Background We investigated the personal philosophies of eight persons with a tetraplegic condition (four male, four female), all living in Sweden with a chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and all reporting a good life. Our purpose was to discover if there is a philosophical mindset that may play a role in living a good life with a traumatic SCI. Methods Two rounds of in-depth qualitative interviews were performed by the same interviewer, a philosophical practitioner by training (de Miranda). The (...) second round systematically covered the following elements: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose and philosophical sense. This six-step method developed by de Miranda is called SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Results All the interviewees, as a consequence of their trauma, reported having gone through a reinvention of themselves which implied questioning the meaning and purpose of their life in particular and life in general. A philosophical rather than realistic sense of the possible was abstracted toward teleological growth. All interviewees developed a sense of purpose based on self-interested altruism and solidarity with disabled peers. Conclusions To reinvent a good life with SCI, in addition to physical training and willpower, one needs to consider philosophical questions about the self and life, what Kant called the cosmic interests of reason: What may I hope? What must I do? What can I know? Our results indicate that we should, in the future, explore what the philosophical health approach may bring to rehabilitation processes in the months or years that follow the trauma. (shrink)

A central debate in the current philosophical literature on temporal experience is over the following question: do temporal experiences themselves have a temporal structure that mirrors their temporal contents? Extensionalists argue that experiences do have a temporal structure that mirrors their temporal contents. Atomists insist that experiences don’t have a temporal structure that mirrors their contents. In this paper, I argue that this debate is misguided. Both atomism and extensionalism, considered as general theories of temporal experience, are false, since temporal (...) experience is not a single undifferentiated phenomena as both theories require. I argue for this conclusion in two steps. First, I show that introspection cannot settle the debate. Second, I argue that the neuroscientific evidence is best read as revealing a host of mechanisms involved in temporal perception - some admitting of an extensionalist interpretation while others admitting only of an atomistic interpretation. As a result, neither side of the debate wins. (shrink)

The present article is a primary introduction to the semi-structured interviewing method SMILE_PH, an acronym for Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health. Beyond grounding this new methodology theoretically (a work that is started here but will in the future necessitate several developments), the main motivation here is pragmatic: to provide the recent philosophical health movement with a testable method and show that philosophically-oriented interviews are possible in a manner that can be reproduced, compared, tested and used systematically with (...) a population that has received no training in philosophy. The SMILE_PH approach was conceived by the author during an ethically approved pilot study focused on the philosophy of life of persons living with spinal cord injury (SCI), with the intention of rectifying the epistemic obstacles generated by rationalist, Socratic or unstructured ways of in-depth interviewing. The six-step structure of the method is also inspired by hundreds of individual dialogue sessions with philosophical counselees, led by the author between 2018 and 2022: the SMILE_PH method progressively gathers phenomenological data about 1 – our bodily sense, 2 – our sense of self, 3 – our sense of belonging, 4 – our sense of the possible, 5 – our sense of purpose and 6 – our philosophical sense. (shrink)

It’s often claimed in the philosophical and scientific literature on temporal representation that there is no such thing as a genuine sensory system for time. In this paper, I argue for the opposite—many animals, including all mammals, possess a genuine sensory system for time based in the circadian system. In arguing for this conclusion, I develop a semantics and meta-semantics for explaining how the endogenous rhythms of the circadian system provide organisms with a direct information link to the temporal structure (...) of their environment. In doing so, I highlight the role of sensory systems in an information processing architecture. (shrink)

El lenguaje o la actividad cognoscitiva del ser humano que se debate en su lucha contra la circunstancia en la que le ha tocado vivir es hablar, decir y conocer. El hombre habla porque tiene algo que decir, dice porque se define a sí mismo ante la circunstancia en la que vive en cada momento, y esto es posible porque conoce de forma creativa. En este sentido el decir determina el hablar, por arriba, y el conocer por abajo. El conocer (...) humano empieza en una sensación sensible, la aísthesis, la cual es transformada en un universal, extracto o concepto, logos, el cual es el fruto de una serie de operaciones intelectivas realizadas por el propio sujeto en u solo acto, el acto único de hablar, decir y conocer. (shrink)

Process philosophies tend to emphasise the value of continuous creation as the core of their discourse. For Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze, and others the real is ultimately a creative becoming. Critics have argued that there is an irreducible element of (almost religious) belief in this re-evaluation of immanent creation. While I don’t think belief is necessarily a sign of philosophical and existential weakness, in this paper I will examine the possibility for the concept of universal creation to be a political and (...) ethical axiom, the result of a global social contract rather than of a new spirituality. I argue here that a coherent way to fight against potentially totalitarian absolutes is to replace them with a virtual absolute that cannot territorialise without deterritorialising at the same time: the Creal principle. (shrink)

Conceptual analysis has been a traditional methodology within analytic philosophy, but it also has been the target of numerous attacks. On the other hand, explication has been undergoing a revival as a methodological alternative due to the revisionary element associated with it. This allows for a scientific reconstruction of our ordinary notions, which would share virtues associated with scientific concepts. However, there is now a popular variant of conceptual analysis which resembles closely the explicative methodology: the two-step methodology advanced by (...) the advocates of the Canberra Plan. Although explication is a wider and more ambitious program, I will argue that both methodologies can be regarded as attempts to bring philosophical methodology and its products closer to scientific ones. However, I will also point out that, although the goal is advantageous, there still remain some theoretical problems. (shrink)

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within distributed cognition and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities.

