in the search for results for the last 2 years of knowledge production. This upgrade is particularly important in a research field that presents exponential growth, where 2019 and 2020 presented almost double the amount of knowledge production compared to 2017 and 2018. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary field of neurorobotics looks to neuroscience to overcome the limitations of modern robotics technology, to robotics to advance our understanding of the neural system’s inner workings, and to information technology to develop tools that support those complementary endeavours. The development of these technologies is still at an early stage, which makes them an ideal candidate for proactive and anticipatory ethical reflection. This article explains the current state of neurorobotics development within the Human Brain Project, originating from a close (...) collaboration between the scientific and technical experts who drive neurorobotics innovation, and the humanities and social sciences scholars who provide contextualising and reflective capabilities. This article discusses some of the ethical issues which can reasonably be expected. On this basis, the article explores possible gaps identified within this collaborative, ethical reflection that calls for attention to ensure that the development of neurorobotics is ethically sound and socially acceptable and desirable. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that if a deterministic description of the events leading up to a morally questionable action is couched in mechanistic, reductionistic, concrete and/or emotionally salient terms, people are more inclined toward compatibilism than when those descriptions use non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic, abstract and/or emotionally neutral terms. To explain these results, it has been suggested that descriptions of the first kind are processed by a concrete cognitive system, while those of the second kind are processed by an abstract cognitive system. The (...) current paper reports the results of three studies exploring whether or not considerations about possible future consequences of holding an agent responsible at a present time affect people’s judgments of responsibility. The results obtained suggest first that the concrete system does not produce compatibilist judgments of responsibility unconditionally, even when facing appropriately mechanistic, reductionistic, emotionally loaded and concretely worded deterministic scenarios. Second, these results suggest that considerations about possible future consequences for innocent third parties that may follow as a result of holding an agent responsible affect people’s judgment as to whether or not the agent is responsible for what she did. Finally, it is proposed that these results compliment extant evidence on the so-called “Side-effect effect”, as they suggest that emotional reactions toward possible future side effects influence people’s judgment of responsibility. The impact of these results for philosophy and moral psychology is discussed. (shrink)

On pages 263, 265, and 266, incorrect degrees of freedom and t values were reported. The statistical conclusions are not affected by these reporting errors, but the corrected values are shown below.

A key premise of the kalam cosmological argument is that the universe began to exist. However, while a number of philosophers have offered powerful criticisms of William Lane Craig’s defense of the premise, J.P. Moreland has also offered a number of unique arguments in support of it, and to date, little attention has been paid to these in the literature. In this paper, I attempt to go some way toward redressing this matter. In particular, I shall argue that Moreland’s (...) philosophical arguments against the possibility of traversing a beginningless past are unsuccessful. (shrink)

While most people believe the best possible life they could lead would be an immortal one, so‐called “immortality curmudgeons” disagree. Following Bernard Williams, they argue that, at best, we have no prudential reason to live an immortal life, and at worst, an immortal life would necessarily be bad for creatures like us. In this article, we examine Bernard Williams' seminal argument against the desirability of immortality and the subsequent literature it spawned. We first reconstruct and motivate Williams' somewhat cryptic argument (...) in three parts. After that, we elucidate and motivate the three best (and most influential) counterarguments to Williams' seminal argument. Finally, we review, and critically examine, two further distinct arguments in favor of the anti‐immortality position. (shrink)

