Altruism and solidarity are concepts that are closely related to organ donation for transplantation. On the one hand, they are typically used for encouraging people to donate. On the other hand, they also underpin the regulations in force in each country to different extents. They are often used indistinctly and equivocally, despite the different ethical implications of each concept. This paper aims to clarify to what extent we can speak of altruism and solidarity in the predominant models of organ donation. (...) It also raises the ethical question of whether these categories are adequate as a basis for such models, bearing in mind that organs are a scarce resource and that a shortage of them may mean that fewer lives are saved or improved. (shrink)

This study's focus was to determine students' English competency level after exposure to video lessons as supplemental materials. The respondents of the study were 139 Grade 9 students of Mahaplag National High School coming from four sections enrolled for School Year 2022-2023. Quasi-experimental method of research particularly the pretest-posttest design was utilized in the study. Frequency counts, mean percentage score, weighted mean, standard deviation, and paired samples T-test were utilized in data analysis. Results of the study revealed that the competency (...) level of the students on all three learning competencies before the exposure to video lessons is in the poor category. On the other hand, it was revealed in the study that after exposure to video lessons and through the administered post-test, students’ competency levels improved, which now belongs to the fair category. As to the student’s acceptance level of video lessons as supplemental materials, it was found that students positively accept video lessons as supplemental materials for selected English 9 competencies. It was also ascertained that there was a statistically significant increase in the scores of the students on all three competencies after exposure to video lessons. Furthermore, there was a significant increase in students' overall scores on the three competencies. From the results of the study, it can be concluded that video lessons can be a great supplemental material in teaching English 9 competencies. (shrink)

This study assesses the student learning styles and academic performance in modular learning among Grade IV, V, and VI learners of Hindang Central School. This considered the learning styles and academic performance of the respondents in modular learning. A total of 252 learners from Hindang Central School participated as respondents in the evaluative method of research that consists of two parts questionnaires. This study used a modified survey questionnaire from the University of California at Merced, Student Advising and Learning Center (...) to gather the data of the respondents. As to the significance of learning styles and academic performances of the respondents in modular learning, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the significant differences. The study's findings indicated that auditory learning was the respondents' preferred method of learning. This learning style is best through speaking or listening. Moreover, auditory learners prevail dominantly amidst the health crisis faced. The respondents' academic achievement in the academic year 2020–2021 was also revealed to be Very Satisfactory. According to the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), there was no apparent connection between learning preferences and academic achievement in the new typical education. Therefore, there was no relation or correlation between the two variables. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the evolution of the Professional Technical Modality in Secondary Education in Argentina since its inception. How has it been traversed by the various productive models, from the foundation of the first technical school with Fordism to local development? What were the main policy milestones throughout this process? In particular, the study incorporates the design and principles of entrepreneurship in the current educational model and the basic tools for entrepreneurial development that contribute to local technological innovation. To conclude, (...) the impact of these new educational policies is evaluated in this dynamic socio-economic context. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was focused on analyzing the adjacent factors related to human rights in women victims of sexual violence in the context of the armed conflict. The quantitative method of descriptive approach was selected under the systematic review technique using the PRISMA guide. As a result, it was obtained that women continue to be instrumentalized in wars, their physical and psychosocial vulnerability persisting in all spheres of life; This being a phenomenon that continues to growglobally given the (...) characteristics associated with political, social and religious structures. As a conclusion, it was identified that, although there are jurisprudential guidelines and policies, these are insufficient and do not protect the human rights of women victims. (shrink)

Ante estas obras de Victoria Diehl es fácil pensar en conocidos modelos anatómicos en cera o en la iconografía de Venus y Evas de las que un vistazo rápido a cualquier libro de historia del arte nos mostraría múltiples variantes. Algo de todo ello hay aquí. Pero también hay algo que hace que los espectadores se detengan a pensar. Algo más allá de lo reconocible que hace que las lenguas del pasado se muevan a un ritmo actual. Hermes, al (...) trasladar sus mensajes los interpreta, los adapta al interlocutor y al medio; los transforma, los traduce, los recrea. Y logra ponernos en movimiento. [...]. (shrink)

