Interest in proportionalism as an important trend in Catholic moral theology seems to have faded in the recent decade. This has led some to view it as a movement that was somehow defeated. I suggest that proportionalism's influence can still be seen in contemporary Catholic ethics, most noticeably in the current interest in virtue ethics, casuistry, and feminist ethics. I argue that proportionalism encouraged a reappraisal of the methodology for evaluating moral action in a direction that was more hospitable to (...) concerns about the particularity and context of the agent. (shrink)

This study develops a biosemiotic framework for a descriptive phenomenology. We incorporate the set _utterance-genre-lifeworld_ in biosemiotic theory by paralleling it with the Peircean-Uexküllean notions of _sign_, _habit_, and _Umwelt_ (respectively). This framework for empirical semiotic studies aims to complement the concepts of _affordance_ and _scaffold_, as applied in studies on learning. The paper also contributes to bridging Bakhtinian-Hallidayian-Habermasian views on utterance, genre, and lifeworld with biosemiotics. We exploit the possibility that biosemiotics offers to bring together hermeneutic and phenomenological analysis. (...) We relate these views to integrated _levels_ in a systemic framework for communication. Signs are seen as inter-dependent construction elements in utterances. Repeated use of utterances in shifting contexts generates shared recognizable _kinds_ of communication, or genres. ‘Life-genre’ is used in a zoo-communication context, to avoid anthropocentrism. _Life-genre_ serves animals’ life-functions. Genres make up a systemic network of communicational resources, along with the related concepts of event, affordance, and scaffold. Utterance, genre, and lifeworld have five aspects, constituting an integrative approach to communication: form, content, act, time, and space. Semiosis and positioning are _processes_ that connect aspects and levels. Levels, aspects, and processes make up the framework as a system. While biosemiotics supports a phenomenological notion of life-genre, in turn, this notion also contributes to the development of the former, bridging a gap between organisms’ sign experience on a micro-level and organisms’ phenomenal lifeworld/Umwelt. Comparisons of _lifeworld_ and _Umwelt_ reveal that, although not identical, these are sufficiently similar to be perceived as an overall _macro-_level for signs and communication. Starting from a construal of utterance and genre as dynamic, dialogical, and reciprocal, genre is positioned as _meso_-level, mediating between signs in utterances and the lifeworld/Umwelt level. We propose _genres_, understood as semiotic scaffoldings built through affordances, as an analytical concept to capture meso-level phenomena. Scaffolding is determined by both ongoing events and (pre-)available genres. Events are manifestations of these scaffolding processes. Identifying animal and educational communication as two particularly relevant fields for future applications, we compare key socio-semiotic concepts to the notions of sign, habit, and Umwelt. The notions affordance and scaffolding are particularly important to think of learning as continuous with adaptation. An overall aim is to broaden as well as finetune semiotic _phenomenology_ as a platform for empirical analyses of communication. We conclude by exemplifying and summarizing how the framework facilitates this. (shrink)

Paradigmatic examples of logical arguments from evil are attempts to establish that the following claims are inconsistent with one another: (1) God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. (2) There is evil in the world. Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense resists such arguments by providing a positive case that (1) and (2) are consistent. A weakness in Plantinga’s free will defense, however, is that it does not show that theism is consistent with the proposition that there are non-moral evils in (...) the world (i.e., that there obtain morally bad states of affairs for which no creature is morally responsible). But many of us firmly believe that there are evils of that sort. I show how Plantinga’s free will defense can be extended so as to redress this weakness. (shrink)

In this response to Christian Smith's What Is a Person?, I raise questions about his conception of the human life as a narrative quest and his account of change in social structures and institutions. The metaphor of life as a quest suggests a solid, isolated, and integrated moral agent. I wonder whether the experiences of most moral agents render a different picture—one where life is fragmented and characterized by complex webs of relationships. Smith provides a detailed account of how social (...) institutions change. I pose examples of more subtle and complex types of change as a way to press him to think about whether his account of change is too linear. (shrink)

Resenha: Acidentes ambientais e planos de contingência.