Pierre Duhem’s philosophy of science has influenced many philosophers in the twentieth century, and even today. Many of the subjects he addressed are still highly discussed today, especially the distinction between science and metaphysics. My aim in this paper will be to motivate a naturalistic approach where the difference between physics and metaphysics is only a matter of degree. I focus on whether it would be possible to articulate this gradual distinction from a duhemian point of view. Although Duhem thought (...) that metaphysics is an entirely different and more excellent activity than physics, I believe that Duhem’s philosophy of science also supports a naturalistic distinction in terms of degrees. I offer three reasons to justify this conclusion: Duhem’s notion of common sense; Duhem’s holism and his views on the generality of our theories, and Duhem’s notion of natural classification. At the end of the paper I will argue that a naturalistic approach accomplishes must of what Duhem wanted to achieve with his distinction. (shrink)

In 2008 the authors held Involving Interface, a lively interdisciplinary event focusing on issues of biological, sociocultural, and technological interfacing (see Acknowledgments). Inspired by discussions at this event, in this article, we further discuss the value of input from neuroscience for developing robots and machine interfaces, and the value of philosophy, the humanities, and the arts for identifying persistent links between human interfacing and broader ethical concerns. The importance of ongoing interdisciplinary debate and public communication on scientific and technical advances (...) is also highlighted. Throughout, the authors explore the implications of the extended mind hypothesis for notions of moral accountability and robotics. (shrink)

Examining imagination, 4E cognition and the arts together expands our understanding of them all. 4E cognition is a framework that comprises the theories separately known as embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. This paper draws on research in cognitive science (including 4E and recent predictive processing approaches), ideas in phenomenology, and artworks from The Extended Mind exhibition (2019–20). The artworks offer diverse reflections on 4E cognition, as well as revealing personal, political and ethical benefits and issues predicated on a 4E (...) cognition perspective. This approach further provides a way of defending the epistemic value of the imagination and of unpacking the four key puzzles associated with its relationship with the arts regarding its production of emotional response, imaginative resistance, and moral persuasion, and the paradox of our attraction towards horror and tragedy. The arts are a valuable mode of inquiry into the nature of cognition and neglect of their relevance negatively impacts understandings of the mind. (shrink)

The emerging crealectic frame posits that there are three complementary and effectual domains of intelligence, namely analytic, dialectic, and crealectic, being alternatively or complementarily used in human interactions with the world. The focus of crealectic intelligence is the relative possibilization and local realization of absolute possibility, the becoming real, biological, and social of creation. This multimodal externalization and asymptotic unification of a cosmological flux expresses itself via three realms of possibilization: physical, psychological, and philosophical. But the philosophical possible is not (...) merely abstract; it originates a generative process of exteriorizations, interiorizations, dissolutions, and unifications transforming the possible into realities. The term “crealectics,” coined by philosopher and author Luis de Miranda, is a compound of “Creal” and of two possible suffixes: “logos” or “ektos”. The ontological core of crealectics, the Creal, is the immanent process of creation understood as a ubiquitous stream of absolute possibility exteriorizing itself. For a crealectician, philosophy is not the mere logical analysis of truth conditions, but the self-questioning enterprise of thought regarding its own possibilizing and world-making power. (shrink)

Dr Miranda Anderson is an Honorary Fellow in History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. She has held several prestigious fellowships and was principal investigator of an AHRC-funded project, titled ‘The Art of Distributed Cognition’, which involved collaboration with the Talbot Rice Gallery. Her work has investigated the relations between cognition and culture, particularly literary works, challenging the boundaries between disciplines and engaging with numerous contemporary science, technology and society (...) (STS) questions. In this perspective article, she evokes the ‘fission-fusion’ concept on which she has been working for some years now – a concept that contributes to debates surrounding the issue of identity by drawing on the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. (shrink)

