In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:.. MERELY A MAN OF LETTERS" an interview with Jorge Luis Borges* Philosophy and Literature: Why don't you tell us about some of the philosophers who have influenced your work and in whom you have been the most interested? Jorge Luis Borges: Well, I think that's an easy one. You might talk in terms of two: Berkeley and Schopenhauer. But I suppose Hume might be worked in (...) also, because, after all, Hume refutes Berkeley. Really, he comes from Berkeley—even if Berkeley comes from Locke. You might think of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume as being three links in an argument..... But I suppose that when someone refutes someone else in philosophy, he is carrying on the argument. P&L: And Schopenhauer? Borges: Schopenhauer is very different from Hume. Of course, Schopenhauer had his idea of the Will. That is not to be found in Hume.... The case of Berkeley was different. I suppose he thought of God as being aware of all things all the time, if I don't get him wrong. If we go away, does this room disappear? No, because God is thinking about it. Now, in the case of Schopenhauer, I was rereading Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea, and I was rather taken aback, or baffled I should say, puzzled by something that keeps on recurring in Schopenhauer. Of course it may have been a slip of the pen, but as he goes back to it, and as he was a very careful writer, I wonder if it is a slip of the pen. For example, Schopenhauer begins by saying that the universe, the stars, the spaces in between, the planets, *On April 14, 1976, two editors of Philosophy and Literature, along with an interested colleague, interviewed Jorge Luis Borges at Michigan State University, where he held a position as visiting professor for the winter term. These remarks are edited from the transcript of that conversation. 337 338Philosophy and Literature this planet, those things, have no existence—except in the mind which perceives them. But then, to my surprise—and I suppose you can explain this to me, since you are philosophers and I am not—what Schopenhauer says is that all those things have no existence except in the brain. And that the universe—I remember these words, I don't think I'm inventing them now—"ist ein Gehirnphänomen," that the world is a cerebral phenomenon. Now, I was baffled. Because, of course, if you think of the universe, I suppose the brain is as much a part of the external world as the stars or the moon. The brain after all is a system of visual, of tactile, perceptions. He keeps on insisting on the brain. I don't think, for example, that Bishop Berkeley insists on the brain, or Hume, who would have insisted on the mind, consciousness. P&L: People sometimes say that they see Berkeley in stories like "Orbis Tertius." Borges: Yes, I suppose they do. Well, of course. But in that story I was led by literary means also. P&L: How do you distinguish the literary from the philosophical means in that story? Could you explain that? Borges: Very easily.... Encyclopedias have been my chief reading. I have always been interested in encyclopedias. I used to go to the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires—and since I was so shy, I felt I could not cope with asking for a book, so I looked on the shelves for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I would pick up any chance volume and I would read it. One night I was richly rewarded, because I read all about the Druses, Dryden and the Druids—a treasure trove, no?—all in the same volume, "Dr-." Then I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia... a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. For example, you would have a language and then a literature, and then a history and so on. Then I thought I would write a story of a fancy encyclopedia. Of course that would require many different people to write it... (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Steffen Borge’s The Philosophy of Football. It has contributions from William Morgan, Murray Smith and Brian Weatherson with replies from Borge.

Jorge Luis Borges is working for decades now on the execution of the nightmare. Perhaps his most celebrated instance is "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius ". It would take much work to sift the fabricated references in Borges' works from the ones deliberately misread from the over-emphasis on an author's casual remark, etc.

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well (...) as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

In this paper I want to explore the arguments for so-called ‘unarticulated constituents’ (UCs). Unarticulated constituents are supposed to be propositional elements, not presented in the surface form of a sentence, nor explicitly represented at the level of its logical form, yet which must be interpreted in order to grasp the (proper) meaning of that sentence or expression. Thus, for example, we might think that a sentence like ‘It is raining’ must contain a UC picking out the place at which (...) the speaker of the sentence asserts it to be raining. In §1 I will explore the nature of UCs a little further, and, in §2, suggest that we can recognise two different forms of argument for them.. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immediately concatenated with the demonstrative in such phrases (...) the ‘matrix’ of the expression. The question, then, is how we should construe the logical form of such expressions within a semantic theory for our language; and I wish to suggest that some recent answers to this question are, in fact, mistaken. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I wish to highlight two (often underlying) assumptions about the nature of noun phrases in general, and suggest that, if they are both adopted, they apparently constrain the possible accounts of the logical form of complex demonstratives to just three options. The second and third parts of the paper will be concerned with expanding these options and arguing that none of them are adequate; thus the major part of the paper is concerned with the negative claim that the most obvious moves to make in this area must actually fail on closer inspection. The fourth and final section will then (very briefly) sketch the positive thesis of the paper: that we can deliver a clear and cohesive account of complex demonstratives, armed simply with elements which we will draw from David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives, but only at the cost of rejecting (or at least refining) one assumption we recognised initially. (shrink)

