We review three broadly geometrodynamical---and in part, Machian or relational---projects, from the perspective of spacetime functionalism. We show how all three are examples of functionalist reduction of the type that was advocated by D. Lewis, and nowadays goes by the label `the Canberra Plan’. The projects are: the recovery of geometrodynamics by Hojman et al. ; the programme of Schuller and collaborators to deduce a metric from the physics of matter fields; the deduction of the ADM Hamiltonian by Gomes (...) and Shyam. We end by drawing a positive corollary about shape dynamics: namely, it has a good rationale for the Hamiltonian it postulates. (shrink)

The present paper is about the author’s current research on children’s education in urban contexts. It departs from the rising offer of programmes for school children in out-of-school contexts (e.g. museums, libraries, science centres). It asks what makes these practices educational (and not just interesting, entertaining and/or audience building). Based on Biesta ( 2006a , 2010 ) theory of education, the author frames and analyses the educational characteristics of, and possibilities of articulating, in and out-of-school educational practices. This paper aims (...) at understanding if the occasional outing from primary school premises promotes interruptions in the humanist foundations of school. In order to analyse relations between different institutions and professionals (to be) engaged in educational activities and programmes, Nóvoa ( 2002 , 2009 ) essays will be brought to the discussion, namely his conception of the ‘Public Space of Education’—as a space where culture, education, arts, sports and leisure are shared responsibilities, and where diverse institutions are networked aiming towards societal pluralism. I argue for the possibility of using cities’ public spaces as contexts with a worldly quality to complexify children’s education. Nevertheless, I draw attention to the unbearable educational lightness that these practices may carry if they do not go beyond the praise of chance; as well as to their unsustainable weight if they perpetually repeat school’s normal orders and add up rational discourses. (shrink)

According to non-conceptualist interpretations, Kant held that the application of concepts is not necessary for perceptual experience. Some have motivated non-conceptualism by noting the affinities between Kant's account of perception and contemporary relational theories of perception. In this paper I argue (i) that non-conceptualism cannot provide an account of the Transcendental Deduction and thus ought to be rejected; and (ii) that this has no bearing on the issue of whether Kant endorsed a relational account of perceptual experience.

Phenomenal particularism is the view that particular external objects are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. It is a central part of naïve realist or relational views of perception. We consider a series of recent objections to phenomenal particularism and argue that naïve realism has the resources to block them. In particular, we show that these objections rest on assumptions about the nature of phenomenal character that the naïve realist will reject, and that they ignore the full (...) resources that naïve realism has to offer in explaining phenomenal character. (shrink)

Scepticism is sometimes expressed about whether there is any interesting problem of other minds. In this paper I set out a version of the conceptual problem of other minds which turns on the way in which mental occurrences are presented to the subject and situate it in relation to debates about our knowledge of other people's mental lives. The result is a distinctive problem in the philosophy of mind concerning our relation to other people.

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Partindo do dito popular “manda quem pode, obedece quem tem juízo” o presente artigo tem como objetivo defender a tese de que o Estado hobbesiano sustenta-se tanto pela força quanto pela razáo. Dentro desta perspectiva, será analisada a noçáo de desobediência e, ao final, mostrar-se-á que o adágio referido só pode ser tido como verdadeiro de acordo com a filosofia política de Thomas Hobbes após feitas certas ressalvas.

Gomes-Nelson_Physicalism-and-early-behaviourism.