O sistema político brasileiro preenche, formalmente, os requisitos mínimos de uma poliarquia, ou seja, um sistema democrático em que o poder é atribuído com base em eleições livres e em que há ampla participação política e concorrência pelos cargos eletivos. Esse sistema implica disputa pelo poder, tolerância à diversidade de opiniões e oposição política. No entanto, o que se percebe na sociedade é que essa estrutura formal não garante a democratização dos recursos socialmente produzidos, como bens, direitos e serviços básicos (...) proporcionados pelo Estado. Assim, destaca-se que a questão democrática vai além do estabelecimento das regras formais que caracterizam esse tipo de regime. É necessário retomar o conteúdo social da democracia e ampliar os direitos de cidadania para reduzir a distância entre as esferas formal e real1 ; afinal, a cidadania plena é condição indispensável para a concretização dos direitos humanos. A estruturação dos direitos de cidadania no Brasil esteve constantemente vinculada aos interesses das elites socioeconômicas e políticas; poucas vezes foi resultado de um projeto com ampla participação política e voltada para a inclusão social. Com base nessa constatação, o historiador José Murilo de Carvalho 2 desenvolveu uma teoria de que vivemos em uma “estadania”, pois muitos de nossos direitos seriam resultantes de uma “concessão” relativa do Estado, feita de cima para baixo a uma população muitas vezes desinteressada da “coisa pública”. Dessa forma, os direitos costumam ser vistos como concessões ou benefícios oferecidos pelos grupos dominantes ao restante da população. Ainda de acordo com o autor, a construção da cidadania no Brasil inverteu a ordem cronológica apontada por T. H. Marshall, uma vez que primeiro foram estabelecidos os direitos sociais e ampliados os direitos políticos, durante o período ditatorial do Estado Novo, para depois serem implementados os direitos civis, o que gerou a formação de uma pirâmide invertida dos direitos. Já o cientista político carioca Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos utiliza o conceito de “cidadania regulada” para identificar a concessão dos direitos por parte do Estado como maneira de mediar possíveis conflitos entre classes. Nesse caso, o Estado controlaria os grupos sociais por meio de práticas regulatórias, que variam entre o aumento da participação (proporção de indivíduos que possuem acesso aos direitos) e a redução da liberalização (capacidade das instituições sociais de garantir a consolidação dos direitos). Aqui, o governo Vargas deve ser mencionado, uma vez que Santos cita, como políticas desse período, a criação das leis trabalhistas e o controle dos sindicatos. Como consequência, a classe trabalhadora conquistou direitos, mas perdeu poder de contestação. No entanto, identifica-se na história do Brasil alguns momentos em que as mobilizações políticas ganharam destaque, em geral tendo como referência a luta por direitos sociais e liberdade. Com base em um conjunto de práticas repressivas, a ditadura militar, iniciada em 1964, impôs um retrocesso à construção da democracia e dos direitos humanos no país. E foi então que movimentos populares e sindicais do campo e da cidade passaram a exigir distribuição justa dos bens produzidos pelo trabalho e maior participação social nas decisões sobre os rumos adotados pelo país. Além disso, foi pela resistência à ditadura e durante a redemocratização formal do Brasil que diversos grupos se fortaleceram para as lutas subsequentes em prol dos direitos humanos. Em meio ao processo de redemocratização, foi promulgada a Constituição Federal de 1988, que contou com destacada participação social em sua elaboração e incorporou diversas reivindicações populares, sobretudo no campo das liberdades civis e políticas. A constituição brasileira estabelece alguns mecanismos de participação política, como o plebiscito, o referendo e a iniciativa popular (artigo 14), para garantir, ao menos no âmbito formal, a democracia participativa. Outro exemplo é o orçamento participativo, modelo em que os cidadãos, por meio de uma complexa ferramenta de gestão pública, participam da elaboração e da fiscalização do orçamento, principal instrumento de distribuição dos recursos públicos. Outro momento de mobilização política de nossa história recente foram as jornadas de junho, que aconteceram em 2013, nas quais parte da população saiu às ruas para lutar pela efetivação de alguns direitos, como transporte público de qualidade e gratuito, e para questionar o funcionamento da democracia. A socióloga fluminense Maria Victoria Benevides chama de democracia semidireta as formulações institucionais firmadas pela Constituição de 1988. O objetivo do modelo participativo de democracia proposto pela Constituição não é “substituir” o sistema representativo, mas possibilitar a conscientização social, essencial para a efetivação da cidadania, que só é possível com uma participação política permanente, plena e ativa de todos os cidadãos. Contudo, a Constituição ainda apresenta muitas limitações, em especial no que se refere às dimensões social e econômica. Nessas dimensões residem os principais obstáculos à construção e à concretização dos direitos humanos e da cidadania na vida social brasileira. Na verdade, há grande diferença entre a cidadania formal e a cidadania real no Brasil. A cidadania formal é a que está presente nas leis, imprescindível para a liberdade e para as garantias individuais; sem ela, estaríamos à mercê da vontade de qualquer grupo dominante. Ou seja, ela garante igualdade de todos perante a lei. Já a cidadania real, aquela do dia a dia, mostra justamente o contrário, isto é, que não existe igualdade entre os seres humanos e que prevalece a desigualdade em todas as dimensões da sociedade. Apesar da luta de diferentes setores da sociedade, principalmente aqueles ligados às minorias sociais, no dia a dia percebemos que a maioria da população tem seus direitos desrespeitados. Portanto, apesar de existirem formalmente, a democracia, a cidadania e os direitos ainda são bastante restritos. Podemos dizer que o Brasil é uma democracia em construção, em todos os sentidos. O rumo e o alcance que ela terá vão depender da participação da população brasileira, em especial da juventude, nas lutas pela implantação dos direitos humanos para todos os cidadãos. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary approach to the semiotics of emotion offers insights on emotion as a semantic category organising an array of feelings, thoughts and sensations into meaningful (communicable) terms. This is achieved via an exploration of the role of perspective-taking in making meanings that are felt rather than expressly articulated through words. Forming a semiotic system based on embodied experiences and their contexts, emotions, as semantic categories, are the first stage in processes of expression and communication. I lay the groundwork for (...) an interdisciplinary semiotics of emotion in accordance with findings and stances taken in the fields of literary and cultural studies, neuroscience, and cognitive and comparative psychology. Narrative empathy (sometimes called narrative emotion), like emotion per se, stands upon processes of communication involving the interpretive capacities of feeling, cognitive processes of identification, and perspective-taking. Feeling, beginning as an interpretation of sensorial and neurologically driven values, intensifies through the cognitive-affectual interpretative processes of perspective-taking. With recursive (multi-perspectival) feeling resulting in intensifications of feeling we recognise as emotion, I define emotion as a complex recursive pattern of feeling and affect that calls attention to itself in terms that are readily identifiable with semantic categories such as love, hate, shame, sadness, and anger. (shrink)

