La crisis sanitaria por coronavirus ha traído consigo una atención inusitada por las respuestas filosóficas. Son destacables aquellas que conceden un valor negativo a la esperanza, como una disposición evitable a toda costa. Paradójicamente, existe un intenso debate y un alto ritmo de publicaciones sobre el concepto de esperanza y sus beneficios para la vida humana. Mi objetivo consiste en ofrecer un balance de las principales contribuciones de los últimos veinte años, con especial atención a la llamada “descripción estándar” y (...) sus bases tomistas. Tras ello ofrezco tres conclusiones en torno a las bondades de la esperanza. (shrink)

Este artículo es una breve introducción al opúsculo De veritate propositionis de Roberto Grosseteste , acompañada por una traducción inédita de dicho opúsculo, la primera que por primera vez puede ser leído en español. En él Grosseteste comenta el problema de los futuros contingentes tal y como fue expuesto por Aristóteles en Sobre la interpretación, capítulo IX. Las soluciones de Aristóteles y Grosseteste son similares, aunque la idea de necesidad en Grosseteste está más vinculada a la eternidad que a la (...) temporalidad. (shrink)

El programa fuerte de la estética de lo cotidiano propone un enfoque en el que su valoración evite reducir el criterio estético a parámetros artísticos. Frente a la alternativa débil, este planteamiento incurre en una paradoja, de acuerdo a la cual es imposible apreciar estéticamente lo cotidiano sin que abandone su cotidianidad. Analizo los argumentos de Arto Haapala y Yuriko Saito para resolver este problema y presento sus debilidades, así como sus oportunidades.

Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These ‘evidence-first’ accounts provide little guidance for what makes speculation productive or egregious, nor how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various functions speculations play. On this basis, I develop a ‘function-first’ account (...) of speculation. This analysis grounds a richer discussion of when speculation is egregious and when it is productive, based in both fine-grained analysis of the speculation’s purpose, and what I call the ‘epistemic situation’ scientists face. (shrink)

In their widely cited article, Swain et al. report data that, purportedly, demonstrates instability of folk epistemic intuitions regarding the famous Truetemp case authored by Keith Lehrer. What they found is a typical example of priming, where presenting one stimulus before presenting another stimulus affects the way the latter is perceived or evaluated. In their experiment, laypersons were less likely to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp case when they first read a scenario describing a clear case of knowledge, and more (...) likely to ascribe knowledge when they first read a vignette describing a clear case of nonknowledge. We tried to replicate Swain et al. findings in three experiments: one devised in Polish, and the other two conducted in English. We found no priming effect for knowledge ratings regarding the Truetemp case – laypersons were similarly likely to attribute knowledge in all three investigated conditions. These three failed replication attempts are not decisive as to whether the priming effect in question occurs, nevertheless, the collected data puts Swain et al. conclusions about instability of epistemic intuitions in jeopardy. (shrink)

Cognitive archaeologists infer from material remains to the cognitive features of past societies. We characterize cognitive archaeology in terms of trace-based reasoning, which in the case of cognitive archaeology involves inferences drawing upon background theory linking objects from the archaeological record to cognitive features. We analyse such practices, examining work on cognitive evolution, language, and musicality. We argue that the central epistemic challenge for cognitive archaeology is often not a paucity of material remains, but insufficient constraint from cognitive theories. However, (...) we also argue that the success of cognitive archaeology does not necessarily require well-developed cognitive theories: Success might instead lead to them. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar que el lugar que ocupa la figura de Sócrates en la obra de Diderot es problemático, ambivalente. Ciertas actitudes y escritos de Diderot llevaron a sus coetáneos a trazar un paralelismo entre éste y el filósofo ateniense, sin embargo este artículo revela que el editor de la Encyclopédie se alejó de la figura de Sócrates en diferentes ocasiones. Esto arroja algunas luces, por otra parte, acerca de la posición que Diderot mantuvo en sus (...) trabajos de madurez con respecto a la relación entre el filósofo o el sabio y la sociedad. (shrink)

I introduce and defend the notion of a cognitive account of the sense of ownership. A cognitive account of the sense of ownership holds that one experiences something as one's own only if one thinks of something as one's own. By contrast, a phenomenal account of the sense of ownership holds that one can experience something as one's own without thinking about anything as one's own. I argue that we have no reason to favour phenomenal accounts over cognitive accounts, that (...) cognitive accounts are plausible given that much of our mental activity has unnoticed effects on our mental life, and that certain illusory experiences of body ownership sometimes described as thought-independent may be best explained as imaginative perceptual experiences. (shrink)