In the Organon Aristotle describes some deductive schemata in which inconsistencies do not entail the trivialization of the logical theory involved. This thesis is corroborated by three different theoretical topics by him discussed, which are presented in this paper. We analyse inference schema used by Aristotle in the Protrepticus and the method of indirect demonstration for categorical syllogisms. Both methods exemplify as Aristotle employs classical reductio ad absurdum strategies. Following, we discuss valid syllogisms from opposite premises (contrary and contradictory) studied (...) by the Stagerian in the Analytica Priora (B15). According to him, the following syllogisms are valid from opposite premises, in which small Latin letters stand for terms such as subject and predicate, and capital Latin letters stand for the categorical propositions such as in the traditional notation: (i) in the second figure, Eba,Aba ` Eaa (Cesare), Aba, Eba ` Eaa (Camestres), Eba, I ba ` Oaa (Festino), and Aba,Oba ` Oaa (Baroco); (ii) in the third one, Eab,Aab ` Oaa (Felapton), Oab,Aab ` Oaa (Bocardo) and Eab, Iab ` Oaa (Ferison). Finally, we discuss the passage from the Analytica Posteriora (A11) in which Aristotle states that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is not generally presupposed in all demonstrations (scientific syllogisms), but only in those in which the conclusion must be proved from the Principle; the Stagerian states that if a syllogism of the first figure has the major term consistent, the other terms of the demonstration can be each one separately inconsistent. These results allow us to propose an interpretation of his deductive theory as a broad sense paraconsistent theory. Firstly, we proceed to a hermeneutical analysis, evaluating its logical significance and the interplay of the results with some other points of Aristotle’s philosophy. Secondly, we point to a logical interpretation of the Aristotelian syllogisms from opposite premises in the antilogisms method proposed by Christine Ladd-Franklin in 1883, and we also present a logical treatment of the Aristotelian demonstration with inconsistent material in the paraconsistent logics Cn, 1 _ n _!, introduced by da Costa in 1963. These two issues seem having not yet been analysed in detail in the literature. (shrink)

What method should we use to determine the nature of perceptual experience? My focus here is the Kantian thought that transcendental arguments can be used to determine the nature of perceptual experience. I set out a dilemma for the use of transcendental arguments in the philosophy of perception, one which turns on a comparison ofthe transcendental method with the first-personal method of early analytic philosophy, and with the empirical methods of much contemporary philosophy of mind. The transcendental method can avoid (...) this dilemma only if it commits to our possessing a capacity for imaginative reflection, one which is capable of identifying certain formal properties of experience.This result indicates some of the commitments which must be made if transcendental arguments are to be used in the philosophy of perception, and it has implications for those views that take the philosophy of perception to be autonomous of the empirical science of perception. (shrink)

In the section ‘Unity and Objectivity’ of The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson argues for the thesis that unity of consciousness requires experience of an objective world. My aim in this essay is to evaluate this claim. In the first and second parts of the essay, I explicate Strawson's thesis, reconstruct his argument, and identify the point at which the argument fails. Strawson's discussion nevertheless raises an important question: are there ways in which we must think of our experiences (...) if we are to self-ascribe them? In the third part of the essay, I use Kant's remarks concerning the passivity of experience to suggest one answer to this question: in self-ascribing experiences, we must be capable of thinking of them as passive to their objects. This can be used to provide an alternative route from unity to objectivity. (shrink)

We are self-conscious creatures thrown into a world which is not of our making. What is the connection between being self-conscious and being related to an objective world? Descartes and Kant, in different ways and with different emphases, argued that self-conscious subjects must be related to an objective world. But many have worried about their starting points. ‘One should say it is thinking, just as one says, it is lightning’, the eighteenth-century philosopher, physicist, and aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg writes. ‘To (...) say cogito is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement.’ Lichtenberg raises a question here about our entitlement to think of ourselves as the agent of our thinking. Sometimes thoughts strike us like lightning. When this happens, we are their patient. It is central to our self-conscious lives that this is the exception: we are first and foremost the agents of our thinking. What right do we have to think of ourselves as such? The Practical Self argues that self-consciousness requires faith in ourselves as the agents of our thinking. But faith can be undermined and it can be sustained. And this provides us with a connection to the world since our faith in ourselves as the agents of our thinking is sustained by practices which relate us to other thinkers. Self-conscious subjects must have faith in themselves as thinking agents and it is our relations to the others which sustain this faith. Self-consciousness connects us to a world of others. (shrink)

Lucy Allais seeks to provide a reading of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories which is compatible with a nonconceptualist account of Kant’s theory of intuition. According to her interpretation, the aim of the Deduction is to show that a priori concept application is required for empirical concept application. I argue that once we distinguish the application of the categories from the instantiation of the categories, we see that Allais’s reconstruction of the Deduction cannot provide an answer to Hume’s problem (...) about our entitlement to use a priori concepts when thinking about the objects of empirical intuition. If the Deduction is to provide a response to Hume, Allais’s interpretation must be rejected. (shrink)

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In the (...) first part of this paper I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the paper I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non- evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions – our expressive knowledge - may fit this bill. (shrink)

