Taking part in the broad contemporary effort of proposing an anticolonial and non-Eurocentric critical theory, this article sets out the dialogue between Aníbal Quijano's critique of coloniality, and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's critique of instrumental reason. Firstly, we reconstruct the critique of instrumental reason, highlighting how it is enriched when associated with the binary objective reason and subjective reason as well as aspects of negative dialectics. Secondly, we revisit Quijano's texts immediately preceding his decolonial phase. These texts allow us (...) to see how the critique of instrumental reason is an integral part of and is enlarged by the concept of coloniality. Building on this double movement, we are able to map affinities, differences, and connections between the two critiques and their respective outlining of alternatives to instrumental reason, especially the mediations between, on the one hand, objective reason and non-identical, and, on the other, historical/alternative reason and heterogeneous totality. (shrink)

The purpose of the following text is to analyze the development of the understanding of God in the theological-biblical imaginery, as well as the formulations that allow us to understand the development of Transcendent identity in history and in the construction of the talk and about God. Starting from a brief synopsis of the biblical Old Testament design of elements present in the theological imagination of the identity of the God of Israel, from liberating perception present in the image of (...) God Revelation from Jesus Christ phenomenon, passing briefly to the understanding of God as Trinity and culminating with the perception of identity of God within the current context of liberation, it points out the development of the identity of a God who – far from remain static, immobile, inert – assumes an itinerant identity alongside your people. Thus, the present paper analyses aspects of revelation and maps an identity of God from these elements, pointing to the construction of the identity design of a God who, by walking along the humanity, is not free to be assimilated and perceived in different forms in the course of this Revelation route. (shrink)

The absence of grammatical subject and object in Parmenides' "it is/it is not" allows the reading of the verbal forms not as copulas but as names, with no implicit subject nor elided predicate. Once there are two only alternatives, contrary and excluding each other, sustaining that a 'no-name' does not grant knowledge implies identifying its opposite – "it is" – as the only name conducive to knowledge in itself, denouncing the 'inconceivability of a knowledge that does not know. If "it (...) is" is the only [name] "which can be thought/known", and "what is" is the way in which 'thought/knowledge' can be accomplished, there is no need to postulate the existence of 'anything' that is, nor of anything that can be said of "what is". Being the only name which "can be thought of/known", the unifying synthesis of "knowledge, knowing and known" in one infallible cognitive state, it is unthinkable that "what is" does not exist. (shrink)

In this article, Lucas maintains the falseness of Mechanism - the attempt to explain minds as machines - by means of Incompleteness Theorem of Gödel. Gödel’s theorem shows that in any system consistent and adequate for simple arithmetic there are formulae which cannot be proved in the system but that human minds can recognize as true; Lucas points out in his turn that Gödel’s theorem applies to machines because a machine is the concrete instantiation of a formal system: (...) therefore, for every machine consistent and able of doing simple arithmetic, there is a formula that it can’t produce as true but that we can see to be true, and so human minds and machines have to be different. Lucas considers as well in this article some possible objections to his argument: for any Gödelian formula we could, for instance, construct a machine able to produce it or we could put the Gödelian formulae that we had proved as axioms of a further machine. However - as Lucas underlines - for every of such machines we could again formulate another Gödelian formula, the Gödelian formula of these machines, that they are not able to proof but that we can recognize as true. More general arguments, such as the possibility to escape Gödelian argument by suggesting that Gödel’s theorem applies to consistent systems while we could be inconsistent ones, are moreover refuted by Lucas by maintaining that our inconsistency corresponds to occasional malfunctioning of a machine and not to his normal inconsistency; indeed, a inconsistent machine is characterized by producing any statement, on the contrary human being are selective and not disposed to assert anything. (shrink)

Franco Trabattoni. Platão.. São Paulo, Annablume, 2010, 342 pp.

