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Ludus Vitalis

Revista científica. Nº 37. Vol. XX. 2012. Ciudad de México (México)
Editado por: Centro de Estudios Filosóficos Políticos y Sociales Vicente lombardo Toledano de la Secretaría de Educación Pública, la Universitat de les Illes Balears, La Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa y la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia

ISSN: 133-5165
Ciencias Naturales: Evolucionismo, Ciencias de la Vida, Física, Antropología, Historia, Ciencias Políticas, Sociología, Filosofía.
Palabras clave: evolucionismo, epistemología, mente-cuerpo, conducta, técnica, naturaleza

Descripción:

Este número está dedicado a evolucionismo, epistemología, relación mente-cuerpo, conocimiento conducta, lo humano, técnica y naturaleza y el juego de los conceptos.

1. How Functional Differentiation Originated in Prebiotic Evolution (English)

Argyris Arnellos. IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, Donostia - San Sebastian, Spain, argyris.arnellos@ehu.es Álvaro Moreno. IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, Donostia - San Sebastian, Spain, alvaro.moreno@ehu.es

Even the simplest cell exhibits a high degree of functional differentiation (FD) realized through several mechanisms and devices contributing differently to its maintenance. Searching for the origin of FD, we briefly argue that the emergence of the respective organizational complexity cannot be the result of either natural selection (NS) or solely of the dynamics of simple selfmaintaining (SM) systems. Accordingly, a highly gradual and cumulative process should have been necessary for the transition from either simple self-assembled or selfmaintaining systems of functionless structural components to systems with FD. We follow results of recent in vitro experiments withrespect to competition among protocells, where a primitive type of selection begins to operate among them accompanied by a parallel evolution of their functional domain. We argue that minimal forms of FD should be established within the evolution of SM processes in protocells as they undergo a simpler selection process for stability and persistence in a prebiotic environment. We then suggest the concept of closure of constraints (CoC) as a way to identify and describe minimal FD in a far-from-equilibrium SM organization. We show in detail how the concept of CoC together with the conditions for its fulfillment can be applied in the case of a simple protocelular system that begins to couple internal chemical reactions with the formation of its membrane components. Finally, we discuss how such SM systems can evolve towards significantly higher levels of FD, suggesting this is mainly the result of functional recombination (formation of mechanisms) in the context of a modular SM organization.

Palabras clave: diferenciación funcional, auto-mantenimiento, selección natural, limitaciones, clausura, evolución prebiótica, complejidad organizativa, protocélulas

3. Platonismo Cum Externismo en la Epistemología de los Experimentos Mentales (Español)

Jorge Ornelas. Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa, México, cintora@prodigy.net.mx Armando Cíntora. Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa, México

Two competing conceptions of mental experiments are briefly explained: R. Norton’s Empirism and J. R. Brown’s Platonism. It is argued that some of Norton’s criticisms against Brown’s Platonism are motivated by an internalist epistemology, hence the platonist could defeat these criticisms by availing himself an externalist epistemology.

Palabras clave: experimentos mentales, platonismo, empirismo, internalismo epistemológico, externalismo

5. Incertidumbre y Políticas Ambientales (Español)

Teresa Kwiatkowska. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, México, tkwiatkowska@yahoo.com Wojciech Szatzschneider. Escuela de Actuaría, Universidad Anáhuac Norte, México, wojciech@anahuac.mx

Nature did not endow us with clear set of laws. Successful solution to any environmental problem implies working within Knightian uncertainty that explicitly deals with decision making under conditions of unstructured randomness. A ‘wild’ type of randomness that we will never discern, due to its unstable properties, makes the assignment of corresponding probabilities impossible. Science and knowledge are intrinsically uncertain, with new information constantly altering our perceptions and beliefs. Scientific uncertainty has to be taken into account by environmental decision making policy.