A standard objection to so-called ‘minimal semantics’ (Borg 2004, 2012, Cappelen and Lepore 2005) is that minimal contents are explanatorily redundant as they play no role in an adequate account of linguistic communication (those making this objection include Levinson 2000, Carston 2002, Recanati 2004). This paper argues that this standard objection is mistaken. Furthermore, I argue that seeing why the objection is mistaken sheds light both on how we should draw the classic Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, and how (...) we should think about the key philosophical notion of assertion. Specifically, it reveals that these ideas are best understood primarily in socio-linguistic terms (resting on the degree of liability a speaker is held to have for linguistically conveyed content). (shrink)

Com este trabalho pretendemos mostrar como um olhar mais atento para o corpo de Ulisses pode nos ajudar a compreender o percurso e os processos de formação da identidade, do sujeito esclarecido, presentes no Excurso I da Dialética do Esclarecimento, de Theodor Adorno e Max Horkheimer. Acreditamos que pontos sobre mito e esclarecimento e alguns traços a respeito da formação da subjetividade do homem esclarecido serão marcados nas relações que o herói homérico estabelece com a natureza e, em especial, com (...) seu corpo. (shrink)

J.W. Goethe concluded in 1795 his novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. Twelve years later, Hegel would publish his Phenomenology of Spirit. His “science of the experience of consciousness” and this new kind of novel appeared in historical conditions leading both literature and philosophy to pay attention to culture and to cultivation of identity by the hero himself. Goethe and Hegel converge in two masterpieces, close to each other in many aspects. This paper aims to present Hegel’s Phenomenology as an example of (...) a stylized apprenticeship novel. Lukács would point out in Goethe’s novel “the problem of the relation between poet and bourgeois world”, in which a romantic Werther had collapsed, for there is a pedagogical significance for socialists in this narrative. Although in our age philosophies of history are suspicious, such “coming-of-age novels” still survive as an appropriate gender in the writings of, e. g., Günter Grass and J. M. Coetzee. (shrink)

Contexto histórico-social da América Latina nas décadas de 1960 e 1970 -- Um modo peculiar de fazer filosofia, teologia e pedagogia na América Latina dos anos 1960 e 1970 -- A reconstrução de uma ética pedagógica libertadora freireana a partir do oprimido.

El artículo analisa el actual Estado de Derecho en conexión con la redescubierta del valor de la justicia, producida por la Filosofía de los Valores característica del siglo XX, cuya vertiente neokantiana e idealista tendrá un significativo impacto en el Derecho. La justicia surge como el centro simbólico de la experiencia del Derecho, asumiendo papel axial en sus procesos de construcción y concrección. En el marco de la llamada Escuela Iusfilosófica de Minas Gerais, investigase las interfaces (evidentemente interdisciplinares) entre lo (...) jurídico y lo ético. Al retomar la justicia, acabamos construyendo la experiencia del Imperio de los jueces, en el fenómeno llamado justicialización de la política. El gran riesgo de la Era de la Justicia es despolitizar el nomos y el Ethos, como pasa hoy en Brasil. En ese sentido, hay que asumirse la necesaria reconstitucionalización de Brasil, para impedirse el fortalecimiento de las prerrogativas autocráticas judiciales y bien así el vaciamiento de lo político, de lo ideológico y de lo democrático. Afirmase que una comprensión culturalista del Derecho podrá combater la desideologización del Estado y recuperar la dimensión ética del Derecho, sin expoliarlo de la política y la historicidad. (shrink)