In the literature on self-referential paradoxes one of the hardest and most challenging problems is that of revenge. This problem can take many shapes, but, typically, it besets non-classical accounts of some semantic notion, such as truth, that depend on a set of classically defined meta-theoretic concepts, like validity, consistency, and so on. A particularly troubling form of revenge that has received a lot of attention lately involves the concept of validity. The difficulty lies in that the non-classical logician cannot (...) accept her own definition of validity because it is given in a classical meta-theory. It is often suggested that this mismatch between the consequence relation of the account being espoused and the consequence relation of the meta-theory is a serious embarrassment. The main goal of the paper is to explore whether certain substructural accounts of the paradoxes can avoid this sort of embarrassment. Typically, these accounts are expressively incomplete, since they cannot assert in the object language that certain invalid arguments are in fact invalid. To overcome this difficulty I develop a novel type of hybrid proof-procedure, one that takes invalidities to be just as fundamental as validities. I prove that this proof-procedure enjoys a number of interesting properties and I analyze the prospects of applying it to languages capable of expressing self-referential statements. (shrink)

This is an introductory handbook for some of the main themes around the notion of predication in Aristotle. It does not aim at being exhaustive, but only sketches some important lines about the subject; it contains an introductory essay, besides the translation (into Portuguese) and commentary of basic texts (such as Posterior Analytics I-22, Categories 1-5, Interpretation 1-6 etc.).

According to constitutivism, we can justify the authority of aims and norms on the ground that they are inescapable. Constitutivist views divide between ambitious and modest ones. According to ambitious constitutivism, the inescapability of aims grounds their unconditional authority, whereas according to modest constitutivism, the inescapability of aims only grounds their conditional authority. Either way, both forms of constitutivism share the assumption that inescapability grounds authority, which in turn presupposes that at the foundation of normativity we find aims and norms (...) that can be evaluated as having or lacking authority. In this paper I shall defend a form of constitutivism that rejects this assumption. According to this view, which I shall call Hinge Constitutivism, at the foundation of epistemic normativity we find an aim, the truth-aim, that is altogether beyond the evaluation in terms of the ordinary notion of authority. Moreover, I shall argue that to aim at truth is a condition of possibility for justifying the authority of any other aims or norms. In this sense, to aim at truth is a hinge of deliberation. (shrink)

Qu'attendre des chercheurs en sciences sociales? Qu'ils fassent tout bonnement leur métier ou qu'à partir de leurs analyses ils s'impliquent dans les problèmes qui relèvent de leur compétence ou même qu'à partir de leur position de chercheur ils prennent publiquement position sur les grandes questions du jour? Ces alternatives sont loin d'épuiser le champ des possibles, mais les énoncer invite à s'interroger sur les rapports qu'entretiennent les travaux de recherche en sciences sociales avec les pratiques sociales qu'elles étudient. Ces questions (...) n'étaient pas étrangères à Philippe Lucas - et c'est peu dire. Elles sont aussi à l'origine de ce livre. Président de l'université Lumière-Lyon II avant d'être nommé recteur de l'Académie de Bordeaux puis de l'Académie de Caen, Philippe Lucas fut aussi et d'abord un chercheur qui concevait son travail de recherche comme un engagement. Sa " sociologie impliquée " supposait la confrontation des points de vue et le débat non seulement après coup, une fois le travail terminé, mais avant tout dès les premières investigations et tout au long de la recherche. Quel meilleur hommage rendre à Philippe Lucas que de reprendre aujourd'hui ces questions qui furent les siennes? Il les avait posées à sa manière mais leur actualité nous frappe, leur importance aussi. Ceux qui ont contribué à cet ouvrage collectif ont tenté d'y répondre et d'abord de les reformuler en proposant tantôt leur témoignage tantôt leurs réflexions de chercheurs sur l'implication et l'engagement : leur propre implication et celle de leurs disciplines, leur propre engagement et celui de leurs disciplines. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to vindicate the Cartesian quest for certainty by arguing that to aim at certainty is a constitutive feature of cognition. My argument hinges on three observations concerning the nature of doubt and judgment: first, it is always possible to have a doubt as to whether p in so far as one takes the truth of p to be uncertain; second, in so far as one takes the truth of p to be certain, one is (...) no longer able to genuinely wonder whether p is true; third, to ask the question whether p is to desire to receive a true answer. On this ground I clarify in what sense certainty is the aim of cognition. I then argue that in judging that p we commit ourselves to p’s being certain and that certainty is the constitutive norm of judgment. The paper as a whole provides a picture of the interplay between doubt and judgment that aims at vindicating the traditional insight that our ability to doubt testifies our aspiration to know with absolute certainty. (shrink)