It is often thought that the vindication of experimental work lies in its capacity to be revelatory of natural systems. I challenge this idea by examining laboratory experiments in ecology. A central task of community ecology involves combining mathematical models and observational data to identify trophic interactions in natural systems. But many ecologists are also lab scientists: constructing microcosm or ‘bottle’ experiments, physically realizing the idealized circumstances described in mathematical models. What vindicates such ecological experiments? I argue that ‘extrapolationism’, the (...) view that ecological lab work is valuable because it generates truths about natural systems, does not exhaust the epistemic value of such practices. Instead, bottle experiments also generate ‘understanding’ of both ecological dynamics and empirical tools. Some lab work, then, aids theoretical understanding, as well as targeting hypotheses about nature. 1Introduction2Trophic Interactions and Observational Techniques3Cryptic Dynamics in Bottle Experiments4Extrapolationism 4.1Ecological possibility and actuality4.2Ecological heterogeneity5Understanding 5.1The epistemic good of understanding5.2Bottle experiments as understanding-generators5.3How understanding travels6Conclusion. (shrink)

Adrian Kuzminski argues that Pyrrhonism, an ancient Greek philosophy, can best be understood as a Western form of Buddhism. Not only is its founder, Pyrrho, reported to have traveled to India and been influenced by contacts with Indian sages, but a close comparison of ancient Buddhist and Pyrrhonian texts suggests a common philosophical practice, seeking liberation through suspension of judgment with regard to beliefs about non-evident things.

Creativity and PhilosophyBerys Gaut and Matthew Kieran Routledge. 2018. pp. 394. £30.99.

The author begins with an outline of Bernard William's moral philosophy, within which he locates William's notorious doctrine that reflection can destroy ethical knowledge. He then gives a partial defence of this doctrine, exploiting an analogy between ethical judgements and tensed judgements. The basic idea is that what the passage of time does for the latter, reflection can do for the former: namely, prevent the re-adoption of an abandoned point of view (an ethical point of view in the one case, (...) a temporal point of view in the other). In the final section the author says a little about how reflection might do this. Footnotes1 This essay is derived from a lecture entitled ‘Bernard Williams’, delivered at Oxford University in 2000, in the series ‘Oxford Philosophers on Oxford Philosophers’, organized by Peter Hacker and David Wiggins. I am grateful to those who attended the lecture, and to Bernard Williams, for helpful comments. (shrink)

An argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of “methodologically omnivorous” geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. -/- The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies (...) and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress. -/- Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation. (shrink)

Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. (...) The Kantian conception solves certain intractable problems in decision theory by integrating it into classical predicate logic, and provides answers to longstanding controversies in metaethics concerning moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification that the Humean conception engenders. In addition, it sheds light on certain kinds of moral behavior – for example, the whistleblower – that the Humean conception is at a loss to explain. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been proposed as a potential treatment of drug addiction on the basis of its effects on drug self-administration in animals and on addictive behaviours in some humans treated with DBS for other psychiatric or neurological conditions. DBS is seen as a more reversible intervention than ablative neurosurgery but it is nonetheless a treatment that carries significant risks. A review of preclinical and clinical evidence for the use of DBS to treat addiction suggests that more animal (...) research is required to establish the safety and efficacy of the technology and to identify optimal treatment parameters before investigating its use in addicted persons. Severely addicted persons who try and fail to achieve abstinence may, however, be desperate enough to undergo such an invasive treatment if they believe that it will cure their addiction. History shows that the desperation for a cure of addiction can lead to the use of risky medical procedures before they have been rigorously tested. In the event that DBS is used in the treatment of addiction, we provide minimum ethical requirements for clinical trials of its use in the treatment of addiction. These include: restrictions of trials to severely intractable cases of addiction; independent oversight to ensure that patients have the capacity to consent and give that consent on the basis of a realistic appreciation of the potential benefits and risks of DBS; and rigorous assessments of the effectiveness and safety of this treatment compared to the best available treatments for addiction. (shrink)

Negative self-views have proved to be a consistent marker of vulnerability for depression. However, recent research has shown that a particular kind of cognitive conflict, implicative dilemma, is highly prevalent in depression. In this study the relevance of these conflicts is assessed as compared to the cognitive model of depression of a negative view of the self. In so doing, 161 patients with major depression and 110 controls were assessed to explore negative self-construing (self-ideal discrepancy) and conflicts (implicative dilemmas), as (...) well as severity of symptoms. Results showed specificity for the clinical group indicating a pattern of mixed positive and negative self-descriptions with a high rate of conflict. Regression analysis lent support to the conflict hypothesis in relation to clinically relevant indicators such as symptom severity, global functioning. However, self-ideal discrepancy was a stronger predictor of group membership. The findings showed the relevance of cognitive conflicts to compliment the well-consolidated theory of negative self-views. Clinical implications for designing interventions are discussed. (shrink)

Brian Earp and colleagues argue that the major harms associated with the use of illicit drugs largely arise from, or are at least exacerbated by, the fact that their use attracts criminal pe...

