I present and develop a novel account of the schematism by reading it through the distinction between constitution and regulation. I thus show that Kant’s stipulation of only eight schemata for the twelve pure concepts of the understanding is not haphazard but answers, instead, to two distinct processes of synthesis, mathematical and dynamical, that either constitute objects in intuition or regulate objects of experience. Based on this, I offer a detailed reconstruction of each of the schemata specified by Kant, and (...) I provide an explanation of the systematic role each plays in the Analytic. (shrink)

Unable to overlook Agamben’s gloss of Kant’s moral philosophy as a vector of ontological delirium, the article scrutinises Kant’s choice of the well-known expression ‘categorical imperative’ as the prescriptive cornerstone of moral praxis. The article’s central claim is that the linguistic formulation of the categorical imperative in such terms on Kant’s part is not determined by pleonastic redundancy or overabundant formality. It depends on Kant’s well-aware need to voice and get logically rid of, as best as possible, within the available (...) language in the wake of the philosophical tradition, an ontological conundrum whose evidence can already be traced back to Socrates’s trial. The categorical imperative attempts to convey the results of Kant’s inquiry of human ontology linguistically, requiring a hendiadys to express the somewhat ineffable – since counterintuitive for us as finite beings – equivalence between human freedom and morality. By engaging with Agamben’s critique, the article not only refutes it by referencing other scholars like Rawls, Korsgaard, Ferraris, and Habermas, but also sheds new light on Kant’s moral philosophy regarding the intrinsic morality of human beings whose adoption of the universal moral law would rationally be natural expression and necessity. This interrogates the Kantian scholarship, which, despite its best intentions, may not have yet taken due account of such a record which, we argue, suggests an inseparability between political and moral philosophy whereof contemporary political theory has probably not yet fully grasped its significance, at least in a strictly Kantian sense. (shrink)

A number of authors have recently developed and defended various versions of ‘normative essentialism’ about the mental, i.e. the claim that propositional attitudes are constitutively or essentially governed by normative principles. I present two arguments to the effect that this claim cannot be right. First, if propositional attitudes were essentially normative, propositional attitude ascriptions would require non-normative justification, but since this is not a requirement of folk-psychology, propositional attitudes cannot be essentially normative. Second, if propositional attitudes were essentially normative, propositional (...) attitude ascriptions could not support normative rationality judgments, which would remove the central appeal of normative essentialism. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD (Taylor 2022), we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argue instead that the irrationality of OCD is located in the emotions that are (...) characteristic of OCD, such as anxiety or fear. In particular, we propose to understand the irrationality of OCD as a matter of harboring recalcitrant emotions. We argue that this account not only solves the puzzle about insight, but also makes better sense of how OCD sufferers experience and describe their condition and helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of compulsive behavior. (shrink)

Many have found it plausible that practical circumstances can affect whether someone is in a position to know or rationally believe a proposition. For example, whether it is rational for a person to believe that the bank will be open tomorrow can depend not only on the person's evidence but also on how practically important it is for the person not to be wrong about the bank being open tomorrow. This supposed phenomenon is known as “pragmatic encroachment” on knowledge and (...) rational belief. Assuming that the phenomenon is real, I ask what explains it. I argue that a variant of instrumentalism about epistemic reasons offers a natural explanation, that at the same time is able avoid commitment to a more radical form of pragmatism. (shrink)

Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency is available: transparency can be explained by the aim one necessarily adopts in deliberating about whether to (...) believe that p. To show this, I reconsider the role of the concept of belief in doxastic deliberation, and I defuse 'the teleologian's dilemma'. (shrink)

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value theory: (...) first, the problem of why knowledge is better than mere true belief, and second, the relation between epistemic justification and responsibility. (shrink)