This photo-essay, entitled 'Our Stories: Cartography of a Conflict', is born from the fieldwork carried out in the scope of the research 'Past, Present and Future in the Voice of Women and Girls Affected by the Conflict in Cabo Delgado: A Feminist Analysis', as a way of naming and disseminating the diversity of voices of displaced women, and broadening the visibility of their stories, which have very often been reduced to statistics. The aim of this article is to share their (...) perceptions and demands, their stories and journeys in search of security and possible horizons for their re-existence. This photo-essay shows that women displaced and affected by the conflict need to be named, singularised in their aspirations, needs and struggles. Their life stories are the reason for this work. It is their pain and resilience, their desires, their invisible and visible powers, their strategies for rebuilding their lives, families and communities that we want to make known. Their voices need to be heard, read, understood and placed at the centre of all governmental and civil society interventions for reconstruction, humanitarian response and peacebuilding in Cabo Delgado. Each woman participating in this photo-essay has chosen to share her story and her face, and has decided how to be photographed and represented, with the desire that somehow their trajectories become sources of direct knowledge to guide the paths to Peace in the province. They want to be known and recognised in their dignity, in their determination and perseverance, as well as in their deepest needs. The story of each woman shared in this article is a local and national reference to build a nonviolent future in Mozambique. (shrink)

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces a contrast in (...) terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

Wright claims that “the epistemology of good abstraction principles should be assimilated to that of basic principles of logical inference”. In this paper I follow Wright’s recommendation, but I consider a different epistemology of logic, namely anti-exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism’s main contention is that logic is not a priori, and that the choice between rival logics should be based on abductive criteria such as simplicity, adequacy to the data, strength, fruitfulness, and consistency. This paper’s goal is to lay down the foundations for (...) an application of the anti-exceptionalist methodology to abstraction principles. In Sect. 1 I outline my strategy. I show that anti-exceptionalism has a bearing on the so-called Bad Company problem (Sect. 2), and explore some versions of anti-exceptionalism about abstraction (Sect. 3). I then consider new criteria for choosing between rival abstraction principles, and, in particular, between consistent revisions of Frege’s Basic Law V (Sect. 4). I finally consider how the abstractionist can compare between competing criteria (Sect. 5), and argue that anti-exceptionalists should be pluralists about abstraction (Sect. 6). (shrink)

Responsibility is a key concept in our moral, social, and political thinking, but it is not itself properly understood. J.R. Lucas here presents a lively, broad, and accessible discussion of responsibility in various areas of human life, from personal and sexual relations to politics.

I discuss the exact meaning of the thesis according to which the object of scientific knowledge is necessary. The thesis is expressed by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, in his definition of scientific knowledge. The traditional interpretation understands this definition as depending on two parallel and independent requirements, the causality requirement and the necessity requirement. Against this interpretation, I try to show, through the examination of several passages that refer to the definition of scientific knowledge, that the necessity requirement specifies (...) more exactly the causality requirement: what cannot be otherwise is the explanatory relation between the explanandum and the cause by which it is what it is. (shrink)

I discuss Aristotle's treatment of essence and definition in Metaphysics VII.4. I argue that it is coherent and perfectly in accord with its broader context. His discussion in VII.4 offers, on the one hand, minimal criteria for what counts as definition and essence for whatever kind of object, but also, on the other hand, stronger criteria for a primary sort of definition and essence—and thereby it serves the interest of book VII in pointing to the explanatory power of the essence (...) of composite substances. (shrink)

"Lucas' book competently brings Whitehead's philosophy into dialogue with "analytic" philosophy. This is a topic of great originality and considerable potential importance for the field of philosophy.

Sets are central to mathematics and its foundations, but what are they? In this book Luca Incurvati provides a detailed examination of all the major conceptions of set and discusses their virtues and shortcomings, as well as introducing the fundamentals of the alternative set theories with which these conceptions are associated. He shows that the conceptual landscape includes not only the naïve and iterative conceptions but also the limitation of size conception, the definite conception, the stratified conception and the graph (...) conception. In addition, he presents a novel, minimalist account of the iterative conception which does not require the existence of a relation of metaphysical dependence between a set and its members. His book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Trata-se de tradução do Hípias Maior de Platão para o Português, com algumas notas de elucidação e justificação das opções.

