Mercedes Valmisa turns our attention to the relations between truth and practice in classical Chinese philosophy. In this tradition, truth is conceived of, in a pragmatic-like spirit, as a series of embodied beliefs and perspectives that lead to fitting dispositions, emotions, and actions (regardless of whether they accurately describe the world, or whether there are other competing beliefs and perspectives that equally accurately or inaccurately describe the world). This means that we should care about truth because of its normative (...) power to guide our behavior in the most fitting way, not because of a theoretical interest in accurately describing reality. Valmisa Oviedo traces the development of this conception of truth in the Mohists and Zhuangists, leading to two radically different sociopolitical and ethical positions: the Mohists used single-truth discourses to enforce ideological monopolies that could not allow pluralism in values, norms, beliefs, and practices, while the Zhuangists warned us against the dangers of such dogmatism. (shrink)

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the assumption that relations are primary to the constitution of the person, hence acting in the early Chinese context necessarily is interacting and co-acting along with others –human and nonhuman actors. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical (...) Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency –what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin 因). As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action also conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires great capacity of self and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response, which allows the agent to co-raise courses of action ad-hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines, opening a brand-new topic in Chinese and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

The first contribution, by Mercedes Valmisa, begins by repositioning the Zhuangzi 莊子 as a whole within pre-Qin thought under the impact of newly excavated materials. Moving away from the traditional classification of texts according to schools, it focuses instead on varying approaches to life issues. Centering the discussion on life situations and changes we have no control over, including the unpredictable vagaries of fate (ming 命), it outlines several typical responses. One is adaptation, finding ways to go along with (...) what life demands, and even availing oneself of the new opportunities it brings about. Another is a turning inward, a focus on the inner self, holding on to ethical and other standards and making sure on does the right thing regardless of the outcomes of one's actions. While the former appears in several chapters of the Zhuangzi, notably in chapter 6, the latter is central to the Qiongda yishi 窮達以時 (Failure and Success Depend on Opportunity), a manuscript excavated at Guodian. However tempting it may be to characterize one approach as Daoist and the other as Confucian, they both appear within the Zhuangzi together with a third approach to fate, showing the fluidity of philosophical discussion and the futility of thinking along the lines of traditional boundaries. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca establecer el origen y desarrollo del concepto de ley natural en Tomás de Aquino, especialmente la relación que se establece entre razón y voluntad. Recordemos que esta relación ha sido objeto de numerosos estudios, especialmente en referencia al mismo concepto en Francisco Suárez. El artículo trata el tema de manera objetiva y como testigo de lo que nuestro teólogo pensó y estableció en sus escritos. Al calificarlo como teólogo, entendemos desde dónde está hablando, es decir, desde (...) su condición de creyente y teniendo como fuente la misma Revelación. (shrink)

This chapter presents an analysis of Wang Bi’s (226-249 CE) hermeneutics and reception theory via the concept of “forgetting” (wang 忘) in his essay “Clarifying the Images” (Ming xiang 明象).

This paper is a critical review of the most relevant studies about the Levinasian concept of passivity. The purpose is to follow the way in which Levinas’s scholars have dealt with the following aspects: the relation between ethical passivity and the possibility of effective ethical agency, the origin of passivity, and the validity of ethical passivity in the public sphere. As a starting point for future research, I finally argue that the best way to read Levinas’s passive ethics is through (...) the dynamism between maximums and minimums present within it. This means that without sacrificing the omni comprehensive view of divine revelation and Jewish tradition, Levinas presents ethics as rationally understandable by everyone and philosophically defensible. Despite being biblically based, Levinas does not appeal to authority in supporting his view, he is confident in arguing rationally. This account could place Levinas in the way of public ethics, which consists in an ethos shared by all members of democratic societies. These minimums of justice could be the way to universalize Levinas’s ethics. (shrink)

Early Chinese texts make us witnesses to debates about the power, or lack thereof, that humans had over the course of events, the outcomes of their actions, and their own lives. In the midst of these discourses on the limits of the efficacy of human agency, the notion of ming 命 took a central position. In this article, I present a common pattern of thinking about the relationship between the person and the world in early China. I call it the (...) reifying pattern because it consisted in thinking about ming as a hypostasized entity with object-like features. Although external and independent, ming was not endowed with human qualities such as the capacities for empathy, responsivity, and intersubjectivity. The reification of fate implied an understanding of ming as an external, amoral, and determining force that limited humans without accepting intercommunication with them, thereby causing feelings of alienation, powerlessness, and existential incompetence. I first show that the different meanings of ming hold a sense of prevailing external reality, and hence can be connected to the overarching meaning of fate. Then, I offer an account of the process of reification of fate in early China and its consequences, theoretical and practical, through cases study of received (Mengzi 孟子) and found (Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道) texts. I end with some reflections on the implications of ming as a nonpersonal and nonsubjective type of actor for both early Chinese and twenty-first-century accounts of agency. (shrink)