After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns defining superpositions of causal structures. This leads me to a distinction between time and space, to a further degree than that present in the canonical approach to general relativity. With this distinction, one can make sense of superpositions as interference between alternative paths in the relational configuration space of the entire Universe. But the full use of relationalism (...) brings us to a timeless picture of Nature, as it does in the canonical approach. After a discussion of Parmenides and the Eleatics' rejection of time, I show that there is middle ground between their view of absolute timelessness and a view of physics taking place in timeless configuration space. In this middle ground, even though change does not fundamentally exist, the illusion of change can be recovered in a way not permitted by Parmenides. It is recovered through a particular density distribution over configuration space which gives rise to 'records'. Incidentally, this distribution seems to have the potential to dissolve further aspects of the measurement problem that can still be argued to haunt the application of decoherence to Many-Worlds quantum mechanics. I end with a discussion indicating that the conflict between the conclusions of this paper and our view of the continuity of the self may still intuitively bother us. Nonetheless, those conclusions should be no more challenging to our intuition than Derek Parfit's thought experiments on the subject. (shrink)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled, in United States u. Texus Tech University, 171 F.3d 279, that the Eleventh Amendment bars a private citizen from bringing a qui tam action in federal court against a state, absent federal intervention.Intervenor Carol Foulds was a dermatology resident at the Texas Tech Health Services Center. While a resident, Foulds examined patients, made diagnoses, and prescribed treatments for patients. Foulds alleged that she and other residents performed these medical services without (...) the supervision of staff physicians. Foulds further alleged that, after residents performed these services without physician oversight, staff physicians signed charts and Medicare and Medicaid billing forms certifying that they personally performed or supervised the administration of these services. Foulds estimates approximately 500,000 false claims occurred in a span of ten years.In 1995, Foulds filed a qui tam action with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. As regulated by the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, the complaint remained under seal. (shrink)

James Van Cleve has argued that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories shows, at most, that we must apply the categories to experience. And this falls short of Kant’s aim, which is to show that they must so apply. In this discussion I argue that once we have noted the differences between the first and second editions of the Deduction, this objection is less telling. But Van Cleve’s objection can help illuminate the structure of the B Deduction, and it suggests (...) an interesting reason why the rewriting might have been thought necessary. (shrink)

An extended examination of Libet's works led to a comprehensive reinterpretation of his results. According to this reinterpretation, the Minimum Train Duration of electrical brain stimulation should be considered as the time needed to create a brain stimulus efficient for producing conscious sensation and not as a basis for inferring the latency for conscious sensation of peripheral origin. Latency for conscious sensation with brain stimulation may occurafterthe Minimum Train Duration. Backward masking with cortical stimuli suggests a 125-300 ms minimum value (...) for the latency for conscious sensation of threshold skin stimuli. Backward enhancement is not suitable for inferring this latency. For determining temporal relations between stimuli that correspond to subjects' reports, theendof cerebral Minimum Train Duration should be used as reference, rather than its onset. Results of coupling peripheral and cortical stimuli are explained by a latency after the cortical Minimum Train Duration, having roughly the same duration as the latency for supraliminal skin stimuli. Results of coupling peripheral stimuli and stimuli to medial lemniscus (LM) are explained by a shorter LM latency and/or a longer peripheral latency. This interpretation suggests a 230 ms minimum value for the latency for conscious sensation of somatosensory near-threshold stimuli. The backward referral hypothesis, as formulated by Libet, should not be retained. Long readiness potentials preceding spontaneous conscious or nonconscious movements suggest that both kinds of movement are nonconsciously initiated. The validity of Libet's measures of W and M moments (Libet et al., 1983a) is questionable due to problems involving latencies, training, and introspective distinction of W and M. Veto of intended actions may be initially nonconscious but dependent on conscious awareness. (shrink)

Can the experience of great art play a role in our coming to understand the ethical framework of another person? In this article I draw out three themes from Iris Murdoch’s ‘The Sovereignty of Good’ in order to show the role that communal attention to works of art can play in our ethical lives. I situate this role in the context of Murdoch’s wider philosophical views.

