This paper sets out to carry out an analysis of the concept of love in the Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, published anonymously by Feuerbach in 1830. Afer examining the scale of different types of love, conceived by Feuerbach as a hierarchy of the erotic, the paper will focus its attention on the question of the other and the fundamental role it plays in the very constitution of the individual: starting from the famous Feuerbachian defnition “Sein ist Gemeinschaf„, a number (...) of key notions that fnd their basis in love will be addressed, such as self-knowledge, the distinction of the individual, life as a continuous process of communication and as remembrance (of and by) the other, as well as the signifcation of one’s own life in relation to others. -/- -------- -/- El presente trabajo se propone realizar un análisis del concepto de amor en los Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, publicado anónimamente por Feuerbach en 1830. Luego de examinar la escala de diferentes tipos de amor, concebida por Feuerbach como jerarquía de lo erótico, el trabajo centrará su atención en la cuestión del otro y del papel fundamental que desempeña en la propia constitución del individuo: partiendo de la célebre defnición feuerbachiana “Sein ist Gemeinschaf„, se abordará una serie de nociones clave que encuentran su base en el amor, tales como el saber de sí, la distinción del individuo, la vida como proceso continuo de comunicación y como recuerdo (de y por) otro, así como la signifcación de la propia vida a partir de los demás. (shrink)

This paper focuses on elucidating the manner in which, funded upon Feuerbach’s peculiar sen- sualist philosophical anthropology found in his early work Gedanken über Tod und Übsterlichkeit (1830), a notion of history is raised which tends towards an immanence and anti-theological ap- proach, where memory takes on a fundamental role as a becoming-communicable of the subject. History, according to a young Feuerbach, is to be understood as an uninterrupted process of commu- nal remembrance, in which individual man finds his transcendence. (...) -/- El presente trabajo se concentrará en elucidar de qué manera, sobre la peculiar antropología filosó- fica sensualista feuerbachiana que encontramos en su obra temprana Gedanken über Tod und Übsterlichkeit (1830), se erige una noción de la historia que abona por un enfoque inmanentista y anti-teológico, en donde el recuerdo asume un rol fundamental en tanto un hacerse-comunicable del sujeto. La historia, para el joven Feuerbach, se entendería ella misma como un ininterrumpido proceso de recordación comunitaria, en la que el hombre individual encontraría su trascendencia. (shrink)

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

Passive frame theory attempts to illuminate what consciousness is, in mechanistic and functional terms; it does not address the “implementation” level of analysis (how neurons instantiate conscious states), an enigma for various disciplines. However, in response to the commentaries, we discuss how our framework provides clues regarding this enigma. In the framework, consciousness is passive albeit essential. Without consciousness, there would not be adaptive skeletomotor action.

In this paper I first present Dan Korman’s (2015) recent defence of a conservative view as regards the existence and composition of material objects, and then go on to criticize some of his arguments. I will focus on two related issues: on the one hand, I argue that his defense of that kind of view by making use of what he calls “arguments from counterexamples” has some metaontological presuppositions that are indeed unacceptable for someone defending the revisionist views he opposes; (...) on the other hand, I also claim that his defence of the epistemic authority of the singular intuitions allegedly backing some key premisses in those arguments is also flawed, as it seems to be in tension with his realist commitments. (shrink)

I consider some of the objections that have been raised against a conceptualist solution to the “grounding problem”, I address in particular two objections that I call Conceptual Validity and Instantiation, and I attempt to answer them on behalf of the conceptualist. My response, in a nutshell, is that the first of these objections fails because it ascribes to the conceptualist some commitments that do not really follow from the view’s basic insight, while the second objection also fails because it (...) denies the conceptualist resources that the alternative positions are allowed to use. (shrink)

If embodied models no longer address the symbol grounding problem and a conceptual system can step in and resolve categorizations when embodied simulations fail, then perhaps the next step in theory-building is to isolate the unique contributions of embodied simulation. What is a disembodied conceptual system incapable of doing with respect to semantic processing or the categorization of smiles?

El artículo que sigue fue publicado originalmente con el título "Causation" en el Journal of Philosophy 70.17 : 556-567, y luego reimpreso en Lewis, D. Philosophical Papers. Vol. II. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1986. 159-172. Esta traducción se publica conla autorización del Journal of Philosophy y de Oxford University Press.Querría agradecer aquí a Santiago Erpen, María José García Encinas,Diego Morales y Carolina Sartorio por diversos comentarios y sugerencias que me han permitido, espero, mejorar la traducción.

In this paper I present and critically discuss Simon Evnine’s account of hylomorphically complex objects (as presented in his 2016 book Making Objects and Events). On the one hand, I object to the account he gives of how artifacts (which are for him the paradigmatic cases of hylomorphically complex objects) allegedly acquire their existence and identity conditions. I elaborate on two problems I see for this account: first, that it seems unable to explain our knowledge of the kinds to which (...) artifacts belong; second, that it cannot offer a plausible solution to the grounding problem for coincident objects. I also object to the way in which he tries to adapt the sort of account he gave for artifacts to the case of organisms (in my view this fails because both cases are dissimilar at crucial points), and finally I also object to his attempt to extend that account, in a fictional way, to the case of natural non-organic objects (as I try to show, both his arguments to the effect that there are no such objects, and his positive fictionalist proposal to account for our talk about them, are flawed). (shrink)

