This chapter argues that from a particularly weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location, it follows that it is possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of space-time fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. The chapter suggests, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of no less unappealing alternatives. It also discusses a few ways in which their possibility (...) is relevant to various important debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

This reading companion and commentary on Lacan Seminar XXIII provides detailed analyses of Lacan's seminar while maintaining an overall continuity and consistency. This book does not purport to provide an exhaustive and systematic line-by-line reading of a very complex and varied seminar. Rather it selects key themes of Lacanian theory that are found present throughout his work. In addition, the book does not try to simplify Lacan's ambiguous style, leaving the text open to different interpretations, while providing theory, commentary, and (...) lines of analysis into some of Lacan's important insights. Finally, this book is not about Joyce the writer, but more about the use that Lacan makes of Joyce. Its purpose is not to apply psychoanalysis to a literary subject, but rather to use the literary text to illustrate and develop psychoanalytic theory, and Lacanian theory in particular. It is an analysis of topology and language, or a linguisterie, as Lacan called it, for clinicians. The references to neurosis and psychosis are always there. However, a Lacanian clinic can also be of service to those interested in literary theory and/or social studies to develop theory within their own respective fields of studies. (shrink)

I argue that from a very weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location it follows that it's possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of spacetime fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. I defend, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of equally radical alternatives. I also discuss a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various (...) debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

Purpose: To determine the relative value that patients place on consent for procedures in the emergency department (ED) and to define a set of procedures that fall in the realm of implied consent. Methods: A questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample 134 of 174 patients who were seen in the ED of a Midwestern teaching hospital. The questionnaire asked how much time they believed was necessary to give consent for various procedures. Procedures ranged from simple (venipuncture) to complex (procedural (...) sedation). Results: Participants valued a simple blood draw at a low mean of 1.02 minutes of extra time and a lumbar puncture at a high mean of 7.78 minutes. Of all participants 52% and 48% noted a time-value of ?0? time on blood draw and intravenous line starts, respectively, indicating that they desire no additional consent for these procedures. Conclusion: Defining a set of ED procedures covered under implied consent will be difficult because many patients value formal consent for even the simplest procedure. (shrink)

We study whether robots can satisfy the conditions of an agent fit to be held morally responsible, with a focus on autonomy and self-control. An analogy between robots and human groups enables us to modify arguments concerning collective responsibility for studying questions of robot responsibility. We employ Mele’s history-sensitive account of autonomy and responsibility to argue that even if robots were to have all the capacities required of moral agency, their history would deprive them from autonomy in a responsibility-undermining way. (...) We will also study whether humans and technological artifacts like robots can form hybrid collective agents that could be morally responsible for their actions and give an argument against such a possibility. (shrink)

This contribution offers reflections about Chilean Cybersyn, 50 years ago. In recent years, Cybersyn, has received significant attention. It was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, who conceived it to support the transformation of the Chilean economy from its bureaucratic history to hopefully create a vibrant and modern society, driven by cybernetic tools. These aspects have received much attention in recent times; however, in this contribution, I want to discuss how working in Cybersyn influenced my work after the coup of 1973. (...) Perhaps, for me, its major influence was in the management of complexity, through what I refer here as variety engineering and through the Viable System Model VSM as a paradigm to the management of relationships with implications to enterprises, society and the economy. After the 1973 coup major interest was in technological aspects of Cybersyn such as real-time management and its contribution to decision support and executive information systems. In the late 70s I was personally influenced by information management, but by the early 1980s my work moved towards methodological aspects of how to use the VSM. By 1989 I had created the VIPLAN method. Key questions I attempted to answer were, how to model the complexity of enterprises and their interactions with environmental agents. Later on, in the 1990s and 2000s, the main direction of my work was epistemological, ontological and methodological towards second-order cybernetics and relationships. Only in recent decades the political transformations proposed by Cybersyn have captured the imagination of many commentators. The confluence of social and cultural changes with information technology, data models, artificial intelligence, algorithms and several additional technological developments have challenged the excesses of capitalism, particularly after the banking crisis of 2008–2009. The purpose in this paper is discussing this evolution in the light of those early days in Chile. (shrink)

I give shape to a neglected debate in metaphysics, the debate over the ontological priority between individuality and collectivity. I distinguish the debate from more familiar ones in the recent literature and articulate what I call ontological collectivism, the view that collectivity is prior to individuality. I defend the in-principle intelligibility of the view from forceful general objections and argue that not only is it coherent but also of significant interest to the literature: it allows for overlooked alternatives on a (...) variety of central discussions. (shrink)

Nietzsche identificó la filosofía como _arte de la transfiguración _en la edición de _La gaya ciencia_ de 1887. Esta expresión tiene un fuerte vínculo con la última obra de Rafael Sanzio, _La trasfigurazione_, comentada en _El nacimiento de la tragedia_, en donde el arte es considerado como transfigurador. Tanto la filosofía como el arte se relacionan con el acto de transfigurar y ambas deben ponerse en relación con la vida; la cual ha de ser transfigurada por el amor.