研究早期中国哲学的学者均普遍认为，缺乏作者和思想学 派的资料，对以哲学为本的研究非常不利。就着这个观点，本文提出异议: 汉学研究所提供的文献、文学、语言、历史的知识，可融贯于早期中国哲学 的研究，并产生良好的影响。蒋韬在 2016 年提出了“汉学挑战”的论述。就此，本文论证，汉学正好 提供一个机会，结合不同的研究方法及角度，从而更有效地处理具体的哲 学议题。我以自己对“命”的研究为例，解释如何以多个文本为基础，梳理 哲学问题，做“没有作者的哲学”，并显示:融贯汉学研究所提供的各种方 法、知识、研究工具，不仅无损哲学研究，更为其注入新气象。我采取了“后学科”的研究角度:受到前学科文化(例如早期中国文 化)的启发，“后学科”的角度在提问时，往往从整体出发，不囿于各个学科 的既定模式和分类;并开辟新路向，容纳创意，追寻意义，以产生可行的新 联系。 Some scholars of early Chinese philosophy see the knowledge provided by Sinology as a challenge to the development of sound philosophical enquiry. What Sinology tells us about the historical context and the textual, material, and intellectual culture of the period is considered detrimental for engaging in philosophical research, reason why these scholars believe that Chinese philosophy must separate itself from Sinology. I argue that Sinology does not offer (...) a challenge but an opportunity to engage with a multitude of approaches and methods to more efficiently address philosophical problems and questions. I offer my own research as an example of how to integrate the knowledge and analytical tools offered by Sinology in a philosophical study of early China. Focusing on the most crucial Sinological challenge--the challenge to the notions of “book” and “author"--I show that using the methods and knowledge provided by other disciplines does not jeopardize but, much to the contrary, invigorates and revitalizes philosophical research. My perspective is post-disciplinary: inspired by pre-disciplinary cultures such as early China, post-disciplinarity engages inquiry holistically, suspending the patterns and categories established by discrete disciplines, forging new paths for creativity and the search of meaning, and allowing new viable connections to emerge. (shrink)

This paper leads us in reflections regarding the ontological status of a situation inspired by two main sources: the Zhuangzi--a multifarious compilation from Warring States China (ca. 4th c. BCE)--and José Ortega y Gasset's (1883-1955) Unas Lecciones de Metafísica (Some Lessons in Metaphysics)--the transcripts of a course on metaphysics by a Spanish philosopher of the early 20th century. Much as other ontologically subjective entities and events, situations do not preexist the intentional subject: instead, they are created alongside our act of (...) noticing. In Classical Chinese, shi , commonly rendered "propensity" and the closest the language comes to our concept of situation, denotes a dynamic process that incorporates the conscious subjective agent as well as other entities as constitutive elements. Here a situation is not reducible to the discrete phenomena and events that we can discern within a given space-time; rather, it necessitates our thinking about it to arise. These ontological reflections are important for a philosophy of action. They help us notice the role of attention in the creation of situations--as in the creation of worlds--hence the importance of understanding what the agent notices and fails to notice, what we privilege as worthy of our attention and what passes inadvertent among the world's plural affordances. The relational affordances that we actualize and reify as constituting a situation depend on what we are socialized and educated to see when looking at the world, thus situations and agents co-create one another over time. This acknowledgement is crucial to retrain our agency in order to illuminate our blind spots, overcome our uncritical certainties which generate absolutist tendencies, and move beyond fixed, reduced, and contingent corners from which to interpret the world. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas wrote a text later known as Quaestio de attributis and ordered it inserted in a precise location of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard more than a decade after composing this work. Aquinas assigned exceptional importance to this text, in which he confronts the debate on the issue of the divine attributes that swept the most important centres of learning in 13th Century Europe and examines the answers given to the problem by the representatives of the (...) four mainstream schools of his time: the Greek mystic Dionysius Areopagita, the Latin Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina. This in-depth study of Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestio de attributis (In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3) binds together the findings of previous research on the unique history of this text by reconstructing the historical circumstances surrounding its composition, shows that the Quaestio contains Aquinas’ final answer to the dispute on the divine attributes, and thoroughly examines his interpretation of Maimonides’ position on the issue of the knowledge of God by analysing this and other texts related to it chronologically and doctrinally. The examination of the Quaestio reveals the background of Thomas Aquinas’ renewed interest in Maimonides’ position on the issue and brings to light elements of Aquinas’ interpretation that are absent from his earlier references to Maimonides. Moreover, the chronological and doctrinal connection of the Quaestio de attributis to other Thomistic works with explicit references to Maimonides enables a reconstruction of his comprehensive approach to Maimonides’ teaching on the possibility and extent of the knowledge of God in the Guide of the Perplexed and highlights the place of Maimonides’ philosophical teachings in Thomas’ own thought in issues like "Being" as the proper name of God, the multiplicity of the divine names, the beatific vision in the afterlife, the causes that prevent the instruction of the multitude in divine matters and the role of faith and prophecy in the acquisition of the true knowledge of God in this life. The last chapter examines the reasons behind Aquinas’ silencing of Maimonides’ name when introducing his Five Ways for the knowledge of the existence of God, in spite of the evident relation between these and Maimonides’ Four Speculations. The study is completed with an extensive appendix that includes the text of the Quaestio de attributis with an English translation and the critical edition of several chapters of the 13th Century Latin translation of the Guide of the Perplexed known as Dux neutrorum. (shrink)