Narrated in the first person, Peter Carey’s novel about the life of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly incorporates other aspects of speech derived both from Carey’s personal experience and from the editorial process. Kelly's voice is toned down to some extent by virtue of the latter, introducing expressions Kelly himself would not have used. Identifying these elements, along with the specific attributes of Kelly’s own speech, enjoins a diversity of cultural and social groupings that intersect and, in some instances, compete with (...) or contradict one another. Shifts in speakers might be signalled by textual markers or by adopting different expressive qualities and speech patterns, which may or may not include a change in grammatical person. In this novel, at one instance, a shift in person is apparent, but I want to argue, not necessarily a shift in the identity of the speaker because, although the grammatical voice shifts, its qualitative features are largely unaltered. The shift nonetheless introduces a significant change. Paradoxically, as far as literary theory is concerned, the subjective qualities produced through voice mean that stylisations of speech may be indicative of character point of view, rather than what is understood to be narrative voice, because they might function in narrative as inflections of speech that do not correspond to the established voice of the grammatically instanced speaker—offering a focalised perspective instead. The shift in True History presents problems in these terms, however: the point of view instanced here is clearly that belonging to the speaker, though the voice is Kelly’s, for the narrator’s point of view determines the generality of the descriptive terms where once these were specific and personal. Had the novel been narrated wholly in third person, an unproblematic reading of Kelly’s point of view, suggested by the use of his voice, would be possible. But the shift undermines this—Kelly’s point of view gives way to another, instanced in the shift that takes place in narrative voice. Carey, in other words, inverts the convention. This is not an instance of free indirect style or discourse, where grammatical mood is at odds with the speaker’s position and tenses align with the implicated subject position of another. The same features of voice that might identify character point of view must, in absence of any disparity of mood or tone, function in respect to narrative voice to convey something of its speaker’s subjectivity, and this seems apparent here: the speaker shares Kelly’s subjective emotional and intellectual perspective, but no longer occupies the subject position. Carey’s voicing of the bushranger therefore complicates distinctions between voice and point of view by revealing qualitative features of voice to be important to the question of who is speaking the narrative. (shrink)