The multiple-choice video game Life is Strange was described by its French developers as a metaphor for the inner conflicts experienced by a teenager in trying to become an adult. In psychological work with adolescents, there is a stark similarity between what they experience and some concepts of existentialist philosophy. Sartre’s script for the movie Les Jeux Sont Faits (literally ‘‘games are made’’) uses the same narrative strategy as Life is Strange—the capacity for the main characters to travel back in (...) time to change their own existence—in order to stimulate philosophical, ethical, and political thinking and also to effectively simulate existential ‘‘limit situations.’’ This article is a dialogue between Sartre’s views and Life is Strange in order to examine to what extent questions such as what is freedom? what is choice? what is autonomy and responsibility? can be interpreted anew in hybrid digital–human—‘‘anthrobotic’’—environments. (shrink)

The concept of modes of existence of semiotic entities underlies (post)Greimasian semiotics, yet it seems to have received little attention. Modes of existence can be used in different senses. For Greimas, from the perspective of narrative semiotics, when Michelangelo first receives a block of marble and decides to sculpt the David, his intention is in a virtual mode; as Michelangelo progresses he ends up bringing the David into existence, and his intention comes to the realized mode. In Fontanille’s tensive semiotics, (...) however, modes of existence can have to do with how one can narrow or broaden the scope of our apprehension of the David as our eyes look at it in order to produce a meaningful experience. In this work, the perspectives of narrative and tensive semiotics are contrasted both theoretically and practically applying both to a number of examples. In order to identify all possible modes of existence and all the possibilities of transitioning from one to the other in the examples presented, we resort to the method of finite-state automata from computer science. In the end, we propose a robust narrative account of modes of existence that relies on narrative semiotics for its definition, but into which intent and apprehension from tensive semiotics can be integrated. This work calls for the need of establishing a syntax of modes of existence, since both Greimas and Fontanille construe them as being necessary to account for the production of signification. (shrink)

« Ce petit livre est un bijou d’intelligence, de finesse, de culture, qui prend un objet technique sans rechigner et le tourne et le retourne comme Heidegger nous avait appris à le faire avec les chaussures de Van Gogh. Ce qui frappe, c’est l’ambition d’une méditation sur les cartes de la modernité contemporaine, sur le fameux Grand Paris, sur le sujet, sur le pluriel, sans les faux-fuyants du postmoderne, de la citation absurde. Luis de Miranda se promène, il vous (...) conte qu’il se promène, mais il vous mène avec une grande maîtrise et sait où il veut aller. Rien de gratuit dans cette rencontre de l’enseigne de kebabs sur la table de dissection de la Ville Néon. C’est plutôt une nouvelle méditation cartésienne après Descartes et Husserl : où le poêle et sa chaleur ont fait place au bruit vrillant du gaz dans un tube. Je suis, je crée, donc j’entends. » Yann Moulier-Boutang, ancien élève de l’ENS, professeur agrégé d’économie à l’université de technologie de Compiègne, directeur de la revue Multitudes. Né d’une rencontre inopinée avec un néon sur le quai du Louvre, ce livre a été composé à partir d’un séminaire donné par l’auteur à l’hiver 2012. Un voyage inspiré à travers la nuit, qui déchiffre les halos du passé et les reflets du présent pour donner à entendre une certaine magie du futur. Luis de Miranda, philosophe, romancier, révélateur du créalisme, est notamment l’auteur d’un essai remarqué, L’art d’être libres au temps des automates (Max Milo, 2010). (shrink)

Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth. Language is the mental activity executed by speaking subjects. Linguistics of saying consists in analyzing speech acts as the result of an act of knowing. Speaking subjects speak because they have something to say. Tthey say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in. And this is possible because they are able to know. Speaking, then, is speaking, saying and knowing. In this sense there is a progressive determination. Knowing makes (...) possible saying, and saying determines speaking, or, in other words: speaking involves saying and knowing, and saying involves knowing. The problem thus is to determine the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker to say something in every speech act. (shrink)

What happens to our minds when we listen to a story or read a book? How about when we watch a play or film? Any story, like a piece of music, plays out across our minds and in the process changes the nature of our notes and expands their range. Stories enable a metamorphosis of our minds through biological and sociocultural processes operating in concert.

Examining imagination, 4E cognition and the arts together expands our understanding of them all. 4E cognition is a framework that comprises the theories separately known as embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended cognition. This paper draws on research in cognitive science (including 4E and recent predictive processing approaches), ideas in phenomenology, and artworks from The Extended Mind exhibition (2019–20). The artworks offer diverse reflections on 4E cognition, as well as revealing personal, political and ethical benefits and issues predicated on a 4E (...) cognition perspective. This approach further provides a way of defending the epistemic value of the imagination and of unpacking the four key puzzles associated with its relationship with the arts regarding its production of emotional response, imaginative resistance, and moral persuasion, and the paradox of our attraction towards horror and tragedy. The arts are a valuable mode of inquiry into the nature of cognition and neglect of their relevance negatively impacts understandings of the mind. (shrink)