This chapter argues in favour of three interrelated points. First, I argue that demonstration (as expression of scientific knowledge) is fundamentally defined as knowledge of the appropriate cause for a given explanandum: to have scientific knowledge of the explanandum is to explain it through its fully appropriate cause. Secondly, I stress that Aristotle’s notion of cause has a “triadic” structure, which fundamentally depends on the predicative formulation (or “regimentation”) of the explanandum. Thirdly, I argue that what has motivated Aristotle to (...) choose the syllogism as a demonstrative tool was precisely the fact that syllogisms are apt to express causal relations in their triadic structure. Instead of complaining against Aristotle’s preference for the syllogisms as demonstrative tools, I argue that Aristotle was fully aware of the advantages of regimenting the explanandum into a predication. One of these advantages is to abandon a purely extensional standpoint and to highlight the importance of the notion of relevancy in explanation. (shrink)

Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. John Campbell’s relational theory is a prominent representative of the latter (...) approach, and the main focus of this paper. We argue that Campbell’s theory is problematic for a variety of reasons, through which runs a common thread: most of the problems that the theory is faced with arise from the relational view of perception that he endorses, and, more generally, they suggest that perceptual experience is not sufficient for an analysis of joint attention. (shrink)

This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but can't. For instance, why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran to the store for five minutes? Why is five pounds of books acceptable, but *five pounds of book not acceptable? What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a (...) swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth? And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous? The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect, plural and mass reference, measurement, and distributivity. In this book, Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains, connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology, and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above. (shrink)

I discuss the methodological passage in the begin- ning of Ethica Eudemia I.6 (1216b26-35), which has received attention in connection with Aristotle’s notion of dialectic and his methodology in Ethics. My central focus is not to discuss whether Aristotle is prescribing and using what has been called the method of endoxa. I will focus on how this passage coheres with the remaining parts of the same chapter, which also are advancing methodological remarks. My claim is that the meth- od of (...) Ethica Eudemia I.6 is in agreement with many features of Aristotle’s theory of explanation as presented in the Posterior Analytics: Aristotle’s main concern is a warning against misuses of explanatory arguments. (shrink)

Resumo Lida sem atenção, a avaliação do Poema de Parmênides por Nietzsche corre o risco de frustrar, mais do que estimular, os leitores não-iniciados em Filosofia. Pois, nela o filósofo não só ignora a pesquisa sua contemporânea sobre o Eleata, como insere o seu pensamento numa polêmica antiracionalista, recheada de equívocos e intuições infundadas. É nosso objetivo aqui tentar restituir credibilidade a esta avaliação, apontando as linhas que orientam o diálogo do crítico com o seu objeto tanto para o senso-comum, (...) como para o seu próprio pensamento.Carelessly read, Nietzsche’s evaluation of Parmenides frustrates rather than stimulates non-initiate readers in Philosophy. For the German philosopher ignores any current research on the Eleatic thinker, inserting his arguments in an anti-rationalist polemic, mostly based on unfounded intuitions. We aim at establishing the credibility of Nietzsche’s criticism on the grounds of common sense and of his own heraclitean influenced philosophy. (shrink)

A ética de John Dewey tem sido revistada por diversos autores como fonte fecunda e relativamente inexplorada de seu pensamento. Dentre as características mais marcantes de seus escritos está o destaque dado à imaginação, como faculdade essencial à deliberação moral. O filósofo caracteriza a imaginação moral como a capacidade de se projetar na condição de outro e de desenhar cursos de ação possíveis diante de um impasse. A imaginação é indissociável da experiência democrática, cujas marcas são a convivência com o (...) diferente e a incompletude. O lugar da imaginação na educação adquire um contorno que extrapola a estratégia didática, tornando-se imprescindível na formação integral do homem. (shrink)

Parmenides’ argument in the Way of Truth and Plato’s theory of Forms are usually seen as mighty metaphysical constructions. But what if they are motivated by the semantic complexity of the Greek verb ‘be’? This is the approach followed throughout this paper, mostly dealing with the debate on the emergence of a separate existential reading of ‘einai,’ and the problems arising from the use of the Latin verb ‘existere’ to translate it. The analysis of some sophistic puzzles provides examples of (...) this fused reading of the verb. They suggest that Plato’s philosophical program was intended as a correction of current sophistic views on reality and discourse, both through his theory of Forms, and the analysis of being and not being, carried out in the Sophist. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the nature and the importance of a third kind of sophistic argument that is not always found in the classification of those arguments in the secondary literature. An argument of the third kind not only is a valid one, but is also constituted of true propositions. What makes it a sophistic argument is the fact that it produces a false semblance of scientific explanation: its explanation seems to be appropriate to the explanandum without being so. (...) Evidence from this kind of argument comes from Sophistic Refutations 11, and Brison’s attempt to square the circle should be counted as one of its instances. (shrink)