Using hokku poet Basho’s aesthetics of wandering, as defined by Thomas Heyd, I argue that, by detailing the excruciating pointlessness of work undertaken according to commands that take little or no account of their feasibility, Richard Flanagan’s novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (which takes its title from Basho's work) transforms the features of this aesthetics into the lived experience of prisoners of war on the ‘line’. In doing so, Flanagan transfers Basho’s aesthetics into a represented actuality through (...) the privileging of subjectivity over identity and the dissolution of the body on the line. The three prongs to Basho’s aesthetics are found in Flanagan’s novel. In this, Flanagan is identifying the complexity of meanings evident in the terminology of such aesthetics, rendering what appears positive in the context of Basho’s poetry negative in its practical application as this is articulated through the prisoners’ wartime experiences. Rather than being formative, Flanagan’s novel suggests wartime experience has a complexly ‘opposite’ effect. This is apparent in the complications of identity represented in post-war terms as a disunity (rather than a coherent unity), as articulated through the use of spatial metaphors that reverse the formative intensities of subjectivity and body through symbolic acts of dispersal and dissolution. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to explore the possibility that the success of narrative in stimulating empathy comes from the relation that narrative bears to emotion—where emotion is a kind of proto-narrative that possibly accounts for the structure and range of narratives themselves —and that our familiarity with emotions as micro-narratives results in the motivation of narrative. That is, the resolution of events occurs in terms of feeling rather than other forms of closure, since other forms of closure represent literal (...) endings as, quite simply, the cessation of events whereas emotion achieves its end by being felt or translated in empathetic terms and in ways that endure beyond the formality of the fictive event that ends the narrative. I will be using Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart (1999) and Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) to discuss narrative and emotions, or the role of emotion in motivating narrative events and the role of narrative in conveying and stirring emotion in the reader. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with the ways in which meaning is generically mediated in the novel. In particular it addresses the productive diversity of meanings generated by critical interpretation and asks how, given this diversity, comprehension and consensus might be possible. I argue that the construction of subject, object, space and time is achieved in the novel through different manifestations of four key metaphors: voice, view, setting and event. These metaphors supply meanings that rely on a common experience of embodiment. (...) Embodiment supplies the basis for an intersubjectively established consensus which identifies subjects and objects in terms that correspond to the semiotic, syntagmatic and semantic uses of metaphor. I begin by surveying and reviewing certain constructionist accounts of language and meaning in order to establish the importance of metaphor in conveying meaning in rhetorical, rather than linguistic, terms. I then discuss two examples of continental philosophy on speech: Derrida on voice and Foucault on discourse. I demonstrate how meaning is rhetorically constructed according to the use to which metaphors are put—whether they denote formal, semantic, or functional aspects of meaning—through an explication of Foucault’s theory, reserving Derrida’s grammatology for my analysis of the stabilisation of meaning in the theory of certain narratologists (Gérard Genette and Marie-Laure Ryan). Voice and view are key terms in literary theory, and I examine refinements to these metaphors in Genette and Ryan. The insistence of these narratologists on restricting the rhetorical dimension of meaning undermines the value of the literary work, prompting me to argue for a relaxing of such constraints. I read Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang for its uses of voice and point of view, many of which expose the limitations of the narratological approach. This is a theoretical thesis, which engages a wide range of perspectives—constructionist, deconstructionist, sociological and structuralist—together with their various accounts of language, metaphor, speech and meaning. In terms of sociological approaches to genre and discourse, I employ the chronotope as a critical tool, examining it in the context of the theme of the country house to demonstrate the role of two of my key metaphors, setting and event, which are important for the construction of space and time in abstract terms. Focusing on novels by Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Kazuo Ishiguro, in which the country house defines the space and the temporality through which thematic and “material” elements are mediated, I reveal how the chronotope supplies an overarching coherence that unites thought and event in narrative. My readings of these novels describe a theory that is concerned with the rhetorical capacities of genre rather than with taxonomic constructions of form. To this end I argue that the metaphorical dimensions of narrative—voice, view, setting and event—be loosely drawn, according to the acknowledged mutability of genre. I also emphasise the constructive effect of metaphor whilst according it a rhetorical versatility consistent with the mutability and instability of genre as a semiotic tool, concluding that consensus is achieved in our readings of novels through the form’s reliance on these four key metaphors of embodiment. These metaphors have ordinary, everyday, widespread usage beyond narrative theory; in appreciating their rhetorical value, it must be noted nonetheless that any confusion that ensues is productive, for it results in the diversities of meaning and form celebrated in the literary work. (shrink)

Numerous societal issues, from climate change to pandemics, require public engagement with scientific research. Such engagement reveals challenges that can arise when experts communicate with laypeople. One of the most common frameworks for framing these communicative interactions is the deficit model of science communication, which holds that laypeople lack scientific knowledge and/or positive attitudes towards science, and that imparting knowledge will fill knowledge gaps, lead to desirable attitude/behavior changes, and increase trust in science. §1 introduces the deficit model in more (...) detail and shows that adhering to this model often fails to achieve its aims, which motivates the main question of this chapter: how can Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thinking collectives address the persistent problem of deficit approaches in science communication? I suggest that it can do so by exposing the deficit model’s implicit assumption of an expert-lay divide. Accordingly, §2 lays out Fleck’s theory and §3 contrasts it with contemporary debates about science communication. Following this descriptive work, §4 draws on Fleck’s ideas to make four concrete suggestions for further questioning the expert-lay divide. (shrink)