What happens to our minds when we listen to a story or read a book? How about when we watch a play or film? Any story, like a piece of music, plays out across our minds and in the process changes the nature of our notes and expands their range. Stories – whether told orally, read in a book, scrolled through or watched upon screen or stage – enable a metamorphosis of our minds through biological and sociocultural processes operating in (...) concert. (shrink)

The possibility that non-biological resources can act as part of the cognitive system is claimed by Andy Clark’s and David Chalmers’s seminal paper, ‘The Extended Mind’ (1998). This hypothesis holds parallels with the history of the book, an area of research that has long been considering the effect on culture and cognition of the technological changes from orality to literacy and from manuscripts to printing. M. T. Clanchy’s From Memory to Written Record describes literacy as a technology that structures the (...) intellect and Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy argues that the increasing use of texts results in the development of new forms of cognition. More recently a number of scholars have charted how the common Renaissance practices of the annotation and alteration of the books enabled readers to deal with increasing cognitive loads, through reorganising and adding to the textual structures. Furthermore, in the Renaissance the textual was understood as playing a supplementary role to biological memory and historical narratives were understood as supplementing individual experience, with another’s memories or knowledge equivalent to one’s own. In addition, Renaissance accounts of rhetoric explore the notion of language as constitutive of our humanity. These strands form a prevalent notion of language and literacy as a means of extending oneself that is equivalent to the production of biological offspring, and as a means to overcome death and forgetting. This notion infiltrated diverse spheres’ ways of understanding these activities, from literary prefaces, autobiographies, plays and poems, to jest books and medical and scientific texts. These diverse works shape this reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which focuses on the exploration in ‘Sonnet 77’ of the benefits and constraints of a biological versus a textual copy of the subject. ‘Sonnet 77’ evidences the co-existence of an uneasy and yet also a celebratory understanding of the human capacity to reproduce and extend itself through biological and linguistic couplings, the latter of which the reader may experience through their own encounter with the sonnets. This chapter thereby demonstrates that the fertile parallels between the extended mind hypothesis, the history of the book, and Renaissance texts invites a re-evaluation of historical, as well as modern, concepts of what constitutes cognition and subjectivity. (shrink)

In his dialogues with Claire Parnet, Deleuze asserts that: ‘Whether we are individuals or groups, we are made of lines’ (Deleuze and Parnet 2007: 124). In A Thousand Plateaus (with Guattari), Deleuze calls these kinds of ‘lifelines’ or ‘lines of flesh’: break line (or segmental line, or molar line), crack line (or molecular line) and rupture line (also called line of flight) (Deleuze and Guattari 2004a: 22). We will explain the difference between these three lines and how they are related (...) to the ‘soul’. We will also explain how a singular individual or group can arise from the play of the lines. Eventually, we will introduce the concept of ‘Creal’ to develop the Deleuzian figure of the ‘Anomal’, the so(u)rcerer. (shrink)

Vous éprouvez souvent l'embarras du choix? Que sera la liberté au XXIe siècle? Depuis l'invention des machines et des computeurs, notre quotidien semble avoir gagné du temps. Mais en contrepartie, il paraît de plus en plus codé, soumis aux automatismes. Depuis Leibniz jusqu'à la puce biométrique, l'auteur raconte une histoire alternative de l'ère informatique. Il démontre que le " numérisme ", le principe ordinateur, est une vertu humaine ancestrale et nécessaire. Mais insuffisante. Après le sauve-qui-peut du postmodernisme, un nouveau paradigme (...) est en train de naître, le " créalisme " : le monde est notre création commune incessante. L'horizon de notre liberté politique et existentielle, c'est la Terre comme oeuvre d'art. Construit comme une odyssée philosophique curieuse et empreinte d'humour, voici un traité de cocréativité pour une époque aux forces actives éclatées. Où l'on découvre que l'ordre et l'aventure ne sont pas incompatibles. (shrink)

« Voici un livre vif, intelligent, nullement béni-oui-oui. Avec Lacan, il démontre que le capitalisme est une machine à faire jouir massivement. Ce qui s'obtient n'est pas pour autant une jouissance toute, mais seulement des lichettes. La jouissance demeurera toujours tonneau des Danaïdes. » Hervé Castanet, professeur des universités, psychanalyste, membre de l'école de la Cause freudienne. -/- Partout la qualité de vie prend la forme d'une quantité d'envies. Le nouveau monde oscille entre deux versants d'une même pièce de théâtre (...) : côté cour, des passages à l'acte obscènes ; côté coulisses, un puritanisme coupable. Pouvons-nous nous comporter autrement que comme des machines à jouir détraquées, dont le courant alternatif oscillerait entre avidité et rétention, gaspillage et dette ? Beaucoup se demandent pourquoi, une fois réunies les conditions imaginaires ou symboliques de la jouissance, c'est un réel vide ou perverti qui s'installe. C'est que la mécanique même de l'économie libidinale capitaliste repose sur l'angoisse sans cesse repoussée d'un désir dévoyé. Dans un monde globalement structuré par la plus-value, la jouissance prend la forme internationale du « plus-de-jouir ». -/- Faut-il pour autant renoncer à la joie de vivre et se réfugier dans le moralisme et l'austérité ? Lacan, Heidegger et Marx, articulés ensemble, permettent de dire comment une forme d'existence créative est encore possible. Une telle liberté est l'horizon de ce livre. (shrink)

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the intentional meaningful purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is the performance of an intuition by the subject, both individual and social.