The article examines the first Hebrew Encyclopedia of Science, Yesodei ha-Tvunah u-Migdal ha-Emunah, by Medieval Jewish scholar Abraham Bar Hiyya from Saragossa (Iberian peninsula).

El artículo muestra la estrecha conexión existente entre el concepto de ética y el de tiempo mesiánico en la filosofía de Emmanuel Lévinas. Esto significa que la respuesta ética se da en un tiempo discontinuo en el que –además de romper la continuidad del tiempo ininterrumpido del progreso– el sujeto se convierte en el mesías que responde al sufrimiento del otro. Para lograr este propósito, el trabajo muestra la crítica de Lévinas a la historia ontológica como olvido de lo singular; (...) posteriormente presenta la posición intermedia entre la perspectiva ontológica y la mesiánica representada en el punto de vista de Bergson, para mostrar luego cómo –para Lévinas– es en la tradición judía donde es posible encontrar una respuesta ética al sufrimiento del otro en el ahora del tiempo mesiánico. (shrink)

Philosophers sometimes wonder whether academic work can ever be truly interdisciplinary. Whether true interdisciplinarity is possible is an open question, but given current trends in higher education, it seems that at least gesturing toward such work is increasingly important. This volume serves as a testament to the fact that such work can be done. Of course, while it is the case that high-level theoretical work can flourish at the intersection of dance and philosophy, it remains to be seen how we (...) might share this with undergraduate students. For many of us in philosophy and dance, a large number of the students we teach are neither philosophy nor dance majors. As such, we are familiar with the challenge of convincing our students to care about our fields. Both philosophy and dance, qua disciplines on a college campus, face similar challenges. These disciplines are often deeply misunderstood, frequently presumed to be “impractical” (a powerful, but confused objection), intimidating, and frivolous. In this chapter, we offer an account of the course we co-taught at Southern Utah University in the Spring of 2016 titled “Movement and Space” as a rough framework for how to introduce the intersection between philosophy and dance to students. We simultaneously attempted to break students of their misconceptions about philosophy and dance, and worked to engage students and professors alike in a truly interdisciplinary educational experience. Treating philosophy as an embodied endeavor, and employing philosophical concepts through the act of dance encouraged students and faculty alike to rethink the fundamental nature of aesthetics. (shrink)

This study tries to identify the core elements of the teaching of Albert the Great on the possibility of a natural knowledge of God and its sources in the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite.

