The starting point of this study is the concept of the “world-opening instance” one of the most carefully created concepts in philosophical reflection, from the predominance of the being, via consciousness, to a singular mode of experience which finds its support in finiteness and dispossession . The main points of the article are the analysis of the fragile itinerary of subjectivity, the study of Da-seinas the limit of the substantialist ontology, and the experience of negativity as an appropriate form for (...) illuminating the manifestation of the self. The article highlights the contrast between this and the experience of the “you”, proposed by Gadamer and by Habermas theory of communicative action. (shrink)

Esta obra es un viaje por el camino recorrido por la filosofía trascendente, que pone de relieve la pervivencia de conceptos como "sujeto", "crítica" o "reflexión". El núcleo fundamental del libro está en el estudio de la situación terminal a la que conduce el planteamiento fenomenológico husserliano y en el hallazgo de nuevos ámbitos de trascendentalidad. Puede advertirse cómo la vieja filosofía de sujeto-conciencia llega a transformarse y girar, para dar cabida a nuevos temas: la corporeidad, la intersubjetividad, el lenguaje, (...) que tradicionalmente habían sido silenciados o infravalorados. (shrink)

Marie-José Mondzain, philosophe, est directrice de recherche au CNRS. Elle a publié des livres sur l’image, entre autres, Image, icône, économie (Seuil, 1996), L’image peut-elle tuer? (Bayard, 2002), Le Commerce des regards (Seuil, 2003) ; des livres sur la peinture : Van Gogh ou la Peinture comme tauromachie (Éd. de l’Épure, 1996), Henri Cueco, vol. 2 (Cercle d’Art, 1997), L’Arche et l’Arc-en-ciel, Michel-Ange – la voûte de la chapelle Sixtine (Le Passage, 2006). Sa réflexion sur l’image l’a conduite à (...) collaborer avec des gens de théâtre et de cinéma, et à participer à des ouvrages collectifs : L’Assemblée théâtrale, 1 (Éd. de l’Amandier, 2002) et 2 ( La Représentation, Éd. de l’Amandier, 2004), Voir ensemble. Autour de Jean-Toussaint Desanti (Gallimard, 2003, coll. « Réfléchir le cinéma »), Le Cinéma et la Shoah. Un art à l’épreuve de la tragédie du xx e siècle (sous la dir. de J.-M. Frodon, Cahiers du Cinéma, 2007). Elle vient de publier Homo spectator (Bayard, 2007). (shrink)

Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts. The goal of this book is to assess the main arguments against the possibility of knowledge, and its conclusions challenge this consensus. The book articulates and defends a theory of knowledge that belongs firmly in the truth-tracking tradition, and argues that although the theory has the (...) resources for blocking the main standard lines of sceptical reasoning, there is a sceptical argument against which the theory offers no defence, as it doesn’t rely on any assumptions that the theory would render illegitimate. The book ends with the suggestion that the problem might have a metaphysical solution—that although the sceptical argument may make no illegitimate epistemological assumptions, it does rest on a questionable account of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

To the sceptic's contention that I don't know that I have hands because I don't know that there is an external world, the Moorean replies that I know that there is an external world because I know that I have hands. Crispin Wright has argued that the Moorean move is illegitimate, and has tried to block it by limiting the applicability of the principle of the transmission of knowledge by inference—the principle that recognising the validity of an inference from known (...) premises generates knowledge of the conclusion. I argue that, in the presence of some plausible assumptions, blocking the Moorean move does not require limiting the applicability of the transmission principle. Then I argue against Jim Pryor's contention that the Moorean argument transmits evidential support from its premises to its conclusion. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that Russell's theory of judgment fails to show that it's not possible to judge nonsense.

An introduction to the basic concepts and results of contemporary logic, including a discussion of the basic mathematical tools needed to master the technical aspects of the subject.

