Juan José Sanguineti

The article presents the relationship between religious faith and natural sciences within a historical perspective. Three great periods are distinguished: classical, enjoying a substantial harmony between science and belief in God; modern period, characterized by a radical rationalism that can be seen as the root of the structural conflict between science and religion; contemporary phase, with the collapse of rationalism, notwithstanding the great prestige of natural science, often perceived within a secularist framework. It is argued that no objective reasons oppose today scientific knowledge to theology and religion. The present state of natural sciences is favourable for a new complementarity between secular/rational views and theological/religious faith.

Cognitive science, and especially neuroscience, currently addresses the philosophical problem of human free choice. This article proposes addressing the problem with the methodology of a confrontation between a phenomenological analysis of human decisions and some main points of philosophy of mind and of neuroscience. The author offers a proposal for the meaning of a 'free' decision, within the context of intentional actions. While avoiding dualism, which is linked to a pure opposition between a disincarnate act of will and a merely physiological account of what is going on in the brain, the author proposes a unitary conception of intentional cognitive/emotional circuits both in animals and in human beings. Neural activations are just a dimension of those circuits and need to be analyzed at the intentional level. Truth and good as a permanent background in human intentional powers provide the root of free choices, as essentially different from animal choices.

This paper studies the problem of the arrow of time from the scientific and philosophical perspective. The scientific section (Castagnino) poses the topic according to the instruments of measuring employed in physical theories, specially when they are applied to dynamic chaotic systems in which a temporal asymmetry is shown. From the analysis of “two schools” (epistemological and ontological), the conclusion is favorable to the reality (both ontological and epistemological) of the difference between past and future, with the recourse to Reichenbach’s notion of global system. In the philosophical section (Sanguineti) the content of the scientific part of the article is presented in a qualitative way. The role of some philosophical choices in the scientific field is stressed, taking into account the diversity of a positivistic and realistic view.

The author brings out three interpretations of the relationship between neuroscience, philosophy and theology. Then he presents the character of neuroscience in contrast with biology and psycholo- gy. Critical consideration is given to different currents of neuroscience on the central theme of the relationship brain-mind, soul-body and the reductionism of body alone. He opts for the Thomistic view which holds that the spiritual soul is essentially linked to the body, making it the identity of the human person. Finally, he analyses the relationship between neuroscience, philosophy and Christian Faith, concluding with some key meeting points between anthropology and neuroscience.

This paper considers the relevance of the theory of the cogitative power in Aquinas, as highlighted by Cornelio Fabro during his early research in the fourth decade of the past century, in contemporary neuropsychological studies, and particularly as a specific way of overcoming a dualistic approach in the psychology of perception. The thesis is coherent with an anthropological view based on the substantial unity between soul and body. As a consequence, the capacities of the cogitative faculty (estimative in animals) involve a special account of perception, irreducible to pure thought and to sensations as well, an account that is present in the psychological view of M. Merleau-Ponty and J. J. Gibson.

This paper studies the notion of self-knowledge in Aristotle and principally in Aquinas. According to Aristotle, sensitive operations like seeing or hearing can be perceived by the knower (sensitive consciousness), while there can be also an understanding of the understanding, mainly attributed to God, but not exclusively. In his ethical writings, Aristotle acknowledges the human capacity of understanding and perceiving one’s life and existence, extended also to other persons in the case of friendship. Aquinas receives this heritage and includes also the habitual self-awareness of the mind which was held by Augustine. A more ontological view is taken from the Neoplatonic notion of complete reflexivity of the intellectual soul upon its own essence as a manifestation of total immateriality and self-possession, which is a higher way of existing and living. Thus, the modern idea of self-consciousness is not absent in the Thomistic account of self-understanding, though the term “conscience” was reserved to the moral judgment upon one’s actions as right or wrong. The Thomistic distinction between habitual existential self-knowledge, which is an intellectual experience including perception and judgment, and scientific and abstract human self-knowledge, is useful and provides insight to the ontological value of existential self-knowledge. The last part of the paper argues that according to Aquinas there is a deep connection between self-knowledge and self-love, provided they are rooted on truth and virtue. This point has many consequence in the notion of shared self-awareness and mutual joy in friendship. The author concludes as well that a genuine self-understanding is possible only in friendship based upon virtue.

Being-in-the-world defines in Heidegger an ontological and practical existential situation that in a first approach characterizes intellectual knowledge, an approach related to the Husserlian notion of intentionality. In his Curso de teoría del co- nocimiento, Polo rectifies this characterization, stressing the primacy of theory regarding action, and interpreting the practical (technical) relation- ship with the world as a lower level of “having”. Ma- king some comparisons between Husserl, Scheler and Jonas, in connection with Polo’s thought, the article presents different accounts of the notion of the world (phenomenological, metaphysical, mo- ral) that allow to clarify the problem of the rela- tionship between contemplation and action in the world.

En esta voz se considera el tiempo como una dimensión de la realidad física que se manifiesta en la percepción de las cosas en su devenir y cuya realidad ontológica se apoya en las transformaciones naturales. Primeramente se afronta la temática del tiempo físico y sus características en una perspectiva filosófica. Se tocan cuestiones fundamentales como el estatuto ontológico del presente/pasado/futuro, la realidad o irrealidad del instante, la simultaneidad, la unidad y pluralidad de tiempos, la dirección temporal (flecha irreversible del tiempo) y la relación entre tiempo y causalidad. Se distingue entre tiempo natural, tiempo fenomenológico (percepción humana del tiempo) y tiempo métrico (medidas humanas temporales). En segundo término, se estudia la conceptualización científica de la temporalidad, con cuestiones ontológicas como, por ejemplo, la posibilidad o no de los viajes en el tiempo, la temática del tiempo absoluto o relativo, y la cuestión del inicio y final del tiempo cosmológico. En tercer lugar, se considera la temporalidad tal como se manifiesta en la vida humana en forma de historicidad, así como la trascendencia del espíritu humano sobre el tiempo, con un vínculo especial con la eternidad. En cuarto y último lugar, se estudia la temporalidad a la luz de la teología bíblica, donde el tiempo cósmico e histórico quedan transfigurados en el tiempo salvífico, estableciéndose así una relación especial con la vida eterna de Dios, de la que el hombre, en el Cristianismo, se hace partícipe a través de Cristo.

Abstract: Being-in-the-world defines in Heidegger an ontological and practical existential situation that in a first approach characterizes intellectual knowledge, an approach related to the Husserlian notion of intentionality. In his Curso de teoría del conocimiento, Polo rectifies this characterization, stressing the primacy of theory regarding action, and interpreting the practical (technical) relationship with the world as a lower level of “having”. Making some comparisons between Husserl, Scheler and Jonas, in connection with Polo’s thought, the article presents different accounts of the notion of the world (phenomenological, metaphysical, moral) that allow to clarify the problem of the relationship between contemplation and action in the world.

In this study first we delineate an overview of the main philosophical positions on the problem of the distinction between mental acts and physical acts in man. There follows an exposition of the topic, inspired by Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s principles. Sensitive operations are physical, but in the sense of an ‘elevated body,’ thanks to a higher formal dimension, which informs the organic basis. Intellectual operations, by contrast, are completely immaterial, though they act united to the sensitive cerebral basis. Accordingly, they have neurological correlations, guided by the intentional causality of the intellect. The intellectual act and its neural basis form a unique act, which is integrated by several cognitive dimensions. Our intelligence uses the brain as an intrinsic instrument, but we also need external ‘cognitive’instruments, namely written texts and computers. The intellectual development of people can be explained by the interaction of these different dimensions.