Meaning defines language because it is the internal function of language. At the same time, meaning does not exist unless in language and because of language. From the point of view of the speaking subject meaning is contents of conscience. From the point of view of a language, meaning is the objectification of knowledge in linguistic signs. And from the point of view of the individual speaking subject, meaning is the expressive intentional purpose to say something.

A theory of knowledge is the explanation of things in terms of the possibilities and capabilities of the human way of knowing. The human knowledge is the representation of the things apprehended sensitively either through the senses or intuition. A theory of knowledge concludes about the reality of the things studied. As such it is a priori speculation, based on synthetic a priori statements. Its conclusions constitute interpretation, that is, hermeneutics. Linguistics as the science studying real language, that is, the (...) language spoken, reverts to human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language thus must be studied as a theory of knowledge. (shrink)

When we speak of language we usually use the concept of a particular language. In this sense the concept denoted with the word language may vary from one language to another. Real language (=the language spoken) on the contrary is the reality lived by speakers thus encompassing complex and multifarious activities. Depending on the language spoken, the modes of thinking, modes of being in the conception of things, and systems of beliefs transmitted by means of particular languages, denote the living (...) reality of language with different grammatical categories. The concept “language” is expressed sometimes with a noun, thus denoting something existing in it; sometimes with a verb, thus denoting an action or an activity; and sometimes with an adverb, thus denoting the mode of an activity. The reality or degree of reality implicit in these grammatical categories involves a particular mode of thinking, prompted with a particular mode of being in the conception of things. Because of this it is necessary to distinguish the concept of language as something different from the reality of language. But first of all it is necessary to determine the reality or degree of reality of both the reality lived by speakers and the thing usually conceived of as language or a language. (shrink)

The most comprehensive manifestation of language can be seen in the activity of speaking. In it the activity of speaking cannot be understood unless it is referred to the concepts of language and a language. Anything in language can be found in the activity of speaking. Because of this you can find what language is if you abstract from the innumerable manifestations of the activity of speaking.

Meaning as the original function of language is the arrangement of internal things on the part of the creative and historical individual subject who speaks a particular language. Meaning constitutes the series of contents making up the linguistic world human subjects can manage real things with. Real things are not described with meanings but merely represented and designated. Meanings represent the essence of things thus making them members of a category. In this sense, meaning is the base to create things (...) in as much as they constitute entities. Only through the operation of determination can meanings designate individual real things. Since meaningful categories are intended to particular purposes, meaning is intentional and inclusive. (shrink)

La lengua española nació cuando los hablantes del latín de la península Ibérica cambiaron de modo de pensar. Desde el pensar absoluto latino, asimilaron el pensar substantivo de los griegos a través del pensar cristiano. Haciendo una síntesis de estos tres pensares absolutos, crearon el pensar individual, el pensar abstracto y el pensar real. De este modo crearon lo que se puede designar como una ontología lingüística, la manifestación directa del pensar español. Los modos de pensar tienen que ver con (...) los modos de concebir lo que nos rodea. Ambos a dos preceden y determinan el pensamiento y la manifestación de las actividades libres del hombre, tanto si este es considerado individualmente, como si es considerado socialmente dentro del conjunto de hablantes que participan y contribuyen dentro de una comunidad lingüística. (shrink)

Mi concepción sobre el lenguaje parte de tres realidades ciertas: el hablar (Coseriu), el decir (Ortega y Gasset), y el conocer (Descartes, Kant, Ortega y Gasset), tres realidades tan ciertas como que yo vivo porque estoy haciendo algo ahora mismo. Y este hacer algo constituye mi vida (Ortega y Gasset). Yo soy porque vivo y porque tengo la necesidad de hablar con otros seres humanos, quienes constituyen mi circunstancia, para definirme a mí mismo (decir) sobre aquello de lo que hablo (...) para conseguir un fin, aunque este sólo sea pasajero y volátil. La aparición del hablar, decir y conocer en el acto lingüístico nos revela el pensamiento y lo que llamamos el lenguaje y la lengua. Además, estas realidades radican en mí, en el ser humano, y manifiestan la condición de ser del ser humano, quien es capaz de conocer creativamente, definirse ante la situación que analiza antes de hablar (=decir), y de hablar utilizando palabras que no son suyas sino de la comunidad lingüística (=la lengua, Coseriu) en la que vive (Ortega y Gasset). Así, pues, considero el lenguaje como realidad que subyace en la conciencia del ser humano individual que habla, dice y conoce. (shrink)