According to proper functionalist theories of warrant, a belief is warranted only if it is formed by cognitive faculties that are properly functioning according to a good, truth-aimed design plan, one that is often thought to be specified either by intentional design or by natural selection. A formidable challenge to proper functionalist theories is the Swampman objection, according to which there are scenarios involving creatures who have warranted beliefs but whose cognitive faculties are not properly functioning, or are poorly designed, (...) or are not aimed at truth. In this paper, we draw lessons from cognitive science in order to develop a novel argument for the conclusion that the Swampman objection fails against proper functionalist theories of warrant. Our argument not only shows that the underlying, central intuition motivating Swampman-like scenarios is false but also motivates proper function as a necessary condition for warrant, thereby lending support to the claim that any theory of knowledge that lacks a proper function requirement is false. (shrink)

The article discusses a model first described in a Keynote and revisited to reflect how certain ways of knowing have become subjugated by the power structures of Western society and need to be brought into relationship with the dominant culture. The original keynote did not examine all the polarities which were developed in Unconventional Wisdom. The article explains how I have developed these in my theology, performance and professional practice. The article shows how I have used the thinking in a (...) variety of contexts and forms bringing together the arts and theology to produce a practical theology for my ministry as a Christian priest and a composer/conductor. (shrink)

In her seminal book, Philosophy and the State in France, Nannerl O. Keohane uncovered something close to a paradox: French absolutism bred a peculiar form of individualism that manifested disregard for civic involvement, yet by the eighteenth century the passive member of the ancient corporations moved without hesitation into participatory politics. The aim of this article is to clarify this apparent paradox. In order to do so, I revive the medieval dialectic between forum internum and forum externum that for more (...) than a thousand years provided the foundation for individualism all across the Western world. One cannot understand the paradoxes that later will mark the French Revolution if one fails to take into consideration the almost obsessive focus on the forum internum and on the authenticity of the self coupled with a drive toward conformism and unity in the forum externum, which was already in place for more than a century before. Furthermore, one cannot understand why political representation as representation of individual wills was not at all appealing to the early modern Frenchmen. Given today's worrisome disaffection of the typical individual with the formalized political sphere, the dialectic of the two fora is worth reconsidering. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetivou apresentar uma revisão sistemática da produção científica brasileira sobre a inclusão de crianças autistas no ensino regular, publicada entre os anos de 2010 e 2020. As buscas foram realizadas nas bases de dados SciELO, BIREME, Redalyc, EBSCO e Scopus, tendo como descritor “a inclusão de crianças autistas”. Após a verificação dos estudos, e contemplando-se os critérios de inclusão e exclusão da presente pesquisa, foram selecionados oito artigos. Nos principais resultados, pôde-se perceber que a maioria das pesquisas (...) empíricas utilizaram-se de métodos quantitativos e buscaram investigar se a relação das escolas regulares com a inclusão de crianças autistas nesse meio ocorre de forma positiva ou negativa. Outro dado importante foi a falta de preparação dos ensinos regulares frente à inclusão dessas crianças, no sentido de que muitos professores não se sentem aptos para trabalhar com estas. Por fim, discutiram-se os achados mais relevantes e propuseram-se novos temas para futuras pesquisas acerca deste tema. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 71, Issue 3, Page 331-352, June 2021.