Palabras clave: incertidumbre, medio ambiente, toma de decisiones

6. La Historia del Presente Inmediato en el Contexto del Debate Epistemológico de las Ciencias Sociales (Español)

Teresa Pacheco Méndez. Instituto de Investigaciones Sobre la Universidad y la Educación. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, kat_tpm@yahoo.es

The whole history is undeniably a history of social life. Even in the specific case of the history of the present and in the denominated “immediate history,” social life stands for new theoretical, conceptual and methodological challenges to define its epistemological stance and the recognition of a present-past time where the socio-historical complexity is decisive. Far from the idea of past as a uniform analysis unit isolated from its context, the history of the immediate present faces the epistemological themes that concern social sciences. From the description of facts, to the capacity to interpret the historical reality in movement. From the notion of time as a definable and homogenous unit applied to all kinds of societies, to the confluence of multiple socio-historical temporalities in specific conjunctures. From the gradual and cumulative idea of progress, to the acceptance of contradiction, rupture and socio-historical change. From verification of facts only with documentary material, to the development of the capacity to think about the non-predictable challenges of the immediate social reality. These are the main axes of analyses that will be attended here.

Palabras clave: Historia del presente, historia inmediata, presente histórico-social, transformaciones sociales, ciencias sociales, reflexión epistemológica, metodología

7. Por qué la Identidad es la Solución Correcta para el Problema Mente-Cuerpo (Español)

Israel Grande García

In this paper I offer a new defense of the mind-body identity thesis.
The two key arguments are: (1) the causal argument, according to which mental states have no causal influence on our behavior, unless they are identified with physical body/brain states, and (2) biperspectivism or dual-access thesis, which states that we have two access modes or two perspectives to the same physical event: from the first-person perspective and from the third-person perspective. Given this dual-access to only one physical event, we use two different ways of referring it by means of scientific theoretical terms and by the use of the so-called phenomenal concepts. I will also make some critical comments on emergentism and of various erroneous formulations of the identity thesis. Finally, I defend identity against some of the traditional objections, namely, indiscernibility of identicals, Kripke’s objection, the conceivability argument, the knowledge argument, and the explanatory gap.

Palabras clave: identidad mente-cuerpo, causalidad física, biperspectivism, fisicalismo, surgimiento, conciencia, argumento concebible, conocimiento argumento, vacío explicativo

8. What Does Genetic Selection Miss? Considering the Causal Role of Behavior in Evolution (English)

Íñigo Ongay de Felipe. Fundación Gustavo Bueno (Oviedo-Spain)-American School of Bilbao, España, ongaydefelipe@gmail.com

While the Darwinian original concept of natural selection primarily includes the central role that the behavior of individual organisms may play as an active agent in the process of biological evolution, the architects of the Modern Synthesis tended to focus primarily on genetic heritance in order to explain evolutionary changes of populations. I shall argue that in doing so there is something important that evolutionary biology fails to grasp: the behavior of the organisms that need to act in their ecological environment if copies of their genes are to be transmitted. The concept of behavior helps to understand the way evolution works in the wild. Finally, examples are provided as to how ethology offers some enlightening insights that help reinterpret, in a way that does not imply a metaphysical hypostatization of the idea of nature, much of the current debate in relation to the very concept of natural selection as real force acting in the outside world.

Palabras clave: teoría sintética, evolución, selección natural, selección artificial, comportamiento, etología, filosofía de la biología, efecto Baldwin, genética

9. La Etología como Punto de Partida Epistémico frente a las Formas del Determinismo Biológico (Español)

Diego Alejandro Calle. Línea de investigación en neuropsicología y etología, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Seccional Palmira, Colombia, diego.calle@upb.edu.co

This paper looks for a bridge between human sciences and biology, which can be done reviewing ethology and anthropology. It discusses the old nature/nurture dichotomy; the other primate’s behavior in their habitat, and the latest paleoanthropology registers. Finally, it seeks new ways to think about objective and subjective conceptions.

Palabras clave: Etología, antropobiología, evolución, determinismo biológico, la naturaleza, naturaleza/cultura humana

10. ¿Puede hablarse de una Explicación Dinamicista en las Ciencias Cognitivas? (Español)

Nicolás Venturelli. Problemas Epistemológicos de la Psicología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina., nicolasventurelli@gmail.com

The central aspects of dynamical explanation in the cognitive sciences are identified and analyzed within the theoretical and methodological assumptions that define the young dynamical approach in the field. My analysis draws on the dynamic field model for the A-not-B error (Thelen, et al. 2001) in developmental psychology, taken as a case study. I attempt to tackle the recent accusations which maintain that the dynamicists’ style of work falls short of being explanatory and is merely descriptive, on account of the extensive use of the mathematical language proper to dynamical systems. Accordingly, the discontinuist pretensions confronted with the classical cognitivist accounts are here further justified, particularly regarding of the underlying notion of explanation.

