This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind, of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Mölder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism, the ascription theory, which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability, and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly (...) directed against interpretivism, the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness -- perception and the awareness of one’s own mental states -- in the interpretivist framework. (shrink)

Esse artigo é um resumo de uma tese de doutorado iniciada em 2017 que tem como objetivo analisar onze filmes do gênero documentário que abordam a liderança política de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ao longo de sua trajetória no cenário nacional. Discuto, entendendo os documentários como fontes narrativas, o tipo de liderança política de Lula nos momentos específicos de suas produções, analisando esteticamente como ele foi representado pelos diversos diretores. Como objetivo específico, busco identificar traços do fenômeno político discutido (...) academicamente intitulado como “Lulismo” presentes nos filmes selecionados. Além da revisão bibliográfica necessária para confecção desse trabalho, utilizei a análise fílmica proposta por Vera Chaia e a Hermenêutica de Profundidade, utilizada por John Thompson em “Ideologia e Cultura Moderna”. (shrink)

In his 1841-2 Berlin lectures, Schelling critiques German idealism’s negative method of regressing from existence to its first principle, which is supposed to be intelligible without remainder. He sees existence as precisely its remainder since there could be nothing that exists. To solve this, Schelling enlists the positive method of progressing from the fact of existence to a proof of this principle’s reality. Since this proof faces the absurdity that there is anything rather than nothing, he concludes that this fact’s (...) constitution and this principle’s proof are mutually dependent, non-dischargeable tasks. I trace this reciprocal relation to one Kant establishes between the constitutive categories of experience and the experience that proves their applicability and argue that it adheres to Kant’s threefold criterion of proof. I do so by uncovering the Maimonian skeptical motivation—specifically, the need to answer what I call the question quid indicii—behind the qualified return to Kant on which Schelling’s critique of idealism relies. (shrink)

This paper discusses three generic types or ways of understanding the common good found in the literature, and then describes the implications of the integral common good for seven key practices of humanistic management. In particular, compared to conventional management, an approach to humanistic management based on the integral common good tends to: 1) have institutional mission and vision statements that are developed by multiple stakeholders that emphasize social and ecological well-being ahead of financial well-being; 2) have a strategic orientation (...) that emphasizes collaboration, “minimizer” and “transformer” generic strategies, a Radical Resource Based View, and uses Porter’s five forces as a way to foster collaboration; 3) structure organizations based on experimentation, sensitization, dignification, and participation ; 4) develop control systems based on value loops that seek to enhance the flourishing of multiple stakeholders; 5) emphasize multi-directional multi-stakeholder communication; 6) invite all stakeholders to participate in making decisions, including developing and choosing alternatives; 7) foster leadership based on socialized power, a focus on SMART 2.0 goals, a desire to ensure everyone is treated fairly, and an emphasis on relationships that nurture community and the integral common good. Implications for research and teaching are discussed. (shrink)

Scientificity is essentially methodology. The use of information technology as methodological instruments in science has been increasing for decades, this raises the question: Does this transform science? This question is the subject of the Special Issue in Minds and Machines “The epistemological significance of methods in computer simulation and machine learning”. We show that there is a technological change in this area that has three methodological and epistemic consequences: methodological opacity, reproducibility issues, and altered forms of justification.

This is a review of the book Metaética: algumas tendências. The book contains papers of three important philosophers in this subject, Peter Railton, Allan Gibbard and Stephen Darwall. Since this book has been published, the study of metaethics has been improved in Brazil. In this review we describe the main aspects of the book, focusing on Railton’s ideas.

1. Can “practice” and “practices” be used as epistemological tools to study history? Can these concepts be used to break up unilateral and teleological narratives one the one hand, and, on the other, to provide a basis for a new understanding and writing of history and histories? The twelve essays (by thirteen authors) collected by Francis Chateauraynaud and Yves Cohen under the title Histoires Pragmatiques (in the Ehess’s Raisons pratiques. Epistémologie, sociologie, théorie sociale series)...