The recent development of biosemiotics has revealed the achievement of knowledge and the development of science to be the results of the semiosis of all life forms, including those commonly regarded as cultural constructs. Education is thus a semiosic structure to which evolution itself has adapted, while learning is the semiotic phenomenon that determines the renewal of life itself. Historically, it was a semiotic paradigm that determined the emergence of institutions such as universities and that underpinned the development of liberal (...) education. The present article considers the history of education in terms of sign emergence and evolution, regarding education as currently being conceived and practised as a stage in the general evolutionary action of signs. This approach differs from the prevailing modern approaches to education, which are mostly applied psychology and sociology. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a multiverse hypothesis, but (...) it tends to favor a single-universe hypothesis instead. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain how semiotics and constructivism can collaborate in an educational epistemology by developing a joint approach to prescientific conceptions. Empirical data and findings of constructivist research are interpreted in the light of Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics is an anti-psychologistic logic and relational logic. Constructivism was traditionally developed within psychology and sociology and, therefore, some incompatibilities can be expected between these two schools. While acknowledging the differences, we explain that constructivism and semiotics share the assumption of realism (...) that knowledge can only be developed upon knowledge and, therefore, an epistemological collaboration is possible. The semiotic analysis performed confirms the constructivist results and provides a further insight into the teacher-student relation. Like the constructivist approach, Peirce’s doctrine of agapism infers that the personal dimension of teaching must not be ignored. Thus, we argue for the importance of genuine sympathy in teaching attitudes. More broadly, the article also contributes to the development of postmodern humanities. At the end of the modern age, the humanities are passing through a critical period of transformation. There is a growing interest in semiotics and semiotic philosophy in many areas of the humanities. Such a case, on which we draw, is the development of a theoretical semiotic approach to education, namely edusemiotics. (shrink)

Proponents of the this-universe objection to fine-tuning arguments for a multiverse claim that while the multiverse hypothesis raises the probability that some universe is fine-tuned for life, it fails to raise the probability that this one is. Because that is so, they further argue, those who take the fine-tuning of this universe as evidence for a multiverse are guilty of a probabilistic fallacy. Some opponents of the this-universe objection contend that it turns on contentious assumptions regarding the essential properties of (...) universes and agents. In particular, it is alleged to turn on the assumption that universes fail to have their nomic properties essentially as well as on the assumption that we could not have existed in other universes. I argue by contrast that the this-universe objection does not depend on these assumptions. (shrink)

Existentialism concerning singular propositions is the thesis that singular propositions ontologically depend on the individuals they are directly about in such a way that necessarily, those propositions exist only if the individuals they are directly about exist. Haecceitism is the thesis that what non-qualitative facts there are fails to supervene on what purely qualitative facts there are. I argue that existentialism concerning singular propositions entails the denial of haecceitism and that this entailment has interesting implications for debates concerning the philosophy (...) of language, the nature of propositions, and the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

Historically, Nelson Goodman’s paradox involving the predicates ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ has been taken to furnish a serious blow to Carl Hempel’s theory of confirmation in particular and to purely formal theories of confirmation in general. In this paper, I argue that Goodman’s paradox is no more serious of a threat to Hempel’s theory of confirmation than is Hempel’s own paradox of the ravens. I proceed by developing a suggestion from R. D. Rosenkrantz into an argument for the conclusion that these (...) paradoxes are, in fact, equivalent. My argument, if successful, is of both historical and philosophical interest. Goodman himself maintained that Hempel’s theory of confirmation was capable of handling the paradox of the ravens. And Hempel eventually conceded that Goodman’s paradox showed that there could be no adequate, purely syntactical theory of confirmation. The conclusion of my argument entails, by contrast, that Hempel’s theory of confirmation is incapable of handling Goodman’s paradox if and only if it is incapable of handling the paradox of the ravens. It also entails that for any adequate solution to one of these paradoxes, there is a corresponding and equally adequate solution to the other. (shrink)

The debate over the genetic testing of minors has developed into a major bioethical topic. Although several controversial questions remain unanswered, a degree of consensus has been reached regarding the policies on genetic testing of minors. Recently, several commentators have suggested that these policies are overly restrictive, too narrow in focus, and even in conflict with the limited empirical evidence that exists on this issue. We respond to these arguments in this paper, by first offering a clarification of three key (...) concepts—autonomy of the minor, future autonomy, and parental authority—which must be disentangled. We then respond to the arguments by noting the uncertainty of the value of predictive genetic information, and by assessing the psychosocial risks still involved in genetic testing of minors, which are also largely unknown. We conclude that the current consensus position is justified at this stage, in light of the predictions of harm resulting from genetic testing of minors that have not been adequately proved to be unwarranted. (shrink)

