La meva intenció en les pàgines següents és analitzar la teoria del llenguatge que es troba en el Cràtil de Plató. D'una banda, s'analitza la concepció del significat de les paraules quePlató sembla defensar en aquest diàleg; de l'altra, s'ocupa del problema dels orígens delllenguatge. Aquestes qüestions s'estudien en relació amb la perspectiva ontològica i epistemològicade Plató: essencialisme, teoria de la reminiscència i les tesis dels sofistes sobre laimpossibilitat de parlar amb falsedat. La conclusió és que en el Cràtil podem (...) trobar ja la preparació de la teoria del llenguatge que Plató necessitarà per a la seva ulterior teoria de les idees. (shrink)

In this paper a non-paradoxical interpretation of Hobbes’s defence of scientific realism of materialistic type is proposed. It attempts to explain how this author was able to defend the truth of materialism and at the same time to deny that it could be demonstrated in a metaphysical way. The key to his position depends on the metaphorical use of the concept of ‘imitation’ and the treatment of the infinite and irresistible power as the philosophically relevant attribute of God. So Hobbes’s (...) intention would consist of saying that the explanation, but not the demonstration, of the truth of materialism depends on the ontological parity and continuity between the world and the human being, in the way in which they are explained by empirical science. In this sense Hobbes’s project, very different to Descartes’s one, would be an attempt to naturalise the epistemology that yet is conscious of the metaphysical limits affecting the naturalistic proposals of philosophy. (shrink)

Este artículo se ocupa del problema de cuál pueda ser la naturaleza de la creencia y cuál la mejor explicación de su normatividad. Se analizan diversas teorías que desarrollan el modelo ¿estado más contenido¿, y se presenta como alternativa una concepción de filiación wittgensteiniana que entiende la creencia como acción simbólica y expresiva.

This broad and insightful book presents current scholarship in important subfields of philosophy of science and addresses an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary readership. It groups carefully selected contributions into the four fields of I) philosophy of physics, II) philosophy of life sciences, III) philosophy of social sciences and values in science, and IV) philosophy of mathematics and formal modeling. Readers will discover research papers by Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Keizo Matsubara, Kian Salimkhani, Andrea Reichenberger, Anne Sophie Meincke, Javier Suárez, Roger Deulofeu, Ludger Jansen, (...) Peter Hucklenbroich, Martin Carrier, Elizaveta Kostrova, Lara Huber, Jens Harbecke, Antonio Piccolomini d'Aragona and Axel Gelfert. This collection fosters dialogue between philosophers of science working in different subfields, and brings readers the finest and latest work across the breadth of the field,illustrating that contemporary philosophy of science has successfully broadened its scope of reflection. It will interest and inspire a wide audience of philosophers as well as scholars of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The volume shares selected contributions from the prestigious second triennial conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science/ Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie (GWP.2016, March 8, 2016 - March 11, 2016). (shrink)

Visiones antropológicas divergentes en artículos científicos de bioética en Brasil Divergent Anthropological Views in Scientific Articles on Bioethics in Brazil The aim of the study is to characterize Brazilian bioethics outputs anthropologically, specifically scientific articles. The guiding question of this research is: What is the anthropological characterization present in scientific articles on bioethics in Brazil? Prominent bioethical theories show restrictive anthropology indicators; i.e., dignity is given only to members of the human species that have certain attributes, including conscience and self-consciousness, (...) as opposed to comprehensive anthropology indicators in relation to human beings; i.e., dignity is equally assigned to all members of the Homo sapiens species. In conclusion, comprehensive anthropology indicators and theoretical divergence in relation to the origin of life, especially between utilitarianism and personalism, prevail. Para citar este artículo / To reference this article / Para citar este artigo Sanches MA, Monteiro TM. Visões antropológicas divergentes em artigos científicos de bioética no Brasil. Pers Bioet. 2019; 23: 64-83. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.1.5 Recibido: 09/10/2018 Aceptado: 20/03/2019. (shrink)

In this paper we intend to present briefly the way Fonseca deals with the doctrine of causation in his Commentaries on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. We shall begin with the presentation of the map of the disputations on causation in that work (I), then will refer to the position of Fonseca on the definition of cause (II), the relation between cause and principle (III) and, finally, his defense of the Aristotelian four causes (IV).

Including articles translated from the Italian for the first time, this unique set is the first systematic collection of critical commentary on this influential figure. Reprinting some thirty years of Gramsci criticism, the collection features individual volume introductions as well as a general overview introduction. The thematically-organized volumes include: * Volume I: Life, Context and Intellectual Development * Volume II: Marxism, Philosophy and Politics * Volume III: Revolution, Praxis and the Party * Volume IV: Contemporary Applications.

