8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

Scholars of Plato are divided between those who emphasize the literature of the dialogues and those who emphasize the argument of the dialogues, and between those who see a development in the thought of the dialogues and those who do not. In this important book Russell Dancy focuses on the arguments and defends a developmental picture. He explains the Theory of Forms of the Phaedo and Symposium as an outgrowth of the quest for definitions canvassed in the Socratic dialogues, by (...) constructing a Theory of Definition for the Socratic dialogues based on the refutations of definitions in those dialogues, and showing how that theory is mirrored in the Theory of Forms. His discussion, notable for both its clarity and its meticulous scholarship, ranges in detail over a number of Plato's early and middle dialogues, and will be of interest to readers in Plato studies and in ancient philosophy more generally. (shrink)

RESUMO Este artigo pretende mostrar o fundamento geométrico-matemático que permitiu a Giambattista Vico estabelecer um vínculo entre a criação humana e a criação divina. A pesquisa centrou-se no uso formal que o autor fez das ciências matemáticas para compreender o mundo. Considerando o pitagorismo presente na filosofía viquiana até 1710, o esforço busca mostrar a sobrevivência deste nos trabalhos posteriores do autor. Para isso, destacamos o novo papel que a geometria cumpriu inteligentemente na storia ideale eterna da Providência na "Scienza (...) Nuova". ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to show the geometric-mathematical basis that allowed Giambattista Vico to establish a bond between human and divine creation, focusing on the formal use of mathematical sciences in his comprehension of the world. Considering the Pythagorean character of his philosophy, up to year 1710, this study reveals its survival in Vico's later works by stressing the role of geometry in the witty understanding of Providence's storia ideale eterna in the "Scienza Nuova". (shrink)

In the early part of the paper, I attempt to explain a dispute between two parties who endorse the compositionality of language but disagree about its implications: Paul Horwich, and Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. In the remainder of the paper, I challenge the thesis on which they are agreed, that compositionality can be taken for granted. I suggest that it is not clear what compositionality involves nor whether it obtains. I consider some kinds of apparent counterexamples, and compositionalist responses (...) to them in terms of covert indexicality and unspecific meanings. I argue that the last option is the best for most of the cases I consider. I conclude by stressing, as against Horwich and Fodor and Lepore, that the appropriate question concerns the extent to which compositionality obtains in a natural language, rather than whether it obtains or not, so that the answer is essentially messy, requiring detailed consideration of a wide range of examples. (shrink)

Through consideration of another practical case, this chapter opens the way to a generalization of the method of argument outlined previously. Multilateral cases raise the question of how the interests of all parties can be resolved into a determinate moral conclusion, which brings the discussion to a standpoint that has affinities with classical utilitarianism. Like the principle of universalizability, the form of the utilitarian principle espoused is purely logical. In both cases, the moral substance comes from fleshing out the parties’ (...) actual inclinations and interests. The chapter embarks on a short survey of the challenges faced by a utilitarian system of this kind, before considering the concept of happiness, act‐utilitarianism, and rule‐utilitarianism. (shrink)

The paper argues that intensional phenomena can be explained without appealing to "exotic" entities: one that don't exist, are merely possible, or are essentially abstract.

MY AIM in writing this paper is to ask help in the laying of a pair of ghosts who continue to haunt moral philosophy. Their names are ‘objectivism’ and ’subjectivism'; but the second sometimes assumes the name of ‘relativism'. I have long been convinced that the supposed battles between these two have no real substance; but for all that, they go on confusing many moral philosophers. It would be a great benefit to our profession if somebody could put an end (...) to the confusion once for all; but it has proved harder than might have been hoped, and that is my excuse for trying again. (shrink)

Normativism is the view that logic provides rules for correct reasoning. Some influential critics of normativism, such as Gilbert Harman, claim that logical rules provide reasoners with bad or misleading standards. Others, such as Gillian Russell, claim that logic is a descriptive subject and thus cannot, given Hume’s law, provide rules for reasoning. We think these critics are mistaken. Our aim in this paper is to defend normativism by sketching an alternative way of thinking about the normative force of logical (...) rules. On our view, logical rules are best characterized, in a broadly Rossian manner, as intellectual prima facie duties; i.e., they provide standards for evaluating reasoning and reasoners that are universal and authoritative, but not absolute. This position accommodates the inherent normativity of logic, contra Russell, while circumventing the challenges to normativism raised by Harman. (shrink)

ARCHAEOLOGYTHE Classical Spartans were noted for their austerity, which seemed already ancient to writers of the fifth century B.C. The early poetry and art of their country show a considerable aesthetic sense. This apparent contradiction has caused some students to conclude that the strict Lycurgan regimen was not introduced till the middle or even the end of the sixth century and that before that date Sparta had culturally been developing in much the same way as other important Greek states. The (...) argument is unsound. (shrink)