Two types of truth table task are used to examine people's mental representation of conditionals. In two within-participants experiments, participants either receive the same task-type twice (Experiment 1) or are presented successively with both a possibilities task and a truth task (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 examines how people interpret the three-option possibilities task and whether they have a clear understanding of it. The present study aims to examine, for both task-types, how participants' cognitive ability relates to the classification of the (...) truth table cases as irrelevant, and their consistency in doing so. Looking at the answer patterns, participants' cognitive ability influences their classification of the truth table cases: A positive correlation exists between cognitive ability and the number of false-antecedent cases classified as ?irrelevant?, both in the possibilities task and the truth task. This favours a suppositional representation of conditionals. (shrink)

Abstract: Proponents of the this-universe objection to fine-tuning arguments for a multiverse claim that while the multiverse hypothesis raises the probability that some universe is fine-tuned for life, it fails to raise the probability that this one is. Because that is so, they further argue, those who take the fine-tuning of this universe as evidence for the multiverse hypothesis are guilty of a probabilistic fallacy. I argue that a proper evaluation of the this-universe objection requires the development of a general, (...) formal framework for reasoning probabilistically with evidence statements expressed using indexical terms (such as the statement This universe is fine-tuned). I proceed to develop such a framework and then to apply it to the this-universe objection. While my primary aim is to defend the this-universe objection from recent rebuttals, a secondary aim is to exhibit the utility of the framework itself, which has the potential for wider application. (shrink)

Developed in the past two decades, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats‐associated protein 9 (CRISPR‐Cas9) technique offers greater accessibility and efficiency in editing genes. Its immediate success has transformed medical research and treatment in productive ways, but has also left questions about ethical consequences in its wake. These are questions familiar to bioethical inquiry. How do we balance short‐term and long‐term benefits and risks? How do we promote just and equitable access to new medical interventions? How do we protect (...) respect for individual autonomy? These questions require a balance between protecting individuals' liberties and the good of the communities in which they live. In this essay, I am interested in how the principle of respect for autonomy can be interpreted in light of CRISPR‐Cas9. I argue that a relational autonomy framework forges a middle ground between the need to respect individual freedom to pursue genetic treatments and the need to acknowledge the networks of dependence that define our moral worlds. I identify three thematic areas that relational autonomy brings into greater focus: the importance of trust, the acknowledgment of vulnerability/dependence, and the promotion of justice. Autonomy understood relationally allows us to see individual freedom as tethered to communal well‐being. (shrink)

This paper is based on a piano piece commissioned by the British and Ireland School of Feminist Theology for its anniversary conference. It interrogates the situations in which the sections of the piece were created through the lens of conceptions of failure. It explores religious experience and identity in mental health contexts and the development of groups associated with Feminist Theology over the past 20 years. It examines the repression of the feminine, the place of anger in religion and therapy (...) and its relation to a theology of the crucifixion and the processes of forgiveness. It integrates poetry into its text and sets out the role of the arts in process theology. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz betrachtet die Geschichte und Praxis des Devising als ein Feld, um die Dynamik zwischen der Gewalt der Entscheidungsfindung und dem Potenzial für Kollektivität und Dissoziation zu untersuchen. Insbesondere beleuchtet dieser Artikel die Tradition des devised theatre, wie sie im Gefolge der Theater- und Performancegruppen der 1960er Jahre entstanden ist, die Kollektivität als politische Ideologie in den Vordergrund stellten. Ausgehend von den jüngsten partizipatorischen Performances des New Yorker Künstlerduos 600 HIGHWAYMEN im Rahmen des Tryptichons A Thousand Ways wird der (...) Begriff devised acts verwendet, um Facetten der Intervention und Entscheidungsfindung zu beschreiben. Der Aufsatz stellt dabei die Frage, wie die Kräfte der Gewalt durch devising transformiert werden können. Ausgehend von der Behauptung der US-amerikanischen Theaterregisseurin Anne Bogart, dass Entscheidungen eine generative Kraft der Gewalt hervorbringen können (2001, S. 45ff.), schaut dieser Beitrag auf Momente dieser „notwendigen Gewalt“ (ebd., S. 46), die sich nicht aus dem Prozess des Theatermachens und der Performance herauslösen lassen. (shrink)

