Edgar Morin is one of the most important contemporary European philosophers. His name has recently also become well known on the American continent, especially in South America, where his works have given rise to several interesting cultural initiatives. The analysis of his pedagogical proposal can be a stimulating adventure for educators and teachers alike. Morin's proposal to link methodologically what is disjoined suggests re-establishing the connection between thought and action, in order to re-establish on rational and critical bases the ethical (...) principles of solidarity and responsibility and enable us to face the challenges of our times. (shrink)

Antonia Lolordo presents an original interpretation of John Locke's metaphysics of moral agency, in which to be a moral agent is simply to be free, rational, and a person.

This is the first modern edition of an important work by a previously neglected early 19th century woman philosopher, Mary Shepherd. Shepherd develops a distinctive philosophical system that can be seen as a competitor to Kant's Transcendental Idealism. The edition is aimed at researchers in early modern philosophy and is also intended to be used in graduate and undergraduate courses. It contains a concise introduction as guide for the reader.

Thomas Aquinas asked the essential philosophical question which continues to resound to the modern day: what constitutes a human being? This volume looks at Aquinas's views on bodily and spiritual identity through a lens of theological concerns, pagan and Arabic authoritative sources, and contemporary polemic with dualist heresy.

In several early 19th century works, Mary Shepherd articulates a theory of causation that is intended to respond to Humean skepticism. I argue that Shepherd's theory should be read in light of the science of the day and her conception of her place in the British philosophical tradition. Reading Shepherd’s theory in light of her conception of the history of philosophy, including her claim to be the genuine heir of Locke, illuminates the broader significance of her attempt to reinstate reason (...) as the source of scientific knowledge. Reading Shepherd's theory in light of the science of the day helps make plausible her claim that there are robust natural kinds in nature, defined by their causal powers: this is precisely what then-recent advances in chemistry hold. (shrink)

This paper gives three arguments for why Lockean persons must be modes rather than substances.

In October 2013, the Declaration of Helsinki was revised a seventh time in its 50 year history. While it is the most widely accepted set of ethical principles for the protection of patients participating in medical research, the Declaration of Helsinki has also been subject of constant controversy. In particular, its paragraph on the use of placebo controls in clinical trials divides the research community into active-control and placebo orthodox proponents, both continuously demanding revisions of the Declaration of Helsinki in (...) favour of their position. The goal of the present project is to compare the mainly theoretical controversy with regulatory implementation. We distributed a questionnaire to national drug regulatory authorities from different countries to collect information on the authorities’ respective approaches to interpretation and implementation of the Declarations’ placebo paragraph in the conduct of medical research. Our findings suggest that the majority of drug regulatory authorities have established a practice of a middle ground, allowing placebo controls in some instances. Various interpretations of “serious harm” and “methodological reasons” are proposed as well as safeguards to avoid abuse of the option to use placebo-controls. Leaving the placebo paragraph open to various interpretation is a result of the Declaration of Helsinki’s character as a guidance document. With the current version controversy will continue. The Declaration should be continued to be strengthened to enforce the appreciation of conducting medical research with the highest ethical standard. (shrink)

Just as bodily actions are things you do with your body, mental actions are things you do with your mind. Both are different from things that merely happen to you. Where does the idea of mental action come from? What are mental actions? And why do they matter in philosophy? These are the three main questions answered in this paper. Section 1 introduces mental action through a brief history of the topic in philosophy. Section 2 explains what it is to (...) be a mental action in terms of intentional action. Section 3 argues that the fact that we can perform mental actions has some striking consequences concerning mental content. Section 4 shows how mental action helps to explain some important facts about self-knowledge and the normativity of thought. The conclusion mentions two further fruitful avenues for philosophical research on mental action. (shrink)

Locke claims that we have sensitive knowledge of the external world, in virtue of the fact that simple ideas are real, true, and adequate. However, despite his dismissive remarks about Cartesian external-world skepticism, Locke gives us little to go on as to how knowledge of the external world survives the fact of perceptual error, or even how perceptual error is possible. I argue that Locke has an in-principle problem explaining perceptual error.

