Carolina Sartorio argues that only the actual causes of our behaviour matter to our freedom. The key, she claims, lies in a correct understanding of the role played by causation in a view of that kind. Causation has some important features that make it a responsibility-grounding relation, and this contributes to the success of the view. Also, when agents act freely, the actual causes are richer than they appear to be at first sight; in particular, they reflect the agents' (...) sensitivity to reasons, where this includes both the existence of actual reasons and the absence of other reasons. So acting freely requires more causes and quite complex causes, as opposed to fewer causes and simpler causes, and is compatible with those causes being deterministic. The book connects two different debates, the one on causation and the one on the problem of free will, in new and illuminating ways. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza un conjunto de obras sobre ríos y represas que pertenece a la serie titulada Represa /Represión (2012-) de la artista colombiana Carolina Caycedo. La pregunta de la que se ocupa esta investigación es ¿cómo las estrategias estéticas de estas obras identifican los problemas socio-ecológicos generados por las represas y contribuyen a articular imaginarios políticos de sostenibilidad? El argumento principal es que las obras de Caycedo sobre el río Yuma o Magdalena contribuyen con la construcción (...) de una memoria histórica ambiental, a partir de saberes populares, campesinos y cosmovisiones indígenas. Con este fin, este texto caracteriza el problema de las represas a partir de los conceptos de ‘extractivismo’, de Macarena Gómez-Barris, y ‘desterritorialización’, de Rob Nixon, para luego realizar un recorrido por las obras de la artista, de cuyo análisis se va construyendo una caracterización de la memoria histórica ambiental de un segmento del río Yuma. El marco conceptual del trabajo incluye las nociones de ‘seres-tierra’, de Marisol de la Cadena y ‘territorio’, de Arturo Escobar, así como ‘memoria de los ríos’, de Kristina Lyons. La metodología se basa en el análisis conceptual y técnico de las piezas de Caycedo en el marco interdisciplinar de las humanidades ambientales. El análisis concluye que las obras de Caycedo generan espacios de memoria histórica ambiental desde perspectivas trasnacionales y, en estos espacios de encuentro que constituyen las obras, se relacionan y rearticulan los extremos de falsos antagonismos como naturaleza/cultura, humano/no humano y ciencia/arte. (shrink)

There is an initial presumption against disjunctive causes. First of all, for some people causation is a relation between events. But, arguably, there are no disjunctive events, since events are particulars and thus they have spatiotemporal locations, while it is unclear what the spatiotemporal location of a disjunctive event could be.1 More importantly, even if one believes that entities like facts can enter in causal relations, and even if there are disjunctive facts, it is still hard to see how disjunctive (...) facts could be causes. Imagine, for instance, the following scenario. I have a gun filled with red paint and another gun filled with blue paint, and I fire both guns at my neighbor’s white wall. A moment later, there is a graffiti on the wall and my neighbor notifies the police. He would have done so regardless of the graffiti’s color, since all he cares about is the existence of a graffiti on his wall. Is it plausible to claim that a disjunctive fact is a cause of his notifying the police? In particular, is it plausible to claim that he notified the police because I fired the red-paint gun or the blue-paint gun (the thought being that my firing paint of either color would have sufficed)? It seems not. The police was notified because of the actual graffiti on the wall, and the actual graffiti on the wall is made of a certain pattern of colored patches. Imagine, that, as it turns out, there are patches of both colors on the wall. Then it seems that both my firing the red-paint gun and my firing the blue-paint gun were causes of my neighbor’s notifying the police. In other words, my firing the red-paint gun and my firing the blue-paint gun jointly caused the outcome: each of them was a contributory cause of the outcome’s occurrence. On the other hand, imagine that there are only patches of one color on the wall. Then it seems that my firing only one of the guns was a cause. Either way, the disjunction fails to be a cause: either my firing the red-paint gun was a cause, or my firing the blue-paint gun was a cause, or they were both causes, but their disjunction was not.. (shrink)

De Cette chère humanité en 1976 à Lothar Blues en 2008, Philippe Curval est l’auteur d’une série de romans qui mettent en scène un ou plusieurs futurs de l’Union européenne. Alors que l’Europe s’apprête peut-être à vivre des « années de chien », cette conversation entre Philippe Curval et Ariel Kyrou nous plonge dans les rêves ou les cauchemars imaginés par l’auteur de science-fiction, quelque part entre le danger d’un enfermement dans ses frontières, les risques d’effondrement, les promesses de la (...) fin du travail et l’espoir d’une renaissance du vieux continent. (shrink)