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore my affective engagement with Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend (2019). Adopting definitions that reveal the nested hierarchies of feeling, affect, and emotion, I situate emotion as a semantic experience within the framework of thought, arguing that thought itself is an affectual process that carries meaning. Cognition, in other words, is an affective process. Thought’s affectual status is often overlooked, however, with the focus on its semantic content drawing attention from this; yet meaning affects us, and this (...) is the function of thought as affect: it organises experience in ways that are, in turn, affecting. My approach to Wood’s novel aims to emphasise this and find firmer ground on which to perceive emotion as a kind of thought, noting that reading stimulates thinking in terms of grammatically established points of view. (shrink)

Readers are awaiting a new encounter with stories united under the common title Why We Are in Need of Tales. Let me remind you that these deep philosophical books were written by Maria daVenza Tillmanns, a professional philosopher dedicated to the study of philosophizing with children, who has gained valuable experience in this field. Maria’s books are inspired by her work with her students at El Toyon Elementary School in National City (California), with whom Maria held philosophy (...) with children classes for three years before COVID-19. With parental permission, the children provided their drawings, which are used as illustrations for the books. I read Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part III with great pleasure. The focus of this book is on making decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. In Part II, the focus is on dreams — hopes and wishes we have for life. This book looks at how we may best decide how to make those hopes and wishes come true. And the answer Huk and Tuk suggest is deceptively easy: by making decisions “with your eyes wide open.” (5, p. ix). The author of this excellent book managed to describe how to make decisions with your eyes wide open through the playful dialogue between Huk and Tuk. The books are written in dialogue so the reader immediately plunges into the context of a lively conversation. Dialogue not only sharpens attention, but also invites the reader to participate in the conversation. In this way, the reader becomes a listener at the same time. (shrink)

In Francesco Berto’s words, the term “Serious Actualism” is used for the position “that any object must exist in every circumstance in which it has any property – the thesis that predication, or the having of properties as such, entails existence.” (“Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds”, Philosophical Studies 152, 2011, 324f.) Berto agrees with Nathan Salmon that Serious Actualism is “a confused and misguided prejudice” (Salmon, “Nonexistence”, Noûs 32, 1998, 290). The aim of this paper is (...) to defend the doctrine of Serious Actualism against this verdict. (shrink)

Important empirically informed proposals of virtue cultivation invoke techniques of goal pursuit. This paper argues that these techniques are effective in changing behavior due to the attention narrowing they bring about, and further show that such attention narrowing can threaten the appropriate exercise of phronetic-related capacities. When these phronetic-related capacities are threatened, two derivative problems arise: (1) One can end up acting in morally inappropriate ways, and (2) Even in cases where one performs the morally appropriate action, one nonetheless can (...) fail to notice and appreciate features of moral value. In light of these concerns, such techniques of goal pursuit – at least, by themselves – serve the most good for those who are merely trying to avoid vice, rather than cultivate virtue. And so, I suggest that such accounts of virtue cultivation are incomplete. I then go on to argue that these undesirable effects of attention narrowing brought about by these goal pursuit techniques may be ameliorated by also engaging in certain indirect modifications of cognition, particularly those which broaden attention. The suggestion, then, is that attention narrowing techniques of goal pursuit, along with attention broadening modifications, might best facilitate virtue cultivation when employed together. While the particulars of how we might best go about this are currently unclear, this paper ends by looking at empirical research on Open Monitoring Meditation as providing a hopeful option that might be further investigated. (shrink)

Is it possible to disagree with someone without considering them cognitively flawed? The answer seems to be a resounding yes: disagreeing with someone doesn't entail thinking less of them. You can disagree with someone and not think that they are unreasonable. Deep disagreements, however, may challenge this assumption. A disagreement is deep when it involves many interrelated issues, including the proper way to resolve the disagreement, resulting in its persistence. The parties to a deep disagreement can hold neutral or even (...) positive judgements of each other's epistemic character, as parties’ judging each other's epistemic character negatively (i.e., epistemic disdain) is not a defining feature of deep disagreements. When analysing real-life cases, however, we find that epistemic disdain is typical of deep disagreements. In this article, I analyse why this is the case. Given that epistemic disdain undermines cognitive peerhood, the prospects of deep disagreements between epistemic peers seem bleak. Finally, it is discussed how the phenomenon of epistemic disdain, as it relates to deep disagreements, may increase affective polarisation. (shrink)