Este artigo tem como objetivo abordar uma intervenção realizada nas turmas do primeiro ano do ensino médio de uma escola localizada na cidade de Ipu-Ceará no ano de 2018, na disciplina de filosofia, com o tema ''Mito da caverna de Platão''. Assim, foram feitas leituras em sala de aula de alguns trechos do livro A República de Platão que aborda o tema, juntamente com o livro didático Filosofando: Introdução à filosofia das autoras Maria Lúcia de Arruda Aranha e Maria Helena (...) Pires Martins com o intuito de referenciar as cavernas contemporâneas. Deste modo, foi utilizado o método de ensino cuja intenção era a de apresentar livros e recursos audiovisuais para fins educacionais. Com a compreensão do mito da caverna de Platão, portanto, conseguimos vinculá-lo a um assunto da realidade dos alunos: a indústria da beleza que padroniza uma determinada forma de comportamento nos indivíduos, causando-lhes sérios problemas físicos e psicológicos. Para sustentar essa ideia, trabalhou-se com dois videoclipes das cantoras Beyoncé (Pretty Hurts) e Colbie Caillat (Try) na tentativa de despertar a reflexão da necessidade de autovalorização e aceitação física, em um distanciamento das cavernas patriarcais. Enfim, esse artigo manifesta uma enorme contribuição para os jovens do ensino médio, especialmente, na sua autoaceitação e formação identitária na medida em que compreendem os padrões como formas de aprisionamentos. Assim, conclui-se que estas discussões são relevantes por despertarem temas caros e reais aos jovens, tanto que promovem adoecimentos psicológicos. O propósito é o de expandir a discussão de tal forma que eles mesmos possam dialogar sobre o assunto. (shrink)

Hume no comparte la indispensable premisa del ateísmo (Dios no existe), pero sostiene que solamente podemos afirmar que existe lo que se puede probar, comprobar y verificar. Tanto la causalidad como la sustancia como el propio yo son solo creencias. Este aplastante escepticismo influirá inevitablemente en la idea de Dios. La filosofía de Hume comparte con el ateísmo tres puntos cruciales: 1. Crítica al argumento del diseño; 2. Mortalidad del alma; 3. Crítica a los monoteísmos. Con este artículo me propongo (...) mostrar que la filosofía de Hume, aun siendo escéptica, supone una puerta hacia el ateísmo. (shrink)

The comprehension of the tragic in Hegel and Lacan states Antigone’s unconditional desire as heroic. Against this tendency, another hypothesis is explored: The heroic, be it ironic or a sublime brilliance of the sublime, bars the access to the unconditional by attaching it to a transcendence, rather than inquiring into its address. To play down heroism means to reinterpret the capacity of solitude which characterizes heroic courage. What courage then reveals is an ignorance regarding the law of totality, regarding the (...) world that is to be lived in, through a risk taken by a single one. The direct reference to a “conflict of worlds” throws new light on the approaches of Hegel and Lacan. (shrink)

Name does matter. During exploration of knowledge, name provides dignity of existence. Isolating a quid from a whole, name gives that quid a status (i.e., helps it to gain a space, time, and fact). Biohistory had its own name in August 1992, when finally my mind isolated the historical quantum as the promotor of life. Shape follows name; Biohistory began to take shape in 1993, when it ran into Edgar Morin's ideas. For about a year, Biohistory had been a game (...) I toyed with, using it to show my pupils the explosion of events in spaces. I even gave it a poetic dress, in the form of nursery-rhymes (Spazioliberina; Colamonico, 1993). In 1993 I also read Morin's Introduction to Complex Thought (1993), in which it is assumed that a new science and a new doctrine would manage to read the one-whole. It was then that I understood that this theory would have been the body-mind-eye of my joyful child. So I adopted Morin as the father of my Biohistory. (shrink)

The article examines the negative impact of neoliberal policies upon the work of border intellectuals within the university, whose scholarship seeks to explicitly challenge longstanding structural inequalities and social exclusions. More specifically, the notion of neoliberal multiculturalism is defined and discussed with respect to the phenomenon of economic Darwinism and the whitewashing of contemporary academic labor, despite a tradition of progressive struggle within the academy. In response to the current counter-egalitarian climate of neoliberalism, a call is issued for a critical (...) pedagogy that supports a revolutionary vision of human rights and democratic life. (shrink)

The increasing research on international organisations' education policy lacks analyses of the relation between international organisations and nation states. This paper aims to analyse the power of nation states in international education policy. Focusing on the new degree system in higher education in Europe, partly from Foucault's governmentality perspective, the paper suggests that nation states retain power while operating in international settings. The study's conclusions argue that the nation states' power might be a chance for further participation of affected people.