Edith Stein’s early phenomenological texts describe community as a special unity that is fully lived through in consciousness. In her later works, unity is described in more theological terms as participation in the communal fullness and wholeness of God or Being. Can these two accounts of community or human belonging be reconciled? I argue that consciousness can bring to the fore the meaning of community, thereby conditioning our lived-experience of community, but it can also, through Heideggerian questioning, uncover that which (...) remains somewhat hidden from consciousness itself: its own ground or condition of possibility, namely, being—a being that is both one and many, unified, communalised, and very diversified. If my reading of Stein is correct, the traditional understanding of the split between Stein’s strictly Husserlian/phenomenological period and her later Christian philosophical period must be renegotiated, at least when it comes to the philosophical problem of community or human togetherness. (shrink)

Mi objetivo es dar algunas orientaciones sobre las revisiones que Husserl hizo de la epojé que había expuesto en las Ideas I. Este objetivo se enmarca en dos proyectos básicos, primero, la necesidad de hacer una lectura teleológica de Husserl; y, segundo, reivindicar lo que ahora se llama el “nuevo” Husserl. Para ello me centraré en algunas correcciones significativas introducidas por Husserl en Ideas I en los años 20, pero sobre todo en ciertos textos, algunos inéditos en 1972 cuando escribí (...) mi tesis de doctorado, pero ahora publicados. Me centraré especialmente en tres, dos de Erste Philosophie II, y otro de Hua XXXIV. Todo ello sirve como homenaje a Antonio Zirión por la traducción del tomo III de Husserliana que ha puesto a nuestro alcance en castellano.The aim of this paper is to provide a guide on the revisions Husserl made about the Epoché such as it was exposed in Ideas I. This goal falls into two basic projects, first, the need for a teleological reading of Husserl, and second, the claim of the now called “new” Husserl. To do this I will focus on some significant corrections made by Husserl in Ideas I in the twenties, but especially in certain texts, some unpublished in 1972 when I wrote my dissertation, but now published. I will focus especially on three, two of Erste Philosophie II, and other now published in Hua XXXIV. All this serves as a tribute to Antonio Zirión for the translation of Volume III of Husserliana that he has recently published in Spanish. (shrink)

I examine Spinoza's claim in the Metaphysical Thoughts that the attributes of God are only distinguished by a distinction of reason. I contend that for Spinoza essential attributes, such as Thought or Extension, cannot be distinguished by Francisco Suarez's distinction of reasoning reason, as Martin Lin suggests, nor can he be using Suárez’ distinction of reasoned reason for this purpose, as Yitzhak Melamed believes. Since reasoning reason and the distinction of reasoned reason are the only two kinds of rational distinction (...) available to Spinoza, it follows that for him the distinction between God's essential attributes in the CM cannot be a distinction of reason. But I show that Spinoza is not mistakenly using Suarez's distinction in the CM. Rather, I argue, Spinoza consistently follows Suárez and uses reasoned reason to distinguish between God's necessary properties and not between God's essential attributes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 65.1 (2004) 1-13 [Access article in PDF] Ambiguities of the Prisca Sapientia in Late Renaissance Humanism Martin Mulsow University of Munich The wisdom of the ancients, says Marsilio Ficino, was a pious philosophy.1 Born among the Egyptians with Hermes Trismegistus—and, according to Ficino's later writings, concurrently among the Persians with Zoroaster—it was raised by the Thracians under Orpheus and Aglaophemus. It later matured (...) under Pythagoras among the Greeks and Italians and culminated in Plato. As is well known, this genealogy was not merely a historical thesis for Ficino and his followers but also a program for revival, a utopia achieved through restoration. For the assertion of a concordance between these early philosophies and their accordance with Christianity—in the sense of a Christian Platonism—implied the synthesis of fragementary philosophemes into a fully developed doctrine in the service of a uniform and timely philosophia pia.This program was formulated in a variety of ways during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with differing protagonists and with diverse aims. Thus one could supplement the genealogy in a cabalist vein, introduce biblical characters such as Solomon or Moses, or (as was done by Bruno) use it to contest Christian doctrine. The genealogy could be read as culminating in various notable modern figures such as for example, Paracelsus. Aristotle could be included or excluded from it, depending on whether one wanted to assimilate the Aristotelian tradition or to distance oneself from it; and one could leave the end [End Page 1] of this genealogical lineage open in order to exhort the necessity of a scientific and moral reform.Here, however, we shall be occupied with the question of what became of this program during the late Renaissance, when two developments took place simultaneously: on the one hand, the utopia of the prisca sapientia set about to conquer the field formerly reserved to the Aristotelians, namely, natural philosophy; on the other hand, the first doubts arose about the overall validity of the historical-philological foundation of the program, especially the dating of the works of Hermes Trismegistus. The latter began with the publication of the first part of Patrizi's Discussiones peripateticae in 1571,which aimed to rehabilitate, contrary to Aristotle's critique, old presocratic natural philosophies, and in so doing it cleared the way for interpreting the latest advancements in non-Aristotelian natural sciences as resumptions of these very philosophies.2 This initiated a period of complex interaction between late humanist philology, innovative natural science, and speculative metaphysics.This phase, however, not only entailed the grand synthesizing endeavors that one finds in Patrizi's Nova de universis philosophia;it also introduced historical critique—no doubt provoked by Patrizi—of the Hermetic prisca sapientia, understood in Frances Yates's sense, which was performed in careful detail long before Casaubon at the end of the Renaissance.3 Further, it was a phase characterized by an attempt to reevaluate Aristotelian philosophy against its opponents, which paradoxically was also motivated by Patrizi yet which managed to keep the venture open to "esoteric" depths. All of these developments were intertwined, and each effected the articulation of encyclopedic projects at the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the basis of manuscripts, letters, and some neglected texts, I want to introduce two such countercurrents, which illustrate how the migration of arguments from one cultural context to another can lead to wholly divergent and unexpected results. Moreover, these results show the diverse consequences that a prisca sapientia-utopia could have for different visions of encyclopedic scholarship.I. In the bookshop of Paolo Meietti in Padua, Teodoro Angelucci and Antonio Persio met accidentally on an autumn day in 1558. Meietti was the publisher of Angelucci's medical textbook as well as of texts by Patrizi and his [End Page 2] colleague Giannini, and it is possible that Persio was out to discuss publishing possibilities for his forthcoming manuscript De natura ignis. In any case, they were there for business-related matters, so it was quite natural for Persio to... (shrink)