O retorno do conceito de desobediência civil ao centro da teoria política contemporânea mostra-se marcado por debates intensos entre posições plurais e frequentemente conflitantes. O recente livro de William Scheuerman, Civil Disobedience, expressa de forma exemplar as disputas existentes ao longo dos desenvolvimentos históricos desse conceito, reconstruindo os traços particulares de diferentes vertentes interpretativas da desobediência civil e salientando seus principais embates e controvérsias. O presente artigo dedica-se à avaliação do modo como Scheuerman descreve e discute uma dessas vertentes (...) particulares, o chamado modelo democrático, que encontraria em Hannah Arendt e Jürgen Habermas seus principais expoentes teóricos. Busca-se questionar as principais críticas dirigidas pelo autor à elaboração arendtiana do conceito e seu suposto aperfeiçoamento na obra de Habermas. Ao final, defende-se que em sua apresentação da trajetória histórica dessa vertente, Scheuerman expressa, ainda que implicitamente, suas próprias preferências teóricas mais substantivas, as quais serão aqui contestadas em nome de uma reinterpretação do modelo deliberativo de Habermas à luz do conceito de desobediência civil proposto por Arendt, no qual encontramos um vínculo mais acentuado entre democracia e transformação social. (shrink)

"This article presents an analysis of William Lane Craig’s argument of the finitude of the past based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite. To achieve the aim of this academic work we use, as a primary base, a book written by Craig called Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics and a chapter written by the same author along with James Sinclair called The Kalam Cosmological Argument in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. These works, in (...) our opinion, provide sufficient primary material to study the topic. However, other articles and books by Craig are also referenced, and the commentaries of some other authors, who deal with this problem, are also used. Throughout this work, we consider the historical context and Craig’s incorporation of the kalam cosmological argument. We go on to analyse the presuppositions given by this author and consequently we study, progressively, the formulations that Craig himself made to reach his conclusion. /// Este artigo apresenta uma análise do argumento de William Lane Craig sobre a finitude do passado baseado na impossibilidade da formação de um infinito atual. Para atingir o objetivo deste trabalho acadêmico, utilizamos como fonte primária uma obra escrita pelo próprio Craig, intitulada Fé racional: verdade cristã e apologética, e um capítulo escrito pelo mesmo autor em colaboração com James Sinclair chamado O argumento cosmológico kalam, em The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Estes trabalhos, em nossa opinião, oferecem suficientes elementos para o estudo do tópico. Entretanto, outros artigos e livros de Craig também foram citados, bem como os comentários de vários autores que tratam do problema. No decorrer deste trabalho consideramos o contexto histórico e a incorporação de Craig ao argumento cosmológico kalam. Mais adiante, analisamos primeiramente os pressupostos dados pelo mencionado autor e, em consequência, estudamos progressivamente as formulações feitas pelo próprio Craig para obter suas conclusões. ". (shrink)

The aim of the article is to establish the way in which Resurrección [Resurrection], a novella by Jose Maria Rivas Groot, reflects the debates over the psychophysiological conception of consciousness that took place in Colombia at the beginning of the twentieth-century. The analysis, made from the standpoint of cultural history, explores the ideas of experimental psychologists and intellectuals, such as Claude Bernard, William James, Émile Zola or Paul Bourget, who, contrary to hegemonical discourses, suggested a sensory cause for consciousness. (...) The article also studies, through a hermeneutical approach, the way in which such conception is developed within Rivas Groot’s work. This study reveals the interest of the writers of this period to explore the aesthetic elements provided by this new conception of the human being, which was undertaken by contrasting it with the forms and paradigms of the metaphysical stance and preferring the latter as the most plausible explanation for existence. (shrink)

Resenha de Scheuerman, William E. The End of Law: Carl Schmitt in the Twenty-First Century. 2. ed.. London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. 343 p.