I discuss the idea that the objects of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus are propertyless bare particulars, an idea defended by Leonard Goddard and Brenda Judge in their monograph, The Metaphysics of the Tractatus. I present the difficulties that Goddard and Judge raise for this construal concerning the idea that Tractarian objects have natures that determine their possibilities of combination, and I assess the solution they propose. I offer an alternative construal of the notion with which these difficulties can be overcome.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the only book-length work to have been published during his lifetime, continues to generate interest and scholarly debate. This volume of new essays showcases contemporary ideas on how to interpret the Tractatus and throws new light on some of its most challenging passages.

The paper addresses the question whether semantic naturalism is undermined by the thought that semantic concepts are normative.

In this paper it is assumed that pairs of incommensurable theories are in fact comparable. This point of view leads us to accept that incommensurable theories deal with shared portions of the world. Ontosemantic conditions of comparability between two incommensurable theories are considered along the paper.

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity – particularly diversity of viewpoints – for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: (1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years. (2) This lack of political diversity can undermine (...) the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike. (3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority's thinking. (4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology. (shrink)

I endorse Kripke's (Wittgenstein's) conclusion that the standard of correct application required by the notion of rule-following can only be made sense of in terms of intersubjective agreement. This is not to be taken, as Kripke does, merely as providing assertibility conditions, but rather as a genuine account of what normativity consists in. As Blackburn has pointed out, this result entails that the notion of objective judgment is dependent, in a sense, on the shared inclinations of the members of the (...) community. But since the sceptical paradox admits of no noncommunal solution, it is the inclination-independence of the notion of objective judgment that has to be given up. (shrink)

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke rejects some of the most popular accounts of what meaning facts consist in on the grounds that they fail to accommodate the normative character of meaning. I argue that a widespread interpretation of Kripke's argument is incorrect. I contend that the argument does not rest on the contrast between descriptive and normative facts, but on the thought that speakers' uses of linguistic expressions have to be justified. I suggest that the line (...) of reasoning that I attribute to Kripke can be seen as putting pressure on the idea that predicate satisfaction is to be explained in terms of a relation between predicates and properties. (shrink)

... on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0– 19–969152–4 Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, ..

The paper argues against Sosa’s claim that sensitivity cannot be differentially supported over safety as the right requirement for knowledge. Its main contention is that, although all sensitive beliefs that should be counted as knowledge are also safe, some insensitive true beliefs that shouldn’t be counted as knowledge are nevertheless safe.

Tanto el proceso metafórico como el interpretativo consisten en tomar algo extraño como algo familiar en función de la perspectiva que la fuerza del deseo propone. Partiendo de este supuesto intentaremos mostrar en este trabajo que lo que falta en el deseo, más que el objeto, es una relación interactiva, es decir, el vínculo por el que ese supuesto objeto faltante se podría abrir a la experiencia hermenéutica de tomar algo como algo. Y para ello seguiremos las consecuencias que se (...) derivan de la pregunta por la relación imposible que formuló Leclaire en su artículo sobre la realidad del deseo. Si se pueden concebir dos elementos sin que exista entre ellos ninguna relación posible, lo que falta, entonces, no será ninguno de estos elementos sino el nexo hermenéutico que los podría conectar, y ahí es justamente el lugar en donde se instala el deseo. (shrink)

Replies to contributions to a symposium on the book, Scepticism and Reliable Belief.

This work is not a specific assessment of Utility of Religion by John Stuart Mill, but a defence of what I think is a utilitarian, but not millian, view on the problem that work states, the question of the utility of religion in contemporary societies. I construct that view from neohumeanism more than from millian positions, notwithstanding, I postulate that view as a genuine utilitarian one. -/- Every cultural tradition makes a different approach to ethical and political theories. Spanish and (...) Ibero-American utilitarians make precisely it with Classical Utilitarianism. -/- From that point of view, Ibero-American people identifies utilitarianism with radical and enlightened tradition linked with the reform that through XVIIIth and XIXth centuries tried to undermine the foundations of conservative society in our nations. -/- This aim was not achieved, at least not completely; because of that, the pursuit of Utilitarianism remains opened between us. In the end, I will argue that Spanish and Ibero-American utilitarians connect utilitarianism with philosophical and political radicalism, and inside that Hispanic utilitarianism, plays an important role the criticism of social and political functions of Religion. -/- Maybe, part of the future of Utilitarianism in our cultural context depends on a return of the Theory to its radical roots, also in religious subjects. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that some of the central doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be seen as addressing the twin problems of semantic unity and...

