In 1977, the first computer-assisted proof of a mathematical theorem was presented by K. Appel and W. Haken. The proof was met with a lot of criticism from both mathematicians and philosophers. In this paper, I present some examples of computer-assisted proofs, including Appel and Haken’s work. Then, I analyze the most famous arguments against the equal acceptance of computer-based and human-based proofs in mathematics and examine the philosophical assumptions behind the presented criticism. In the conclusion, I talk about whether (...) the philosophical assumptions are justified as they are, or one needs to take a specific philosophical position to accept them. (shrink)

We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to (...) doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non-skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments start with a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our evaluative beliefs, and conclude that we are not justified in those beliefs. The value realist holds that there are attitude-independent evaluative truths. But the debunker argues that we have no reason to think that the evolutionary forces that shaped human evaluative attitudes would track those truths. Worse yet, we seem to have a good reason to think that they wouldn’t: evolution selects for characteristics that increase (...) genetic fitness—not ones that correlate with the evaluative truth. Plausibly, the attitudes and judgments that increase a creature’s fitness come apart from the true evaluative beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that no plausible evolutionary debunking argument can both have force against the value realist and not collapse into a more general skeptical argument. I conclude that there is little hope for evolutionary debunking arguments. This is bad news for the debunker who hoped that the cold, hard scientific facts about our origins would debunk our evaluative beliefs. And it is good news for the realist. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs. My primary aim is to clarify this empirically grounded epistemological challenge. I begin by distinguishing among importantly different sorts of epistemological attacks. I then demonstrate that instances of each appear in the literature under the ‘evolutionary debunking’ title. Distinguishing them clears up some confusions and helps us better understand the structure and potential of evolutionary debunking arguments.

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

The fact of moral disagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significance disagreement, seems to entail moral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislike moral skepticism. Others, equally inclined against moral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

Should learning we disagree about p lead you to reduce confidence in p? Some who think so want to except beliefs in which you are rationally highly confident. I argue that this is wrong; we should reject accounts that rely on this intuitive thought. I then show that quite the opposite holds: factors that justify low confidence in p also make disagreement about p less significant. I examine two such factors: your antecedent expectations about your peers’ opinions and the difficulty (...) of evaluating your evidence. I close by proposing a different way of thinking about disagreement. (shrink)

Christianity has a long presence in the Maghreb, dating back to Roman imperial times. Eventually it became a mostly Muslim region, but in the late nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church embarked on a vast mission of church building, in part to assist the French colonial endeavor. In Tunisia, political independence in 1956 was accompanied by a further reinvigoration of Christianity, and, over the last twenty years, conversion to Christianity has been on the rise. Beginning in 2003, workers and students (...) from sub-Saharan Africa have contributed to the growth of both Catholic and Protestant churches in Tunis. This article analyzes the ways in which various Christian groups organize and articulate their religious practice and proselytization in ritual spaces that are sparse and must be shared in contemporary Tunisia. (shrink)

The continuous inclusion of new technologies in organizations challenges business ethics and creates new problematics in work life. Managers in particular are challenged insofar as they must learn how to adapt general technological hardware to local organizational needs and work habits. Based on new empirical research conducted in Danish health care organizations, it investigates how managers experience technologies and how these experiences affect their professional ethics; it asks: a) What kinds of ethics do managers consider when using new technologies? b) (...) How are these ethics negotiated? Using a techno-human practice approach—which takes into account both human and non-human entities as the basis of moral judgment—the new technologically-induced ethical dilemmas faced by managers are discussed. A typology of techno-ethics is introduced, which presents situated ways of engaging with technologies in businesses. By employing multiple ethics connected to the use of technologies in organizations might make managers more ethically responsible in decisions concerning technologies. (shrink)

O objetivo central neste artigo é o de explicar o que é testemunho e como ele produz conhecimento e justificação. Conforme essa concepção, o testemunho é uma importante e habitual fonte de conhecimento e de justificação, bem como um conceito relevante em epistemologia social, comunicação e psicologia da aquisição de crença. Apesar de o testemunho, nessa concepção, não ser considerado uma fonte básica de conhecimento e justificação, é alegado que ele é uma fonte de conhecimento básico pois crenças básicas não (...) precisariam derivar de uma fonte básica. Assim, novas crenças podem ser geradas a partir do testemunho, mas novo conhecimento não pode ser produzido a não ser a partir de conhecimento anterior. Apesar disso, a posição defendida neste artigo considera que, mesmo que a justificação com base no testemunho seja, em última instância, dependente de outras fontes de justificação, o testemunho constitui uma fonte essencial tanto de conhecimento como de justificação. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to develop the concept of the dignified death of children in Brazilian pediatric intensive care units (PICUs). The Hybrid Model for Concept Development was used to develop a conceptual structure of dignified death in PICUs in an attempt to define the concept. The fieldwork study was carried out by means of in-depth interviews with nine nurses and seven physicians working in PICUs. Not unexpectedly, the concept of dignified death was found to be a complex (...) phenomenon involving aspects related to decisions made by the multidisciplinary team as well as those related to care of the child and the family. Knowledge of the concept’s dimensions can promote reflection on the part of healthcare professionals regarding the values and beliefs underlying their conduct in end-of-life situations. Our hope is that this study may contribute to theoretic and methodological development in the area of end-of-life care. (shrink)