Donald Davidson intenta reconciliar dos posiciones tradicionalmente opuestas: la positivista, naturalista, y la hermenéutica. Sin embargo, aunque sostiene la identidad mente-cerebro y la explicación causal de la acción, en su teoría tienen más relevancia la autonomía e irreductibilidad de lo mental así como la relación de justificación que existe entre razones y causas y que fundamenta las explicaciones de sentido común. Argumentaré que su intento conciliador no ha tenido éxito ya que opta claramente por el proyecto interpretativo frente al explicativo. (...) Ese proyecto se basa en la creencia de que compartimos universalmente ciertos principios de raciona-lidad que hacen posible la interpretación mutua por lo que tiene problemas a la hora de explicar el relativismo y la irracionalidad. Además, considera que las únicas explicaciones válidas de la acción son las de la psicología popular. (shrink)

Kant is categorical about the relation between virtue and the controlling of inclinations:Since virtue is based on inner freedom it contains a positive command to a human being, namely to bring all his capacities and inclinations under his reason's control and so to rule over himself. Virtue presupposes apathy, in the sense of absence of affects. Kant revives the stoic ideal of tranquilitas as a necessary condition for virtue: ‘The true strength of virtue is a tranquil mind’ . In the (...) Anthropology and the Doctrine of Virtue, apathy is taken in the sense of freedom from affects. In these texts, Kant maintains that we must strive toward a state in which affects are absent. (shrink)

Vardanyan’s Theorems [36, 37] state that $\mathsf {QPL}(\mathsf {PA})$ —the quantified provability logic of Peano Arithmetic—is $\Pi ^0_2$ complete, and in particular that this already holds when the language is restricted to a single unary predicate. Moreover, Visser and de Jonge [38] generalized this result to conclude that it is impossible to computably axiomatize the quantified provability logic of a wide class of theories. However, the proof of this fact cannot be performed in a strictly positive signature. The system $\mathsf (...) {QRC_1}$ was previously introduced by the authors [1] as a candidate first-order provability logic. Here we generalize the previously available Kripke soundness and completeness proofs, obtaining constant domain completeness. Then we show that $\mathsf {QRC_1}$ is indeed complete with respect to arithmetical semantics. This is achieved via a Solovay-type construction applied to constant domain Kripke models. As corollaries, we see that $\mathsf {QRC_1}$ is the strictly positive fragment of $\mathsf {QGL}$ and a fragment of $\mathsf {QPL}(\mathsf {PA})$. (shrink)