We are able to think of empirical objects as capable of existing unperceived. What explains our grasp of this conception of objects? In this paper I examine the claim that experience explains our understanding of objects as capable of existing unperceived with reference to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that standard accounts of experience’s explanatory role are unsatisfactory, but that an alternative account can be extracted from the first Critique – one which relies on Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Diferentemente dos diálogos de Platão, considerados “exotéricos”, ou seja, escritos para o público exterior à Academia, os escritos de Plotino, segundo o depoimento de Porfírio, parecem ser apenas para alguns. Se buscarmos compreender as razões internas em seu pensamento para que sua filosofia e seus textos sejam direcionados para um público interno selecionado e reduzido, encontraremos alguns princípios fundamentais que estão intimamente relacionados com a sua concepção de conhecimento e filosofia. O “verdadeiro conhecimento”, aquele do qual dependem todos os outros, (...) segundo Plotino, está para além do discurso e dos raciocínios e se dá como “intuição”, “visão” direta e “experiência” inteligível e só pode ser acessado por aqueles que, por um esforço heroico moral e intelectual (espiritual), voltam-se para si mesmos em um movimento purificador de retorno e simplificação e se unem a si e ao princípio superior no interior da própria alma divina. O que Plotino reconhece como o desejo intrínseco de toda alma e como o percurso da verdadeira filosofia: o de divinização e assimilação a deus (homoíosis theôi), unindo o conhecimento à bem-aventurança (makaría). O verdadeiro conhecimento, portanto, supõe a capacidade de desprendimento e liberação dos demais amores, desejos, dispersão e preocupações exteriores, bem como da identificação excessiva com as paixões e as afecções que nos chegam pelos sentidos. Além de exigir a superação, no limite do percurso, inclusive, do discurso. O que faz desse caminho um percurso reservado a poucos, e do “verdadeiro conhecimento” um bem intimamente atrelado à prática das “verdadeiras virtudes”. (shrink)

Since the last war, one character of the political system in Belgium is the growth and the duration of the ministerial crisis. Some questions of public law appeared. How is it possible to maintain the continuity of the political and administrative action, without ministerial responsibility to Parliament, during the crisis? The Belgian Conseil d'Etat contributed, by the notion of the «affaires courantes», sort of general principle of public law, to give a solution to this problem.

Resumo Palavras-chave Keywords : Narrative production. Authorship. Language. Memory. Identity. : This article comprises a detailed report on a project of narrative production, which is being conducted, every semester, with students entering the Languages course, on the Portuguese Language subject.The project consists of a process of production, reading, and rewriting of small narratives, which, at the end of the term, are gathered and organized by each student in order to assemble their own book craftily. The proposal came forth as a (...) strategy to try to solve problems related to the little familiarity with writing and to the lack of authorship marks. The engagement in the production of contextualized and guided narratives for a determined purpose has disclosed, at the end of each semester, similar results: pleasure to write, read and expose the produced texts for group discussions; concern with the interlocutor; presence of authorship marks; perception of discursive qualities on the text itself and on the text of others; concern with the adequacy of the writing to linguistic conventions; confidence on the writing process; perception of oneself as part of a history and as a result of multiple intersubjectivities; praise of one’s own life history and of one’s ancestors. The project finds itself based on enunciation theories. : Produção de narrativa. Autoria. Linguagem. Memória. Identidade. : Este artigo constitui-se do relato de um projeto de produção de narrativa que vem sendo desenvolvido, semestralmente, com alunos ingressantes no curso de Letras, na disciplina de Língua Portuguesa. O projeto consiste em um processo de produção, leitura e reescritura de pequenas narrativas com as quais, ao fim do semestre, cada aluno organiza e confecciona artesanalmente o seu próprio livro. A proposta surgiu como estratégia para tentar solucionar problemas relacionados à pouca familiaridade com a escrita e à ausência de marcas de autoria. O enfoque na produção de narrativas contextualizadas e orientadas para um determinado fim tem revelado, no fim de cada semestre, resultados semelhantes: prazer de escrever, de ler e de submeter à discussão do grupo os textos produzidos; preocupação com o interlocutor; presença de marcas de autoria; percepção de qualidades discursivas no próprio texto e no texto do outro; preocupação com a adequação da escrita às convenções linguísticas; segurança em relação à escrita; percepção de si como parte de uma história e como fruto de intersubjetividades múltiplas; valorização da própria história de vida e da de seus antepassados. O trabalho encontra suporte em teorias da linguística da enunciação. (shrink)

Seven informants , aged between 32 and 42, who had experienced at least one career change in their lives were interviewed about the history of their career trajectories. The interviews were analyzed according to the systematic and systemic reflexivity proposed by the phenomenological tradition: description, reduction and interpretation. The findings point to the need for professional guidance practice giving attention not only to professional information but also to a reflection of individual and work-related values. This would help both young people (...) and adults to see their own objectives more clearly and to be capable of formulating their own career plans and following them through. (shrink)

Chapter 4 of Dennis Schulting’s book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism targets those commentators who take there to be a gap in the transcendental deduction of the categories, arguing instead that there is no gap between the necessary application of the categories and their exemplification in the object of experience. In these comments on the chapter, I suggest a minimal sense in which the fact that there is a gap is non-negotiable. The interesting question is not whether there is a gap which (...) needs to be bridged, but how and why Kant makes the step from subjectivity to objectivity. (shrink)

Dissertação: GOMES, Káthia Silva. Sob o sol de satã no interior mineiro: Fé e Liberdade em Bernanos. 2014. Dissertação – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.