According to John Rawls, the methods and conclusions of science—when these are non-controversial—constitute public reasons. However, several objections have been raised against this view. This paper focuses on two objections. On the one hand, the associational objection states that scientific reasons are the reasons of the scientific community, and thus paradigmatically non-public in the Rawlsian sense. On the other hand, the controversiality objection states that the non-controversiality requirement rules out their public character when scientific postulates are resisted by a significant (...) portion of the citizenry. The paper replies that both objections miss their mark. To the associational objection, it replies that the relevant test for a reason to be public is whether the reasons have been construed under the rules and constrains of a public frame of thought. Insofar as scientific methods and conclusions correspond to the principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that liberals understand as public, their associational origin is secondary. To the controversiality objection, it replies that the standard for a scientific argument to be regarded as non-controversial should refer to its degree of intra-scientific consensus, since ordinary citizens accept or reject scientific pronouncements conditioned to their particular comprehensive views. Nonetheless, a wide extra-scientific agreement on the epistemic virtues of the scientific method will be needed. The paper concludes that there is a good case to think about scientific reasons as public to the extent that scientific reasoning is a mode of inquiry that mirrors a central aspiration of Rawlsian political liberalism: having a public way of thought and an impersonal standpoint to adjudicate between competing claims. (shrink)

Se suele pensar que la culpa procede de una transgresión a la norma o la ley. La razón universal determina a obrar conforme al deber de un sujeto replegado dentro de sí mismo. La acción que emana de la obediencia a la ley es la virtud moral del singular. Pero Hegel propone la tragedia de una oposición entre dos deberes que compelen a obrar, al mismo tiempo, de acuerdo a ellos. Sin embargo, al acatar una de las leyes se transgrede (...) la otra. De esa manera, la virtud de seguir la ley es, al mismo tiempo, transgresión respecto de la otra ley opuesta. El destino condena a Antígona a violentar la ley de la razón, obrando, empero, conforme a su deber. La sustancia ética se rompe. ¿Cómo eludir la culpa?. (shrink)

Cristóbal Balbontin La phénoménologie française, et tout particulièrement la philosophie de Lévinas, cherche à critiquer la lutte pour la reconnaissance hégélienne en ce qu’elle est une philosophie qui cherche à réduire « l’Autre » au « Même ». Est-ce que cette critique vaut aussi pour la réactualisation honnethienne de la lutte pour la reconnaissance? Notre position est que, même si Honneth s’engage dans une réactualisation de la reconnaissance intersubjective qui met en valeur l’importance de l’altérité, cette démarche s’avère insuffisante ; (...) surtout par rapport à la place phénoménologique de la chair. (shrink)

The theory of belief, according to which believing that p essentially involves having as an aim or purpose to believe that p truly, has recently been criticised on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not interact with the wider aims of believers in the ways we should expect of genuine aims. I argue that this objection to the aim theory fails. When we consider a wider range of deliberative contexts concerning beliefs, it becomes obvious that the aim (...) of belief can interact with and be weighed against the wider aims of agents in the ways required for it to be a genuine aim. (shrink)

Une étude du concept de reconnaissance chez Hegel demande une attention particulière à la pensée de Fichte et à son élaboration de la reconnaissance aussi bien que l’influence de Schelling. Notre propos est de montrer que le concept de reconnaissance, loin d’être une notion simple à exposer, se montre dans une multiplicité de niveaux de l’architecture hégélienne tout en étant soumis á une influence à géométrie variable des différents philosophes. Ainsi, tout en se rapportant les uns des autres de façon (...) complexe, ces niveau et influences jouent à leur tour avec une ensemble d’autres concepts fondamentaux de la pensée hégélienne qui font partie aussi des enjeux critiques de l’idéalisme allemand. (shrink)

Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss argue that any truth norm for belief, linking the correctness of believing p with the truth of p, is bound to be uninformative, since applying the norm to determine the correctness of a belief as to whether p, would itself require forming such a belief. I argue that this conflates the condition under which the norm deems beliefs correct, with the psychological state an agent must be in to apply the norm. I also show that (...) since the truth norm conflicts with other possible norms that clearly are informative, the truth norm must itself be informative. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists think that epistemic normativity is just a special kind of instrumental normativity. According to them, you have epistemic reason to believe a proposition insofar as doing so is conducive to certain epistemic goals or aims—say, to believe what is true and avoid believing what is false. Perhaps the most prominent challenge for instrumentalists in recent years has been to explain, or explain away, why one’s epistemic reasons often do not seem to depend on one’s aims. This challenge can (...) arguably be met. But a different challenge looms: instrumental reasons in the practical domain have various properties that epistemic reasons do not seem to share. In this chapter, we offer a way for epistemic instrumentalists to overcome this challenge. Our main thesis takes the form of a conditional: if we accept an independently plausible transmission principle of instrumental normativity, we can maintain that epistemic reasons in fact do share the relevant properties of practical instrumental reasons. In addition, we can explain why epistemic reasons seem to lack these properties in the first place: some properties of epistemic reasons are elusive, or easy to overlook, because we tend to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an ‘elliptical’ manner. (shrink)

Nishi Shah has recently argued that transparency in doxastic deliberation supports a strict version of evidentialism about epistemic reasons. I argue that Shah's argument relies on a principle that is incompatible with the strict version of evidentialism Shah wishes to advocate.