Come si può essere speranza nel tempo della tecnica? Forse può essere utile interrogare brevemente a tale proposito il pensiero, o meglio approfondire alcune riflessioni presenti nell’elaborazione filosofica di importanti pensatori del Novecento. Attraverso tale procedimento si aprirà forse una prospettiva, un piccolo spiraglio, una via d’uscita tanto per il pensiero, quanto per la comprensione contemporanea della pratica quotidiana dell’aver-cura. Non deve stupire se si rimanda a classici del pensiero filosofico, ciò che muove ogni azione, soprattutto in ambito clinico e (...) sanitario, non è forse una sempre personale visione del mondo, che ha scelto deliberatamente di aver-cura dell’altro opponendosi, per quanto possibile con tutti i mezzi della conoscenza e del cuore, ad un altrettanto diffusa visione dell’uomo che lo vede invece preda degli eventi e della caducità, al di là di ogni possibile e autentico intervento e soccorso dell’altro? Partendo dalle riflessioni circa le nozioni di “situazione-limite” e “aver-cura”, proposte rispettivamente da autori come Karl Jaspers e Martin Heidegger, è infatti possibile indicare una prospettiva teorico-pratica contemporanea circa il discorso sulla pratica di cura nel tempo della tecnica. Vedremo che i classici del pensiero del Novecento hanno ancora qualcosa da dirci, che una qualche comunicazione fra discipline differenti è ancora possibile; almeno ogni volta in cui, come nel caso della dimensione e rete di cure palliative e della presa in carico globale della persona sofferente, si avvicini l’uomo aperti alla sua realtà omnicomprensiva, soprattutto quando si parla di dolore e sofferenza, elementi comuni ad ogni uomo e ogni tempo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Allegory and the Spaces of LoveOscar Martín (bio)Writing about Spanish sentimental fiction from 1450 to 1550 is not an easy task, as we are discussing a genre with a difficult theoretical configuration. The investigation of sentimental fiction, however, has been sorting out the classifications that applied to a hodgepodge of works previously labeled as “sentimental novel” (“novela sentimental”). This label, once attached uncritically to a bunch of heterogeneous (...) texts that shared such intangibles as “loving focus” or “prevalence of psychological description over narratives,” has been applied more consistently nowaday, thanks in part to the scholarly efforts started in the 1980s like those of Martínez Jiménez and Muñoz Marquina (1982), and Martínez Latre (1989).1 Using some of these research efforts, Alan Deyermond has codified the genre accurately:Brevity; focus on psychological interest over external action; a tragic vision of love; autobiography (first-person narration or a narrator as a character) and the insertion of letters or poems (or, often, both) into the narration.[77]2Within this scholarly categorization, Regula Rohland de Langbehn has been pivotal in offering—first in 1986, and more recently in 1999—a threefold scheme in the development of the genre she labels as “sentimental novel”: a first group chronologically of the genre would be represented by Siervo libre de amor and Sátira de felice e infelice vida, both works marked by the influence of cancionero poetry—specially in the allegorical structuring and in the characterization of love, and by other subjects being limited to an abstract and general analysis of emotions. Both works also present a debate over the moral value of love. A second group would gravitate around Triste deleytacion and the works of Diego de San Pedro and Juan de Flores, works that show a wider range of topics and the impact of a broader generic textuality like cancionero poetry and such chivalric novels as Tirant. Finally, she distinguishes a third group whose main characteristic is the imprint of Celestina’s influence on both the narrative surface and its thematic approach. In the same vein, Vicenta Blay Manzanera has taken up this threefold scheme, dividing the genre into “the creation of the paradigm” (“la creación del paradigma”) the climactic stage, and the downfall and disarticulation of the narrative sentimental system” (“la fase climática” and “el tercero la fase de declive o desintegración del paradigma”) [“La conciencia genérica” 221]. [End Page 132]Just as Rohland de Langbehn’s works had at least settled down the arguments about the existence of a sentimental novelistic genre, however, medieval Hispanic scholarship has been shaken by an entrenched debate over not only the identification of this genre (novel or fiction) but whether the genre even existed at all. It was Antonio Cortijo Ocaña who, while editing a critical cluster in La Corónica on sentimental fiction, opened the door to some scholars such as Weissberger who voiced their skepticism over the generic nature of sentimental prose, a skepticism already present in an innovative volume published by Gwara and Gerli in 1997. This skeptical position was also supported by Cortijo Ocaña himself, who in 2001 published a monumental work in which, although using the generic term as a departure point, he ended up suggesting the difficulty of defining it, therefore jettisoning it. This position in turn was contested by Rohland de Langbehn, who in 2002 defended the validity of both the existence of a genre and its name novela sentimental, a position that has sparked a new round of replies in a La Corónica forum in 2003.In this debate, I would join today’s minority position on the existence of a sentimental genre, because, as I explained in my 2001 review of Rohland de Langbehn’s book and as I find convincingly argued in her 2002 contribution, there are internal traits within sentimental fictional texts that do not appear together in other sentimental generic texts [139]. In addition, once we take into account the obvious intertextuality of those sentimental texts, as Blay Manzanera has shown [“La conciencia genérica”], and the overutilization of central motifs in the configuration of love’s debate, we... (shrink)