For Kant, the human cognitive faculty has two sub-faculties: sensibility and the understanding. Each has pure forms which are necessary to us as humans: space and time for sensibility; the categories for the understanding. But Kant is careful to leave open the possibility of there being creatures like us, with both sensibility and understanding, who nevertheless have different pure forms of sensibility. They would be finite rational beings and discursive cognizers. But they would not be human. And this raises a (...) question about the pure forms of the understanding. Does Kant leave open the possibility of discursive cognizers who have different categories? Even if other discursive cognizers might not sense like us, must they at least think like us? We argue that textual and systematic considerations do not determine the answers to these questions and examine whether Kant thinks that the issue cannot be decided. Consideration of his wider views on the nature and limits of our knowledge of mind shows that Kant could indeed remain neutral on the issue but that the exact form his neutrality can take is subject to unexpected constraints. The result would be an important difference between what Kant says about discursive cognizers with other forms of sensibility and what he is in a position to say about discursive cognizers with other forms of understanding. Kantian humility here takes on a distinctive character. (shrink)

Claims that necessary and sufficient conditions are not converse relations are discussed, as well as the related claim that If A, then B is not equivalent to A only if B . The analysis of alleged counterexamples has shown, among other things, how necessary and sufficient conditions should be understood, especially in the case of causal conditions, and the importance of distinguishing sufficient-cause conditionals from necessary-cause conditionals. It is concluded that necessary and sufficient conditions, adequately interpreted, are converse relations in (...) all cases. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é analisar a interpretação de John Dewey da história da filosofia e de seus problemas para tentar lançar luz sobre o estado de coisas atual, no qual, em meio a uma pandemia de COVID-19, políticos, religiosos e filósofos se confrontam com cientistas numa disputa para determinar quem tem autoridade para determinar como havemos de viver. A distinção que Dewey vê na história da filosofia entre ciências naturais e ciências do “espírito” na modernidade pode indicar a origem (...) desse mal-estar e a resistência da classe “espiritual” em aceitar as orientações da classe dos cientistas. (shrink)

Nesta comunicação, discutimos os discursos intolerantes e privilégios religiosos que circulam no contexto prisional baiano, que por um lado afeta a presença e expressão de religiosidades de matriz africana através de processos de demonização, desqualificação e desautorização religiosa, por outro, produz privilégios direcionados a cristãos, em especial, vinculados as vertentes evangélicas/protestantes. Os dados apresentados são oriundos de parte da dissertação intitulada “nome suprimido”, desenvolvida no Programa. Adotamos a perspectiva da psicologia social, sustentada teórico-metodologicamente no movimento do Construcionismo Social. Além disso, (...) utilizamos contribuições mais específicas que situam os processos de racialização e seus efeitos para a compreensão do tema desse estudo, em especial de Franz Fanon. Os dados foram produzidos através de entrevistas, via roteiro semiestruturado, de quatro custodiados, três agentes penitenciários/as e um agente religioso no Complexo Penitenciário Lemos Brito na cidade de Salvador, analisadas à luz da análise categorial temática. Concluímos que a instituição prisão ainda funciona de forma preponderadamente colonial, onde a reatualização da hegemonia cristã, com a roupagem atual das vertentes evangélicas/protestantes. Esse horizonte localiza o corpus religioso de matriz africana, importante e fundamental prisma de resistência identitária negra diaspórica, como algo a ser neutralizado, incidindo maior vulnerabilidade da população negra ao discurso cristão que produz auto-ódio, desvinculação social, com base em intolerância religiosa, racismo religioso e institucional. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa a questão da enunciação literária em alguns dos escritos teóricos de Rousseau, em particular a Carta a D’Alembert, Do contrato social e o Ensaio sobre a origem das línguas, além do prefácio da Nova Heloísa. Neles, atenta-se ao modo como a literatura está intimamente relacionada à problemática da voz e do ordenamento das enunciações e dos corpos no pensamento político do autor, configurando assim uma política / polícia da literatura, conforme a distinção feita por Jacques Rancière.