Palabras clave: enfoque dinámico, explicación científica cognitiva, cognitivismo, ciencia cognitiva incorporada, explicación sistemática, mecanismo, Esther Thelen, teoría de los sistemas dinámicos, cognitiva predicción científica

11. Tipología y Filogenia de lo Humano (Español)

Gustavo Caponi. CNPq // Departamento de Filosofia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, gustavoandrescaponi@gmail.com

The Darwinian way to understand the distinctive characters of a lineage should never be confused with the definition of a natural kind. That should lead us to assume that there is no Darwinian way to understand the animal-human opposition. From an evolutionary standpoint, this distinction is unintelligible. The evolutionary perspective forces us to consider that each character point out as characteristic of Homo sapiens, or of the genus Homo, is nothing else but the derivation of a character state shared with the ancestors of these lineages, which imposes conditions that must be met by the evolutionary explanations for these characters. Compliance with these requirements sets us apart from anthropocentrism.

Palabras clave: Animalidad, antropocentrismo, darwinismo, evolución humana, humanidad

13. Reflexiones sobre los Cyborgs y los Robots: Evolución Humana y Aumentación (Español)

Francesc Mestres. Departament de Genética, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, España, mestres@ub.edu

The human being has changed in time due to both biological and cultural evolution. In a first step, biological evolution was the cornerstone of the changes in our species; later cultural evolution provided key adaptations.
These adaptations include clothing, tools, reading and writing, calculation and some forms of rudimentary prosthesis. Technoscience has enhanced these adaptations conducing to a broad-sense cyborg. Our contemporary society includes a huge proportion of these latter individuals. In this article we discuss this reality and our future based on the interconnections between humans, cyborgs and robots.

Palabras clave: cyborg, aumento, robot, clon, replicante, evolución biológica, la evolución cultural

14. Active Matter, Organisms and their others (English)

Arantza Etxeberria. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, UPVEHU, Donostia – San Sebastián, España, arantza.etxeberria@ehu.es

This text comments the article ”Natural selection and self-organization: A deep dichotomy in the study of organic form,” by Marta Linde Medina, Ludus Vitalis, vol. XVIII, num. 34, 2010, pp. 25-56. Available at www.ludusvitalis.org/debates.

Palabras clave: internalism, interaccionism, active matter, organisms

15. IN MEMORIAM (Español)

Camilo José Cela Conde. Evocog Group, Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos (IFISC), Universidad de las Islas Baleares y Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

En memoria de Phillip V. Tobias.

Palabras clave: Phillip V. Tobias, Senderos de la Evolución Humana, homo, homo habilis



VER MÁS PUBLICACIONES DEL REPOSITORIO SELECCIONANDO AQUÍ

¿Puede hablarse de una Explicación Dinamicista en las Ciencias Cognitivas? (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Nicolás Venturelli. Problemas Epistemológicos de la Psicología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina., nicolasventurelli@gmail.com

The central aspects of dynamical explanation in the cognitive sciences are identified and analyzed within the theoretical and methodological assumptions that define the young dynamical approach in the field. My analysis draws on the dynamic field model for the A-not-B error (Thelen, et al. 2001) in developmental psychology, taken as a case study. I attempt to tackle the recent accusations which maintain that the dynamicists’ style of work falls short of being explanatory and is merely descriptive, on account of the extensive use of the mathematical language proper to dynamical systems. Accordingly, the discontinuist pretensions confronted with the classical cognitivist accounts are here further justified, particularly regarding of the underlying notion of explanation.

Palabras clave: enfoque dinámico, explicación científica cognitiva, cognitivismo, ciencia cognitiva incorporada, explicación sistemática, mecanismo, Esther Thelen, teoría de los sistemas dinámicos, cognitiva predicción científica

Active Matter, Organisms and their others (English)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Arantza Etxeberria. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, UPVEHU, Donostia – San Sebastián, España, arantza.etxeberria@ehu.es

This text comments the article ”Natural selection and self-organization: A deep dichotomy in the study of organic form,” by Marta Linde Medina, Ludus Vitalis, vol. XVIII, num. 34, 2010, pp. 25-56. Available at www.ludusvitalis.org/debates.