Grappling with the marginalization of the marginal in Western thinking, this paper sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy and Johann Baptist Metz’s political theology in order to learn from their thoughts on the suffering of victims. For both Levinas and Metz, the idea of theodicy as an explanation of suffering is linked to the ontological conception of time and history, and therefore useless and unjustifiable by nature. The essential question of this research is how to give meaning to (...) the concrete suffering of humanity in order to redeem history from the concept of an evolutionary progress which limits the possibility of hearing the cries of the victims of history. This article will show how Levinas’s and Metz´s rejection of traditional theodicy is closely related to the concepts of memory and history and, therefore, the paper will demonstrate how traditional theodicy becomes for both thinkers an ethical theodicy. Consequently, the ethical account of theodicy replaces the attempt to negotiate the goodness and power of God with the pain of human beings. From this perspective, ethics is shaped by a response to the cry of victims which summons the subject to understand freedom as limited and subordinated to ethical responsibility. In responding to suffering, philosophy and theology can meet beyond idealism and dogmatism. (shrink)

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue is supposed to be the best way to solve the conflicts arising from rival religious hermeneutics and different modes to conceive the ideal of a good life in contemporary multicultural and pluralistic societies. In regard to communicative or dialogical reason, respectful coexistence can be reached only by argumentative communication between interested people. In this sense, only rational arguments, strong enough to pass the test of the shared rationality can be valid at a discursive level. However, Jewish (...) philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz challenge the symmetrical and rational-based dialogue in order to postulate an asymmetrical relation by giving voice to the other. For them, the core of interreligious and intercultural engagement does not start from rational agreements as Habermas, for instance, has proposed; but from prophetic and anamnestic reasons. (shrink)

La administración científica de la educación ha llevado a que las instituciones educativas muestren en los últimos años un marcado interés por los rankings, la rendición de cuentas y por una educación de calidad basada en la excelencia individual. Frente a esta dinámica, el presente trabajo muestra que las exigencias de una sociedad que ha venido de experiencias conflictivas o que quiere formar ciudadanos solidarios, requieren un cambio de perspectiva desde la autonomía individual hacia la construcción de escenarios de cooperación (...) y respeto por el otro. Mediante un análisis teórico, este artículo muestra la insuficiencia del modelo taylorista de educación y propone una educación para la incertidumbre como apertura hacia la cooperación y la solidaridad. (shrink)

La obra de Lévinas propone asumir la ética como Filosofía Primera. Allí convergen dos fuentes de inspiración filosófica, el pensamiento judío y la fenomenología, y la experiencia histórica de persecución, violencia y desconocimiento del otro que exigió a Lévinas criticar el totalitarismo ontológico griego con el propósito de hacer justicia a la Alteridad y dar primacía así a la Responsabilidad para con el Otro sobre la Libertad autónoma del Yo. Luego, el autor retorna la crítica de Lévinas a la fenomenología (...) de la conciencia y a la ontología hermenéutica de Heidegger, con la que Occidente lleva a término su limitada opción por el conocimiento y la manifestación del Ser. Rubio y Lévinas, en tercer lugar, señalan hacia una hermenéutica encarnada de nuestras relaciones con el Otro, a una reivindicación de la antropología filosófica que recupere el Sentido desde el Otro. Finalmente, el autor se refiere al terna de la muerte en Lévinas, y subraya, en relación con la desaparición del maestro Rubio que, nuestro adiós a él, significa el 'ante Dios' de todas nuestras relaciones no tematizables con el Otro y antes que todo. (shrink)

English version of collaborative text with Bruno Varela on his film La máquina de futuro (2024), published in the catalog of Umbrales experimental film section of the FICUNAM film festival.

This paper attempts to open the debate on the idea of local and territorial development of microregional nodes in the Province of Buenos Aires. Under this approach, a model that proposes the creation of Municipal Development Forum, with the participation of local actors, generate local development program is proposed. The proposal is formulated for territories over 5,000 and below 30,000 inhabitants. This criterion is based on the applicability of the proposed model to municipalities with potential for territorial development, large and (...) balanced internal consumption, but where progress is hindered by the proximity of one or two political jurisdictions of a larger productive scale that have became regional administrative centers. The development program will consider a diagnosis of the productive profile of the territory and its relationship with the characteristics and origin of goods or services consumed at the municipality. This territorial development model aims to move towards self-sufficiency on goods and services, to create new jobs and to promote effective and efficient use of local resources. In short, we propose to tackle territorial development from an innovative perspective, focusing on the creation of Municipal Development Fora that foster the improvement and growth of the productive system, the creation of jobs, local identity and the consumption of goods and services locally produced. (shrink)

El libro trata los siguientes temas de acuerdo a la normativa uruguaya: -/- NORMAS CONTABLES II EFECTIVO Y OTROS VALORES · Sistema de Banco y Fondo Fijo · Descuentos y endosos de documentos · Arqueo de Caja y Valores · Conciliación Bancaria III INVENTARIOS IV PROPIEDADES, PLANTA Y EQUIPO V ASIENTO DE APERTURA VI PRESENTACIÓN DE ESTADOS FINANCIEROS.