Understanding compositional practices is a major goal of musicology and music theory. Compositional practices have been traditionally viewed as disembodied and idiosyncratic. This view makes it hard to integrate musical creativity into our understanding of the general cognitive processes underlying meaning construction. To overcome this unnecessary isolation of musical composition from cognitive science, in this conceptual analysis, we approach compositional processes with the analytic tools of blending theory, material anchoring, and enaction. Our case study is Iannis Xenakis’ use of sieves (...) for distributing rhythmic patterns inPsappha. Though disregarded in previous accounts, the timeline and the gearwheel provide crucial conceptual templates for anchoring Xenakis’ idea of time for this score. This case study of conceptual integration templates for temporal representation seeks to gain insight into musical creativity, embodiment, and blending, especially into how virtual interactions with material structures facilitate the construction of complex meanings. (shrink)

The subject matter of this paper is the view that it is correct, in an absolute sense, to believe a proposition just in case the proposition is true. I take issue with arguments in support of this view put forward by Nishi Shah and David Velleman.

In the recent literature on confirmation there are two leading approaches to the provision of a probabilistic measure of the degree to which a hypothesis is confirmed by evidence. The first is to construe the degree to which evidence E confirms hypothesis H as a function that is directly proportional to p and inversely proportional to p . I shall refer to this as the probability approach. The second approach construes the notion as a function that is directly proportional to (...) the true-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is true, p – and inversely proportional to the false-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is false, p . These reverse conditional probabilities – of the evidence on the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis – are sometimes known as likelihoods. I shall refer to the approach to confirmation that uses them as the likelihood approach.For each of these approaches, there are two obvious options as to how to define the confirmation function. The first is to define it as the difference between the magnitude that is treated as increasing confirmation or p ) and the magnitude that is treated as decreasing confirmation or p ). The second is to define confirmation as the quotient of these two magnitudes.This yields four different measures of confirmation, represented in the following table: Differences RatiosProbabilities PD = p – p1 PR = Graphic2Likelihoods LD = p – p3 LR = Graphic4All these measures agree on whether or not E provides some support for H. Intuitively, we want to say that E provides some support for H just in case learning that E is true would make us assign a higher probability to H, i.e. when p(H …. (shrink)

Embryonic development in a given species is orchestrated by genes regulating growth and differentiation in a stereotyped and conserved manner, resulting in embryos of consistent size and shape. Several signaling pathways, including that of Sonic Hedgehog (SHH), have been implicated in these processes. Recent experiments with Gas1 indicate that it may act as a growth-inducing gene, challenging its previous function as a gene specifically involved in growth arrest. Moreover, GAS1, a GPI-linked membrane protein, can bind SHH, suggesting an interacting link (...) between growth and patterning through SHH and GAS1.(1-4) BioEssays 24:22–26, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The main aim of the present study is to identify which mental footnotes (related to Adam Smith’s Capitalism) have more weight in the current cognitive processing of participants. We used the “Wealth of Nations” as the main source of the concepts from this author. An experimental design (based on a previous qualitative research) was carried out to test the influence of mental footnotes on the citizens’ decision on the validity of the concepts. The findings point out that there are strong, (...) current, mental footnotes related to the Adam Smith’s concept of price. People mostly understand that, for every product, the entrepreneur has to recover their initial investment and to gain a profit. On the other hand, the fact that entrepreneurs have to pay some expenditures and they need to have profits determines the price of products. (shrink)