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate (...) that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk. (shrink)

This paper reframes the issue of appropriation, extraction, and dispossession through AI—an assemblage of machine learning models trained on big data—in terms of enclosure and foreclosure. While enclosures are the product of a well-studied set of operations pertaining to both the constitution of the sovereign State and the primitive accumulation of capital, here, I want to recover an older form of the enclosure operation to then contrast it with foreclosure to better understand the effects of current algorithmic rationality. I argue (...) that the act of enclosing is to be understood as a set of fundamental operations that consist in producing structural distinctions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion—whether by drawing lines on a map, constructing border walls, or by algorithmically categorizing and (mis)recognizing people and things. Tracking the transformation of an enclosure-logic into one of foreclosure, I show how current AI perpetuates and at the same time expends forms of extraction, exclusion, and dispossession toward a totalizing horizon. For, while the outside is essential and constitutive to the logic of enclosure, foreclosure, by contrast, is characterized by the “totalizing desire” to not leave anything out of it. The totalizing desire to move beyond the logic of the enclosure forecloses that the enclosure has just gotten bigger and that the operations of exclusion have been masked and displaced, making them harder to contest. (shrink)

Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially (...) influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens. (shrink)

This paper reframes the issue of appropriation, extraction, and dispossession through AI—an assemblage of machine learning models trained on big data—in terms of enclosure and foreclosure. While enclosures are the product of a well-studied set of operations pertaining to both the constitution of the sovereign State and the primitive accumulation of capital, here, I want to recover an older form of the enclosure operation to then contrast it with foreclosure to better understand the effects of current algorithmic rationality. I argue (...) that the act of enclosing is to be understood as a set of fundamental operations that consist in producing structural distinctions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion—whether by drawing lines on a map, constructing border walls, or by algorithmically categorizing and (mis)recognizing people and things. Tracking the transformation of an enclosure-logic into one of foreclosure, I show how current AI perpetuates and at the same time expends forms of extraction, exclusion, and dispossession toward a totalizing horizon. For, while the outside is essential and constitutive to the logic of enclosure, foreclosure, by contrast, is characterized by the “totalizing desire” to not leave anything out of it. The totalizing desire to move beyond the logic of the enclosure forecloses that the enclosure has just gotten bigger and that the operations of exclusion have been masked and displaced, making them harder to contest. (shrink)

It’s intuitive to think that (a) the more sure you are of something, the harder it’ll be to change your mind about it, and (b) you can’t be open-minded about something if you’re very sure about it. If these thoughts are right, then, with minimal assumptions, it follows that you can’t be in a good position to both escape echo chambers and be rationally resistant to fake news: the former requires open-mindedness, but the latter is inimical to it. I argue (...) that neither thought is true and that believing them will get us all mixed up. I show that you can be open-minded and have confidently held beliefs, and that beliefs in which you are less sure are not, thereby, more fragile. I close with some reflections on the nature of rational belief change and open-mindedness and a brief sketch about what might actually help us in the fight against misinformation and belief polarization …. [please read below the rest of the article]. (shrink)

Zhuangzi purports to follow a particular method of viewing human emotion and suggests freeing oneself from worldly emotions—this is called “doctrine of non-emotion” (wuqing shuo 無情說). This article attempts to show that the idea of non-emotion in Zhuangzi does not in any way conflict with the expression of emotion in poetry, and moreover, it provides a foundation for the poet to express his emotions naturally and freely. We will use the Chinese poetry of the Wei-Jin Period—a period that is strongly (...) influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, yet at the same time emphasizes the expression of the poet's emotion in poetry—as an example to show how fruitful it indeed is when Zhuangzi's philosophy becomes applied to Chinese poetry. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, computational technology had advanced sufficiently that astrophysicists were able to construct reasonably high resolution computer simulations of the Local Group of galaxies. These simulations indicated there should be around 250 small satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way and Andromeda. In the real Local Group, however, only around 40 satellites had been observed, and only twenty or so more have been discovered since then. Despite this discrepancy in numbers, claims have been made in recent years that the (...) ‘missing satellites problem’ has been solved. Using the examples of the constructed luminosity curve, and hydrodynamic simulations, this paper explores how simulations are used in conjunction with observation to ‘solve’ the missing satellites problem. It is suggested that the simulated universes have sufficient complexity to be understood as worlds in their own right, ones that can be measured and observed. By demonstrating that these virtual worlds are sufficiently ‘realistic’ with respect to observations, astrophysicists are able to make a robust argument for the existence of ‘dark’, non-observable astrophysical objects. Observational and simulated data are combined to demonstrate the plausibility—a term that develops more ontologically meaningful connotations—of both the existence and the maintenance of dark satellites. It is thus through the conflation of the real and virtual worlds, the blending of simulation data with empirical data, that the missing satellites problem is ‘solved’. (shrink)