This article attempts to open the debate on a territorial development perspective that fixes the interest in organized territories that are characterized by the existence of a community with a local identity, politically and administratively regulated. We conceive these territories as subjects of development promotion interventions. For this we propose a model for the creation of Municipal Development Forums, which with the participation of local actors, can generate a tailor-made Local Development Program. The development program will consider a diagnosis of (...) the productive profile of the territory and its relationship with the characteristics and origin of goods or services consumed at the municipality. Based on the diagnosis, the causes of the decoupling between the local production system and consumption needs can be detected. And with this, find a way to readjust local production systems to meet the demand for goods and services of the inhabitants, generating new companies and encouraging local consumption. (shrink)

Often, there are conceptual differences between politicians, officials, academics and professionals on key concepts related to forms of administrative organization of the State and in relation to the categorization of the various subjects who directs their actions. Settle these differences contribute to the implementation of the modernization of the State. It is also necessary to distinguish conceptually between different degrees of protection can be invoked by natural and legal persons in the administration. To help settle these conceptual differences, we will (...) propose some key definitions related to governance, from a literature review and analysis of the actions of the state. (shrink)

This article seeks to establish the development of rural communities, with up to 500 inhabitants, with the creation of a Rural Tourism Development Forum and a Tourism Development Program with local identity. It is proposed to capitalize on cultural assets and local knowledge, to strengthen the profile and tourist circuits, local services and enterprises, agro-tourism and other related economic and social activities. The objective is to contribute to territorial tourism development from an innovative perspective, which, based on the efficient use (...) of local resources, generates employment and improves the quality of life of its inhabitants, capitalizing on the advantages of tourist activity. The methodology used consisted in analyzing the problems of local development, identifying the obstacles and conceiving tourism as a solution and sustenance that allowed the elaboration of the model. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Varela’s Radical Proposal: How to Embody and Open Up Cognitive Science” by Kristian Moltke Martiny. Upshot: I examine Varela’s relationship with Husserl’s phenomenology, highlighting Varela’s acknowledgment of the pragmatic dimension of its phenomenological reduction. I argue that Varela sees, in some developments of phenomenology, a deconstruction of the subject-object duality and an embodied view of the mind. I also highlight the existential dimension of Varela’s radical proposal, which contributes to (...) further opening up and embodying cognitive science. (shrink)

El artículo consta de cuatro partes. En la primera parte, la introducción, señalo algunos aspectos de la importancia del proyecto. Segundo, describo y evalúo como Varela interpreta la filosofía. Tercero, exploro su eclecticismo dentro de su filosofía. Por último, explico el concepto de utilidad en el quehacer filosófico de Varela. Estos tres conceptos: filosofía, eclecticismo y utilidad están correlacionados en su obra. La filosofía con la recta razón. El eclecticismo, o lo que Varela llama la “verdadera filosofía,” (...) con la sabia selección de argumentos, incluyendo diversos métodos para explorar nuestras experiencias cotidianas, y la utilidad con la mesurada evaluación de nuestra conducta, incluyendo el bien común. Dado que estos tres conceptos son polisémicos, ellos pueden ser manipulados, y de hecho han sido tergiversados, por pensadores que han tratado de explicar el pensamiento filosófico vareliano con fines partidistas, ya sea con buenas intenciones o con fines ideológicos tendenciosos. (shrink)

The philosophy by Husserl has always been a very interesting topic for cognitive scientists. Indeed, there is a strong analogy between the method of phenomenological reduction and the theories of mind developed by cognitive science in the last fifty years. The method of reduction is based on the concept of reality as a product of mind. Cognitive science seems to agree with this view but it is still difficult to elaborate a cognitive interpretation of the Husserl phenomenology which is philosophically (...) correct. The best attempt is that by Francisco Varela; thanks to the philosophic teaching of Humberto Maturana, he offers us a terribly reliable and audacious interpretation of Husserl even if complex for the role which plays between two necessities: the former is to construct neurophenomenology emphasizing the philosophy of Husserl like the only conceptual architecture able to study experience directly and the latter (which) is to found the enactive paradigm for cognitive science referring to Buddhist psychology. (shrink)

Spanish version of my analysis of Oaxaca-based experimental filmmaker Bruno Varela's 2022 feature-length film El Prototipo, which draws on ideas from Philip K. Dick's novel Valis.