This is an obituary of Bernard Williams.

Animal data suggest that jet fuels such as JP-8 are associated with hearing deficits when combined with noise and that the effect is more pronounced than with noise exposure alone. Some studies suggest peripheral dysfunction while others suggest central auditory dysfunction. Human data are limited in this regard. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible chronic adverse effects of JP-8 combined with noise exposure on the peripheral and central auditory systems in humans. Fifty-seven participants who were current (...) personnel from the Royal Australian Air Force were selected. Based on their levels of exposure to jet fuels, participants were divided into three exposure groups. Groups were also categorised based on their noise exposure levels. All participants were evaluated by tympanometry, pure-tone audiometry, distortion product otoacoustic emissions, auditory brainstem response, words-in-noise, compressed speech, dichotic digit test, pitch pattern sequence test, duration pattern sequence test and adaptive test of temporal resolution. All auditory tests were carried out after the participants were away from the Air Force base for a minimum of two weeks, thus two weeks without jet fuel and noise exposure. Jet fuel exposure was significantly associated with hearing thresholds at 4 and 8 kHz; average hearing thresholds across frequencies in the better ear; DPOAEs at 2.8, 4 and 6 kHz; ABR wave V latency in the right ear; compressed speech and words-in-noise. Further analyses revealed that participants with low exposure level to jet fuels showed significantly better results for the aforementioned procedures than participants with moderate and high exposure levels. All results were controlled for the covariates of age and noise exposure levels. The results suggest that jet fuel exposure, when combined with noise exposure, has an adverse effect on audibility in humans. Taking all the test results into consideration, jet fuel exposure combined with noise exposure specifically seems to affect the peripheral hearing system in humans. (shrink)

Wie unterscheidet sich ein Betriebssystem wie bspw. Linux von einer Mikrobe? Der Beitrag untersucht, wie technische Objekte im »Jahrhundert der Biologie« aufgefasst werden. Anhand des Werks von Gilbert Simondon wird gefragt, welche Existenzweisen biotechnische Objekte aufweisen. Die Prozesse von Abstraktion und Konkretisierung, die auf dem Feld der Synthetischen Biologie stattfinden, können einen Weg aufweisen, diese Fragen zu beantworten. How does a computer operating system such as Linux differ from a microbe? This paper explores how technical objects are envisaged in the (...) »century of biology«. Via the work of Gilbert Simondon, it asks what modes of existence biotechnical objects will display. The processes of abstraction and concretisation taking place in the field of synthetic biology offer one way to address these questions. (shrink)

Contributing to renewed scholarly interest in R. D. Laing and his circle, and in the radical therapeutic community of Kingsley Hall, London, this article offers the first article-length reading of Mary Barnes’ and Joseph Berke’s Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness. This text offers views of anti-psychiatry ‘on the ground’ that critique the 1960s utopianism of Laing’s championing of madness as a metanoic, quasi-psychedelic voyage. Barnes’ story, too, reveals tensions within the anti-psychiatric movement. Moving beyond existing criticism (...) of the text, Barnes, it is argued here, emerges as far more than an exemplary patient, victim or anti-psychiatric puppet. Particular attention is paid in this reading of Two Accounts to the following: the ways in which the spiritually inclined Barnes and the psychoanalytic Berke differ in this dual narrative text; the ways in which each differs from Laing; the metaphor of the journey; and the setting of Barnes’ story in the often conflicted, experimental household of Kingsley Hall. (shrink)