Page 1. Economics and Philosophy, 26 291--320 Copyright C Cambridge University Press doi: 10.1017 / S0266267110000386 TWO KINDS OF WE-REASONING RAUL HAKLI, KAARLO MILLER AND RAIMO TUOMELA University of Helsinki.

Various sources in the literature claim that the deduction theorem does not hold for normal modal or epistemic logic, whereas others present versions of the deduction theorem for several normal modal systems. It is shown here that the apparent problem arises from an objectionable notion of derivability from assumptions in an axiomatic system. When a traditional Hilbert-type system of axiomatic logic is generalized into a system for derivations from assumptions, the necessitation rule has to be modified in a way that (...) restricts its use to cases in which the premiss does not depend on assumptions. This restriction is entirely analogous to the restriction of the rule of universal generalization of first-order logic. A necessitation rule with this restriction permits a proof of the deduction theorem in its usual formulation. Other suggestions presented in the literature to deal with the problem are reviewed, and the present solution is argued to be preferable to the other alternatives. A contraction-and cut-free sequent calculus equivalent to the Hubert system for basic modal logic shows the standard failure argument untenable by proving the underivability of DA from A. (shrink)

CONTENIDO: Problemas del diálogo intercultural en filosofía - Pensamiento iberoamericano: ¿base para un modelo de filosofía intercultural - Filosofía iberoamericana intercultural, ¿un programa también interdisciplinario - Aprender a filosofar desde el contexto del diálogo de las culturas - Supuestos filosóficos del diálogo intercultural - Cultura entre tradición e innovación - Hacia una transformación intercultural de la filosofía en América Latina - Teoría crítica, liberación y diálogo intercultural - Los derechos humanos, ¿fuente ética de crítica cultural y de diálogo entre las (...) culturas - Para una crítica del neoliberalismo a partir de la filosofía de la liberación - Tesis para la comprensión y práctica de la interculturalidad como alternativa a la globalización. (shrink)

Endorsing the idea of group knowledge seems to entail the possibility of group belief as well, because it is usually held that knowledge entails belief. It is here studied whether it would be possible to grant that groups can have knowledge without being committed to the controversial view that groups can have beliefs. The answer is positive on the assumption that knowledge can be based on acceptance as well as belief. The distinction between belief and acceptance can be seen as (...) a refinement of the ordinary language concept of belief, and it may be useful in understanding the nature of epistemic justification and classifying various types of epistemic subjects. (shrink)

Epistemic justification of non-summative group beliefs is studied in this paper. Such group beliefs are understood to be voluntary acceptances, the justification of which differs from that of involuntary beliefs. It is argued that whereas epistemic evaluation of involuntary beliefs can be seen not to require reasons, justification of voluntary acceptance of a proposition as true requires that the agent, a group or an individual, can provide reasons for the accepted view. This basic idea is studied in relation to theories (...) of dialectical justification in which justification is taken to require ability to justify. Since the reasons offered can in principle always be challenged, there is no ultimate end to the dialectical chain of justification. This makes justification of acceptance, and thus group belief, social and, in a way, contextual, but this does not seem to entail strong forms of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the Spinozian topic of understanding human actions and its interpretation by Nietzsche in The Gay Science 333. Nietzsche doesn’t read directly Spinoza’s work but rather the volume of Kuno Fischer’s History of Modern Philosophy dedicated to the XVIIth century philosopher; this can be confirmed by the way in which the text is quoted. Even if Nietzsche reduces greatly the power of understanding to one of its aspect translating intelligere as erkennen, it is necessary to emphasize (...) that the aphorism presents a novelty that can enrich the study of the relationship between these two philosophers. Nietzsche identifies conscious thought with the “last scenes of reconciliation” between different drives of a previous unconscious process. Even if the point of departure of this survey is the centrality of affects in both thinkers, it will also identify a precise limit which distances Spinoza’s understanding of the affects from the centrality of drives in Nietzsche’s philosophical project. (shrink)