El artículo aborda el trabajo de un conjunto de filósofos chilenos, cuyo objetivo es mostrar que el pensamiento conservador ─y puntualmente la historiografía conservadora─ construye y transmite un imaginario nacional que, al sancionar la necesidad de una democracia tutelada, comparece como antecedente y justificación del golpe de Estado y la dictadura militar. Junto con exponer y discutir algunos de los supuestos del trabajo de estos autores, el artículo muestra que el mérito del mismo es poner de manifiesto que el relato (...) de la historia ─y la consiguiente construcción de memoria─ es el lugar de un diferendo, de un conflicto siempre abierto. (shrink)

Health and Illness are noted Concepts form Medicine and Society. This Essay treats on Interaction between both Conceptions and their legal Influence.Resumen:Salud/enfermedad son tanto conceptos centrales de la ciencia médica como de importancia para la sociedad en general. El presente artículo trata de la interacción de ambas concepciones con respecto a su influencia normativa.

In this article, the author discusses how we might talk about the notion of “man” in the law and con siders the different changes this notion has had through different stages of its historical process.Resumen:En el presente texto se reflexiona sobre la manera en que se puede hablar de una idea de hombre en el derecho, así como de los cambios que esta idea de hombre ha sufrido en las principales etapas de su desarrollo histórico.

En los últimos años se ha visto aumentar significativamente los resultados de las ciencias neurocognitivas y el estudio de los diferentes mecanismos que actúan sobre la conciencia, sobre la identidad personal, sobre el comportamiento libre, sobre la conciencia de culpa o arrepentimiento. Este trabajo analiza la conducta normativa del hombre desde el punto de vista antropológico, derivado de los recientes avances biológicos, médicos, bioquímicos y psicológicos. Dicha perspectiva representa, sin lugar a dudas, un logro en el estudio inter, multi y (...) transdisciplinario del hombre y su conducta, en específico de aquella organizada por reglas. El artículo sugiere que responder a la pregunta sobre la relevancia de las propiedades básicas del cerebro, su actividad electroquímica, su plasticidad sináptica o el tipo de neurotransmisión, para el derecho no puede provenir sino de la filosofía. (shrink)

Neil MacCormick says that his "version of institutional theory" about the law 'is "non positivist", or, if you wish, "post-positivist"'. He is aware, however, that his work could be perfectly labelled, from the point of view of the history of legal and moral thought, as a form of natural law theory, at least by those who adhere to some version of natural law. It is an important merit of MacCormick that, rising above the label walls and wars, his theory of (...) law has taken into account the main insights of the great authors belonging to both traditions, such as Hans Kelsen and Herbert Hart, on the so-called "positivist" side, and some authors in the Thomistic tradition, particularly John Finnis, as well as "the writings of seventeenth and eighteenth century jurists concerning natural jurisprudence and the law of nature", on the so-called "natural law" side. Writing with such openness to all sources and insights, Neil MacCormick, one of the most eminent legal philosophers of our time, does not surprise us when he chooses to end his lifetime's work with an attempt to dig into the ethical foundations of all that he has written on law and politics. Practical Reason in Law and Morality is, in a way, his most significant book. He tackles here the deeper issues that he himself realised were left open and uncertain in his salient works on legal theory. He considered this book as the last one in a quartet on "Law, State, and Practical Reason". The quartet itself has become the culmination of a life devoted to the common good, in academia and in politics, among many other endeavours. Notwithstanding its flaws, I am convinced that Neil MacCormick's last book can be illuminating for all those students, and even professors, who go about doing legal philosophy without ever reading anything antedating Hart's Concept of Law. They tend to be confused by sophisticated forms of scepticism, luxurious discussions on law and morality and metaethics, and all sorts of distrust of truth in practical matters. Hence they will surely benefit from reading how a great legal philosopher of our time, once equally confused but always honestly open to rational deliberation and fair discussion, freed himself of at least half of his misunderstandings, and learned a lot by reading some natural law theorists old and new. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Esteban Céspedes (2015) seeks to defend the contrastive account of singular causation from my criticisms (Steglich-Petersen 2012). Céspedes objects to my argument on three counts: (1) it is circular in presupposing a principle that it seeks to establish; (2) that same principle is false; and (3) even if the principle were true, it would not speak against the contrastive account. In this note I argue that all three objections are unconvincing.