The changes known as the loss of inflexions in English (11th- 15th centuries, included) were prompted with the introduction of a new mode of thinking. The mode of thinking, for the Anglo-Saxons, was a dynamic way of conceiving of things. Things were considered events happening. With the contacts of Anglo-Saxons with, first, the Romano-British; second, the introduction of Christianity; and finally with the Norman invasion, their dynamic way of thinking was confronted with the static conception of things coming from the (...) Mediterranean. The history of English from the 11th to the 15th century meant the introduction, confrontation and adoption of a new mental conception of things, the static way of conceiving of things, both modes of thinking defining the language today. (shrink)

Empleando procedimientos de la lógica simbólica, se intenta contribuir a una mejor comprensión del ejercicio dialéctico llevado a cabo en el Parménides. La interpretación de las formas del ser y el no ser a partir de la oposición entre el objeto de conocimiento y el pensamiento acerca del mismo, abre la puerta a una manera original de enfocar el problema de la verdad en Platón. Puede resultar interesante, asimismo, la solución que se propone a la aporía planteada en Parménides 132b-c, (...) relativa a la confusión del pensamiento o el no ser con otras formas. (shrink)

Latin American rigorous thought has consisted of a reconstruction of western rigorous thought. This inflexion is not only limited to literary practice, it also, and most importantly, reaches all sciences, and here visibly touches the social sciences. As such, the relation between literature and t..

El decir es anterior y va más allá del hablar, se vale del hablar y constituye la determinación del hablar. No hay un hablar sin un decir y sí puede haber un decir sin un hablar. El acto lingüístico es la manifestación del lenguaje, la lengua, el pensamiento y el conocimiento. Es fruto de un hablar, está determinado por un decir, presupone un conocer y revela la actitud del hablante, un sujeto libre e histórico, que es, a la vez, sujeto (...) hablante, dicente y cognoscente, ante la realidad y el mundo. De la misma manera que no se da un hablar sin un decir, tampoco se da un decir sin un conocer. En su génesis más profunda el conocer determina al decir y éste al hablar. Así, pues, el «ser hablante» (Coseriu) es, a la vez, el sujeto «dicente» (Ortega y Gasset) y el sujeto cognoscente (Coseriu, Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger, Aristóteles), porque se realiza a sí mismo en el acto del hablar y éste está determinado por el acto del decir y en última instancia por el acto del conocer. El decir define al hablante ante la realidad y el mundo y da soporte a lo que es la realidad y el mundo, que no es más que aquello a lo que el sujeto hablante, dicente y cognoscente le atribuye el ser o realidad. El ser humano, «coexistencia actuante de mí o yo con la circunstancia o mundo» (Ortega y Gasset), se libera de la necesidad vital en la que está inmerso, de la circunstancia a la que está inexorablemente ligado, mediante el conocer. Por el conocer el ser humano atribuye a eso que le rodea y afecta «el ser», haciendo de ello «cosas» y «mundo» constituido por «cosas». Todo esto se manifiesta en el acto lingüístico, que es un acto creador en un triple sentido: crea las cosas y el mundo (contenidos de conciencia, significados), crea la realidad de las cosas y el mundo, y crea la expresión de lo que es las cosas y el mundo (el lenguaje y la lengua) mediante lo dicho (lektón) determinado esto por el pensamiento (lógos). El acto lingüístico es creación (poiesis) y es manifestación (apóphansis), acto de crear un mundo y acto de desvelar el mundo interior del sujeto hablante, dicente y cognoscente, acto de desvelar lo que está oculto y que ahora es no-oculto o verdadero (a-lethés). El hablar, el decir y el conocer son acciones vitales del ser humano. El hablar es una acción vital del sujeto creador que le viene de fuera, de la comunidad; el decir es la acción vital que le viene de dentro y que proyecta él mismo hacia fuera, hacia la comunidad; y el conocer es el acto mismo de creación de un sujeto, que es, opuestamente, libre e histórico, absoluto y limitado, creador de formas y participante de formas comunes creadas en la comunidad. El hablar en sí mismo, al igual que la lengua, es a-circunstancial y tiene que ver con la creación en términos absolutos e históricos. El decir como manifestación del interior del sujeto hablante, dicente y cognoscente tiene que ver con la verdad o aquello que se manifiesta desvelándose (a-létheia). De esta manera, podemos ver dos clases de pensamiento o logos: el logos a-circunstancial o intersubjetivo o histórico, lógos semantikós, y el logos que manifiesta una realidad interior y crea una realidad exterior desde el interior del sujeto creador o lógos apophantikós. La lingüística del decir que ahora se presenta recoge una propuesta en el mismo sentido hecha por Ortega y Gasset y es la continuación de la lingüística del hablar de Coseriu. Hace un replanteamiento de la realidad radical, el ser hablante de Coseriu, que es concebido ahora como el sujeto hablante, dicente y cognoscente. Estudia el acto lingüístico, acto del hablar, decir y conocer, como la manifestación primera de la intención significativa de cada sujeto. Se basa en los principios de la lingüística del hablar de Coseriu, especialmente en los que describen el plano universal e individual del hablar, es decir, los principios de la confianza en el hablar del otro y de la congruencia y coherencia en el hablar. Mira, por consiguiente, al acto lingüístico como «producción», como aquello que se crea en el acto único del hablar, decir y conocer. La finalidad de la lingüística del decir es llegar la génesis misma del lenguaje, que no es más que la génesis del acto lingüístico. Analiza el acto lingüístico como la manifestación del acto del conocer, el cual partiendo de la aísthesis o intuición sensible (Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger, Aristóteles) o intuición inédita del hablante (Coseriu), se descompone en una serie de operaciones intelectivas, cada una de las cuales contribuye a configurar de una manera dada la «aprehensión del ser» inicial e inédita. Estas operaciones intelectivas son: la selección, el establecimiento de una designación, la creación de una clase o esencia, la relación, la nominación y la determinación. Tras la presentación y justificación de lo que es cada uno de los conceptos indicados arriba (los cuatro primeros capítulos), el libro dedica un capítulo a cada una de estas operaciones intelectivas, analizada e ilustrada con ejemplos. Como ilustración de lo que puede ser el análisis aquí propugnado, se dedica un capítulo al análisis del adjetivo 'brisk’, adjetivo de conducta de la lengua inglesa. (shrink)