When formulating the concept of the impulse-image, Deleuze never tires of asserting that these images are saturated with death and obsessed by degradation. They stand at a curious intersection in the taxonomy of images, a constitutively in-between space: they are formally inserted between affection-image and action-image in The Movement-Image, but produce a direct passage to the time-image. However, they do not reach the time-image due to obsession by the negative effects of time. This article introduces the concept of the impulse-image (...) in Deleuze's work on the impulse and death instinct, in his fundamental texts of the 1960s and 1970s, including his collaboration with Félix Guattari. The death instinct in the late 1960s was a transcendental principle that acquired the form of the groundless or crack-up essential for the production of difference. It is at this time that Deleuze publishes Zola and the Crack-up, an embryonic essay for what would later become the impulse-image. In the 1970s, Deleuze, along with Guattari, fought the need to include a groundless force in the mould of the death instinct. Speaking of cinema in the 1980s, which is when he returns to the impulse theme, one finds characteristics of both preceding periods, especially the structure conceived in the 1960s, associated with the criticism of the 1970s. However, Deleuze now stands apart, recognising a naturalistic image and admiring a practice of symptomatology, but pointing out that his own understanding of the world does not lie in it. With the impulse-images, Deleuze also plays a relevant role in studies of film naturalism, shaping a powerful concept for studies of contemporary naturalistic symptomatologies that emerge in situations of misery of civilisation. (shrink)

La mission du juge est de trancher les litiges. Or, avant de d’appliquer une règle juridique, il est nécessaire de connaître précisément les faits de la cause. « Da mihi factum, dabo tibi jus ». L’expert est le spécialiste de l’analyse des faits dont le juge a besoin. Dans le domaine de la santé, l’expert est incontournable tant pour étudier la santé corporelle que la santé mentale. On note toutefois une évolution considérable qui tend à demander à l’expert, non plus (...) seulement d’observer une situation passée ou présente mais de prévenir l’avenir. (shrink)

If we accept the Socratic edict that the examined life is the only worth living, we find no examination can exclude that mortal fate of human life. If we define a philosophical problem as, in Hans Jonas’ words, “the collision between a comprehensive view (be it hypothesis or belief) and a particular fact which will not fit into it”, we see there can be no greater problem for materialism or organicism than the corpse. That living things die is a problem (...) for a view on which only a figment of the imagination differentiates organic from inorganic matter, as for a view on which life is rational and eternal. For any systematic view, the body is a constant reminder of an acceptable answer to the question 'what is being'. This is because the body that can die is the ultimate explanatory task for any principled answer to this question. (shrink)

An explanatory gap ensues when the truths constituting the explanans do not entail the explanandum. Attempts to give a physicalist account of consciousness seem to generate an explanatory gap, which is special in the following psychological sense. In other cases, it is possible to bridge or close the gap by regimenting or eliminating the respective concepts. In the case of consciousness, however, there is a pervasive intuition that the gap remains even when one works out a notion of consciousness that (...) allows the entailment of truths about consciousness from physical premises. The intuition is expressed by the sense that something essential about consciousness is left out from any such conceptual regimentation. This paper defends the view that this intuition is generated by the way our experiences are given to us. Every experience has a component that is not captured by any specification. The gap intuition is due to this ineffable component in experiences. Since conscious experiences are partly ineffable, it seems that no account of consciousness captures conscious experiences entirely and so would develop the intuition that something has been left out. An alternative explanation to the gap intuition is provided by the “phenomenal concepts’ strategy”. According to this strategy, it is the peculiar nature of phenomenal concepts that feeds the intuition. The main problem with such an approach is that phenomenal concepts are more coarse-grained than the experiences themselves and thus their application still does not entail what it is like to have a particular phenomenal experience. (shrink)

Can one expect religious minorities to be committed to a liberal democratic state? Can a democratic, Western, liberal state be open and safe for all – both ultra-orthodox and secular alike – and count on the allegiance of all? Does this require that religious minorities ‘hide’ their religious identity and conform to prevailing laws and customs and express their religious views and practices only in the privacy of their own homes? Or should minorities request that they receive public recognition? Ought (...) such minorities tolerate opposing views and practices on matters that are central to their faith, or should they request that these are not expressed in public? In this paper, I discuss and evaluate four possible responses to these questions. (shrink)