In Psychology, the issue of language usage as a means of action in psychological life requires that we question the relations between the forms of language expression and their psychological functions. The current paper contributes to an understanding of this question. The relation between form and function is examined here, with particular focus on a discursive and dialogic method employed in the Activity Clinic approach to elicit controversy as a means of developing dialogical thinking. We argue that the interfunctionality of (...) levels of dialogue serves developmental processes, promoting thought and the possibilities for its elaboration. We describe these developmental processes on the basis of an empirical analysis of a sequence from an intervention conducted with Roman Catholic Priests on preaching in homily. Our methodological frameworks have the function of vivifying dialogical thinking about work, by making use of the interfunctionality of levels of dialogue and the vital function of social relations in the psychological life of the subjects. (shrink)

As crianças participam de corpo inteiro nos seus mundos de vida, visibilizando a natureza incorporada da ação humana. A partir de uma pesquisa etnográfica com crianças em nível de doutorado, sua empiria e bases teóricas, vimos que o corpo das crianças está na base de toda sua experiência social, mediador das relações, das práticas, dos discursos, das apropriações do Outro e do mundo. Tal ideia precisa ser considerada nas práticas pedagógicas, para que vençamos os fortes mecanismos de controle e dominação (...) que instituem e orientam um ordenamento social normativo do modelo ideal de corpo disciplinado e obediente, que marginaliza e exclui o corpo da criança ávido por descobrir e descobrir-se na sua relação novidável e embrionária com o mundo. As crianças como atores sociais de corpo inteiro têm na sua ação incorporada uma de suas formas de participar dos contextos coletivos de educação pela qual expressam seus pontos de vista. Palavras-chaves: Corpo. Criança. Educação Infantil. Direitos. Direitos de participação. (shrink)

The author analyzes the complex intimate relations between human rights and globalization, and the consequences of this debate in the reconfiguration of public space and in the composition of virtual space. Globalization is explained through a critical reading of the political phenomenon of the pri..

En "tiempos" de una profunda crisis de los espacios públicos, principalmente, la crisis de soberanía, identidad colectiva, pertenencia y radicalismos; Europa quiere ser un bastión de "resistencia a la globalización" y, en su conjunto, un espacio para la afirmación y la garantía de los Derechos que ..

Todas as teorias fundacionistas assumem que algumas crenças justificadas são básicas porque sua justificação não se deve ao fato de terem sido inferidas de outras crenças justificadas, interrompendo assim o regresso epistêmico. A versão internalista do fundacionismo sustenta que uma crença só pode ser justificada quando o fator justificador está cognitivamente disponível ao sujeito que crê com base nele. Tendo em vista esta dupla exigência – dar por encerrado o regresso epistêmico em crenças que são justificadas de modo não inferencial, (...) e assegurar a consciência do item que contribui para a justificação de tais crenças básicas epistemicamente independentes – alguns críticos levantaram objeções contra o fundacionismo internalista. Neste artigo me ocupo de uma dessas objeções, tendo em vista especificamente a teoria proposta por Laurence BonJour: o dilema apresentado por Michael Bergmann. (shrink)

How can the visual and textual data about an image – the image of a work of art – on recto and verso of a picture be interpreted? An analogical-art-documentary photograph represents a palimpsest to be considered layer by layer. The examples discussed in this article, which refer to both Aby Warburg himself and the first nucleus of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, contribute to effectively outline elements of the debate around the question of the photographic reproduction of the work (...) of art as well as of the position of photography in relation to the perception of the work of art. (shrink)

A adolescência é um período do desenvolvimento acompanhado de importantes mudanças na esfera física, psicológica e social, caracterizando-se como um momento de transição para a vida adulta. A presente pesquisa investigou algumas repercussões que uma doença crônica como a fibrose cística possui dentr..