A virada neopragmática, crítica avassaladora da função fundante dos saberes autodefendida pela filosofia, radical ao ponto de incluir a própria vertente analítica de onde se originou, é, inexoravelmente, a fronteira atual do conhecimento filosófico, o golpe do movimento neopragmático à filosofia e à razão; contudo, deve ser avaliado como positivo. Ele possibilitou o retorno à consciência das matrizes conceituais genuínas desse saber ao apontar as propostas de superação do impasse: naturalismo estrito, naturalismo fraco, idealismo objetivo, contextualismo. Contribuíram, inquestionavelmente, para esse (...) desfecho, os estudos históricos e sociológicos da ciência pós-kuhnianos, inspirados em sua filosofia da ciência. Inserindo-se tangencialmente nesse debate, o objeto de reflexão deste estudo é contrapor o ponto de vista da sociologia da ciência ao realismo e ao idealismo. Nosso intuito é demonstrar que o construtivismo que caracteriza seu modelo de inquirição não nega, como ingênua ou maliciosamente entendem seus críticos, a função determinante da natureza na construção da ciência. A força do nosso argumento emergirá da análise realizada pelos expoentes do strong programme em sociologia da ciência, Barry Barnes, David Bloor e John Henry, no livro “ Scientific Knowledge: a sociological analysis ”, de um estudo de caso controverso da história da física: os experimentos que o físico norte-americano Robert Millikan realizou para estabelecer a carga do elétron. (shrink)

Local gauge theories are in a complicated relationship with boundaries. Whereas fixing the gauge can often shave off unwanted redundancies, the coupling of different bounded regions requires the use of gauge-variant elements. Therefore, coupling is inimical to gauge-fixing, as usually understood. This resistance to gauge-fixing has led some to declare the coupling of subsystems to be the \textit{raison d'\^etre} of gauge \cite{RovelliGauge2013}. Indeed, while gauge-fixing is entirely unproblematic for a single region without boundary, it introduces arbitrary boundary conditions on the (...) gauge degrees of freedom themselves---these conditions lack a physical interpretation when they are not functionals of the original fields. Such arbitrary boundary choices creep into the calculation of charges through Noether's second theorem, muddling the assignment of physical charges to local gauge symmetries. The confusion brewn by gauge at boundaries is well-known, and must be contended with both conceptually and technically. It may seem natural to replace the arbitrary boundary choice with new degrees of freedom, for using such a device we resolve some of these confusions while leaving no gauge-dependence on the computation of Noether charges \cite{DonnellyFreidel}. But, concretely, such boundary degrees of freedom are rather arbitrary---they have no relation to the original field-content of the field theory. How should we conceive of them? Here I will explicate the problems mentioned above and illustrate a possible resolution: in a recent series of papers \cite{GomesRiello2016, GomesRiello2018, GomesHopfRiello} the notion of a connection-form was put forward and implemented in the field-space of gauge theories. Using this tool, a modified version of symplectic geometry---here called `horizontal'---is possible. Independently of boundary conditions, this formalism bestows to each region a physically salient, relational notion of charge: the horizontal Noether charge. Meanwhile, as required, the connection-form mediates an irenic composition of regions, one compatible with the attribution of horizontal Noether charges to each region. Thes aims of this paper are to highlight the boundary issues in the treatment of gauge, and to discuss how gauge theory may be conceptually clarified in light of a resolution to these issues. (shrink)

Early twentieth-century philosophers of perception presented their naïve realist views of perceptual experience in anti-Kantian terms. For they took naïve realism about perceptual experience to be incompatible with Kant’s claims about the way the understanding is necessarily involved in perceptual consciousness. This essay seeks to situate a naïve realist account of visual experience within a recognisably Kantian framework by arguing that a naïve realist account of visual experience is compatible with the claim that the understanding is necessarily involved in the (...) perceptual experience of those rational beings with discursive intellects. The resultant view is middle way between recent conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations of Kant, holding that the understanding is necessarily involved in the kind of perceptual consciousness that we, as rational beings, enjoy whilst allowing that the relations of apprehension which constitute perceptual consciousness are independent of acts of the understanding. (shrink)

Libet's (2000) arguments in defense of his interpretation of his experimental results are insufficient. The claims of my critical review (Gomes, 2008) do not suffer with his new statements.