The philosophy and theory of film began with the skeptical question of whether film could be an art, given the mechanical way its moving pictures were produced. Theorists such as Noël Carroll and Victor Perkins have persuasively argued that the legacy of its defensive beginnings continues to compromise both philosophy and theory of film. This chapter seeks to contribute to an ongoing collective effort to overcome the effects of this legacy. It focuses on two films that invite comparisons not to (...) painting or theater but to dance—Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. It argues that the right kind of attention to these films sheds new light on both what film is and how it is related to the other arts. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar uma análise do riso no filme Coringa (Todd Phillips, 2019) enquanto paródia de elementos constituintes da sociedade atual, a qual incorpora uma sociedade humorística nos termos de Gilles Lipovetsky (2014) e onde os fenômenos do riso grotesco e dos Charivaris marcam presença sob formas reinventadas. Coringa apresenta diversos pontos de reflexão, dentre os quais, destacaremos o contexto social, onde a “leveza do humor” e o vínculo entre riso e violência prevalece. A atmosfera do humor (...) é a ambientação geral da atual sociedade, onde tudo precisa ter “graça” (os acontecimentos sérios, a vida política, as catástrofes etc.), uma sociedade humorística (LIPOVETSKY, 2014). Lipovetsky (2014) caracteriza essa sociedade por um clima de “leveza” geral. Mostraremos, porém, que o riso comumentemente assume sua face violenta, ou sob sua forma menos recorrente, o grotesco, apreendido sob o signo da inquietude, estranheza. Sua natureza é de denúncia, de apreensão do real (BAUDELAIRE, 1998); ou sob a outra mais comum, o riso de Charivari, que é de natureza grupal, segregadora e excludente, um riso inscrito na “lógica simbólica do ruído” que tem suas origens na Idade Média (GAUVARD, 1974; MINOIS, 2003). (shrink)

A Short Modern History of Studying Sacrobosco’s De sphaera. The treatise generally known as De sphaera offered at the beginning of the 13th century a general image of the structure of the Cosmos. In this paper I’m first trying to present a triple stake with which this treaty of Johannes de Sacrobosco (c. 1195 - c. 1256). This effort is intended to draw a context upon the treaty on which I will present in the second part of this paper namely, (...) a short modern history of studying this treaty starting from the beginning of the 20th century up to this day. The first stake consists in the well-known episode of translation of the XI-XII centuries in the Latin milieu of the Greek and Arabic treaties. The treatise De sphaera taking over, assimilating and comparing some of the new translations of the texts dedicated to astronomy. The second consists in the fact that Sacrobosco`s work can be considered a response to a need of renewal of the curriculum dedicated to astronomy at the University of Paris. And the third consists in the novelty and the need to use the De sphaera treatise in the Parisian University’s curriculum of the 13th century. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Digital literature presents new ways of constructing aesthetic and emotional experience for child readers. This article reflects on emotion and affect in digital literature through the analysis of three literary apps for children. To deal with the complex phenomenon of the affective and emotional experience in digital reading, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework is proposed, relating Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to Kress and van Leeuwen’s multimodal social semiotics. The corpus includes the apps Little Red Riding Hood, by producer Nosy Crow, The Monster (...) at the End of This Book, by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin, and Hat Monkey, by Chris Haughton. It discusses how different semiotic resources are used in the representation of emotions and in suggesting emotional tension to the child reader, with embodiment and the intrinsic relationship between reader’s bodies and their emotional experience as a central part of apps’ textual construction. (shrink)

O presente artigo trata da relação entre experiência estética e formação humana a partir da abordagem de John Dewey e tem como objetivo demonstrar as contribuições da experiência estética para a formação humana, a partir da perspectiva monista deste autor. Para dar conta desse propósito, tomamos como referência principal a sua obra Arte como Experiência e, como complementares, Democracia e Educação, Experiência e educação e Vida e Educação. O artigo aborda, inicialmente, a relação entre a experiência estética e o papel (...) da imaginação para, em um segundo passo, tematizar a contribuição da experiência estética à educação compreendida como formação em uma perspectiva monista. Palavras-chave : Experiência estética. Formação humana. Arte. Educação. (shrink)