An analysis of some work by the Oaxaca-based Mexican experimental filmmaker and video artist Bruno Varela via the latter’s reading of the late U.S. philosopher Stanley Cavell, especially Cavell’s 1982 essay “The Fact of Television.” This essay focuses on the aesthetic possibilities of the very constitution of the electronic image, based in Cavell’s understanding of television’s dependence on notions of “switching,” as opposed to “succession,” as well as how those notions play a role in Varela’s understanding of what (...) it is to critique communications media while retaining their communal potential. Audiovisual work by Varela discussed in this essay include Línea 3 (2010-11) and Materia oscura (Dark Matter, 2016). (shrink)

In this article, I contend that the three Cuban philosophers/pedagogues of the nineteenth century – Félix Varela y Morales, José de la Luz y Caballero, and Enrique José Varona were responsible for overcoming the teaching of late scholastic at the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Jerome of Havana. Against late scholastic philosophers and pedagogues who preferred syllogistic logic and the authority of tradition over induction, they argued in favor of the latter over the first. Since they defended liberal (...) and republican ideas, they also argued against those who appeal to the authority of tradition rather than to our ordinary experiences. Of course, their liberal spirit challenged not only the tyrannical regime imposed by Spain at the time but any other regime whose authority depends on force rather than on the will of the people. (shrink)

Current approaches in psychology have replaced the idea of a centralized, self-present identity with that of a diffuse system of contextually changing states distributed ecologically as psychologically embodied and socially embedded. However, the failure of contemporary perspectives to banish the lingering notion of a literal, if fleeting, status residing within the parts of a psycho-bio-social organization may result in the covering over of a rich, profoundly intricate process of change within the assumed frozen space of each part. In this paper (...) I show how thinking from this more intimate process may transform current views of metaphor, the unconscious, and the relation between affect and cognition. (shrink)

In a series of lectures on Ethical Know-How, Francisco Varela explains that he is venturing 'into the territory of ethical thought ... Ethics is a new terrain for me, and what I have to say here must be taken in the sphere of adventure more than anything else'. On this adventure Varela is very much influenced by Hubert Dreyfus and his analysis of expertise. Similar to the way that Dreyfus attempts to formulate an ethical theory derived from his (...) analysis of expertise, Varela attempts to do this based on his enactive principles. I'll argue that, despite being inspired by Dreyfus' account of expert practice and embodied coping, and retaining the term 'ethical expertise, Varela offered important correctives to the specific limitations that can be found in Dreyfus's view. I'll also argue that we can resolve some tensions in Varela's account, and extend it to include a skillful form of deliberation that can play an important role in setting up environments or even rules of society, which through the enactive reciprocity of relations between agentive organism and environment, can facilitate our actions and make us who we are. (shrink)

Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela ground the affectively, valuatively felt contingency of intentional acts of other-relatedness in what they presume to be a primordial neutral point of pre-reflective conscious auto-affective awareness. Through meditative practice, we can access this pre-reflective state , and avail ourselves of ‘unconditionally intrinsic goodness', 'spontaneous compassion', 'luminosity', 'blissfulness', and ' a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence'. But how do such feelings emerge as ultimate outcomes of a philosophy of groundlessness? (...) Aren't they motivated by a sort of 'will to goodness', a preferencing of one affective dimension over others? It would seem that groundlessness for Varela and Thompson doesn't apply to the thinking of affect and desire. Despite their claim that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the will, they appear not to recognize that the positive affectivities they associate with meditative practice are, as dispositions of feeling opposed to other dispositions, themselves forms of willing. Phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty show that attention, as a species of intention, is sense-making, which means it is sense-changing. Attention is affectively, valuatively and meaningfully implicated in what it attends to as co-participant in the synthesis, creation, constitution of objects of regard. As auto-affection turns reflexively back toward itself, what it finds is not the normative sameness and constancy of a neutral positivity( blissful, self-less compassion and benevolence toward all phenomena) but a newly sensing being. Thus, the basis of our awareness of a world isn’t simply compassionate, empathic relational co-determinacy, but the motivated experience of disturbing CHANGE in relational co-determinacy. (shrink)

What would the Merleau-Ponty of Phenomenology of Perception have thought of the use of his phenomenology in the cognitive sciences? This question raises the issue of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the relationship between the sciences and philosophy, and of what he took the philosophical significance of his phenomenology to be. In this article I suggest an answer to this question through a discussion of certain claims made in connection to the “post-cognitivist” approach to cognitive science by Hubert Dreyfus, Shaun Gallagher and (...) Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch. I suggest that these claims are indicative of an appropriation of Merleau-Ponty’s thought that he would have welcomed as innovative science. Despite this, I argue that he would have viewed this use of his work as potentially occluding the full philosophical significance that he believed his phenomenological investigations to contain. (shrink)