In 1876 the Italian physicist and physical chemist Adolfo Bartoli discussed a thought experiment in which he connected the second law of thermodynamics with the hypothetical pressure of radiation. Bartoli's work, published in Italian, exerted some influence on the subsequent development of black-body theory and light pressure research. This influence was mainly due to Boltzmann, who came to the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law via a reworking of Bartoli's thought experiment. However, contrary to what is usually assumed, Bartoli was himself reluctant to (...) admit the existence of light pressure and soon rejected the hypothesis. Bartoli's work is discussed and related to other work in the areas of radiometer research and thermodynamics. (shrink)

Bringing together a range of specialists in their respective fields, the book provides a combination of original research with fundamental questions about why states stay together, and above all why sometimes they fall apart. When and under what conditions is the separation of one part of a state from another justified? Written in an accessible and informed manner, the authors seek to answer this question on the basis of ten case studies and a general review of the literature and theories (...) of the question. (shrink)

Nous définissons une classe de suites de polynômes, calculés par des circuits de complexité polynomiale comprenant des additions, des soustractions, des multiplications et des sommations de Valiant. Nous montrons que cette classe est close pour la prise de la fonction-coefficient, définie au paragraphe 3 de cet article: nous en déduisons l'existence d'un circuit de complexité 72.n2, calculant le coefficient binomial de deux nombres de n chiffres, donnés en base 2. Il est par ailleurs facile de construire un circuit de complexité (...) 17.n + 2 calculant la factorielle d'un nombre de n chiffres. La présence de 2.n sommations d'effet exponentiel dans chacun de ces circuits en affecte gravement l'intérêt pratique. Il est peu probable, ou du moins peu souhaitable, qu'on puisse éliminer ces sommations sans explosion, car cela provoquerait la catastrophe cryptographique que redoutent tous les banquiers: néanmoins, nous ne savons pas séparer la classe définie ici de celle des suites de polynômes calculables en un nombre polynomial d'opérations arithmétiques. Cela n'a rien de surprenant, vu la très grande affinité qu'elle a avec la classe PSPACE: nous montrons en effet que cette classe est identique à la classe VPSPACE, définie antérieurement par Koiran et Perifel, qui apparaît ici sous une forme bien plus maniable que l'originale. (shrink)

Le regard croisé, pour la période contemporaine, sur l’histoire des femmes et l’histoire religieuse, deux champs de l’historiographie française qui se sont longtemps ignorés, permet de saisir les efforts récents d’ouverture et de collaboration qui contribuent, de part et d’autre, à une rénovation historiographique. Revisiter ces deux champs de recherches conduit, de manière plus générale, à une réflexion sur une « histoire sociale du religieux » qui s’élabore aux interfaces de plusieurs champs disciplinaires et peut contribuer, à plus long terme, (...) à leur renouvellement. (shrink)

Textes comme images laissent penser que la plupart des repas médiévaux faisaient coexister hommes et femmes. Mais de quelle manière? Le traitement par les enlumineurs de trois motifs iconographiques tirés de la Bible, qui n’impliquent pas toujours cette coexistence des sexes – le festin d’Assuérus, le repas des enfants de Job et le banquet de Balthasar –, révèle la banalité d’une mixité dont les modalités d’organisation se révèlent très souples. Les plans de table des banquets de la cour de Bourgogne (...) confirment l’imbrication des mangeurs et des mangeuses mais suggèrent que leur disposition répond à des considérations politiques et familiales plus qu’au souci de l’alternance des sexes. (shrink)

SummaryMutations in human genes encoding transcription factors are often dominant because one active allele cannot ensure a normal phenotype (haploinsufficiency). In other instances, heterozygous mutations of two genes are required for a phenotype to appear (combined haploinsufficiency). Here, we explore with models (i) the basis of haploinsufficiency and combined haploinsufficiency owing to mutations in transcription activators, and (ii) how the effects of such mutations can be amplified or buffered by subsequent steps in a transcription cascade. We propose that the non‐linear (...) (sigmoidal) response of transcription to the concentration of activators can explain haploinsufficiency. We further show that the sigmoidal character of the output of a cascade increases with the number of steps involved, the settings of which will determine the buffering or enhancement of the effects of a decreased concentration of an upstream activator. This exploration provides insights into the bases of compensatory mutations and on interloci interactions underlying oligogenic inheritance patterns. (shrink)