Resumen En 1976, Nagel y Williams presentaron -en una reunión de la Aristotelian Society- dos célebres textos dirigidos a exhibir el desafío que el azar y la fortuna representan para la imputación kantiana de responsabilidad moral. Desde entonces han proliferado cientos de artículos centrados en analizar este dilema. Dicho debate, no obstante, rara vez es situado al interior del análisis de las implausibles y falsas premisas que dan lugar a él. En este trabajo reconstruyo las coordenadas centrales en las que (...) esta problemática filosófica se origina. Posteriormente muestro que la imputación de responsabilidad ética a un agente no sólo no excluye, sino incluso presupone, lo que llamaré una capacidad impura de agencia donde la suerte ocupa un lugar central.In 1976, Nagel and Williams presented -at the congress of the Aristotelian Society- two famous texts aimed at exposing the challenge that chance and fortune represent for moral thought. Since then, hundreds of articles have proliferated in the literature focused on analyzing this dilemma. This debate, however, is rarely situated within the analysis of the implausible and false premises that give rise to it. In this paper I reconstruct the central coordinates in which this philosophical problem originates. Later, I show that imputation of ethical responsibility to an agent not only does not exclude, but even presupposes, what I will call an impure capacity for agency where luck occupies a central place. (shrink)

Este libro, autoría del doctor Andrés Felipe López, se publica en el marco de los 50 años de presencia de la Universidad de San Buenaventura en la ciudad de Medellín. Es un trabajo riguroso indexado en el marco de la Filosofía de la Ciencia y la Teoría del Conocimiento. Hace parte de los proyectos académicos de la Vicerrectoría para la Evangelización de las Culturas, a través de su Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios Humanísticos. No es impensable, pero no es común, (...) que hoy en día un investigador vaya a los pensadores del Medioevo para encontrar aportes a la ciencia moderna en torno al problema de la verdad. Aportes, incluso, no imaginados hasta el momento en que se hace público el libro. Pero esto no debería de sorprendernos, pues filósofos, científicos y teólogos medievales encontraron en el conocimiento las fuentes del hombre y de la ciencia. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia, el devenir de los acontecimientos ha hecho que determinados autores, que quizá en su época gozaron de fama y popularidad, hayan caído en el olvido o hayan sido forzados al ostracismo. Un caso clásico sería el del poeta y narrador estadounidense William Gilmore Simms quien, antes de la Guerra de Secesión, disfrutó de los laureles de la fama y la admiración de sus contemporáneos. Sin embargo, su apoyo a la causa confederada ha hecho (...) de él un autor prácticamente olvidado hoy en día. El caso de Joseph de Maistre es similar, pues también se enmarca dentro del apoyo a las causas perdidas o, más concretamente, a las causas que, andando el tiempo, no han resultado las vencedoras. Su apoyo a la causa contrarevolucionaria en el momento en que Europa se abría a la contemporaneidad social y política lo ha convertido en una isla en el pensamiento moderno, a pesar de que en su momento fuera un intelectual conocido y un pensador político respetado en los círculos conservadores. Como bien pone de manifiesto la Dra. Guerrero en su introducción, habría que esperar hasta 2007, para que la figura del senador saboyano volviera a los círculos académicos franceses, cuando Philippe Sollers escribió su ya clásico “Elogio de un maldito”. [...]. (shrink)

On a widely held characterization, triadic joint attention is the capacity to perceptually attend to an object or event together with another subject. In the last four decades, research in developmental psychology has provided increasing evidence of the crucial role that this capacity plays in socio-cognitive development, early language acquisition, and the development of perspective-taking. Yet, there is a striking discrepancy between the general agreement that joint attention is critical in various domains, and the lack of theoretical consensus on how (...) to account for it. This paper pursues three interrelated aims: (i) it examines the contrast between reductive and non-reductive views of (triadic) joint attention, by bringing into focus the notion of recursive mindreading; (ii) it assembles, advances, and discusses a number of arguments against reductive views; (iii) finally, in dialogue with some prominent non-reductive views, it outlines the case for a non-reductive view that gives pride of place to the idea that co-attenders relate to one another as a ‘you’. (shrink)