According to the “Embodied Cognition” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the three landmark texts in the 4E cognitive science tradition are Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch’s The Embodied Mind, and Andy Clark’s Being There. In my first section, I offer a phenomenological interpretation of these three texts, identifying recuring affirmations of the figure of dance alongside explicit marginalization of the practice of dance, perhaps in part due to cognitive science’s overemphasis on (...) cognition to the exclusion of affect. In my second section, drawing on my previous interpretations of proto-affect theorists (including Spinoza, Deleuze, and Fanon), I channel this tension in 4E cognitive science into a dancing partnership with human science psychology, suggesting three “choreographic provocations” for therapeutic practice and psychological research, namely (1) treating clients/subjects as dancers, (2) reimagining research and therapy as improvised duets between practitioners and clients/subjects, and (3) pursuing an ideal of freer movement and an emergent flourishing singularity for clients/subjects. Finally, I reformulate these three choreographic provocations in terms of my new theoretical method of “dancing-with,” as well as the four psychological prerequisites for flourishing posited by my figuration philosophy of dance. (shrink)

Although Heidegger thinks cybernetics is the “supreme danger,” he also thinks that it harbours within itself poiēsis, the “saving power.” This article providesa justification of this position through an analysis of its relation to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s Santiago theory of cognition and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia theory. More specifically, it argues that Maturana and Varela’s criticism of cybernetics and their concomitant theory of “autopoiesis” constitutes the philosophical disclosure of “Being itself,” and that the extension (...) of Santiago theory’s various different conceptualizations of poiēsis to Gaia theory makes possible the rise of the “saving power.”. (shrink)

Spanish version of collaborative essay with Oaxaca-based Mexican experimental filmmaker Bruno Varela on his found footage project La máquina de futuro. Published on the website Los Experimentos together with the release of Varela's diptych Anáhuac contra los robots, consisting of the films La máquina de futuro and La ranura en el tiempo.

Many eco-pagans explain their intimate relationship with aspects of the natural environment in terms of spirits of place. Such relationships emerge from a situated embodied knowing that enables eco-pagans to think with place; the ambiguity of that phrase is productive. While this process consists in both using a place as a tool to think with and thinking together with a place, it simultaneously defies dualist reduction. These examples of situated embodied knowing challenge conventional dualist notions and we are led to (...) a relational notion of personhood where the self emerges from a matrix of bodymind and place. Because theorising embodied knowing in eco-paganism pushes us beyond ontological dualism, it demands an embodied epistemology and a model of embodied cognition. Philosopher and psychologist Gendlin provides the former, while my enactive process model answers for the second. The enactive process model synthesises Gendlin's process philosophy with the work of Varela and colleagues, who understand cognition as ‘embodied action’, a process they call ‘enactive’. Eco-pagan practice can awaken us from the dualistic dream that we are separate from the ‘wisdom of the body’ and thus models a strategy for re-embodiment. (shrink)

This essay argues that, despite the potential for an encounter between Stanley Cavell’s thought and found-footage experimental filmmaking, this has not yet taken place because the early Cavell’s picture of films as autonomous “wholes,” together with his "global-holistic" conception of modernism, prevented him from appreciating the expressive possibilities of filmic fragments. I then argue that these impediments to an encounter with found footage recede in Cavell’s later thought, as he moves away from a concern with modernism and as J. L. (...) Austin’s How to Do Things with Words comes to play a greater role in his film writing. In this late period, Cavell no longer conceives of topics of film criticism as filmic “wholes” but rather, more loosely, along the lines of what Austin called “total speech situations.” I claim that the culmination of this turn lies in Cavell’s writing on the expressive powers of collections. In closing, I demonstrate the possibilities of the late Cavell’s thinking about collections and “passionate utterances” for found-footage filmmaking by discussing Mexican experimental filmmaker Bruno Varela’s Monolito (2019), with particular attention to how Varela uses archival footage to fulfill the exigencies of finding new modes of expression at just the moment when a world is receding from view. (shrink)

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains (...) where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)

Definition The authors’ definition of the autopoietic system has evolved through the years. One of them states that an autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (1) through their interactions and transformations regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (2) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they exist by specifying the (...) topological domain of its realization as such a network (Varela 1979, p. 13). Nearly the same formula was earlier used to define an autopoietic machine (Maturana and Varela 1973/1980, 1984/1987, p. 135). (shrink)