Comprendre les mécanismes sous-jacents de la «nouvelle économie» permet d'augmenter ses chances de gagner au jeu. Un rapide survol des conditions de naissance et de développement de la nouvelle économie montre que le passage de l'économie industrielle à l'économie du savoir a été accompagné par des malentendus similaires à ceux qu'a soulevés l'avènement de l'industrie dans les sociétés agraires. Dans cet article, nous montrons qu'il faut bien distinguer la nouvelle économie, l'économie des services et l'économie du don. Nous évaluons la (...) pertinence des grandes théories économiques pour rendre compte de la nouvelle économie. En examinant les sources des revenus qu'elle peut fournir, nous montrons les dangers qu'une gestion imprudente et non orthodoxe risque d'engendrer. Le temps romantique des pionniers est révolu; la crise de croissance est dépassée. Il reste que la nouvelle économie offre à l'homme du nouveau millénaire l'occasion de se réinventer.Understand the underlying mechanisms of the "new economy" to increase his chances of winning the game A quick overview of the conditions of birth and development of the new economy shows the transition from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy has been accompanied by misunderstandings similar to those that were raised the advent of industry in agrarian societies. In this paper, we show that it is necessary to distinguish the new economy, the service economy and the gift economy. We evaluate the relevance of major economic theories to account for the new economy. In examining the sources of income it can provide, we show that the dangers reckless and unorthodox management may cause. Romantic time of the pioneers are gone, the growth crisis is exceeded. It remains that the new economy offers to man the new millennium opportunity to reinvent itself. (shrink)

This volume deals with a number of topics that have not previously been specifically addressed before in a single text. A chapter on Sartre and religion talks about his thought in relation to Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism, while one on Sartre and children discusses his work in relation to the issues of freedom, pregnancy and autism. Beyond this, there are an additional seven chapters covering a wide variety of topics by leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, literature psychology, history (...) and political thought. While prior publications on Sartre have generally divided his work into two periods, pre-and post-Marxist, this volume deliberately stresses a middle and final period as well. As representative of the middle period, there is an emphasis on Notebooks for an Ethics, while Sartre's last work, Hope Now, is also treated as being philosophically significant in its own right. This approach helps to cast a new light on what Sartre has to say about authenticity, childhood and consciousness as embodied, among other subjects. The volume also addresses many and diverse issues of current interest, including those of freedom, Marxism and Sartre's relation to ethics. There are sections of the book that deal with history and the historical situations that helped to shape Sartre's thought, as well as articles that deal with Sartre as a specifically French thinker. A chapter deals with Sartre's relation to women , and here the issues of maternity as problematic, plus authentic, adult relationships are discussed. Finally, in addition to authors in philosophy and literature, there are articles by a child psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist to help to provide new insights on Sartre's work. Even as an academic philosopher Sartre always remained an iconoclast and the aim of this book is, at least partially to capture and provide the reader with insight into this spirit. (shrink)

While the genesis of self-awareness at approximately 18 months old is a dramatic landmark in human development, there is at this stage no explicit awareness on the toddler's part of his/her truly standing apart from others. Only much later does a distinct sense of self shift into focus, and here Sartre provides us with a compelling theory of a first reflective experience of self-awareness. He explains this phenomenon by emphasizing a violent shift in ontological status, one in which the pre-adolescent (...) child is precipitated from functional unity with a primary caregiver to an individuated state involving self-awareness as privative, i.e. where the child becomes aware of existing only in the form of not-being-the-adult. For Sartre this new experience of self is not therefore positive but rather formal or empty; there has in fact been a psychic transition, from being to nothingness. In addition, Sartre also states that all children first explicitly experience themselves in this fashion. These claims find support in the work of developmental psychologist Margaret Mahler. In fact, in spite of the vast developmental discrepancies between toddler and pre-adolescent child, given the appropriate environmental triggers privative subjectivity will be shown to involve a regression to the much earlier rapprochement stage of development described by Mahler. (shrink)

In both Being and Nothingness and the Notebooks for an Ethics we are told how one needs the Ego to get along in the everyday world, but yet at the same time that it is a psychic phenomenon that easily distorts everyday experience. In this paper, it is shown how, for Sartre, friends can play an important role by helping each other overcome the vested interest in maintaining the experience of a false, set identity that is engendered by the Ego. (...) In addition, reference to the Notebooks will make it clear that support per se is insufficient to enable one to transcend the constraints of an entrenched Ego, and that instead this form of aid must be taken in conjunction with challenge, or a type of positive conflict, if one is going to be able effectively to help a friend for the task in question. (shrink)

What for Sartre happens when bad faith goes so deep that one is no longer master of it? In The Condemned of Altona, Franz Gerlach, after an initial show of resistance, joins the Nazi cause and tortures prisoners of war in his charge. Fleeing home from Russia at the war’s end, he sequesters himself in the attic of the family mansion and attempts to absorb the guilt of the twentieth century by frantically arguing his case before a tribunal of scuttling (...) crabs.What does Sartre’s portrayal of hallucination tell us about the human condition and is it the result of insanity? As a harbinger for the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre’s ontology has shifted away from an emphasis on human isolation and absolute freedom to a concern with how behaviour, even of an irrational kind, is a profound reflection of one’s place in a social hierarchy. Also a reflection of a CDR-type approach, Sartre’s views change regarding the status of truth and interpersonal relations. For while someone like Nausea’s Roquentin exhibits a redemptive value through introspection, fantasy and private experience, Franz’s behaviour points to a repeated failure to deal with social reality and the associated attempt to redeem his own existence by acting authentically towards others. (shrink)