En este capítulo, analizo a qué se refiere Kuhn cuando habla de metáfora en las Conferencias Notre Dame, pero sobre todo a explorar a qué no se refiere. En la primera sección, analizo por qué Kuhn usa el término “metáfora” para referirse al proceso de aprendizaje de lenguaje científico, en particular, los paralelismos que encuentra entre ambos fenómenos. En la segunda sección, se presentan algunos aspectos centrales de dos teorías influyentes sobre la metáfora: la teoría del mapeo estructural y la (...) teoría de las metáforas conceptuales. Luego, en la sección III, vuelvo a Kuhn para ver las diferencias cruciales que encontramos entre los procesos metafóricos y el proceso de ostensión del que habla el autor. Finalmente, presento una noción del segundo Wittgenstein, la idea de figura, para ofrecer una nueva forma de interpretar la idea de que el cambio revolucionario involucra un cambio en la metáfora central. (shrink)

Thinking of problems of aesthetics has a long and strong tradition in Austrian Philosophy. It starts with Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848); it is famously represented by the critic and musicologist Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904); and it is continued within the school of Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), in particular by Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) and Stephan Witasek (1870-1915). Nowadays the aesthetic writings of Bolzano, Ehrenfels, and Witasek are hardly known, particularly not in the Anglo-Saxon world. Austrian aesthetics is surely less known than Austrian contributions (...) to other philosophical disciplines, like ontology, epistemology or philosophy of science. One of the aims of this paper is to show that this is both regrettable and unjustified for the following reasons: Austrian aestheticians have dealt with a number of problems (mainly concerning the foundations of aesthetics) that are salient until today; in terms of subtlety and depth as well as exactness and originality, in general, they easily stand comparison with today's analytic aesthetics; and many of there views and arguments are still worthy of consideration. In this paper, the focus is on a number of hardly known Austrian contributions to aesthetics. These contributions concern the following, partly interrelated, central problems of philosophical aesthetics: i. The problem of the definition of beauty (What is beauty? What does it mean to say of an object that it is beautiful?) ii. The problem of the ontological status of works of art (What kinds of objects are works of art?) iii. The problem of the objectivity of aesthetic values (Do we claim objective validity for aesthetic value judgements, and if so, is this claim justified?) The answers of Bolzano, Meinong, Witasek and Ehrenfels to these questions will be considered. (shrink)

I analyze figures and themes of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” evident in chapter thirty-six of the Quran. I argue that the two texts share (1) a neck fetter fixing the head; (2) a spatial organization of barriers before and behind and cover- ing above; (3) a theme of failure to see the truth and assault upon those who tell the truth, and (4) a theme of transcendent reality as a context of meaning. I argue that the Quran displays an (...) inheritance of some Platonic thought in Arabic at least two centuries prior to any known translation of Plato. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that for blame to be appropriate the wrongdoer must be blameworthy. However, blameworthiness is not sufficient for appropriate blame. It has been argued that for blame to be appropriate the blamer must have standing to blame. Philosophers writing on the topic have distinguished several considerations that might defeat someone’s standing to blame. This paper examines the underexplored consideration of how personal relationships can influence who has the standing to express blame. We seem to assume that if (...) we do not stand in the right relation to the wrongdoer, it is not our business to blame them. I identify three challenges to this view. First, we do not know what is wrong with meddling (whether it is morally or prudentially wrong). Second, there are cases where we have no close relation to the wrongdoer, but where we seem to have standing nonetheless – murder and other serious moral offences are examples of this. Third, we don’t seem to have a clear conception of what ‘standing’ means, and this makes it hard to see how discussion on standing can help us determine the propriety of blame. This paper defends the notion of standing as a propriety condition on blame in cases of meddling. I argue that personal relationships influence who has the standing to blame through constitution of relationship-specific norms; and that the role these norms play in developing and regulating our relationships can explain why meddlesome blame is morally wrong. (shrink)