Resumo: A acessibilidade como tema transversal à formação dos egressos da Universidade Federal do Pampa se faz presente tanto no projeto institucional da universidade quanto nos Projetos Pedagógicos dos Cursos. No entanto, embora tal intencionalidade constar nos documentos institucionais, a materialização de tal temática - para além da garantia dos requisitos legais de acessibilidade presentes nos instrumentos de avaliação do ensino superior - se mostra incipiente. No curso de Medicina, apesar do tema da diversidade e, da garantia de equidade sem (...) qualquer tipo de distinção, no atendimento da rede básica, compor as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a formação dos futuros médicos, a discussão sobre a temática da deficiência é recente, sendo atualmente impulsionada pela demanda de recursos para este público, em específico, na atenção básica de saúde, em função da pandemia da COVID-19. Neste artigo, apresentamos as práticas interdisciplinares que vêm sendo protagonizadas entre o Curso de Medicina e o Programa de Mestrado Profissional em Ensino de Ciências. Dentre estas práticas estão a produção de pranchas em Comunicação Alternativa Aumentativa (CAA) para apoio ao diagnóstico do COVID-19 em pacientes com deficiência; materiais instrucionais acessíveis sobre temas envolvendo a pandemia; curso de CAA para estudantes da área da saúde e formação de profissionais dos serviços de saúde para o atendimento de usuários com deficiência. Estas práticas e suas consequências para a formação dos estudantes de Medicina, constitui o objetivo deste trabalho. Palavras-chave: acessibilidade; formação médica; inclusão; educação especial Medical Education and Inclusive Processes: interdisciplinary teaching practices guided by the knowledge of special education Abstract: The accessibility, as transversal theme to the formation of the Pampa Federal University egresses, is present in the University institutional project as well in the Courses Pedagogical Projects. However, although such intentionality appears in the institutional documents, the materialization of such theme – apart from the guarantee of the accessibility legal requirements present in the evaluation instruments of the university education – is still incipient. Even in the medical course, in spite of the diversity theme and the guarantee of equality without any kind of distinction in the basic system assistance compose the National Curricular Guidelines to the education of the futures doctors, is recent the discussion about the disability theme, being nowadays stimulated by the demand of resources required for this specific type of public in the primary health care, arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we present the interdisciplinary practices that have been executed in the Medical Course and Professional Master’s Degree on Sciences Teaching. Among these practices we have the production of boards in Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) for supporting the COVID-19 diagnosis in disabled patients; accessible instructional materials about themes concerning the pandemic; AAC courses for health area students and training of health services professionals for the assistance of disabled users. These practices and their consequences for the education of Medical students are the objective of the present work. Key-Words: accessibility; medical training; inclusion; special education Educación médica y procesos inclusivos: prácticas docentes interdisciplinarias guiadas por el conocimiento de la educación especial Resumen: La accesibilidad como tema transversal a la formación de los egresados ​​de la Universidad Federal de Pampa está presente tanto en el proyecto institucional de la universidad como en los Proyectos Pedagógicos de los Cursos. Sin embargo, aunque tal intencionalidad está incluida en los documentos institucionales, la materialización de tal tema, además de garantizar los requisitos legales de accesibilidad presentes en los instrumentos de evaluación de la educación superior, es aún incipiente. En el curso de medicina, a pesar del tema de la diversidad y la garantía de equidad sin ningún tipo de distinción, en la atención de la red básica, componiendo los Lineamientos Curriculares Nacionales para la formación de futuros médicos, la discusión sobre el tema de la discapacidad es reciente., siendo impulsado actualmente por la demanda de recursos para este público, específicamente, en la atención primaria de salud, debido a la pandemia de COVID-19. En este artículo presentamos las prácticas interdisciplinarias que se vienen dando entre el Curso de Medicina y el Programa de Maestría Profesional en Enseñanza de las Ciencias. Entre estas prácticas se encuentran la producción de tableros en Comunicación Aumentativa Alternativa (CAA) para apoyar el diagnóstico de COVID-19 en pacientes con discapacidad; materiales educativos accesibles sobre temas relacionados con la pandemia; Curso CAA para estudiantes del área de la salud y formación de profesionales de los servicios de salud para la asistencia a usuarios con discapacidad. Estas prácticas y sus consecuencias para la formación de los estudiantes de medicina, constituyen el objetivo de este trabajo. Palabras-clave: Accesibilidad; entrenamiento médico; inclusión; educación especial. Data de registro: 14/04/2021 Data de aceite: 01/12/2021. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze some disagreements about scientific ontology as cases of disagreement between epistemic peers. I maintain that the particularities of these cases are better understood if epistemic peerhood is relativized to a perspective-like index of epistemic goals and values. Taking the debate on the metaphysics of laws of nature as a case study, I explore the limits and possibilities of a trans-perspective assessment of positions regarding scientific ontology.

Communication is crucial for us as human beings – much of what we know or believe, we learn through hearing or seeing what others say or express, and arguably part of what makes us human is our desire to communicate our thoughts and feelings to others. A core part of our communicative activity concerns linguistic communication, where we use the words and sentences of natural languages to communicate our ideas. But what exactly is going on in linguistic communication and what (...) is the relationship between what we say and what we think? This entry explores these issues. (shrink)

Human beings are the only creatures known to engage in sport. We are sporting animals, and our favourite pastime of football is the biggest sport spectacle on earth. The Philosophy of Footballpresents the first sustained, in-depth philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of football. In explaining the complex nature of football, the book draws on literature in sociology, history, psychology and beyond, offering real-life examples of footballing actions alongside illuminating thought experiments. The book is organized around four main themes considering the (...) character, nature, analysis and aesthetics of football. It discusses football as an extra-ordinary, unnecessary, rule-based, competitive, skill-based physical activity, articulated as a social kind that is fictional in character, and where fairness or fair play - contrary to much sport ethical discussion - is not centre stage. Football, it is argued, is a constructive- destructive contact sport and, in comparison to other sports, is lower scoring and more affected by chance. The latter presents to its spectators a more unpredictable game and a darker, more complex and denser drama to enjoy. The Philosophy of Footballdeepens our understanding of the familiar features of the game, offering novel interpretations on what football is, how and why we play it, and what the game offers its followers that makes us so eagerly await match day. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the world's most popular game or in the philosophical or social study of sport. nstructive- destructive contact sport and, in comparison to other sports, is lower scoring and more affected by chance. The latter presents to its spectators a more unpredictable game and a darker, more complex and denser drama to enjoy. The Philosophy of Footballdeepens our understanding of the familiar features of the game, offering novel interpretations on what football is, how and why we play it, and what the game offers its followers that makes us so eagerly await match day. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the world's most popular game or in the philosophical or social study of sport. (shrink)

The paper introduces a new problem for fallibilist and infallibilist epistemologies – the diachronic threshold problem. As the name suggests, this is a problem similar to the well–known threshold problem for fallibilism. The new problem affects both fallibilism and infallibilism, however. The paper argues that anyone who worries about the well known problem for fallibilism should also worry about this new, diachronic version of the problem.