This contribution offers the author’s personal experience with a project that took place 25 years ago in Latin America. This was about Second Order Auditing in Colombia during the second part of the 1990s. This project was carried out at the Country’s National Auditing Office, and was an application of the Viable System Model and the Viplan Methodology to a National Context. It was an innovative project at the CGR, focused on Second Order Auditing, to improve communications within the fabric (...) of the Colombian government. Its emphasis was building responsible trust between public enterprises, ministries and political agencies. Its emphasis was building communications between ministries and public entities, with the aim of increasing their effectiveness. At its core were methodological and epistemological developments. Key questions it attempted to answer were how to model the complexity of the enterprises and how to transform the auditors’ views of their relations with people in public entities, from one focused on requesting information, to one focused on communications. Structural changes were proposed for the National Audit Office and state enterprises, and hundreds of auditors were trained, through epistemological methodological workshops, in second order auditing and the reports of their auditing were debated extensively in government and beyond. This paper finishes with a short discussion of these transformations in the light of organisational cybernetics and in particular of the Viable System Model. (shrink)

This article examines the challenges surrounding the application of multicultural, outcomes-based curricula for teaching media ethics and communication ethics classes within a small journalism program. The main question to be answered here is: From the perspective of students, does it make a difference to employ a teaching model that is embedded in multicultural values, and rewards personal transformation and "measurable results"? An additional question is: From the perspective of instructors, how can we best assess student learning and personal growth in (...) fields as "subjective" and intangible as communication ethics and media ethics? (shrink)

Este artículo tiene por objeto explicar cuándo en el estado de necesidad la distinción entre un mal mayor o menor responde al universo ético consecuencialista y desde qué consideraciones no lo haría; segundo, explicar por qué es posible desde el principio del doble efecto la ponderación de la vida humana, aceptando la objetivización de sus parámetros según los efectos de una acción. Por ello, a continuación trataremos en la primera sección el concepto de mal en clave consecuencialista y, posteriormente, moral (...) absolutista. Se trata de un análisis sobre la materia que reconoce, en la segunda sección, la importancia de la existencia de estos universos en la ponderación de males. Luego, contrastaremos nuestros razonamientos con las soluciones que, para casos semejantes, se proponen desde el doble efecto para algunas situaciones de estado de necesidad. Finalmente, en la tercera sección, entregaremos los criterios de una política criminal para distinguir y no encubrir exigencias deónticas en el estado de necesidad. (shrink)

En el texto se presenta a la sofística como precursora de la filosofía práctica, y se la reconoce como anticipadora del pensamiento aristotélico. La vía por la que se muestra dicha relación es el reconocimiento del papel primordial que esta concede al lenguaje y en especial al que adquiere la forma de discursos que buscan persuadir, a la retórica como piedra angular de la formación ciudadana en cuanto preparación para la vida pública. De esta manera se reconoce la importancia que (...) la retórica tuvo para la filosofía en sus orígenes, y cómo perfilaba otra manera de entender la racionalidad, no como teórica sino como práctica. Después se pasa a mostrar cómo según Chaïm Perelman, a partir de una reinterpretación de cierta parte de la obra de Aristóteles, es plausible postular a la retórica como un modelo más adecuado para entender la filosofía. (shrink)

The year 1992 is a year for reflection, because whether or not the quincentenary celebration of the arrival of the Europeans to this continent seems justified, one cannot escape thinking about the impact of this event on our land.As archeology is my area of study, my reflections are directed toward the changes that came about in the relationship between man and animals after 1492, specifically toward what occurred in Mexico once the Spaniards established themselves in this territory.

This analysis comes from a philosophical glance at Aristophanic comedy, where the problem seems to move towards universality of poetry. The common manner to face this problem is getting close to the concepts of learning and inference, introduced in the field of a sort of action or a sort of character without consideration for the Aristotle’s horizon of the poetic research télos, érgon, oikeía hedone and katharsis, or the Greek theatrical-poetic representation as an autonomous form of universal mythos. The underestimation (...) of the comic genre has centered the research upon Aristophanes in the fields of politics, philology and history, but seldom philosophy. (shrink)

GIS has captured planning practice to an unprecedented degree, and this article on how it reconfigures and is configured by institutional context. The author inquires into GIS as a technology for incorporating knowledge into institutional use and includes five propositions: GIS's efficiencies in data processing allows it unprecedented facility and scope of analysis, its use increases alienation, its mimetic language furthers its role in planning, its logic appears rational—purposive, but it conceals an underlying normative logic, and its most profound effect (...) is on the mapper, and the alienating and normative character of GIS necessitate new modes of “social ground-truthing.” The author studies the southeast Los Angeles initiatives to demonstrate these propositions. This article compares two studies: one GIS-based, and the other based on participatory action research and discusses how GIS might be recontextualized into a technology for liberating democratizing processes. (shrink)