In the present paper I defend an interpretation of the Cartesian notion of material falsity that it would be adequate to describe as ‘epistemic’, as opposed to most other views in the literature, which could be described as ‘metaphysical’. Whereas metaphysical conceptions of material falsity consider an idea to be such because of some kind of failure in their representative properties, that is, in the relation between what they exhibit and their objects, an epistemic view considers that what makes an (...) idea materially false is some kind of opacity that precludes their representational properties to be known in the first place. In the paper the evidence for these two kinds of reading is assessed, and it is shown that epistemic views are clearly more adequate. (shrink)

examine Nathan Salmon’s solution to the problem of trivialization, as it arises for conceptions of general term rigidity that construe it as identity of designation across possible worlds. I argue that he does not succeed in showing that some alleged general terms, such as “the colour of the sky” are non-rigid, but also that a small class of different examples that he presents, which can be construed as second order descriptions, are indeed non-rigid general terms, although for reasons different from (...) those he thought. (shrink)

O presente artigo almeja refletir sobre os pressupostos educacionais presentes na obra Sobre a Pedagogia, de Kant e A destinação do erudito, de Fichte. Quanto a Kant, buscar-se-á demonstrar a importância que o pensador confere a uma sólida formação na infância, que será refletida no adulto do futuro. No que se refere a Fichte, o pensador, partindo de pressupostos kantianos, reafirma a importância da construção de uma sociedade moral, na qual cada indivíduo tem uma vocação a ser exercida livremente e (...) que beneficiará a todos os demais. Em ambos os pensadores, pode-se perceber uma ênfase no estabelecimento da educação moral, com o objetivo de promover uma boa convivência em sociedade. A finalidade dessa educação é fazer com que os instintos se submetam à lei moral, que, em última instância, serve para permitir que o indivíduo conviva em harmonia com seus semelhantes. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide (...) an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research. (shrink)

The contents of our conscious mind can seem unpredictable, whimsical, and free from external control. When instructed to attend to a stimulus in a work setting, for example, one might find oneself thinking about household chores. Conscious content thus appears different in nature from reflex action. Under the appropriate conditions, reflexes occur predictably, reliably, and via external control. Despite these intuitions, theorists have proposed that, under certain conditions, conscious content resembles reflexes and arises reliably via external control. We introduce the (...) Reflexive Imagery Task, a paradigm in which, as a function of external control, conscious content is triggered reliably and unintentionally: When instructed to not subvocalize the name of a stimulus object, participants reliably failed to suppress the set-related imagery. This stimulus-elicited content is considered ‘high-level’ content and, in terms of stages of processing, occurs late in the processing stream. We discuss the implications of this paradigm for consciousness research. (shrink)

Reflections on Ethical Living, Asia Publishers, (2021). Editor: Prof. Dror Burstein. (In Hebrew) Two academic events dedicated to the book hosted 7 commentators discussing its key philosophical themes: the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The book has also generated over 20 interviews in the main Israeli media channels.

Early modern automata, understood as efforts to ‘model’ life, to grasp its singular properties and/or to unveil and demystify its seeming inaccessibility and mystery, are not just fascinating liminal, boundary, hybrid, crossover or go-between objects, while they are all of those of course. They also pose a direct challenge to some of our common conceptions about mechanism and embodiment. They challenge the simplicity of the distinction between a purported ‘mechanistic’ worldpicture, its ontology and its goals, and on the other hand (...) an attempt to understand ourselves and animals more broadly as flesh-and-blood, affective entities (that is, not just breathing and perspiring, but also desiring and ‘sanguine’ machines, as La Mettrie might have put it). In what follows I reflect on the complexity of early modern mechanism faced with the (living) body, and its mirror image, contemporary theories of embodiment. At times, embodiment theory seems to be governed by a fascination with what the Artificial Life researcher Ezequiel Di Paolo has called ‘biochauvinism’ (Di Paolo, “Extended Life”): an unquestioned belief that ‘living bodies are special’. Yet how does the theorist define this special status? The question is apparently a simple one, or at least promptly yields an aporia which appears simple: to borrow a provocative phrase from Terry Eagleton, embodiment theory is obsessed by the body but terrified of biology. Yet at the same time, at least since Hubert Dreyfus and Andy Clark’s groundbreaking works, embodiment has been a legit part of cognitive science, yielding the even more recently emerged field of ‘embodied cognition’ (see the work of Larry Shapiro), which seeks to depart from traditional cognitive science, especially the latter’s understanding of cognition as computational, in order to instead underscore “the significance of an organism’s body in how and what the organism thinks,” in Shapiro’s words. (shrink)

ÍNDICE Prefacio. Pensamientos sobre la violencia. Un libro como un bricolage. Ana Belén Blanco – María Soledad Sánchez | 9 Prólogo. La violencia como “objeto”. Una Aproximación Teórica. Sergio Tonkonoff | 19 I. Violencia, mito y religión. Rubén Dri | 35 II. Violencia, religión y mesianismo: reflexiones desde la filosofía judía. Emmanuel Taub | 53 III. Religión y violencia. Una mirada desde lo implícito y lo relacional. Gustavo A. Ludueña | 65 IV. Escrito en el cuerpo: la pregunta por la (...) violencia en algunas ficciones contemporáneas. VII. Política y Violencia: Una Introducción. Miguel Ángel Rossi | 129 VIII. Reflexiones sobre la violencia (y la política). Ezequiel Ipar | 147 IX. Variables de la violencia generalizada: real de la época. Carlos Gustavo Motta | 159 X. La función de la cópula Y en el título “violencia y espectáculo”. Daniel Mundo | 169 XI. Muerte, violencia y prohibición: ¿vínculo histórico o constitutivo? Martina Lassalle | 179 XII. Criminalización, Juventud y Delito. Algunas consideraciones teórico-metodológicas. Sergio Tonkonoff | 205 XIII. Activismo de los derechos humanos, tribunales y policías. Sofía Tiscornia | 233 El Docke. Ensayo fotográfico. Henrik Malmström | 247. (shrink)