Palabras clave: internalism, interaccionism, active matter, organisms

How Functional Differentiation Originated in Prebiotic Evolution (English)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Argyris Arnellos. IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, Donostia – San Sebastian, Spain, argyris.arnellos@ehu.es
Álvaro Moreno. IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, Donostia – San Sebastian, Spain, alvaro.moreno@ehu.es

Even the simplest cell exhibits a high degree of functional differentiation (FD) realized through several mechanisms and devices contributing differently to its maintenance. Searching for the origin of FD, we briefly argue that the emergence of the respective organizational complexity cannot be the result of either natural selection (NS) or solely of the dynamics of simple selfmaintaining (SM) systems. Accordingly, a highly gradual and cumulative process should have been necessary for the transition from either simple self-assembled or selfmaintaining systems of functionless structural components to systems with FD. We follow results of recent in vitro experiments withrespect to competition among protocells, where a primitive type of selection begins to operate among them accompanied by a parallel evolution of their functional domain. We argue that minimal forms of FD should be established within the evolution of SM processes in protocells as they undergo a simpler selection process for stability and persistence in a prebiotic environment. We then suggest the concept of closure of constraints (CoC) as a way to identify and describe minimal FD in a far-from-equilibrium SM organization. We show in detail how the concept of CoC together with the conditions for its fulfillment can be applied in the case of a simple protocelular system that begins to couple internal chemical reactions with the formation of its membrane components. Finally, we discuss how such SM systems can evolve towards significantly higher levels of FD, suggesting this is mainly the result of functional recombination (formation of mechanisms) in the context of a modular SM organization.

Palabras clave: diferenciación funcional, auto-mantenimiento, selección natural, limitaciones, clausura, evolución prebiótica, complejidad organizativa, protocélulas

IN MEMORIAM (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Camilo José Cela Conde. Evocog Group, Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos (IFISC), Universidad de las Islas Baleares y Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

En memoria de Phillip V. Tobias.

Palabras clave: Phillip V. Tobias, Senderos de la Evolución Humana, homo, homo habilis

Incertidumbre y Políticas Ambientales (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Teresa Kwiatkowska. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, México, tkwiatkowska@yahoo.com
Wojciech Szatzschneider. Escuela de Actuaría, Universidad Anáhuac Norte, México, wojciech@anahuac.mx

Nature did not endow us with clear set of laws. Successful solution to any environmental problem implies working within Knightian uncertainty that explicitly deals with decision making under conditions of unstructured randomness. A ‘wild’ type of randomness that we will never discern, due to its unstable properties, makes the assignment of corresponding probabilities impossible. Science and knowledge are intrinsically uncertain, with new information constantly altering our perceptions and beliefs. Scientific uncertainty has to be taken into account by environmental decision making policy.

Palabras clave: incertidumbre, medio ambiente, toma de decisiones

La Etología como Punto de Partida Epistémico frente a las Formas del Determinismo Biológico (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Diego Alejandro Calle. Línea de investigación en neuropsicología y etología, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Seccional Palmira, Colombia, diego.calle@upb.edu.co

This paper looks for a bridge between human sciences and biology, which can be done reviewing ethology and anthropology. It discusses the old nature/nurture dichotomy; the other primate’s behavior in their habitat, and the latest paleoanthropology registers. Finally, it seeks new ways to think about objective and subjective conceptions.

Palabras clave: Etología, antropobiología, evolución, determinismo biológico, la naturaleza, naturaleza/cultura humana

La Historia del Presente Inmediato en el Contexto del Debate Epistemológico de las Ciencias Sociales (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Teresa Pacheco Méndez. Instituto de Investigaciones Sobre la Universidad y la Educación. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, kat_tpm@yahoo.es

The whole history is undeniably a history of social life. Even in the specific case of the history of the present and in the denominated “immediate history,” social life stands for new theoretical, conceptual and methodological challenges to define its epistemological stance and the recognition of a present-past time where the socio-historical complexity is decisive. Far from the idea of past as a uniform analysis unit isolated from its context, the history of the immediate present faces the epistemological themes that concern social sciences. From the description of facts, to the capacity to interpret the historical reality in movement. From the notion of time as a definable and homogenous unit applied to all kinds of societies, to the confluence of multiple socio-historical temporalities in specific conjunctures. From the gradual and cumulative idea of progress, to the acceptance of contradiction, rupture and socio-historical change. From verification of facts only with documentary material, to the development of the capacity to think about the non-predictable challenges of the immediate social reality. These are the main axes of analyses that will be attended here.