Does a person's liability to attack during a war depend on the nature of their individual causal contribution to the (unjust) threat posed? If so, how? The recent literature on the ethics of war has become increasingly focused on questions of this kind. According to some views on these matters, your liability hinges on the extent of your causal contribution: the larger your contribution to an unjust threat, the larger the amount of harm that we can impose on you in (...) order to avert the threat. Some philosophers have suggested that we can ground a quite general principle of civilian immunity on this basis. But, do causal contributions really come in degrees? Can we make sense of a graded notion of causal contribution that can be relevant to debates about liability in war? I argue there is good reason to be sceptical. The appearance that causal contributions come in degrees is just an illusion that can be explained away. (shrink)

I respond to the critical comments by Randolph Clarke, Alfred Mele, and Derk Pereboom on my book Causation and Free Will. I discuss some features of the view that our freedom is exclusively based on actual causes, including the role played in it by absences of reasons, absence causation, modal facts, and finally some additional thoughts on how a compatibilist can respond to the manipulation argument for incompatibilism.

RESUMO: O presente artigo tem como objetivo discutir o estatuto que Foucault confere à psicanálise. Em As palavras e as coisas, de 1966, Foucault condena todo tipo de reflexão que procura conferir estatuto ontológico à finitude humana. Nesse sentido, faz-se necessário investigar se a crítica que Foucault endereça à psicanálise depois de 66 se dá nos mesmos termos que a crítica feita às analíticas da finitude. Ou seja, trata-se de entender se a acusação de que a psicanálise não passa de (...) mais um "dispositivo de sexualidade" a serviço do biopoder está fundada na ideia de que a psicanálise supõe uma ontologia. A ideia da psicanálise como ontologia, contudo, é uma tese recusada por Foucault em alguns escritos da década de 50 e 60. Nesse período, o filósofo defende que a psicanálise é antes de tudo um método hermenêutico e não uma teoria geral sobre o homem. Assim, se é verdade que as teses genealógicas finais de Foucault sobre a psicanálise se fundamentam na visão da psicanálise como ontologia, deparamo-nos com um problema: afinal, a psicanálise, para Foucault, consiste ou não numa teoria sobre o ser do homem? ABSTRACT: The goal of this study is to understand the status conferred on psychoanalysis by Foucault. In The Order of Things the philosopher condemns a certain kind of reflection that aims to confer an ontological status on human finitude. It is necessary to investigate whether the critique that Foucault addresses to psychoanalysis after 1966 is framed along the same lines as the critique made of the analytics of finitude. The aim is, therefore, to understand whether or not the accusatory claim that psychoanalysis is nothing but a "sexuality device" at the service of biopower is founded on the idea that psychoanalysis presupposes an ontology. The idea of psychoanalysis as ontology, however, is a thesis that is refuted by Foucault in some texts from the 1950's and 1960's. In this period, the philosopher holds that psychoanalysis is, above all, rather a hermeneutic method than a general theory on man. Thus, if it is true that Foucault's final genealogical theses on psychoanalysis are grounded on a view of psychoanalysis as ontology, we are posed with a problem: does psychoanalysis ultimately consist, for Foucault, in a theory of the being of man? (shrink)

Some classical studies in social psychology suggest that we are more sensitive to situational factors, and less responsive to reasons, than we normally recognize we are. In recent years, moral responsibility theorists have examined the question whether those studies represent a serious threat to our moral responsibility. A common response to the “situationist threat” has been to defend the reasons-responsiveness of ordinary human agents by appeal to a theory of reasons-responsiveness that appeals to patterns of counterfactual scenarios or possible worlds. (...) In this paper I identify a problem with that response and I offer a better solution. (shrink)

Using data from 88 countries, we test hypotheses linking a country’s economic freedom and cultural values with the propensity and timing of decisions to impose stringent policies to combat the spread of Covid-19, as well as society’s compliance with those restrictive measures. Our analysis supports hypotheses that a country’s economic freedom and cultural dimensions of individualism and masculinity predict early implementation of stringent policies. After accounting for endogeneity, we find that individualism also helps explain residents’ compliance with stringent measures. These (...) findings illustrate how institutions and cultural values influence government policies and societal compliance. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine Michael Moore's views about responsibility in overdetermination cases. Moore argues for an asymmetrical view concerning actions and omissions: whereas our actions can make us responsible in overdetermination cases, our omissions cannot. Moore argues for this view on the basis of a causal claim: actions can be causes but omissions cannot. I suggest that we should reject Moore's views about responsibility and overdetermination. I argue, in particular, that our omissions (just like our actions) can make (...) us responsible in overdetermination cases. I go on to provide an account of how this may be possible. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

On the face of it, causal responsibility seems to be “additive” in the following sense: if I cause some effects, then it seems that I also cause the sum (aggregate, conjunction, etc.) of those effects. Let’s call the claim that causation behaves in this way, Additivity.