God and Phenomenology: Thinking with Jean-Yves Lacoste provides a starting point for scholars who seek to familiarize themselves with the work of this French phenomenologist and theologian. Thirteen international scholars comment on Lacoste's work. In conclusion the volume offers an unpublished essay by Lacoste on the topic of eschatology. / Table of Contents -- Introduction: Thinking with Jean-Yves Lacoste by Joeri Schrijvers and Martin Koci / Part I: Critiques -- 1. "'Children of the World': A Note on Jean-Yves Lacoste," by (...) Kevin Hart / 2. "Lacoste on Appearing and Reduction," by Steven DeLay / 3. "Reduction Without Appearance: The Non-Phenomenality of God," by Robert C. Reed / 4. "Only Metaphysics Sustains Phenomenology," by John Milbank / Part II: Commentaries -- 5. "Canonical Texts," by Oliver O'Donovan / 6. "Reading Prayerfully Before God: Jean-Yves Lacoste's Treatment of Lectio Divina as an Instance of Existence Coram Deo," by Christina M. Gschwandtner / 7. "Affection, Mood, and Poetry: Overcoming Mentalism," by Joseph Rivera / 8. "Rejecting the Wrong Questions: Jean-Yves Lacoste's Resistance to a Philosophical-Theological Divide," by Stephanie Rumpza / Part III: Explorations -- 9. "For the Love of Revelation: Open and Relational Theology in Light of Lacoste," by Jason W. Alvis / 10. "Right Use, Right Thinking," by William C. Hackett / 11. "The Beautiful Life of Faith: A Liturgical Reading of Fear and Trembling," by Amber Bowen / 12. "In the Footsteps of Henri de Lubac and Gregory of Nyssa: Jean-Yves Lacoste on Human Becoming, Historical and Eternal," by Stephen E. Lewis / 13. "Kenosis and Transcendence: Jean-Yves Lacoste and Soren Kierkegaard on the Phenomenality of God," by Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere / In Conclusion -- 14. "The Final Word: Prolegomena to Eschatology," by Jean-Yves Lacoste. (shrink)

Parameters have lain at the core of linguistic research in the generative tradition for decades. The theoretical questions they have raised are deep and broad: this reference text investigates how contemporary linguistics has best tried to answer them. This book looks at how parameters might be properly defined and what their locus might be :lexical information, functional heads, the computational system, the phonological branch of the grammar. What kind of data forms trigger acquisition of a parameter? Are parameters necessary or (...) can we study languages without making reference to them? The questions looked at are not just theoretical: how can a theory of parameters be used to help understand second language acquisition, and what contributions can it make to the study of language typology? This is the right time to gather all this information, dispersed in many different kinds of publications by single authors and groups, into one comprehensive volume. (shrink)

This book explores Caputo's proposal for a radical theology of our time. Philosophers and theologians from within Europe respond to Caputo's attempt to configure a less rigid, less dogmatic form of religion. These scholars, in turn, receive responses by Caputo, thereby strengthening the development of radical theology in Europe and abroad.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar qué tipo de respuesta al escepticismo filosófico podemos esperar de los llamados argumentos transcendentales. La conclusión general es que los argumentos transcendentales no son capaces de neutralizar las dudas escépticas en tanto que formulaciones verbales de posibilidades lógicas. Ahora bien, teniendo en cuenta que el escéptico no puede presentar sus dudas significativamente, parece que sólo tiene tres opciones: dudar con la ayuda de un silencio místico, dudar usando las palabras de una manera metafórica (...) o evocativa, o dudar usando las palabras con sentido literal pero siendo consciente de estar diciendo algo sin sentido. En suma: la duda escéptica nunca puede tener el valor de una duda real. (shrink)

Sentence comprehension involves maintaining and continuously integrating linguistic information and, thus, makes demands on working memory. Past research has demonstrated that semantic WM, but not phonological WM, is critical for integrating word meanings across some distance and resolving semantic interference in sentence comprehension. Here, we examined the relation between phonological and semantic WM and the comprehension of center-embedded relative clause sentences, often argued to make heavy demands on WM. Additionally, we examined the relation between phonological and semantic WM and the (...) comprehension of transitive and dative active and passive sentences, which may also draw on WM resources depending on the number of propositions that must be maintained and the difficulty of processing passive clauses. In a large sample of individuals with aphasia, we assessed whether comprehension performance on more complex vs. simpler active-passive or embedded relative clause sentences would be predicted by semantic but not phonological WM when controlling for single word comprehension. For performance on the active-passive comprehension task, we found that semantic WM, but not phonological WM, predicted comprehension of dative sentences when controlling for comprehension of transitive sentences. We also found that phonological WM, but not semantic WM, predicted mean comprehension for reversible active-passive sentences when controlling for trials with lexical distractors. On the relative clause comprehension task, consistent with prior results, we found that semantic WM, but not phonological WM, predicted comprehension of object relative clause sentences and relative clause sentences with a passive construction. However, both phonological WM and semantic WM predicted mean comprehension across all relative clause types for reversible trials when controlling for trials with lexical distractors. While we found evidence of semantic WM’s role in comprehension, we also observed unpredicted relations between phonological WM and comprehension in some conditions. Post-hoc analyses provided preliminary evidence that phonological WM maintains a backup phonological representation of the sentence that may be accessed when sentence comprehension processing is less efficient. Future work should investigate possible roles that phonological WM may play across sentence types. (shrink)