Palabras clave: Historia del presente, historia inmediata, presente histórico-social, transformaciones sociales, ciencias sociales, reflexión epistemológica, metodología

Platonismo Cum Externismo en la Epistemología de los Experimentos Mentales (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Jorge Ornelas. Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa, México, cintora@prodigy.net.mx
Armando Cíntora. Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa, México

Two competing conceptions of mental experiments are briefly explained: R. Norton’s Empirism and J. R. Brown’s Platonism. It is argued that some of Norton’s criticisms against Brown’s Platonism are motivated by an internalist epistemology, hence the platonist could defeat these criticisms by availing himself an externalist epistemology.

Palabras clave: experimentos mentales, platonismo, empirismo, internalismo epistemológico, externalismo

Por qué la Identidad es la Solución Correcta para el Problema Mente-Cuerpo (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Israel Grande García

In this paper I offer a new defense of the mind-body identity thesis.
The two key arguments are: (1) the causal argument, according to which mental states have no causal influence on our behavior, unless they are identified with physical body/brain states, and (2) biperspectivism or dual-access thesis, which states that we have two access modes or two perspectives to the same physical event: from the first-person perspective and from the third-person perspective. Given this dual-access to only one physical event, we use two different ways of referring it by means of scientific theoretical terms and by the use of the so-called phenomenal concepts. I will also make some critical comments on emergentism and of various erroneous formulations of the identity thesis. Finally, I defend identity against some of the traditional objections, namely, indiscernibility of identicals, Kripke’s objection, the conceivability argument, the knowledge argument, and the explanatory gap.

Palabras clave: identidad mente-cuerpo, causalidad física, biperspectivism, fisicalismo, surgimiento, conciencia, argumento concebible, conocimiento argumento, vacío explicativo

Reflexiones sobre los Cyborgs y los Robots: Evolución Humana y Aumentación (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Francesc Mestres. Departament de Genética, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, España, mestres@ub.edu

The human being has changed in time due to both biological and cultural evolution. In a first step, biological evolution was the cornerstone of the changes in our species; later cultural evolution provided key adaptations.
These adaptations include clothing, tools, reading and writing, calculation and some forms of rudimentary prosthesis. Technoscience has enhanced these adaptations conducing to a broad-sense cyborg. Our contemporary society includes a huge proportion of these latter individuals. In this article we discuss this reality and our future based on the interconnections between humans, cyborgs and robots.

Palabras clave: cyborg, aumento, robot, clon, replicante, evolución biológica, la evolución cultural

Tipología y Filogenia de lo Humano (Español)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Gustavo Caponi. CNPq // Departamento de Filosofia, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, gustavoandrescaponi@gmail.com

The Darwinian way to understand the distinctive characters of a lineage should never be confused with the definition of a natural kind. That should lead us to assume that there is no Darwinian way to understand the animal-human opposition. From an evolutionary standpoint, this distinction is unintelligible. The evolutionary perspective forces us to consider that each character point out as characteristic of Homo sapiens, or of the genus Homo, is nothing else but the derivation of a character state shared with the ancestors of these lineages, which imposes conditions that must be met by the evolutionary explanations for these characters. Compliance with these requirements sets us apart from anthropocentrism.

Palabras clave: Animalidad, antropocentrismo, darwinismo, evolución humana, humanidad

What Does Genetic Selection Miss? Considering the Causal Role of Behavior in Evolution (English)

Ludus Vitalis. Núm. 37 (2012)

Íñigo Ongay de Felipe. Fundación Gustavo Bueno (Oviedo-Spain)-American School of Bilbao, España, ongaydefelipe@gmail.com

While the Darwinian original concept of natural selection primarily includes the central role that the behavior of individual organisms may play as an active agent in the process of biological evolution, the architects of the Modern Synthesis tended to focus primarily on genetic heritance in order to explain evolutionary changes of populations. I shall argue that in doing so there is something important that evolutionary biology fails to grasp: the behavior of the organisms that need to act in their ecological environment if copies of their genes are to be transmitted. The concept of behavior helps to understand the way evolution works in the wild. Finally, examples are provided as to how ethology offers some enlightening insights that help reinterpret, in a way that does not imply a metaphysical hypostatization of the idea of nature, much of the current debate in relation to the very concept of natural selection as real force acting in the outside world.

Palabras clave: teoría sintética, evolución, selección natural, selección artificial, comportamiento, etología, filosofía de la biología, efecto Baldwin, genética

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