Starting from the notions of q-entailment and p-entailment, a two-dimensional notion of entailment is developed with respect to certain generalized q-matrices referred to as B-matrices. After showing that every purely monotonic singleconclusion consequence relation is characterized by a class of B-matrices with respect to q-entailment as well as with respect to p-entailment, it is observed that, as a result, every such consequence relation has an inferentially four-valued characterization. Next, the canonical form of B-entailment, a two-dimensional multiple-conclusion notion of entailment based (...) on B-matrices, is introduced, providing a uniform framework for studying several different notions of entailment based on designation, antidesignation, and their complements. Moreover, the two-dimensional concept of a B-consequence relation is defined, and an abstract characterization of such relations by classes of B-matrices is obtained. Finally, a contribution to the study of inferential many-valuedness is made by generalizing Suszko’s Thesis and the corresponding reduction to show that any B-consequence relation is, in general, inferentially four-valued. (shrink)

In this paper I reexamine the debate between two contrasting conceptions of free will: the classical model, which understands freedom in terms of alternative possibilities, and a more recent family of views that focus only on actual causes, and that were inspired by Frankfurt’s famous attack on the principle of alternative possibilities. I offer a novel argument in support of the actual-causes model, one that bypasses the popular debate about Frankfurt-style cases.

Many studies have examined clinical and institutional moral problems in the practice of nurses that have led to the experience of moral distress. The causes and implications of moral distress in nurses, however, have not been understood in terms of their implications from the perspective of virtue ethics. This paper analyzes how nurses reach for the telos of their practice, within a context of moral distress. A qualitative case study was carried out in a private hospital in Brazil. Observation and (...) semi‐semistructured interviews were conducted with 13 nurse participants. With the aid of ATLAS.ti software, the data were analyzed by using thematic content analysis using virtue ethics to theorize the findings. These nurses experienced a loss of their nursing identity as they encountered an ambiguous telos and the domination of institutional values. In their reach for the telos of their practice, nurses found an environment permeated by ethical challenges, which not only created moral distress but also created professional invisibility, a phenomenon referred to as ‘invisibility of the self’. (shrink)

What do the words ceteris paribus add to a causal hypothesis, that is, to a generalization that is intended to articulate the consequences of a causal mechanism? One answer, that looks almost too good to be true, is that a ceteris paribus hedge restricts the scope of the hypothesis to those cases where nothing undermines, interferes with, or undoes the effect of the mechanism in question, even if the hypothesis’s own formulator is otherwise unable to specify fully what might constitute (...) such undermining or interference. This paper proposes a semantics for causal generalizations according to which ceteris paribus hedges deliver on this promise, because the truth conditions for a causal generalization depend in part on the -- perhaps unknown -- nature of the mechanism whose consequences it is intended to describe. It follows that the truth conditions for causal hypotheses are typically opaque to their own formulators. (shrink)

Los diferentes planteamientos epistemológicos de la ciencia desarrollados a lo largo del siglo XX, junto con la situación actual de la epistemología, no hacen más que revelarnos el paso de una postura positivista hacia la adopción de diversos paradigmas que convendremos en denominar genéricamen..

Moore’s Mechanical Choices is ripe with interesting ideas. Here I’ll focus on a particularly intriguing one that intersects with some aspects of my own work. It’s the suggestion that causalism should be amended in a way that doesn’t require causation. At first, this suggestion may sound absurd: How can causalism survive without causation, of all things? But I think that Moore is actually right about the main suggestion. I don’t think he’s right for the right reasons, but he’s still right (...) about the main idea. So, the aim of this paper is to explain how causalism can survive without causation, and how it may not. (shrink)

This article analyzes the cycle of social mobilization in Colombia between 2011 and 2021, inquiring for the changes that occurred in their actors, agendas and repertoires. It states that during this period there was an expansion of the base of social mobilization, a diversification of the demands and grievances of the protesters, and a transformation in their mobilization repertoires. The theoretical framework for this analysis comes from the political process and collective frames, two tools that allow us to understand the (...) processes of creating political opportunities and the expansion of frame alignments. The information collected is based on the author’s participant observation work in different demonstrations, protests, concentrations in public squares, assemblies and debates during the period 2019-2021, and is complemented with data from the Social Struggles database of the Center for Research and Popular Education- CINEP and the Latin American Public Opinion Project of Vanderbilt University. (shrink)

Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the orthodox view in epistemology analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by deploying analytical tools on capacities and masking to show that the cognitive science of evidence-resistance supports rather than undermines the orthodox view. In doing so, I argue for the claim that belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that p, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on p. Because (...) capacities for evidence-responsiveness are fallible and may be masked, beliefs can be held in the face of counter-evidence. Indeed, I will argue that our best science of belief supports the claim that evidence-resistant beliefs result from masks on evidence-responsiveness capacities. This account of belief not only allows for resistance to evidence, but provides us with a framework for describing and explaining actual cases of evidence-resistance. (shrink)

This is a critical discussion of Vihvelin’s recent book Causes, Laws, and Free Will. I discuss Vihvelin’s ideas on Frankfurt-style cases and the actual-sequence view of freedom that is inspired by them.

In 1992, as part of a larger charitable campaign, the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth’s older son and heir) launched a line of organic food products called “Prince’s Duchy Originals”.1 The first product that went on sale was an oat cookie: “the oaten biscuit.” Since then the oaten biscuit has been joined by hundreds of other products and Duchy Originals has become one of the leading organic food brands in the UK. Presumably, the Prince of Wales is very (...) proud of his Duchy Originals products, and of the oaten biscuits in particular. Let’s imagine that he is so proud of the oaten biscuits that he eats them regularly. Also, let’s imagine that one day Queen Elizabeth asks the Prince to water the plant in her room. As she explains to him, she’ll be gone for the day and the plant needs to be watered every afternoon. But the Prince decides not to water the plant. Instead of watering the plant, he spends his afternoon savoring some oaten biscuits, and the Queen’s plant dies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose that the common horizon of the reflections of political philosophy in Latin America is the debate that has taken place to defend liberalism or go against it. The background of this is the reference to the social collective forms. In this context, Marxism has tried to respond from heterodox visions that recover the Latin American experience. We have focused this debate on three authors, Chauí, Fernández and Echeverría, who do not exhaust the (...) problem but keep open the paths that enhance the local experience. (shrink)

Much confusion exists within the robotics and the biology communities regarding the definition of biorobotics and the aims and strategies that characterize this approach. Not even the basic criteria for identifying biorobotic research are being applied consistently. Barbara Webb has taken a crucial step towards setting a common ground from which biorobotic systems can be described, analyzed, and compared.

Este trabajo intenta dilucidar el significado de la afirmación polémica de Platón relativa a la índole peculiar de los relatos literarios que, aunque falsos, encierran también algunas verdades, pues resulta problemático que Platón, al mismo tiempo, critique esos relatos y, sin embargo, proponga también hacer uso de otros igualmente falsos. Examino tres posibilidades de desambiguar el sentido de pseûdos en estos contextos -"falso" designaría ficción o mentira verbal o el carácter de uno de los dos niveles que constituiría un relato (...) literario- y defiendo que la falsedad rechazable para Platón es sólo la atinente al núcleo tipológico contenido en esos relatos. This paper attempts to elucidate the meaning of the controversial Platonic statement in relation to the peculiarity in the literary accounts which, in spite of being false, contain at the same time certain truths. Furthermore, there seems to be contradiction in the fact that Plato critiques those writings and still proposes using others equally false. I analyze three possibilities to disambiguate the meaning of pseûdos in these contexts -"false" would point to fiction or to a verbal lie or the character of one of the two levels which would comprise a literary account; and I support the fact that, for Plato, the undesirable falsity is only the one related to the typological core comprised in those accounts. (shrink)

Este trabajo examina el tópico de la poesía imitativa en Platón. Su objetivo es averiguar si, para Platón, puede haber una mimesis de valor y, consiguientemente, una poesía mimética aceptable. Para ello se analizan dos secciones de República concernientes a una imitación válida. Esta se basaría en el conocimiento dialéctico de las realidades inteligibles; condición que no puede ser cubierta por el poeta. Mi hipótesis es que la solución a este problema reside en la idea platónica de 'diseño', que -derivado (...) del paradigma ideal- sería la herramienta de trabajo para el imitador. Filón ha conceptualizado esa herramienta en su idea de arquetipo. This paper examines the topic of imitative poetry in Plato. Its aim is to determine whether, for Plato, may be a mimesis of value and consequently an acceptable mimetic poetry. For this, two sections concerning a valid Republic imitation will be analyzed. This would be based on the dialectical understanding of intelligible realities; condition that the poet can not be covered. My hypothesis is that the solution to this problem is the Platonic idea of 'design', which -derived the ideal paradigm- would be the tool for the imitator. Philo has conceptualized this tool in his idea of archetype. (shrink)

En Chile, la filosofía en la segundaria, después de la última reforma a la educación, tiene un lugar contradictorio. Filosofía y globalización parecen no alcanzar un entendimiento. En los límites de la contradicción, se propone un espacio donde el diálogo con diversos conceptos trabajados por Derrida permiten entrar en la dimensión filosófica del problema político-educativo.