In response to its current crisis, scholars call for the revitalisation of democracy through democratic innovations. While they make ample use of life metaphors describing democracy as a living organism, no comprehensive understanding of ‘life’ has been established within democratic theory. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement articulates the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice. This article employs a grounded theory approach, enriched with participatory methods, to develop a radical democratic concept of life in (...) conversation with BLM. It conceptualises life as the existence of a perspective that constantly transforms through its fundamental interconnectedness. Building on this concept, the article outlines four principles of a living democracy that go beyond the revitalisation discourse. A living democracy (1) safeguards the existence of all humans and nonhumans, (2) nurtures a diversity of perspectives, (3) fosters social and planetary connectivity, and (4) enables self- and collective transformation. (shrink)

For a long time, the transcendental dialectic was not at the center of Kant scholarship but was often treated simply as Kant’s reckoning with contemporary metaphysics. Accordingly, the main interest was in the transcendental analytic, especially the transcendental deduction. It is all the more gratifying that in recent times a rethinking seems to be taking place on this issue. In the following, I shall attempt to show why the transcendental dialectic is something more than an addendum to the core business (...) of the Critique of Pure Reason. Rather, it forms the culmination of the work, demanding our full attention. Indeed, it provides the key to the entire critical philosophy by exhibiting reason itself as the ultimate founding principle in the form of its Idea. (shrink)

Sight is undoubtedly the most crucial sense, and accidents resulting in its loss are a significant tragedy for individuals. The scientific community embarked on a journey of scientific innovation i...

In spite of our good intentions and explicit egalitarian convictions, we habitually disfavor the underprivileged. The rapidly growing literature on implicit bias – unconscious, automatic tendencies to associate negative traits with members of particular social groups – points towards explanations of this dissonance, although rarely towards generalizable solutions. In a recent paper, Jennifer Saul draws attention to the alarming epistemological problems that implicit bias carries with it; since our judgments about each other are likely influenced by implicit bias, we have (...) good reason to doubt their veracity. In this paper we explore a novel way to come to terms with the epistemological problem as it manifests itself in ranking situations, i.e. how we can know that the way in which we have ranked a group of people for a certain position, reflects their actual competence. On our approach, rather than attempting to make people less biased, we suggest that biased behavior can sometimes be corrected after the fact. In particular, the veracity of rankings can sometimes be improved by modifying the rankings directly. We investigate three methods that modify biased rankings, and argue that the last of these solves the epistemological problem that we are concerned with. (shrink)

We live in a world where it is impossible to exist without, and beyond, technologies. Despite this omnipresence, we tend to overlook their influence on us. The vigorously developing approach of postphenomenology, combining insights from phenomenology and pragmatism, focuses on the so-called technological mediation, i.e., on how technologies as mediators of human-world relations influence the appearing of both the world and the human beings in it. My analysis aims at demonstrating both the methodological weaknesses and open possibilities of postphenomenology. After (...) summarizing its essentials, I will scrutinize, first, its ability to turn to the technological things themselves and, second, the so-called empirical turn as realized by postphenomenology. By assessing its conceptual framework from the phenomenological perspective, I hope to demonstrate that postphenomenology needs philosophical clarification and strengthening. In short, it needs a more phenomenological, and less pragmatic, approach to technology in its influence on human experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Christopher Peacocke defends a sophisticated version of Conceptual Role Theory. For him, the nature of a concept is completely determined by an account of what it is to possess that concept. The possession conditions he puts forward rest on the notion of primitively compelling transitions or, more recently, on the idea of implicit conceptions. I show that his account is circular and appeals to a dubious distinction between constitutive transitions and transitions that depend on factual beliefs. I also point (...) out that his possession conditions violate the Publicity Constraint; and, finally, I raise doubts about the psychological reality of primitively compelling transitions and implicit conceptions. (shrink)

acknowledgment of a global pandemic in March 2020 and subsequent containment policies disrupted routines. Violent suppression of anti-racists and ongoing state-sanctioned killings in the United States made and continue to make plain the precariousness of justice. The disruption, violence, and uncertainty have resulted in strange, disturbing, and disorienting experiences of time, leading some to describe time as distorted and elastic.I have repeatedly forgotten what day it is and sometimes, upon being reminded of the month, had the shocking sense of weeks (...) suddenly gone. After months of intentional practice, I have become better able to recall details of the recent past. Indistinct collections of days no longer fade... (shrink)