This is about the tension between Epicurean and Galilean accounts of motion in Gassendi. For my more recent thoughts on this, see http://philpapers.org/rec/LOLCEG.

Many great authors claim that reading literature can expand your phenomenal imagination and allow you to imagine experiences you have never had. How is this possible? Your phenomenal imagination is constrained by your phenomenal concepts, which are in turn constrained by the phenomenology of your own actual past experiences. Literature could expand your phenomenal imagination, then, by giving you new phenomenal concepts. This paper explains how this can happen. Literature can direct your attention to previously unnoticed phenomenal properties of your (...) own past experiences, as brought to mind by involuntary memory. This process gives you the opportunity to notice those phenomenal properties for the first time, and so also to form phenomenal concepts of those properties. Forming a new phenomenal concept strictly expands the range of your phenomenal imagination. It gives you the capacity to imagine more than you could have before, including certain specific kinds of experience that you yourself have never enjoyed firsthand. Literature’s capacity to expand your phenomenal imagination in this way is central to its social, moral, and epistemic value. (shrink)

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

This narrative review aims to contribute to the scientific literature on awe by reviewing seven perspectives on the evolutionary function of awe. Each is presented with accompanying empirical evidence and suggestions for research investigating unanswered questions. Based on the existing perspectives, this review proposes an integrated evolutionary model of awe, postulating the evolutionary selection of awe through three adaptive domains: (1) social cooperation, (2) reflective processing, and (3) signaling suitability as a potential mate.

: Malebranche famously objects to Descartes' argument that the nature of the mind is better known than the nature of body as follows: if we had an idea of the mind's nature we would know the possible range of modes of the mind, including the sensory modes, but we do not know those modes and thus can't have an idea of the mind's nature. I argue that Malebranche's objections are readily answerable from within the Cartesian system. This argument involves examining (...) the status of sensations in Descartes, innate ideas, and Malebranche's occasionalism. (shrink)

Antonia Darder closely examines Freire's ideas as they are articulated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, beginning with a historical discussion of his life and a systematic discussion of the central philosophical traditions that informed his revolutionary ideas. Darder explores Freire's fundamental themes and ideas, including issues of humanization, teacher/student relationship, reflection, dialogue, praxis, and his larger emancipatory vision. The book also includes a chapter-by-chapter close reading of the text with sample questions to prompt discussion and engagement with Freire's ideas, (...) as well as a new interview with Freire's widow, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, and a preface by Donaldo Macedo. -- from back cover. (shrink)

This is about Gassendi's 5th Objections to the Meditations and Descartes' Reply. The main issue is what clear and distinct perception consists in and whether we need a criterion in order to know if we perceive something clearly and distinctly.

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in the early nineteenth century Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd. This Element is intended to provide an overview of Shepherd's system, including her views on the following wide range of topics: causation, induction, knowledge of the external world, matter, life, animal cognition, the relationship between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, miracles, and the nature of divine creation. The author also provides an overview of relevant secondary literature (...) and argues for their own interpretation of Shepherd's metaphysics. (shrink)

Antonia LoLordo - Malebranche - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.1 124-125 Andrew Pyle. Malebranche. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xiii + 289. Cloth, $80.00. Despite Malebranche's widely recognized importance, no comprehensive overview of his system was available before Pyle's excellent and wide-ranging study. Pyle agrees with scholarly consensus that occasionalism and the vision in God are Malebranche's two most significant doctrines, but his scope extends well beyond those to matters of theology, (...) physics and biology. In the first half of the book, Pyle lays out Malebranche's two key doctrines as responses to tensions within the Cartesian accounts of causation and of ideas. He details how Malebranche's theory of ideas is involved.. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic plunged economies into recessions and advancements in artificial intelligence create widespread automation of job tasks. A debate around how to address these challenges has moved the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI) center stage. However, existing UBI research mainly focuses on economic aspects and normative arguments but lacks an individual perspective that goes beyond examining the association between socio-demographic characteristics and UBI support. We add to this literature by investigating not only socio-demographic but also psychological predictors (...) of UBI acceptance in a multivariate analysis using a representative sample of the German working population collected in 2020 (N = 1986). Our results indicate that being more supportive of a UBI went along with being comparably younger, of East-German origin, and more in favor of equal living standards, as well as perceiving one’s economic situation to be worse and the threat of the corona-pandemic to be higher. (shrink)