Expectations play a major role in ‘driving’ biotechnology research and development. However, their ethical significance has been largely overlooked. This article examines the dynamics and ethics of expectations surrounding biotechnologies, focusing on biobanks and the promise of personalised medicines. It explores the personal and social implications of expectations, especially where technologies fail to eventuate. The article identifies the claims and practices that support the expectations pertaining to biotechnologies and some of the factors that work against the fulfilment of predicted innovations. (...) It is argued that the role of expectations in shaping thinking and action needs to be taken seriously by those who are concerned about the ethical implications of biotechnologies. (shrink)

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the (...) surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Out of Time by Baron, Miller and Tallant (henceforth BMT) is a contribution to the analytic philosophy of time. In this monograph, BMT argue that time might not exist, and that (therefore) our conc...

En el presente artículo nos proponemos desarrollar y discutir una posible hipótesis de lectura respecto a la obra de la filósofa Catherine Malabou. La crítica de la forma que lleva a cabo desde sus primeros escritos, permite valorarla más allá de la presencia, pero sin apelar a una trascendencia que se plantee por fuera del movimiento de la formación. En esa discusión sobre la forma, Malabou descubre una novedosa idea de materialismo, que hace posible considerar de otro modo la estructura (...) auto-afectiva que subyace al movimiento especulativo y a la naturaleza de la subjetividad. A partir de esta consideración, buscaremos mostrar que una impersonalidad y una indiferencia, que es en cierto sentido un momento de desafección, permite entender de una manera distinta la amplia reflexión sobre la plasticidad, concepto operativo clave que atraviesa gran parte de la obra de Malabou. (shrink)

Eugen Fink propone 5 fenómenos fundamentales de la existencia humana, que son los siguientes: muerte, trabajo, dominio, Eros y juego. En el presente artículo nos ocupamos de dos de ellos: juego y muerte. A modo de destacar algunos de los rasgos primordiales de estos fenómenos -juego y muerte- cabe decir del primero que sobre todo destaca la fantasía, la ficción, y ambos relacionados a su vez con la estructura específicamente lúdica del como-si. De modo espontáneo el niño juega como-si fuera (...) policía, ladrón, rey, plebeyo, padre, madre e incluso niño, es decir, el niño transita con la mayor naturalidad a mundos ficticios. Y esto mismo hará posteriormente el actor profesional. Ello revela a la par el parentesco entre juego y arte. En el caso de la muerte, probablemente lo que más corresponde destacar es su carácter de fenómeno filosófico fundamental, dado que ella se asocia con la concepción del ser en tanto devenir, como que todo lo que es, está transido por el llegar a ser y dejar de ser. Y a la vez que la muerte tiene por lo mismo una peculiar cercanía con el ser, lo tiene también con la nada, y junto con ello, con la pregunta por el sentido. Eugen Fink proposes 5 fundamental phenomena of human existence, which are the following: death, work, dominion, Eros and play. In this article we are dealing with two of them: play and death. How to highlight some of the key features of these phenomena -play and death- it may be said of the first that stands out above all the fantasy, fiction, and both in turn related to the specifically playful structure of the as-if. Spontaneously the child plays as-if he was police, thief, king, plebeian, father, mother and even child, i.e. the child passes naturally to fictional worlds. And the same will do later on the professional actor. This shows at the same time the relationship between play and art. In the case of death, in the first place should be noted its condition as a fundamental philosophical phenomenon, since it is associated with the conception of being as becoming, which implies that everything that is, is determined by the coming to be and the passing away. Death has therefore a unique proximity to being, as with the nothing, and also with the question about meaning. (shrink)

As a comparative politics scholar, it is more than a challenge to read and comment on the work of political theorists. The reason for this lies in the fact that comparative politics and political t...