Let \({\mathcal {K}}\) be a quasivariety. We say that \({\mathcal {K}}\) is a term quasivariety if there exist an operation of arity zero _e_ and a family of binary terms \(\{t_i\}_{i\in I}\) such that for every \(A \in {\mathcal {K}}\), \(\theta \) a \({\mathcal {K}}\) -congruence of _A_ and \(a,b\in A\) the following condition is satisfied: \((a,b)\in \theta \) if and only if \((t_{i}(a,b),e) \in \theta \) for every \(i\in I\). In this paper we study term quasivarieties. For every \(A\in (...) {\mathcal {K}}\) and \(a,b\in A\) we present a description for the smallest \({\mathcal {K}}\) -congruence containing the pair (_a_, _b_). We apply this result in order to characterize \({\mathcal {K}}\) -compatible functions on _A_ (i.e., functions which preserve all the \({\mathcal {K}}\) -congruences of _A_) and we give two applications of this property: (1) we give necessary conditions on \({\mathcal {K}}\) for which for every \(A \in {\mathcal {K}}\) the \({\mathcal {K}}\) -compatible functions on _A_ coincides with a polynomial over finite subsets of _A_; (2) we give a method to build up \({\mathcal {K}}\) -compatible functions. (shrink)

We propose that human self-domestication favored the emergence of a less aggressive phenotype in our species, more precisely phenotype prone to replace (reactive) physical aggression with verbal aggression. In turn, the (gradual) transition to verbal aggression and to more sophisticated forms of verbal behavior favored self-domestication, with the two processes engaged in a reinforcing feedback loop, considering that verbal behavior entails not only less violence and better survival, but also more opportunities to interact longer and socialize with more conspecifics, ultimately (...) enabling the emergence of more complex forms of language. Whereas in the case of self-domestication sexual selection has been proposed to work against physical aggression traits, in the case of verbal insult the selection has been proposed to work in favor of verbal aggression. The tension between these two seemingly opposing forces gets resolved/alleviated by a tendency to replace physical aggression with verbal aggression, and with verbal behavior more generally. This also helps solve the paradox of the Self Domestication Hypothesis regarding aggression, more precisely why aggression in humans has been reduced only when it comes to reactive aggression, but not when it comes to proactive aggression, the latter exhibiting an increase with the advent of modern language. We postulate that this feedback loop was particularly important during the time period before 50 kya, arguably between 200 kya and 50 kya, when humans were not fully modern, neither in terms of their skull/brain morphology and their behavior/culture, nor in terms of their self-domestication. The novelty of our approach lies (i) in giving an active role to early forms of language in interacting with self-domestication processes; (ii) in providing specific linguistic details and functions of this early stage of grammar (including insult and humor); (iii) in supplying neurobiological, ontogenetic, and clinical evidence of a link between (reactive) aggression and (reactive) verbal behavior; (iv) in identifying a variety of proxies of the earlier stages in evolution among cognitive disorders; and (v) in identifying specific points of contact and mutual reinforcement between these two processes (self-domestication and early language evolution), including reduction in physical aggression and stress/tension, as well as sexual selection. (shrink)

Brian Loar has argued that the well-known arguments against individualism in the philosophy of mind are insufficient because they rely on the assumption that that-clauses uniquely capture psychological content. He tried to show that this is not the use of that-clauses in philosophical psychology. I argue that he does not succeed in his argument. That-clauses sometimes capture psychological content, if our system of mental ascription is to be workable at all. I argue further that individualism tends to be at odds (...) with a requirement of intersubjective shareability of contents and that Loar is alternative conception of psychological content is beset with difficulties. (shrink)

This paper provides a detailed analysis of how, according to Kant, the moral badness of some third parties’ actions can be established with certainty (by anyone, not only by the agent’s own conscience or by God). This account helps clarify why Kant affirms that some forms of wrongdoing (of which there are a “multitude of woeful examples”) can be demonstrated to be immoral, while excluding the possibility of proving the moral goodness of any action. The paper concludes by arguing that (...) the possible certainty of judgements imputing immorality to actions of others is not rational but rather moral. (shrink)

A moral requirement R1 is said to be lexically prior to a moral requirement R2 just in case we are morally obliged to uphold R1 at the expense of R2 – no matter how many times R2 must be violated thereby. While lexical priority is a feature of many ethical theories, and arguably a part of common sense morality, attempts to model it within the framework of decision theory have led to a series of problems – a fact which is (...) sometimes spun as a ‘decision theoretic critique’ of lexical priority. In this paper, I develop an enriched decision theoretic framework that is capable of modelling lexical priority while avoiding all extant problems. This will involve introducing several new ingredients into the standard decision theoretic framework, including multidimensional utilities, de minimis risks, and the means to represent two different conceptions of risk. (shrink)

Often presented as a new form of materialism, theories of media have been repeatedly fascinated by the idea of dematerialization—more precisely, by a vision of the history of technical media as a process teleologically oriented toward a future characterized by the overcoming of the weight, the opaqueness, and the resistance of materiality and by the advent of new, pervasive forms of instantaneous communication. Light, be it natural or artificial, has often played a key role in this historical narrative. With its (...) diffused presence, limitless plasticity, ultimate speed, ambiguous status between infinitely small particles and electromagnetic waves, and crucial role in the transmission of images and signals, light has often raised the question of the materiality of media itself, pointing to the possibility of immediacy—of an immediate, instantaneous, immaterial transmission. In this article I analyze the presence of this idea of dematerialization as the end point of media history in the writings of László Moholy-Nagy and Marshall McLuhan, whose thinking about media is centered on the assumption that light is the most fundamental medium, one that leads the entire range of technical media to gradually dematerialize and merge within the environment or even dissolve into the atmosphere. (shrink)

