Search Results (7)

Given the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the conditions of vulnerability of large sectors of the population, the question emerges: what are the ethical limits of technologies in patient care? This paper examines this question in the light of the “language of nature” and of Aristotelian causal analysis, in particular the concept of means and ends. Thus, it is possible to point out the root of the distinction between the identity of the person and the entity of any technology. Nature indicates that the person is always an end in itself. Technology, on the contrary, should only be a means to serve the person. The diversity of their respective natures also explains why their respective agencies enjoy diverse scopes. Technological operations (artificial agency, artificial intelligence) find their meaning in the results obtained through them (poiesis). Moreover, the person is capable of actions whose purpose is precisely the action itself (praxis), in which personal agency and, ultimately, the person themselves, is irreplaceable. Forgetting the distinction between what, by nature, is an end and what can only be a means is equivalent to losing sight of the instrumental nature of AI and, therefore, its specific meaning: the greatest good of the patient. It is concluded that the language of nature serves as a filter that supports the effective subordination of the use of AI to its specific purpose, the human good. The greatest contribution of this work is to draw attention to the nature of the person and technology, and about their respective agencies. In other words: listening to the language of nature, and attending to the diverse nature of the person and technology, personal agency, and artificial agency. Full article

As a Colombian scholar and artist, the author of this essay interrogates feminist aesthetics and artistic practice in a choreographic mode; improvising to see where movement takes her. This first impulse creates the space for performing writing and opening the space of creation. The movement starts at home, immersed in everydayness, aided by poetry and the analysis of the work of three other contemporary Colombian artists who also start at home in their artistic practice. Here, home is also a reference to all the artists’ (including the author’s) place of birth: Barranquilla, Colombia. The aesthetic philosophical tradition comes into play against the backdrop of the ideas presented by Simone de Beauvoir in her seminal The Second Sex (1949), who urges women in the middle of the twentieth century, to transcend, to fight against immanence. The works of Clara Gaviria, Raisa Galofre and Jessica Sofía Mitrani accompany the author’s journey while she arrives at the realization that it all starts with the need to transcend the quotidian while using, precisely, the apparent banality of such everyday things and tasks. Through the created art objects, the author creates an essay about, around and beyond artistic feminist practice and aesthetics. Full article

The paper introduces a new concept of social entropy and a new concept of social order, both based on the normative framework of society. From these two concepts, typologies (logical and historical) of societies are inferred and examined in their basic features. To these ends, some well-known concepts such as entropy, order, system, network, synergy, norm, autopoieticity, fetality, and complexity are revisited and placed into an integrated framework. The core body of this paper addresses the structure and the mechanism of social entropy, understood as an institutionally working counterpart of social order. Finally, this paper concludes that social entropy is an artefact, like society itself, and acts through people’s behavior. Full article

This paper contrasts two contemporary approaches to Nahua metaphysics by focusing on the stance of the Nahua tlamatinime (philosophers) regarding the nature of reality. Miguel León-Portilla and James Maffie offer the two most comprehensive interpretations of Nahua philosophy. Although León-Portilla and Maffie agree on their interpretation of teotl as the evanescent principle of Nahua metaphysics, their interpretations regarding the tlamatinime metaphysical stances diverge. Maffie argues that León-Portilla attributes to the tlamatinime a metaphysics of being according to which being means permanence and stability and thus, since earthly things are continuously changing, being cannot be predicated of them, hence earthly things are not real. I present textual support to show that León-Portilla does not read Nahua metaphysics through the lens of a metaphysics of being and thus that León-Portilla does not interpret the tlamatinime as denying the reality of earthly things. I then provide an exegetical analysis of León-Portilla’s texts to show that, in his interpretation, metaphysical concerns are intimately linked to existential questions regarding the meaning of human life. Ultimately, I argue that, in León-Portilla’s interpretation, the tlamatinime conception of art functions as poiesis, that is, as the process of aesthetic creation that gives meaning to human life. Full article

Parkour, along with “free-running”, is a relatively new but increasingly ubiquitous sport with possibilities for new configurations of ecology and spirituality in global urban contexts. Parkour differs significantly from traditional sports in its use of existing urban topography including walls, fences, and rooftops as an obstacle course/playground to be creatively navigated. Both parkour and “free-running”, in their haptic, intuitive exploration of the environment retrieve an enchanted notion of place with analogues in the religious language of pilgrimage. The parkour practitioner or traceur/traceuse exemplifies what Michael Atkinson terms “human reclamation”—a reclaiming of the body in space, and of the urban environment itself—which can be seen as a form of playful, creative spirituality based on “aligning the mind, body, and spirit within the environmental spaces at hand”. This study will subsequently examine parkour at the intersection of spirituality, phenomenology, and ecology in three ways: (1) As a returning of sport to a more “enchanted” ecological consciousness through poeisis and touch; (2) a recovery of the lost “play-element” in sport (Huizinga); and (3) a recovery of the human body attuned to our evolutionary past. Full article

The diagnostic process in psychotherapy using the aesthetic evaluation is described in this article. Unlike the classical diagnostic process, which presents a result of comparing clinicians´ observations with a diagnostic system (DSM, ICD, etc.), the aesthetic evaluation is a pre-reflexive, embodied, and preverbal process. A Gestalt Therapy theoretical frame is used to introduce a concept of the aesthetic diagnostic process. During this process, the clinicians use their own here-and-now presence, which takes part in the co-creation of the shared relational field during the therapeutic session. A specific procedure of the aesthetic evaluation is introduced. The clinical work with depressed clients is presented to illustrate this perspective. Full article

Through close readings of the work of two major poets of the twentieth century—W.B. Yeats and Fernando Pessoa—this paper identifies and attempts to make sense of an important shift in European modernism away from a broadly Romantic aesthetic toward what might be called “post-Romanticism.” Taking its cue from W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” where having stated that “poetry makes nothing happen” he asserts that it survives as “a way of happening,” and drawing on the philosophy of Heidegger and Jean-Luc Nancy, this paper argues that this shift from Romanticism to post-Romanticism hinges on a deep metaphysical reconceptualization of poetry understood as poiesis. In light of this reassessment of the aesthetics and philosophical affinities of poetic modernism, it is argued that post-Romanticism should be understood as offering a modest, salutary, phenomenological re-acquaintance with our involvement with the everyday world, in sharp contrast to the transcendental ambitions of the Romantic aesthetic that preceded it. Full article