The 20th Century is the starting point for the most ambitious attempts to extrapolate human life into artificial systems. Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, Claude Shannon’s Information Theory, John von Neumann’s Cellular Automata, Universal Constructor to the Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence to Maturana and Varela’s Autopoietic Organization, all shared the goal of understanding in what sense humans resemble a machine. This scientific and technological movement has embraced all disciplines without exceptions, not only mathematics and physics but also biology, sociology, psychology, economics (...) etc. New terms were developed, such as “information”, “organization”, “entropy”, “communication”, “encryption”, “computation” and “algorithmics” to mention a few, all which had an enormous impact on artificial systems. Our work follows this historical track but with a reversed order of priorities. Instead of deducing a reduced group of human acts into an artificial environment, we deduce the human aspects of machines by extrapolating algorithmic methodologies into everyday life acts. The present informational theories were insufficiently powered to achieve this objective without developing a new theoretical approach. Hence, our research is directed towards an expansion of the current informational theories. (shrink)

In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autopoiesis and other organisation theories is inconclusive for three reasons: (...) First, non-living self-organising processes like autocatalysis meet the defining features of autopoiesis without being teleological; second, organisational approaches, whether defined in terms of the closure of constraints, self-determination or autonomy, are unable to specify teleological normativity, that is, the individuation of an ultimate beneficiary; third, all self-organised systems produce local order by maximising the throughput of energy and/or material (obeying the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle) and thereby are specifically organised to undermine their own critical boundary conditions. Despite these inadequacies, an alternative approach called teleodynamics accounts for teleology. This theory shows how multiple self-organising processes can be collectively linked so that they counter each other’s MEP principle tendencies to become codependent. Teleodynamics embraces – not ignoring – the difficulties of self-organisation, but reinstates teleology as a radical phase transition distinguishing systems embodying an orientation towards their own beneficial ends from those that lack normative character. (shrink)

Ecological Psychology and Enactivism both challenge representationist cognitive science, but the two approaches have only begun to engage in dialogue. Further conceptual clarification is required in which differences are as important as common ground. This paper enters the dialogue by focusing on important differences. After a brief account of the parallel histories of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism, we cover incompatibility between them regarding their theories of sensation and perception. First, we show how and why in ecological theory perception is, crucially, (...) not based on sensation. We elucidate this idea by examining the biological roots of work in the two fields, concentrating on Gibson and Varela and Maturana. We expound an ecological critique of any sensation-based approach to perception by detailing two topics: classic retinal image theories and perception in single-celled organisms. The second main point emphasizes the importance of the idea of organism-environment mutuality and its difference from structural coupling of sensations and motor behavior. We point out how ecological - phenomenological methods of inquiry grow out of mutualism and compare Gibson’s idea of visual kinesthesis to Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the lived body. Third, we conclude that Ecological Psychology and varieties of Enactivism are laying down different paths to pursue related goals. Thus, convergence of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism is not possible given their conflicting assumptions, but cross-fertilization is possible and desirable. (shrink)

From his earliest work forward, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new ontology of nature that would avoid the antinomies of realism and idealism by showing that nature has its own intrinsic sense which is prior to reflection. The key to this new ontology was the concept of form, which he appropriated from Gestalt psychology. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to give a positive characterization of the phenomenon of form which would clarify its ontological status. Evan Thompson has recently taken up (...) Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as the basis for a new, “enactive” approach to cognitive science, synthesizing it with concepts from dynamic systems theory and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. However, Thompson does not quite succeed in resolving the ambiguities in Merleau-Ponty’s account of form. This article builds on an indication from Thompson in order to propose a new account of form as asymmetry, and of the genesis of form in nature as symmetry-breaking. These concepts help us to escape the antinomies of Modern thought by showing how nature is the autoproduction of a sense which can only be known by an embodied perceiver. (shrink)

Upshot: In our target article we claimed that, at least since Weber and Varela, enactivism has incorporated a theoretical commitment to one important aspect of Jonas’s philosophical biology, namely its anthropomorphism, which is at odds with the methodological commitments of modern science. In this general reply we want to clarify what we mean by anthropomorphism, and explain why we think it is incompatible with science. We do this by spelling out what we call the “Jonasian inference,” i.e., the idea (...) that we are entitled, based on our first-person experience of teleology, to take the appearance of teleology in other living beings at face value. (shrink)