Arrian's enthusiasm for Ptolemy's account of Alexander has often been echoed in modern times. With much justification it is generally agreed that Arrian's account of Alexander, through its reliance on the works of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, is our best and, on the whole, most reliable account of Alexander. Recent work, however, has illuminated Ptolemy's weaknesses, and we can no longer regard Ptolemy as utterly reliable in every important respect. His version of the Alexander story is centred on Alexander, therefore Alexander (...) is depicted out of the close context of the Macedonian court. It is only through the information preserved in other writers—traditionally, but undiscriminatingly, considered unreliable—that, for instance, the picture of Alexander's struggle with his Macedonian nobles has begun to emerge. And in matters of this kind Ptolemy's version is so much the court ‘official’ version that it cannot be regarded as trustworthy. (shrink)

To make out in what way Einstein’s 1905 ‘annus mirabilis’ writings hang together one has to hang on Einstein’s strive for unity evinced in his stubborn attempts to coordinate with one another the basic research traditions of classical physics. Light quanta hypothesis and special theory of relativity turn out to be mere milestones of maxwellian electrodynamics and statistical thermodynamics reconciliation programme. The conception of luminiferous ether was an insurmountable stumbling block for Einstein’s statistical thermodynamics programme in which the leading role (...) was played by the light quanta paper . (shrink)

In attempting to date the Shield several complementary methods are possible. Roughly these may be classed as literary, historical and archaeological. The literary method indicates that the Shield comes late in the Hesiodic corpus: in particular the use of the F is careful. The historical method suggests a preciser upper limit. Wilamowitz believed that the point of lines 393–401, which give the season in which the combat between Herakles and Kyknos took place, can only be that a commemorative festival was (...) held—at the temple of Apollo at Pagasae, since the scene is laid in Apollo's sanctuary. Mazon continues that the reputation of the temple dates from the end of the Sacred War and the establishment at Pherae of a dynasty with close connections with Delphi : he therefore sets the terminus post quern at about 590. This argument is attractive and possible. Several scholars have attempted to secure a lower limit from the last sentence in Hypothesis A: κα⋯ Στησ⋯χορος δ⋯ φησιν ' Hσ7iota;⋯δου εἶναι τ⋯ πο⋯ημα. But as Wilamowitz observes, we do not know whether the poem in which this mention came was a genuine work of Stesichoros. Certainly it need not make the Shield much earlier than the Stesichorean poem, since our ‘Hesiod’ wrote his epyllion for incorporation in the Ehoiai which was attributed to the genuine Hesiod, and an insertion into such a work could have been very quickly accepted. Mazon's lower limit of 560 is then on insecure grounds. Thirdly there is the possibility that analysis of the decoration of Herakles' shield might give useful comparisons to the conclusions of archaeologists on the chronology of Greek art. It is this method that I shall attempt. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Tractatus contains a wide range of profound insights into the nature of logic and language – insights which will survive the particular theories of the Tractatus and seem to me to mark definitive and unassailable landmarks in our understanding of some of the deepest questions of philosophy. And yet alongside these insights there is a theory of the nature of the relation between language and reality which appears both to be impossible to work out in detail in a way (...) which is completely satisfactory, and to be bizarre and incredible. I am referring to the so-called logical atomism of the Tractatus . The main outlines of this theory at least are clear and familiar: there are elementary propositions which gain their sense from being models of possible states of affairs; such propositions are configurations of names of simple objects, signifying that those simples are analogously configured; every proposition has its sense through being analysable as a truth-functional compound of elementary propositions, thus deriving its sense from the sense of the elementary propositions when this view is taken in conjunction with the idea that the sense of a proposition is completely specified by specifying its truth-conditions. In this way the Tractatus incorporates in its working out a philosophical system analogous to the classical philosophical systems of Leibniz or Spinoza which are regarded by many people, in a sense rightly, as the prehistoric monsters of philosophy which are not to be studied as living organisms, but studied as the curiosities of human thought. And we may here agree that in the end we must simply reject a philosophy which incorporates such features as its postulation of simple eternal objects, or of a possibility of an analysis of a proposition which was presented as a pre-condition for the propositions that we ordinarily utter to make sense, and yet the specific form of which we are unaware of, and so on. (shrink)

Dado que este artículo está pensado para una audiencia predominantemente científica, comenzaré explicando algunas de las similitudes y diferencias entre la ciencia y la filosofía. No hay una división precisa entre una y otra. Ambas son, en principio, universales en lo referente a tu temática y buscan la verdad. Aunque no haya una clara línea divisoria hay importantes diferencias de método, estilo y presuposiciones. Los problemas filosóficos suelen poseer tres características relacionadas que los problemas científicos no poseen. En primer lugar, (...) la filosofía se ocupa en gran parte de cuestiones para las que aún no se ha encontrado una forma satisfactoria y sistemática de resolverlas. En segundo lugar, las cuestiones filosóficas suelen componerse de lo que llamaré preguntas referidas a «marcos conceptuales»; es decir, se ocupan de grandes marcos de fenómenos en vez de preguntas específicas e individuales. Y en tercer lugar, las cuestiones filosóficas se refieren típicamente a problemas conceptuales; habitualmente son cuestiones acerca de nuestros conceptos y la relación entre nuestros conceptos y el mundo que representan. (shrink)