Este trabalho é parte de um relatório de investigação que tem oito projetos de pesquisa integrados em rede, atrelados à pesquisa matricial do Grupo LEPEL/FACED/UFBA, que se articula ao grupo PAIDÉIA/FAE/UNICAMP, que coordena uma pesquisa cujas bases têm vinculação e é intitulada: Produção do conhecimento em Educação Física: Impacto do sistema de pós-graduação das regiões sul e sudeste do Brasil na formação e produção de mestres e doutores que atuam nas instituições de ensino superior da região nordeste – EPISTEFNORDESTE. A (...) investigação promove análise epistemológica e visa formação de pesquisadores com pensamento teórico-metodológico planejado com base no materialismo histórico dialético. (shrink)

Esse trabalho sistematiza a experiência de um estudo de caso realizado por um coletivo de pesquisadores em formação no grupo de LEPEL/FACED/UFBA. Têm em consideração, condições objetivas concretas de uma pesquisa em rede, promovida a partir de um trabalho voltado para elevar o pensamento teórico-metodológico de pesquisadores. Os resultados apontam que uma consiste formação de pesquisadores em rede, visando elevar o pensamento teórico-metodológico, requer estudos em uma rigorosa matriz categorial de referência marxista, cuja concepção histórica se pauta em conceber de (...) forma crítica o intercâmbio do modo de produção econômico capitalista, que engendra a produção do conhecimento científico. (shrink)

Foucault repère une transformation du pouvoir lorsque la vie entre dans ses préoccupations à partir du XVIIIe siècle. Il appelle « bio-pouvoir » les techniques spécifiques du pouvoir s’exerçant sur les corps individuels et les populations, hétérogènes aux mécanismes juridico-politiques du pouvoir souverain. Agamben, dans Homo sacer, reprend l’hypothèse foucaldienne et la fait fonctionner précisément sur le terrain délaissé par Foucault, celui de la souveraineté. La souveraineté ne porte pas à ses yeux sur des sujets de droits, mais de manière (...) cachée sur une « vie nue », ex-ceptée par le pouvoir qui l’expose à sa violence et à sa décision souveraine. On peut alors interroger le déplacement de l’hypothèse foucaldienne opéré par Agamben et les rapports problématiques entre pouvoir souverain et bio-pouvoir, afin d’évaluer la pertinence et la fécondité de la notion de bio-pouvoir. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Axel Honneth deploys the categories of normal and pathological to explain contemporary society in organic terms. This article concerns itself with how these medical references function in Honneth's work to explain the social world, and what their political implications are. For Honneth, social normality is a normative resource, even if it is only accessible through the study of pathology. Socially accepted norms are taken to reflect legitimate principles, with the early Honneth taking pathology as an individual psychic suffering that (...) results from injustice, and the later Honneth taking pathology as an overextension of the logic of one social sphere into the terrain of another. The implications of Honneth's organic account of society are explored through the lens of a competing “French” account of the norm offered by Canguilhem and Foucault. These French thinkers view socially accepted norms not as reflecting legitimate principles, but as standardizing processes of normalization that stifle normativities that do not conform. It is suggested that Honneth's account of normativity must be articulated with Canguilhem's and Foucault's account of normalization. That said, through the course of the analysis, several unexpected continuities are discovered between these two different traditions. (shrink)

Neste texto, exploramos algumas das teses mais importantes desenvolvidas por Newton da Costa, ao longo da sua carreira filosófica. Apresentamos conceitos e ideias de suas obras, que reúnem contribuições no campo da lógica e da filosofia da ciência. A atenção será voltada aos trabalhos Sistemas formais inconsistentes, Ensaios sobre os fundamentos da lógica e O conhecimento científico, dos quais explicitaremos as temáticas e alguns dos conceitos e resultados alcançados pelo filósofo. Objetivamos com essa apresentação ressaltar a originalidade de seu pensamento, (...) isto é, de que modo suas respostas pessoais se dirigem a questões relevantes da história da filosofia, da matemática e da lógica. (shrink)

The following paper presents a reflection on the violence of images understood as the “power” that certain images have in “provoking” what appear to be disproportionate responses on the part of the viewer. In particular, this paper addresses the systematic censorship of images (such as the photographs from David Jay’s work The SCAR Project) in open and highly mediatized societies that advocate and defend freedom of speech. But this requires a new understanding of the image and the working hypothesis of (...) this paper is that we can find resources for this in the work of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. (shrink)

O texto investiga o modo como o problema da liberdade relaciona-se com o entendimento de Schopenhauer a respeito da história, buscando verificar se o filósofo admite uma determinação histórica dos atos humanos. Para isso, mostramos que o posicionamento de Schopenhauer em relação à história se deve, em grande parte, à sua oposição a Kant e Hegel, mas não somente a isso. Destarte, procuramos mostrar que o estatuto da história no pensamento schopenhaueriano não é resultado simplesmente de uma oposição obstinada e (...) abstrata a esses filósofos, mas uma postura coerente com sua filosofia. (shrink)