Escribir hoy en día un libro sobre hermenéutica, que tal hermenéutica se refiera a la desarrollada por G. Gadamer en su conocido Verdad y método y que se pretenda añadir algo nuevo a lo mucho escrito sobre el tema parecería, a primera vista, empresa irrealizable. Que ambas pretensiones inspiren la sólida monografía de María G. Navarro —titulada Interpretar y argumentar— constituye empresa audaz y arriesgada, plena de coraje innovador, que provoca admiración, curiosidad e interés. Contra lo que pudiera parecer a (...) primera vista, el libro contiene un alto componente de originalidad y creatividad, debido a la estratagema metodoló-gica de que se sirve la autora. A saber, una hermenéutica in obliquo, estrategia consistente en interpretar a la hermenéutica gadameriana a través del prisma de la lógica de la argumentación. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the process of self-transformation through which a person comes to embody the ideal of her religion’s vision of the divine, as far as that ideal is expressible in a human life. The paper is concerned with the self as the subject of religious commitments, traits, religious aspirations and religiously inspired ideals. The self-transformative journey that people are invited to undertake poses a number of philosophical and practical difficulties; the paper explores some of these difficulties, concentrating on (...) those that arise in connection with the notion of potential future selves. This paper suggests that imaginative reflection upon exemplary individuals provides one way through these difficulties, for these individuals can show us what it looks like when someone achieves, or draws close to, the ideal. (shrink)

En este artículo introductorio al número especial “Desacuerdos Profundos: Precisiones y Exploraciones”, se presentan los artículos que comprenden este número brindando contexto a sus distintas temáticas, las cuales van desde la naturaleza de los desacuerdos profundos y su resolución, hasta sus conexiones con debates filosóficos y fenómenos sociales.

Interview with the author of "why We are in Need of Tails." Iguana Books, Toronto, Canada.

In this paper, I will try to look at Leibniz from the topos of Indian philosophy. François Jullien called such a strategy “dépayser la pensée” – to withdraw an idea from its familiar environment and to see it through the lens of a different culture. “Read Confucius to better understand Plato.” I am referring to Indian philosophy, especially to some Buddhist systems, in order to highlight certain aspects of Leibniz’s mode of thinking, that I define as “atomistic approach”.

This paper argues for the value of the ‘strange’ as a hermeneutical tool to open fresh perspectives on an issue of widespread human concern, specifically how to deal with and relate to the dead. Traditional Chinese folk religion and the animistic ghost culture found within it is introduced and the role of gods, ancestors, and ghosts explained. The view that death is not the end of life but the transition to a new relationship with the living raises questions about our (...) potential obligations to the dead. It also has implications for our thinking about intergenerational justice and the role of our memory of the past in shaping our present and future experience. (shrink)

Those who are – in the tradition of Meinong – willing to accept the claim that there are objects that do not exist usually argue that the ontological commitment to nonexistent objects allows to resolve a variety of problems of reference and intentionality, such as: the problem of singular negative existential statements, the problem of discourse on past and future objects, the problem of discourse on fictitious objects, the problem of counterfactual existentials, the problem of allegedly necessary truths on nonexistent (...) objects (e. g., "The round square is round".) It seems that the ontological commitment to nonexistent objects enables us to explain both the obvious truth of many predicative sentences whose subject terms do not denote anything existent and the possibility of intentional acts whose objects do not exist. The aim of this paper is to show that the commitment to nonexistents does not resolve any of these problems. Furthermore, some alternative solutions are delineated. (shrink)

Seneca’s tragedy is considered from the point of view of the intertextual relations with other Greek and Roman literary works, connected with the Corinthian history about Jason and Medea. Seneca represents a special view of the hierarchy of male virtues: Jason is a husband, a father and a mentor. The rage of Medea is ‘legalized,’ the reaction of Jason is depicted in the Stoic terms. The main characters of the tragedy are represented by the Roman writer in a pedagogical rather (...) than a heroic posture: the adults seek to educate each other in the process of their conflict over custody of their children. (shrink)

States of affairs raise, among others, the following questions: What kind of entity are they (if there are any)? Are they contingent, causally efficacious, spatio-temporal and perceivable entities, or are they abstract objects? What are their constituents and their identity conditions? What are the functions that states of affairs are able to fulfil in a viable theory, and which problems and prima facie counterintuitive consequences arise out of an ontological commitment to them? Are there merely possible (non-actual, non-obtaining) states of (...) affairs? Are there molecular (i.e., negative, conjunctive, disjunctive etc.) states of affairs? Are there modal and tensed states of affairs? (shrink)

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I defend a strong version of actual intentionalism. First, I argue against meaning subjectivism, conventionalism and contextualism. Second, I discuss what I take to be the most important rival to actual intentionalism, namely hypothetical intentionalism. I argue that, although hypothetical intentionalism might be acceptable as a definition of the concept of utterance meaning, it does not provide an acceptable answer to the question of what determines an utterance’s meaning. Third, I deal with the most serious objection (...) against actual intentionalism, namely the failure objection. I argue that the failure objection can be overcome within a framework of full-blown actual intentionalism if one distinguishes between categorial and semantic intentions. Moreover, I show how this version of actual intentionalism accounts for the possibility of innovative metaphors and other implicatures. Finally, I demonstrate that actual intentionalism – thus construed – makes it possible to distinguish between communicative failures and the intentional breaking of conventions. (shrink)