The standard notion of formal theory, in logic, is in general biased exclusively towards assertion: it commonly refers only to collections of assertions that any agent who accepts the generating axioms of the theory should also be committed to accept. In reviewing the main abstract approaches to the study of logical consequence, we point out why this notion of theory is unsatisfactory at multiple levels, and introduce a novel notion of theory that attacks the shortcomings of the received notion by (...) allowing one to take both assertions and denials on a par. This novel notion of theory is based on a bilateralist approach to consequence operators, which we hereby introduce, and whose main properties we investigate in the present paper. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that causally determined agents are not morally responsible because they cannot make a difference in the world. A recent response by philosophers who defend the compatibility of determinism and responsibility has been to concede that causally determined agents are incapable of making a difference, but to argue that responsibility is not grounded in difference making. These compatibilists have rested such a claim on Frankfurt cases—cases where agents are intuitively responsible for acts that they couldn’t have failed (...) to perform. This essay argues, first, that the intuitive plausibility of the idea that responsibility is grounded in difference making is not completely put to rest by Frankfurt cases, even if those cases successfully show that responsibility is not grounded in difference making in the sense of access to alternative possibilities of action. It then goes on to develop a different compatibilist strategy, one according to which responsibility is grounded in difference making, but the type of difference making it is grounded in does not require access to alternative possibilities. Indeed, it is a form of difference making that is clearly compatible with determinism. (shrink)

What is the relationship between moral responsibility and causation? Plainly, we are not morally responsible for everything that we cause. For we cause a multitude of things, including things that we couldn't possibly foresee we would cause and with respect to which we cannot be assessed morally. Thus, it is clear that causing something does not entail being morally responsible for it. But, does the converse entailment hold? Does moral responsibility require causation? Intuitively, it does: intuitively, we can only be (...) morally responsible for things that we cause. (shrink)

In 1798 the French Directory began to collect moral statistics systematically for the first time in history. The bureaucratic and scientific developments that preceded this policy are well known. Yet the reasons for its abrupt adoption, and the intellectual origins of moral statistics (as distinguished from the topographical statistics previously practiced), have until now remained obscure. This paper contends that, in the aftermath of the Terror, Joseph de Maistre sketched philosophical tools and made political observations that aided the rise of (...) the new state science. In particular, Maistre’s anti-Rousseauian essay On the State of Nature (composed 1794-1796), a critique of Rousseau’s second Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755), outlined theoretical concepts crucial to moral statistics. Maistre’s widely read Considerations on France (1797) later made these concepts available to the French public in an accessible and memorable style. In On the State of Nature Maistre set down his ideas on reason, human nature, human perfectibility, justice, conscience, Providence and chance. These ideas presented the agency of the moral in an innovative way that not only suggested immediate systematic applications, but also helped prepare the French sociological project. Indeed if any text made the theoretical shift away from the model of human nature to the paradigm of normal people with laws of dispersion that Ian Hacking claims set French sociology apart, it is On the State of Nature. Moreover, Maistre’s realist critique of Rousseau’s imagination augured the notion of the social fact that Comte transformed, and Durkheim defined. (shrink)

Rousseau, a philosopher of history? The suggestion may startle those who know him as an enemy of history, the founder of Counter-Enlightenment who rejected his century’s hope in progress and conjured quasi-utopias devoid of time. Alone, the political texts seem to justify this interpretation. Side by side with the Emile and Julie sagas, however, they disclose a new Rousseau, the weaver of a master plot that governs private and public history. This essay describes Jean-Jacques’ overarching narrative and the two main (...) subnarratives that compose it by juxtaposing his political and fictional works. In doing so, it contests current conventions about his ideas on women, challenges assumptions about his educational ideals, retrieves new aspects of his debt to Fénelon, and foregrounds the pivotal role that the idea of ‘true love’ plays in his philosophy as the foundation of political community. (shrink)