Eshel Ben-Jacob’s manuscript entitled ‘Bacterial wisdom, Gödel’s theorem and creative genomic webs’ summarizes decades of work demonstrating adaptive mutagenesis in bacterial genomes. Bacterial genomes, each an essential part of a Kantian whole that is a single bacterium, are thus not independent of the environment as sensed; and a single bacterium is therefore a semiotic entity. Ben-Jacob suggests this but errs in 1) assigning autonomy to the genome, and 2) analogizing through computation without making clear whether he is doing so for (...) illustrative purposes or making committed ontological propositions. We reinterpret adaptive mutagenesis and related phenomena in ways both metaphysically rigorous and revealing. We conclude that bacteria are much farther removed from the ‘self-organizing’ world of inanimate process than from the Peircian world of signs; and a critical reappraisal of existing knowledge can enhance our understanding of selfhood, semiosis, and the roots of subjective experience. (shrink)

El presente artículo propone indagar el problema de nuestra ubicación espacial en términos existenciales. Para ello atenderemos a las consideraciones del espacio planteadas en la analítica del Dasein de Martin Heidegger, destacando un carácter de concernimiento según el cual el existir se despliega en cuanto relación ocupada con el mundo. Atendiendo a las descripciones de Oskar Becker, se planteará la pregunta si acaso una inclusión del fenómeno del cuerpo puede contribuir a una comprensión de nuestro particular «hallarnos en un lugar». (...) Una respuesta será esbozada realizando una caracterización de las cualidades sensibles en términos de un exhortativo «hablar de ellas mismas» y planteando nuestro ser cuerpo como posibilidad de escuchar la exhortación de las cosas singulares. Así, estableciendo una íntima unidad entre ubicación espacial, exhortación de las cualidades sensibles y el cuerpo como posibilidad de dejarse vivir en ellas, intentaremos ir más allá de los índices heideggerianos para proponer una comprensión concreta de nuestra posibilidad existencial de ocupar espacios. (shrink)

By the time of his death in 2003, Bernard Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of his generation. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is not only widely acknowledged to be his most important book, but also hailed a contemporary classic of moral philosophy. Presenting a sustained critique of moral theory from Kant onwards, Williams reorients ethical theory towards ‘truth, truthfulness and the meaning of an individual life’. He explores and reflects upon the most difficult problems in contemporary philosophy (...) and identifies new ideas about central issues such as relativism, objectivity and the possibility of ethical knowledge. This edition also includes a new commentary on the text by A.W.Moore and a foreword by Jonathan Lear. (shrink)

Sections include: experiments and generalised causal inference; statistical conclusion validity and internal validity; construct validity and external validity; quasi-experimental designs that either lack a control group or lack pretest observations on the outcome; quasi-experimental designs that use both control groups and pretests; quasi-experiments: interrupted time-series designs; regresssion discontinuity designs; randomised experiments: rationale, designs, and conditions conducive to doing them; practical problems 1: ethics, participation recruitment and random assignment; practical problems 2: treatment implementation and attrition; generalised causal inference: a grounded theory; (...) generalised causal inference: methods for single studies; generalised causal inference: methods for multiple studies; a critical assessment of our assumptions. (shrink)

Noted psychologist and philosopher develops his own brand of pragmatism, based on theories of C. S. Peirce. Emphasis on "radical empiricism," versus the transcendental and rationalist tradition. One of the most important books in American philosophy. Note.

By the time of his death in 2003, Bernard Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of his generation. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is not only widely acknowledged to be his most important book, but also hailed a contemporary classic of moral philosophy. Presenting a sustained critique of moral theory from Kant onwards, Williams reorients ethical theory towards ‘truth, truthfulness and the meaning of an individual life’. He explores and reflects upon the most difficult problems in contemporary philosophy (...) and identifies new ideas about central issues such as relativism, objectivity and the possibility of ethical knowledge. (shrink)

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to his (...) controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