Data involving epistemic modals suggest that some classically valid argument forms, such as _reductio_, are invalid in natural language reasoning as they lead to modal collapses. We adduce further data showing that the classical argument forms governing the existential quantifier are similarly defective, as they lead to a _de re–de dicto_ collapse. We observe a similar problem for disjunction. But if the classical argument forms for negation, disjunction and existential quantification are invalid, what are the correct forms that govern the (...) use of these items? Our diagnosis is that epistemic modals interfere with hypothetical reasoning. We present a modal first-order logic and model theory that characterizes hypothetical reasoning with epistemic modals in a principled manner. One upshot is a sound and complete natural deduction system for reasoning with epistemic modals in first-order logic. (shrink)

In this Chapter, Maria Kronfeldner discusses whether psychological essentialism is a necessary part of dehumanization. This involves different elements of essentialism, and a narrow and a broad way of conceptualizing psychological essentialism, the first akin to natural kind thinking, the second based on entitativity. She first presents authors that have connected essentialism with dehumanization. She then introduces the error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the category of the human, and distinguishes different elements of psychological essentialism. On that basis, Kronfeldner (...) connects historical, socio-psychological, and philosophical insights in order to show that although essentialism can act as a catalyst for dehumanization, it is not necessary for it. Examples relate to dehumanization in the context of colonialism and evolutionary thinking, to the history of dehumanizing women from Aristotle to 19th-century craniology, and to contemporary self-dehumanization and ‘lesser mind’ attribution. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to (...) social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is on Xenophanes’ criticism of anthropomorphic representation of the gods, famously sounding like a declaration of war against a constituent part of the Greek religion, and adopting terms and a tone that are unequalled amongst “pre-Socratic” authors for their directness and explicitness. While the main features of Xenophanes’ polemic are well known thanks to some of the most studied fragments of the pre-Socratic tradition, a different line of enquiry from the usual one is attempted by (...) considering the multi-layered background of the religious beliefs revolving around the idea that the gods have human form as outlined in the tradition of epic poetry or represented in cult statues: in the light of this consideration Xenophanes’ text can take on some new characteristics. In the second part of the article, emphasis is put on the importance of the correlation Xenophanes established between the issue of the appearance of the gods and that of the certainty of knowledge, in terms that have exerted tremendous influence on later thought, most notably on Plato in the Timaeus. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility' in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities' ('a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise'). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, undercuts many of those debates. Such cases (...) all require a counterfactual mechanism that could cause an agent to perform an action that he cannot avoid performing. I argue that, given our concept of what it is for someone to act, this requirement is inconsistent. Frankfurt-style alleged counterexamples are cases where an agent is morally responsible for an action he performs even though, the claim goes, he could not have avoided performing that action. However, it has recently been argued, e.g. by John Fischer, that a counterexample to the Principle could be a 'Fischer-style case', i.e. a case where the agent can either perform the action or do nothing else. I argue that, although Fischer-style cases do not share the conceptual flaw common to all Frankfurt-style cases, they also fail as counterexamples to the Principle. The paper finishes with a brief discussion of the significance of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

This collection of writings on aesthetics includes selections from Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Amy Mullin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Frederich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. This collection may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University bookstore.

This collection for a course in Social Thought and the Critique of Power includes selections from Sandra Bartkey, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, Juergin Habermas, Margaret Kohn, Saskia Sassen, Margit Mayer, David Ciavatta, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Jeremy Waldron. Selections include material on the city, neoliberalism, computer-mediated life, precarity, cosmopolitanism, and gender. This packet may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University Bookstore.

This out-of-print collection in the area of European twentieth-century political philosophy includes selections from Adorno, Benjamin, Benhabib, Marcuse, Ciavatta, Comay, Honneth, and Fraser.

This collection in the area of continental philosophy of language, aesthetics, and semiotics includes articles and book selections from Derrida, Ricouer, McCumber, Oliver, Sheshradi-Krooks, Lacan, and Kristeva. This collection is available in the University of Guelph bookstore.

This out-of-print collection on animal rights, applied ethics, and continental philosophy includes readings by Martin Heidegger, Karin De Boer, Martha Nussbaum, David De Grazia, Giorgio Agamben, Peter Singer, Tom Regan, David Morris, Michael Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Sue Donaldson, Carolyn Merchant, and Jacques Derrida.