One of the most common ways of morphological marking is affixation, morphemes are classified according to their position. In languages with affixal morphology, suffixes and prefixes are the most common types of affixes. Despite several proposals, it has been impossible to identify solid generalisations about the behaviour of prefixes, in opposition to suffixes. This article argues that the reason is that our traditional definitions of suffix and prefix are based on pre-theoretical, surface criteria that have been given up in other (...) areas of linguistics: defining a morpheme as a prefix does not tell us anything about its grammatical nature, as that label does not take into consideration the structural configuration underlying the morpheme. Once the structural configuration is taken into account, solid generalisations begin to emerge. The article illustrates the advantages of this approach through a study of the interaction between vowel harmony and affixes. (shrink)

This article examines the reflection of the essay Los hijos del limo on the development of the Anglo-American, French and Latin American avant-garde. After exploring its aesthetic and ideological ties with Spanish-American narrative production, it is considered the way in which the latter forged a separate imagery in the context of the paradigm shift worked in occidental thought, following the fall of the Christian paradigm.

The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of past traumatic war experiences on preadolescents in the Gaza Strip, which could be useful for psychological intervention with current and future child victims. Participants were 521 preadolescents from United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, aged 11 and 13 years old. Sections I to IV from Iraqi Version-Arabic of Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess trauma experiences and Post-Traumatic Stress (...) Disorder (PTSD). The results show that the preadolescents in the Gaza Strip witnessed the destruction of their homes and the murder of family members and friends. A quarter of the individuals assessed either suffered torture or witnessed others undergoing it, including sexual assaults. Almost half of them experienced a lack of food and clean water. The traumatic and torture experiences seriously affected preadolescents’ mental health as 26.29% met criteria for the diagnosis of PTSD. The data analysis revealed two PTSD modalities, with the severity of impact depending on whether social implications were involved. Further research is required to check whether these two modalities fit to PTSD and complex PTSD. Understanding the effects of past wars on preadolescents in Gaza and distinguishing between different PTSD types could enhance comprehension of the impacts of current attacks on child victims. It can also aid in determining the type of intervention needed to minimize the impact on the mental health of Palestinian youth, enhancing their resilience through psychological and social support. (shrink)

There is a consensus that Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to clarify, systematize and vindicate the common conception of morality. Philosophical theory hence serves a restorative function. It can strengthen agents' motivation, protect against self-deception and correct misunderstandings produced by uncritical moral theory. In this paper, I argue that Kant also corrects the common perspective and that Kant's Groundwork shows in which senses the common perspective, even considered apart from its propensity to self-deception and without being influenced by misleading (...) theory, is deficient. Critical practical philosophy needs to set right agents about the stringency of some of their duties, and agents need to be made aware that they have certain other duties. I discuss how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of the stringency of the duty to not make false promises and how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of duties to self. I finally discuss how his critical practical philosophy can become popular and achieve the correction of the common perspective. I stress the role of education informed by philosophical theory for this and contrast it with so called ‘popular philosophy’. (shrink)

There is a theoretical difficulty in the economy of argument of The Prince’s, notably in chapter IX, when it deals with the fortunate astuteness necessary for the new prince. In the period that opens this central chapter in the economy of the work, we have the mobilization of important notions of Machiavellian political thought, such as virtù, fortune, private citizen, and, also, astuteness figures as an important attribute. Now, Machiavelli talks little about the fortunate astuteness, on the contrary, it does (...) not receive any expository attention, despite its importance in the list of political qualities necessary for the prince. Hence the question of how to think about the new prince’s fortunate astuteness. In order to better understand this Machiavellian concept, we intend to bring it closer, firstly, to the Greek métis, which allows us to better understand what this quality is that is required of the new prince. Then, based on the argumentative economy of the work, extract an understanding of this political quality. (shrink)

Contextualism, in its standard form, is the view that the truth conditions of sentences of the form ‘S knows that P’ vary according to the context in which they are uttered. One possible objection to contextualism appeals to what Keith DeRose calls a warranted assertability maneuver (or WAM), according to which it is not our knowledge sentences themselves that have context-sensitive truth conditions, but what is pragmatically conveyed by the use of such sentences. Thus, proponents of WAMs argue, the context (...) sensitivity of knowledge attributions is not a semantic phenomenon but a pragmatic one. I examine a number of WAMs and show that each (i) is seriously flawed, or (ii) undercuts standard contextualism if we hold a minimalist conception of semantic content. I propose an alternative form of contextualism that accommodates minimalism and is immune to the second type of WAM, and show that this new form of contextualism shares the virtues of standard contextualism. (shrink)