Vignettes of early modern Epicureanism Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9566-9 Authors Antonia LoLordo, Department of Philosophy, 122 Cocke Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

ABSTRACT. In his Letters on the motion impressed by a moving mover, Gassendi offers a theory of the motion of composite bodies that closely follows Galileo’s. Elsewhere, he describes the motion of individual atoms in very different terms: individual atoms are always in motion, even when the body that contains them is at rest; atomic motion is discontinuous although the motion of composite bodies is at least apparently continuous; and atomic motion is grounded in an intrinsic vis motrix, motive power, (...) while composite bodies simply persist in their state of motion or rest in the absence of outside intereference. Gassendi does not make much effort to explain how his accounts of atomic and composite motion fit together, and it’s difficult to see how they could possible be integrated. My goal is to explain, given this difficulty, why he accepted both the Galilean theory of the motion of composite bodies and the Epicurean theory of atomic motion. (shrink)

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental (...) action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)

This essay will consider the dispute between Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey on the nature and validity of the theory/practice distinction. Their dispute concerns whether a strong affirmation of this distinction enables scientific inquiry or disables it. Inherent in this issue are two related questions, namely whether tmth can be pursued for its own sake, and, as a subset of this question, whether there is an evidence proper to the consideration of pure possibilities. I will argue that there is (...) a common ground between the logic of inquiry which Dewey is determined will have practical effect, and the logic of inquiry which Peirce is concemed will discover the truth promised by correct investigation. This compromise is found in the philosophy of Bemard Lonergan, whose critical realism includes an account of concrete judgement strikingly similar to that of John Dewey, but whose account of the normative stmcture of cognition, emanating from the individual's radical desire to know, also incorporates Peirce's emphasis on the pursuit of truth and on the validity of the scientist's consideration of pure logical possibilities. I will present these similarities, and will consider the stmcture of Einstein's 1905 paper, "On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," as a case study which supports Lonergan's (and Peirce's) account of cognitional stmcture, but which poses problems for Dewe/s instrumentalism. The essay concludes that Lonergan offers a critical realism which successfully renounces the 'spectator' theory of knowledge without underestimating the importance of the normative element of understanding in the human desire to know. (shrink)

Statements to the effect that philosophy will enhance democracy and human rights are not incantations that if repeated enough will magic these results into existence. Teaching more philosophy in schools may well not have dramatic effects in opening people’s minds and promoting intercultural dialogue, and will certainly not have immediate ones.

Statements to the effect that philosophy will enhance democracy and human rights are not incantations that if repeated enough will magic these results into existence. Teaching more philosophy in schools may well not have dramatic effects in opening people’s minds and promoting intercultural dialogue, and will certainly not have immediate ones.

Shamanic Healing and Ritual Drama: Health and Medicine in Native North American Religious Traditions. Åke Hultkrantz. New York: Crossroad, 1992. 197 pp. $19.95 (cloth).

In the thirteenth-century Bibles moralisées there appears a new iconographical type in which God the Father, and figures depicted in moralising illustrations, are shown with a compass. This article argues that these images throw light on the medieval concept of reason and its role in the Divine Economy. In these French Capetian Bibles, the compass is the symbol of divine or human reason, depending on the context where it occurs. When depicted in the scene of Creation in the frontispieces, the (...) compass is the instrument of Christ-Logos as Divine Reason, used to impose God’s rational order on formless matter, but also to initiate the Divine Economy. The compass is depicted again, in the same sense, at the beginning of the New Testament, as a ‘dynamic sign’ which links the start of God’s plan for humankind salvation during Creation with the re-enactment of the Divine Economy through the Incarnation. When a compass occurs elsewhere, in a moralised image for a biblical story which takes place in the earthly realm, the instrument becomes the tool used by human reason to discern between good and evil. The analysis which leads to this interpretation is borne out by an examination of related themes in the Bibles moralisées: those of the sleep of mortal reason, and of the endurance of Divine Reason as a guide to true knowledge. (shrink)