A replicator is simply something that makes copies of itself. There are hypothetical replicators (e.g., self-catalyzing chemical cycles) that are suspected to be unable to exhibit heritable variation. Variation in any of their constituent molecules would not lead them to produce offspring with those new variant molecules. Copying, such as in DNA replication or in xerox machines, allows any sequence to be remade and then sequence variations to be inherited. This distinction has been used against non-RNA-world hypotheses: without RNA replication (...) systems have no capacity to exhibit heritable variation. However, is copying the only way to have heritable variation? This article suggests that evolution can happen without anything being copied and that, in fact, RNA copying is too complex to arise spontaneously as the first pre-biotic system. There would then be a historical gradation of systems from non-alive to alive in which the capacity to have heritable changes would progressively increase and in which copying, as in template-based RNA-replication, would be a crucial but relatively late event. In addition, this article proposes a way by which RNA replication could have arisen, after systems able to evolve arose, as a crucial innovation and how that innovation spread over existing evolutionary systems and became a major driver of subsequent evolution. (shrink)

Este artículo reseña: Andrés GARCÍA INDA, La dulce militancia. Crítica de la razón indignada,prólogo de Chaime Marcuello Servós, ediciones Mensajero, Bilbao, 2020, 167 pp.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted medical care in many ways; previously, a patient would enter a hospital and had an approximate idea of what would happen upon his admission, the physician informed them about it, but in the last two years this scenario has changed. Therefore, our aim was to identify if bioethical principles are present in the physician–patient relationship and the effect of these in the health care provided, through an observational and descriptive study where patients answered the validated (...) ReMePaB questionnaire that measures the presence of bioethical principles in the physician–patient relationship, on the seventh day of their hospital stay and 24 h after discharge, during the period from 1 August to 5 November 2020. In autonomy, an improvement in the score was observed in the second application compared to the first measurement; in the principle of non-vulnerability, the same scenario was observed for the first and second measurements, respectively. In the principles of beneficence, dignity, and justice, no statistically significant differences were observed. Considering the presence or absence of bioethical aspects in health care in this pandemic creates an area of opportunity to know the feelings of the patient during the care received and to maintain what is done well and improve those aspects that can be improved. (shrink)

El registro de la personalidad de Pablo, su formación intelectual y su misión hacen de él un hombre de controversias y de originalidades en su discurso. Este artículo pretende describir: (a) la estructura argumentativa de la llamada 'carta a Filemón' (Fm), texto considerado de autoría paulina, y (b) las maniobras estratégicas que desarrolla el autor del documento para resolver la discusión crítica, específicamente a partir del uso de estrategias de cortesía verbal. En términos generales, desde un análisis dialéctico, la carta (...) nos presenta el pedido del prisionero para que Filemón reciba a Onésimo de regreso en su casa, así como los argumentos que favorecen esta postura. Al insertar las maniobras estratégicas, es decir, el elemento pragmático y retórico, se puede observar un cambio en el punto de vista y en el argumento. Las estrategias de cortesía verbal ayudan, por un lado, a que la comunidad acoja a Onésimo y, por otro lado, aprenda que los cristianos han sido generados por la fe en Cristo. Por tanto, no sólo se declara la petición, sino una nueva verdad de fe y una práctica de vida eclesial y social. Pablo salvaguarda la imagen negativa, apelando a un nuevo estilo de autoridad y a una renovada forma de vida comunitaria que va más allá del contexto específico en el que fue escrita la carta. Todo hombre y mujer de fe son miembros dignos de la comunidad porque son “mis entrañas” (Fm 12b). (shrink)

The essays in _The Philosophy of Spirituality_ address spirituality as a subject of philosophical interest independent of religion and respecting diverse spiritual traditions: African, atheist, Indigenous, Indian, Stoic, and Sufic perspectives, as well as Western analytic and continental views.

Emily Carroll and Parker Crutchfield propose a new inconsistency argument against abortion restrictivism. In response, I raised several objections to their argument. Recently Carroll and Crutchfield have replied and seem to be under the impression that I’m a restrictivist. This is puzzling, since my criticism of their view included a very thinly veiled, but purposely more charitable, anti-restrictivist inconsistency argument. In this response, I explain how Carroll and Crutchfield mischaracterize my position and that of the restrictivist.