In this paper I explore some ideas inspired by Federico Picinali’s Justice In-Between: A Study of Intermediate Criminal Verdicts. Picinali makes a case for the introduction of intermediate options in criminal trials – verdicts with consequences that are harsher than an acquittal, but not so harsh as a conviction. From a certain perspective, the absence of intermediate options in criminal trials is puzzling – out of kilter with much of our everyday decision-making and, perhaps, with the recommendations of expected utility (...) theory. I will argue, however, that the lack of intermediate options is much less puzzling when put in the context of our ordinary practices of blame and non-legal punishment. (shrink)

This article analyses and discusses research-ethical dilemmas, ambivalences and problematic issues. This is done firstly by making a distinction between procedural research ethics and particularistic research ethics. Such a distinction refl ects a theoretical construction and generalization – in practice there can be a very close correlation between the two types. Hereafter, the distinction will therefore be used as a jumping-off point for the presentation of a pragmatic-dualist research ethics. Th e approach is dualist because it draws on the presence (...) of two independent, contrasting understandings, which are essentially diff erent yet equal aspects of good research ethics; and it is pragmatic because this dualism is first and foremost structural and institutional by nature, and designed with an eye to what can realistically and expediently be done in practice. Thus the intention of the article is to both analyze and discuss two different understandings of research ethics and simultaneouslyqualify a research ethics that draws on both these understandings. At the same time, the intention is to try to visualize a diff erent understanding of research ethics which others can address and elaborate on or qualify but even at this point can be included in an arsenal or catalogue of research-ethical understandings and approaches that can be exploited in research-ethical practice. (shrink)

A close reading of the three Bhavanakramah texts, written by Kamalasila, reveals that their author was aware of two competing concepts of meditation prevalent in Tibet at the time of their composition. The two concepts of meditation,associated with the Sanskrit words bhavana and dhyana, can be related respectively to the Indian and Chinese sides of the well-known debates at bSam yas. The account of the Mahayana path outlined in these texts implies an acceptance of the precedence of bhavana over dhyana. (...) In this paper I argue that Kamalasila advocated bhavana – a conception of meditation which encompasses non-conceptual dhyana, but which also includes a discernment of reality that is conceptual in nature. Such conceptual discernment should not be understood simply as a process of ordinary rational understanding but rather as constituting a special kind of meditative wisdom. A failure to recognize the subtle differences between Kamalasila’s employment of the terms dhyana and bhavana, along with his advocacy of the latter, could easily lead to mistranslation and, with this, a basic misunderstanding of his position. In particular, it could lead to a conception of insight that is overly intellectual in nature. Given the historically important role that these texts played in the formation of Tibetan Buddhism, the implications of such a misconception could be far-reaching. This paper attempts to clarify the key meditation terminology found in the Bhavanakramas as well as demonstrate the rationale for using ‘meditation’ as the default translation for bhavana. (shrink)

Marginalized people have used body aesthetic practices, such as clothing and hairstyles, to communicate their worth to the mainstream. One such example is respectability politics, a set of practices developed in post-Reconstruction black communities to prevent sexual assault and convey moral standing to the white mainstream. Respectability politics is an ambivalent strategy. It requires assimilation to white bourgeois aesthetic and ethical standards, and so guides practitioners toward blandness and bodily erasure. Yet, it is an aesthetic practice that cultivates moral agency (...) and helps communities avoid violence and meet social and economic goals. I contrast respectability politics with the anti-assimilationist body aesthetics of Chike Jeffers and Janell Hobson. Because these accounts do not seek to neutralize or erase the body, they fundamentally value black people. As such, they more effectively convey personhood than assimilationist strategies do and also demonstrate the positive role that body aesthetics can play in everyday ethical projects. (shrink)

NOTE: This paper is a reworking of some aspects of an earlier paper – ‘What else justification could be’ and also an early draft of chapter 2 of Between Probability and Certainty. I'm leaving it online as it has a couple of citations and there is some material here which didn't make it into the book (and which I may yet try to develop elsewhere). My concern in this paper is with a certain, pervasive picture of epistemic justification. On this (...) picture, acquiring justification for believing something is essentially a matter of minimising one’s risk of error – so one is justified in believing something just in case it is sufficiently likely, given one’s evidence, to be true. This view is motivated by an admittedly natural thought: If we want to be fallibilists about justification then we shouldn’t demand that something be certain – that we completely eliminate error risk – before we can be justified in believing it. But if justification does not require the complete elimination of error risk, then what could it possibly require if not its minimisation? If justification does not require epistemic certainty then what could it possibly require if not epistemic likelihood? When all is said and done, I’m not sure that I can offer satisfactory answers to these questions – but I will attempt to trace out some possible answers here. The alternative picture that I’ll outline makes use of a notion of normalcy that I take to be irreducible to notions of statistical frequency or predominance. (shrink)

El pluralismo y el multiculturalismo son hoy aceptados como característicos de las sociedades modernas. Como simple afirmación de pluralidad e incompatibilidad de sistemas doxásticos -actividades y formas de vida a las que se les reconoce algún valuor- el pluralismo no pasa de ser un lugar común. Adquiere otro estatuto y relevancia filosófica, a partir del momento en que indica la convicción o la tesis de que el pluralismo de las doctrinas éticas, filosóficas o religiosas, es un trazo permanente e innegable (...) de las sociedades democráticas modernas, y no simple contingencia histórica, eventualmente superable mediante un recurso a cualquier proceso de reducción a un valor que sirva de denominador común a la pluralidad en causa. [Fragmento]. (shrink)