En el presente trabajo analizo críticamente dos estrategias empleadas para esclarecer la naturaleza modal de las estructuras tal como son concebidas por el realismo estructural óntico (reo) en su versión eliminativista: los patrones reales de Ladyman y Ross (2007) y las leyes y simetrías de French (2014). Ofrezco argumentos para mostrar que ambas resultan incapaces de brindar una caracterización de las estructuras como entidades inherentemente modales. Ese resultado impone serias dificultades al proyecto de presentar el reo como una posición realista (...) acerca del mundo físico. (shrink)

I propose and defend the conjecture that what explains why Gettiered subjects fail to know is the fact that their justified true belief depends essentially on unknown propositions. The conjecture follows from the plausible principle about inference in general according to which one knows the conclusion of one’s inference only if one knows all the premises it involves essentially.

Upshot: We seek to address several questions and statements made in the commentaries by elaborating on the four main aspects of the M-N-L framework. Before doing so, we discuss the issue of constructivist teaching in the context of schools. We conclude by hypothesizing on what would be lost in the M-N-L framework by taking constructivism out of the picture.

The dispute between nomological realists and anti-realists has been reflected in the formulation of various arguments and counterarguments that reach topics as diverse as modality, induction and the very scientific practice. In this context it is common to take the main realist argument –the nomological argument– for an instance of Inference to the Best Explanation, while Nomological Anti-realism is considered a skeptical alternative concerning natural laws, sustained by independent reasons. This paper aims to review that image of the Nomological Realism (...) vs. Anti-realism debate in light of what we believe is an appropriate distinction between abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose an invitation to look at the kind of childhood we have been constructing from the practices of Special Education, in articulation with the practices of Early Childhood Education. It problematizes the discursive webs formed in this articulation, considering the way that Special Education teachers working with Early Childhood in public schools regard childhood. Such discussions have derived from the uneasiness of thinking about how we have been producing childhood, given the policy of expanding mandatory attendance (...) to four-year-old children. The analytical exercise, inspired by the discourse analysis proposed by Michel Foucault, has enabled us to question the production of subjects, truths and realities in the “confessions” of the interviewed teachers, in which we have identified two ways of thinking about and producing childhood: captured childhood, which is produced through the operationalization of normalization practices by Special Education, determined by the will to knowledge and the will to power over childhood; and childhood as heterotopy, produced as a powerful movement of resistance and denaturalization of normalizing practices – childhood regarded from other places, as an infinite, multiple, non-nameable, ever undetermined becoming, as an invitation to thought: what can we do in the encounter with childhood? (shrink)

This paper invites us to reimagine parents as history makers and parenthood as a political space where parents and adult educators collaborate in reading and acting on the world that is, with a view to achieving a world that is not. The pandemic provides a backdrop to a fundamental understanding that while the virus may claim to be entirely democratic, the pandemic has failed the equity test. The asymmetrical world that is calls for a reinvention of adult education as a (...) space in which the excesses of neoliberalism are resisted in preparation for a shift in consciousness that might promote collective action against today’s far-from-equitable reality. Parents as ‘Subjects’ is a cris de coeur for a liberatory parent-focused education that rehumanizes parents in a world that will be. (shrink)

‘Pragmaticist’ positions posit a three-way division within utterance content between: (i) the standing meaning of the sentence, (ii) a somewhat pragmatically enhanced meaning which captures what the speaker explicitly conveys (following Sperber and Wilson 1986, I label this the ‘explicature’), and (iii) further indirectly conveyed propositions which the speaker merely implies. Here I re-examine the notion of an explicature, asking how it is defined and what work explicatures are supposed to do. I argue that explicatures get defined in three different (...) ways and that these distinct definitions can and do pull apart. Thus the notion of an explicature turns out to be ill-defined. (shrink)