In an accompanying paper Gomes, we have put forward an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on a non-relativistic, Lagrangian 3+1 formalism of a closed Universe M, existing on timeless configuration space \ of some field over M. However, not much was said there about the role of locality, which was not assumed. This paper is an attempt to fill that gap. Locality in full can only emerge dynamically, and is not postulated. This new understanding of locality is based solely (...) on the properties of extremal paths in configuration space. I do not demand locality from the start, as it is usually done, but showed conditions under which certain systems exhibit it spontaneously. In this way we recover semi-classical local behavior when regions dynamically decouple from each other, a notion more appropriate for extension into quantum mechanics. The dynamics of a sub-region O within the closed manifold M is independent of its complement, \, if the projection of extremal curves on \ onto the space of extremal curves intrinsic to O is a surjective map. This roughly corresponds to \, where \ is a linear projection. This criterion for locality can be made approximate—an impossible feat had it been already postulated—and it can be applied for theories which do not have hyperbolic equations of motion, and/or no fixed causal structure. When two regions are mutually independent according to the criterion proposed here, the semi-classical path integral kernel factorizes, showing cluster decomposition which is the ultimate aim of a definition of locality. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott, we provide evidence to show that participants' responses in the initial experiments are an artifact of the questions posed. Results from two experiments show that, once the questions have been clarified, people do not ascribe more mental capacity to the dead than (...) to PVS patients. There is no reason to think that people perceive PVS patients as more dead than dead. (shrink)

A theory of necessary and sufficient conditions is presented, as well as a theory of necessary and sufficient causes and effects, viewed as a particular case of the former. Ambiguities of the terms 'condition' and 'necessary condition' are explored, and a neutral meaning for 'condition' is favoured. The relation between necessary and sufficient conditions and implicative conditionals (including counterfactuals) is also discussed. Two problems of counterfactual theories of causal explanation are indicated, concerning (i) how to account for causes that are (...) not necessary and (ii) how to interpret the counterfactual from the negation of the effect to the negation of the cause. Application of the theory of necessary and sufficient conditions to Euler’s explanation of the Königsberg bridge problem is discussed. The theory of necessary and sufficient causes and effects is then applied to the flagpole shadow explanation and to two biological explanations, one involving a sufficient but not necessary cause and the other a necessary but not sufficient cause. Causes that are neither sufficient nor necessary are also recognized. Finally, a probabilistic approach to causes that are either not sufficient or not necessary is explored, including its application to examples of such cases. (shrink)

The historical formation of Brazil is distinguished from the majority of ex-colonial nations by one factor that is especially characteristic: an intense process of ethnic and cultural mixing. The Portuguese colonisers, who, unlike the English Puritans in North America, left their families and arrived in Brazil in small groups mainly composed of men, naturally tended to pair off with the women they found available - first of all indigenous women and later African women. There was nothing in Brazil to prevent (...) this spontaneous behaviour similar to the role played in the English colonies of North America by the strength of the family group or the strict religious observance of the community. Thus from the outset Brazil tended to accept racial mixing as a de facto reality. As Gilberto Freyre correctly noted in his book Casa Grande e Senzala:They mixed happily with women of colour from the very first contacts and many mixed-race children resulted, so much so that only a few thousand men were enough to colonize vast areas and compete with the greatest and most numerous peoples as regards the extent of the colonial territory and the effectiveness of colonizing activity. (shrink)

Na Guiné-Bissau, a luta armada de libertação nacional desencadeada entre os anos 1960 e 1970 conseguiu aglutinar em torno de uma causa comum os diferentes povos. Nesse processo, as mulheres participaram ativamente. No entanto, a questão que se coloca é a de saber em que se traduziu a participação feminina nesse processo e quais foram as reivindicações nele geradas. Quais foram as conquistas e os limites da independência e o seu impacto nas mulheres? O texto procura discutir, a partir de (...) algumas narrativas de mulheres que participaram de forma direta ou indireta no processo de independência, e com base em uma análise documental e bibliográfica e em perspectiva de gênero, os principais momento da construção da cidadania e de uma cultura política entre as mulheres guineenses. Palavras-chave: colonialismo, luta de libertação, emancipação feminina. (shrink)