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is nothing but the development of an intuition by the subject thus transforming (...) it in words of a language. It is both individual and social. Since human subjects are free and historical, the study of speech acts is hermeneutics, that is, interpreting speech acts with knowing and the human reality. (shrink)

Estas reflexões têm como principal objetivo mostrar como a concepção do belo em Agostinho de Hipona é tributária da tradição platônico-aristotélica e das Escrituras. No que tange à primeira influência, a ênfase é colocada nas noções de simetria, de proporção, de forma, de unidade e, portanto, de belo. No que diz respeito às Escrituras, Agostinho considera em primeiro lugar o papel da criação e a ação de Deus no universo como o Ser a partir do qual todas as coisas se (...) mantêm harmônica e proporcionalmente vinculadas entre si. Neste universo, ao pôr o acento sobre o homem como a imagem e semelhança de Deus, o teólogo explora igualmente o conceito de participação, que também remete a Platão e às Escrituras. O texto termina apontando para o paradoxo, tipicamente estoico, do apesar de, isto é, apesar do mal, existe o bem, apesar do feio e do desgracioso, existe o belo. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish the importance of mathematical thinking in the work of Vilém Flusser. For this purpose highlights the concept of escalation of abstraction with which the Czech German philosopher finishes by reversing the top of the traditional pyramid of knowledge, we know from Plato and Aristotle. It also assumes the implicit cultural revolution in the refinement of the numerical element in a process of gradual abandonment of purely alphabetic code, highlights the new key code, together with the (...) technological and telematic culture and uses the concepts of game theory, of probability theory and computing to analize the society and culture. Of particular importance is the affirmation of a new kind of imagination, a projective one, ranging from the model to the world. Today's society and culture can´t be understood without resorting to the concepts and results coined and made ​​in the course of developing a type of thinking entirely dominated by the mathematics. The limits and boundaries of scientific disciplines overlap under number development, requiring reflection and rethinking traditional concepts of social and natural sciences. (shrink)

Human beings make themselves with language in history. Language defines human beings making them subjects of their being and mode of being. In this sense language is essential and exclusive of humans. The problem with language consists in explaining the reality of language, something internal to speakers but manifesting itself as external to them.

It is fundamental that, in philosophy, we make sure that we are not mistaking merely verbal disputes, or “conceptual” disputes, for substantive ones. This essay presents a tripartite framework that is useful for clarifying cases where it is difficult to tell whether we are engaged in substantive or non-substantive disputes. For this purpose, the essay offers some combinatorial possibilities between the following levels: verbal, conceptual, and objectual. We need to distinguish whether we are arguing about the world, concepts, or words (...) to avoid talking at cross-purposes and to recognize when our disputes are not worth the time. Distinguishing between these three levels can also throw light and guide research on conceptual engineering, metalinguistic negotiations, metaontology, and so on. (shrink)