Background Nurses frequently face situations in their daily practice that are ethically difficult to handle and can lead to moral distress. Objective This study aimed to explore the phenomenon of moral distress and describe its work-related predictors and individual consequences for home-care nurses in Germany. Research design A cross-sectional design was employed. The moral distress scale and the COPSOQ III-questionnaire were used within the framework of an online survey conducted among home-care nurses in Germany. Frequency analyses, multiple linear and logistic (...) regressions, and Rasch analyses were performed. Participants and research context The invitation to participate was sent to every German home-care service ( n = 16,608). Ethical considerations The study was approved by the Data Protection Office and Ethics Committee of the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Results A total of 976 home-care nurses participated in this study. Job characteristics, such as high emotional demands, frequent work-life-conflicts, low influence at work, and low social support, were associated with higher disturbance caused by moral distress in home-care nurses. Organizational characteristics of home-care services, such as time margin with patients, predicted moral distress. High disturbance levels due to moral distress predicted higher burnout, worse state of health, and the intention to leave the job and the profession, but did not predict sickness absence. Conclusions To prevent home-care nurses from experiencing severe consequences of moral distress, adequate interventions should be developed. Home-care services ought to consider family friendly shifts, provide social support, such as opportunities for exchange within the team, and facilitate coping with emotional demands. Sufficient time for patient care must be scheduled and short-term takeover of unknown tours should be prevented. There is a need to develop and evaluate additional interventions aimed at reducing moral distress, specifically in the home-care nursing sector. (shrink)

This article addresses the sacredness of Ayahuasca from the perspective of the global shamanic vocation. If encounters with Ayahuasca are said to revitalize forms of sacredness in contemporary societies, this is perhaps clearest in cases where individuals understand themselves to be called to lead ceremonies. Recognizing the global scale of Ayahuasca shamanism, we compare facilitators of ceremonies in two societies to discern differences and similarities in how Ayahuasca vocations exist in differently modernized societies: Peru, a predominantly Catholic society with a (...) substantial Indigenous Amazonian population and an active Ayahuasca shamanism tourism sector, and Denmark, a secular society in Northern Europe, where Ayahuasca is illegal. Building on recent reappraisals of Weber’s reflection on vocation and Durkheim’s theory of the sacred, we argue that being called by Ayahuasca to follow shamanic vocations in contemporary societies leads to tensions around the need to both justify and resist the rationalization of Ayahuasca. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...) correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that doxastic deliberation is transparent to the factual question of the truth of the proposition being considered for belief, and that this sets doxastic deliberation apart from practical deliberation. This feature is frequently invoked in arguments against doxastic voluntarism. I argue that transparency to factual questions occurs in practical deliberation in ways parallel to transparency in doxastic deliberation. I argue that this should make us reconsider the appeal to transparency in arguments against doxastic voluntarism, and the (...) wider issue of distinguishing theoretical from practical rationality. (shrink)

The Danish thinker and mystic Martinus presented a comprehensive metaphysical system that explores and explains a wide range of topics, from the nature of consciousness and reality to an objective ethics and the structure of a just and fair society. Although a mystic, his argumentative justification for this system is not based on transcendent experiences but instead on rational arguments and methods and is thus broadly philosophical. This paper argues that since his views stand almost entirely untreated in contemporary philosophical (...) research, it is of interest to examine them further, partly in the context of the history of ideas, but not least, given their unconventional nature, to provide fresh perspectives on the complex problems faced by contemporary philosophy. For example, the problem of decombination: To circumvent the difficult problem of consciousness, which challenges materialism, the position of cosmopsychism claims that the consciousness of the subject is constituted in a cosmic consciousness. How, then, to explain the differentiation or “decombination” of this cosmic consciousness into individual minds? Martinus has a triunic conception of the subject, and a theoretical metaphysical model based on this concept seems to be able to handle the decombination problem. It could be of explanatory benefit to examine other philosophical topics, both theoretical and practical, in light of Martinus’ views. Thus, this paper aims to introduce the views of Martinus into contemporary philosophical debates and argue the value of its further examination. (shrink)