In this ambitious new work, eco-philosopher and cultural theorist Adrian Ivakhiv presents an incisive new way of thinking about images and imagination. Drawing upon an immense range of materials, Ivakhiv reassesses the place of imagination in cultural life, analyzing how people have interacted with images in the past and the ways that digital media are profoundly altering these relationships today. The book contributes powerfully to the study of visual culture and digital media, and provides provocative interpretations of a range of (...) important artists and media movements: from the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, the ambitious multi-screen installations of John Akomfrah, the abstract art of Swedish spiritualist Hilma af Klint, and the Afrofuturism of jazz musicians like Sun Ra and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, to the ever-expanding universe of animal videos on YouTube. Along the way, the book delves into animacy and religious imagery, iconophilia and iconoclasm, divination and prophecy, "truthiness" and "enchantment networks," online communities and artificial intelligence, the political and affective economies of digital media, and the role of utopian futurism in the present "climate-colonial Anthropocene" predicament. The result is a vital contribution toward a more empowering conception of the creative imagination and its possibilities in today's emerging digital ecology. (shrink)

From Machiavelli via Hobbes, Locke and Grotius to J.S. Mill and John Rawls, the liberal (and republican) tradition pivots about the primacy of the individual over all forms of human association and allied to this primacy is the replacing of notions of substan¬tive goodness or truth with the ultimate foundation of society upon subjective rights secured by the power of the central state. Those rights are grounded in the human will and the artifice of the social contract that has supplanted (...) older ideas of covenantal relationships governed by a logic of reciprocity or gift-exchange. Liberalism is therefore inherently atomistic and oscillates between the isolated individual and some collective unity either objectively compounded or artificially supposed – ‘Leviathan’ was both. By positing an asocial ‘state of nature’, liberal contractualism purports to invent the artificial order of politics. By contrast, Romanticism – in the works of Novalis, Schlegel, Carlyle, Coleridge, de Biran and Bulgakov – develops develop in novel ways the ancient and Christian idea that human beings as social, political creatures have a natural desire for objective, substantive values by which to orientate their lives and give them that coherent shape which alone engenders a sense of real fulfilment. This teleological space cannot be equated with the impersonal, absolute sovereignty of national states and transnational markets but requires interpersonal relations within a mediated polity that has a transcendent outlook. So whereas liberalism merely regulates the evil and violence which it views as primary (and which therefore it perpetuates and even reinforces), Romanticism offers a vision of partial redemption in this life just because the Fall and original sin never fully destroyed the fundamentally peaceful, ontological ordering of the world. Rather, as fallen creatures equally capable of vice and virtue, human beings can discover their own particular purpose and place in society that is ordered to the good of the whole cosmos ultimately rooted in God’s creative action. By practising virtue, we can be redeemed in this life up to a point and we can begin to redeem the promise of an original harmony. (shrink)

Beginning with the second decade of the last century, after a fierce critique of W. Dilthey and the Historical School’s epistemological approach, philosophical hermeneutics has assumed the position of “official” philosophy of history of our times. However, in our previous work we have shown that philosophical hermeneutics is not actually able to give a better answer to “What is history?” than that already offered by the Historical School. Now we would like to show that its answer to the other fundamental (...) question of the philosophy of history - “How is history to be known?” - is even more problematic, making historical science impossible. For if the being of history really is tradition as philosophical hermeneutics argues, and if the essence of tradition is language then, on the one hand, the very stability of historical meaning presupposed by any epistemological process will always be displaced by the play of what Derrida calls “différance,” the ceaseless differentiation of the signifiers and signifieds. And, on the other hand, even if historical meaning were stable enough so as to be known, it could not be grasped because, we will try to argue, the process of understanding as philosophical hermeneutics describes it is always permeated by misunderstanding. (shrink)

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-021-09685-3.

This paper penetrates in the complex conceptual architectonic of the Natorp report by following the genealogy and fixing the meaning of the terms employed in this short programmatic text of the young Heidegger.

Notice board of current events, such as conferences, publications and media broadcasts linked to Sartre's life, work and intellectual legacy.