The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an “anthrobotic” horizon, in which data analytics, statistics and probabilities throw our agential power into question. How can we avoid the consequences of a reified definition of intelligence as universal operation becoming imposed upon our destinies? It is here argued that the fantasised autonomy of automated intelligence presents a contradistinctive opportunity for philosophical consciousness to understand itself (...) anew as holistic and co-creative, beyond the recent “analytic” moment of the history of philosophy. Here we introduce the concept of “crealectic intelligence”, a meta-analytic and meta-dialectic aspect of consciousness. Intelligent behaviour may consist in distinguishing discrete familiar parts or reproducible functions in the midst of noise via an analytic process of segmentation; intelligence may also manifest itself in the constitution of larger wholes and dynamic unities through a dialectic process of association or assemblage. But, by contrast, crealectic intelligence co-creates realities in the image of an ideal or truth, taking into account the desiring agent imbued with a sense of possibility, in a relationship not only with the Real but also with the creative sublime or “Creal”. (shrink)

For ancient philosophers, philosophy was not only a theory about the big questions but also a way of life, yet it was not only a way of life but also a theory. Pierre Hadot showed the importance of philosophy as a way of life in antiquity. Moreover, he defended, as this paper demonstrates, the view that ancient philosophy was primarily a way of life and that philosophical discourse or theory played a secondary role. The paper argues against Hadot, taking the (...) paradigmatic Socratic way of life as an illustration, that theory is as crucial for philosophy as practice is. Doing spiritual exercises and living in a particular way was very important for the ancients, but so were truth and understanding reality. (shrink)

"Mi sono messo ancora una volta sulle orme del Nolano e ho scoperto altri sentieri di umanità intrecciata alla sua inquieta filosofia". Così il medico e filosofo napoletano Guido del Giudice parla del suo nuovo libro. L' Acrotismus, un neologismo bruniano che si riferisce alla summa della critica anti-aristotelica del Nolano, viene qui presentato nella sua prima traduzione integrale. Pubblicato a Wittenberg nel 1587, l'opera costituisce la riproposizione ampliata delle tesi discusse dal filosofo a Parigi due anni prima, nel corso (...) di una tumultuosa disputa accademica tenutasi presso il College de Cambrai. (shrink)

La tesis principal de este trabajo es que los modelos estadísticos facilitan explicaciones acerca de los errores que pueden cometer nuestros procedimientos de inferencia de datos a fenómenos, en el contexto de la estadística clásica o frecuentista. La explicación del error es una operación que, a su vez, ayuda a evitarlo en donde es evitable e intolerable; tolerarlo donde es inevitable y tolerable; y suspender el juicio donde es inevitable e intolerable. Todas estas operaciones son elementos de una práctica generadora (...) de evidencia confiable. Se ilustra esta tesis con el modelo lineal en econometría, el estimador de mínimos cuadrados ordinarios, el estimador y modelo de variables instrumentales y con los conceptos relacionados con las pruebas de hipótesis. Se pone especial énfasis en las propiedades de insesgadez, consistencia y precisión como caracterizaciones del tipo de error que se puede cometer usándo un estimador. Se sostiene que los modelos explican identificando patrones de dependencia contrafáctica entre características del mecanismo estocástico representadas por el modelo y características de los procedimientos inferenciales. (shrink)

Il rogo di Giordano Bruno e la sua inquieta filosofia continuano a far pensare; dal 1586 al 1590 il Nolano trascorse in Germania uno dei pochi periodi di serenità della sua esistenza tormentata ed errabonda: l'Oratio Valedictoria e l'Oratio Consolatoria, composte in quegli anni per esternare la sua riconoscenza nei confronti di chi lo aveva accolto con rispetto e magnanimità, sciolgono un vero e proprio inno a quegli ideali per la cui difesa l'ex domenicano lottò incessantemente, fino all'estrema conseguenza del (...) rogo di Campo de' fiori, il 17 febbraio 1600. Amore per la sapienza, tolleranza e libertà di pensiero, al di là di ogni divisione politica o religiosa, vengono qui affermati come criteri di distinzione tra ingegno e bestialità umana. (shrink)

Can we fruitfully apply creative ecology practices in the world of industrial production? Enter the crealectic method for innovation and self-innovation, aiming at fostering creative long-term thinking and acting. The crealectic method proposes five steps: Step 1—Resetting (doing tabula rasa); Step 2—Crealing (reconnecting with the “Creal”); Step 3—Profusing (letting ideas pour out without censorship); Step 4—Compossibilizing (connecting compatible ideas); Step 5—Realizing (understanding and making real). I describe a pilot test of the method within the Research and Development unit of Vattenfall, (...) a Swedish power company dedicated to fossil-free energy production. (shrink)

We study whether it is possible to generalise Seidenfeld et al.’s representation result for coherent choice functions in terms of sets of probability/utility pairs when we let go of Archimedeanity. We show that the convexity property is necessary but not sufficient for a choice function to be an infimum of a class of lexicographic ones. For the special case of two-dimensional option spaces, we determine the necessary and sufficient conditions by weakening the Archimedean axiom.