In this chapter, we investigate whether psychopathy is a mental disorder. We argue that addressing this question requires engaging, at least, with three principal issues that have conceptual, empirical, and normative dimensions. First, it must be established whether current measures of psychopathy individuate a unitary class of individuals. By this we mean that persons classifed as psychopaths should share some relevant similarities that support explanation, prediction, and treatment. Second, it must be proven that psychopathy harms the person who has it. (...) Third, it must be established that the harm associated with psychopathy is relevant for the ascription of disorder status. Regarding this latter issue, we argue that psychopathy should be considered a disorder if its harmfulness derives from certain incapacities or limited capacities. These incapacities should affect basic competences that are justifably required for conducting a preferable type of life. Within this framework, we tentatively advance the hypothesis that some normatively justifed conclusions and empirical evidence about psychopathy, that needs nonetheless to be further investigated, might support the claim that people with psychopathy have a mental disorder. (shrink)

No presente artigo analisarei as três principais objeções comumente empregadas para rejeitar o uso de violência em defesa de animais não-humanos. Existe a ideia de que a violência é inerentemente errada e sempre deveria ser repudiada – eu chamo isso de ‘Objeção do Pacifista Absoluto’. Há também a perspectiva de que a utilização de violência por ativistas interespécies acaba alienando o grande público do movimento pelos direitos dos animais não-humanos como um todo – eu me refiro a esse argumento como (...) ‘Objeção da Hostilidade Pública’. Por último, encontra-se na literatura dos estudos interespécies o argumento de que lançar mão de violência pró-não-humanos é contraproducente, pois táticas violentas seriam responsáveis pela criação de leis que protegem aqueles que exploram os animais não-humanos e criminalizam as ações de ativistas interespécies – essa é a ‘Objeção do Impacto Contraproducente Visível’. Após apresentar cada uma dessas objeções explicarei por que nenhuma delas é capaz de oferecer um argumento definitivo contra o uso de estratégias violentas em favor dos membros de outras espécies animais sencientes. (shrink)

Within current political, social, and ethical debates – both in academia and society – activism and how individuals should approach issues facing nonhuman animals, have become increasingly important, ‘hot’ issues. Individuals, groups, advocacy agencies, and governments have all espoused competing ideas for how we should approach nonhuman use and exploitation. Ought we proceed through liberation? Abolition? Segregation? Integration? As nonhuman liberation, welfare, and rights’ groups increasingly interconnect and identify with other ‘social justice movements’, resolutions to these questions have become increasingly (...) entangled with questions of what justice and our ethical commitments demand on this issue, and the topic has become increasingly significant and divisive. -/- The book considers how this question, and contemporary issues facing nonhumans (such as experimentation, hunting, and factory farming) should be answered by drawing on both theory and practice in order to provide grounded, yet actionable, ways forward. -/- Indicatively, the book covers topics such as: • The intersection between interspecies ethics and the ethics of war and self-defence • Nonhuman animals as political subjects and acting agents • Whether we should intervene for nonhuman animals in cases of natural disaster • Various explorations of why the nonhuman movement may not be succeeding as well as it could be • Comparisons between the nonhuman movement and other social movement • Arguments for and against intervening to help or save nonhumans, and how far we may go • What intervention could ultimately mean for nonhumans -/- The book is therefore intended not only to provide new and interesting insight into the area and important contemporary discussions, but also to constructively aid the nonhuman movement and unite theory and practice on the crucial issues. With the nonhuman movement and its past approaches currently being questioned as a success, more nonhumans than ever being harmed and exploited, and a growing gulf between activists and scholars, this book will not only be a timely addition to the literature, but an attempt to bridge these gaps and move both theory and practice – and thus the movement and field – forward. (shrink)

Public participation in scientific research has gained prominence in many scientific fields, but the theory of participatory research is still limited. In this paper, we suggest that the divergence of values and goals between academic researchers and public participants in research is key to analyzing the different forms this research takes. We examine two existing characterizations of participatory research: one in terms of public participants' role in the research, the other in terms of the virtues of the research. In our (...) view, each of these captures an important feature of participatory research but is, on its own, limited in what features it takes into account. We introduce an expanded conception of norms of collaboration that extends to both academic researchers and public participants. We suggest that satisfying these norms requires consideration of the two groups' possibly divergent values and goals, and that a broad characterization of participatory research that starts from participants' values and goals can motivate both public participants’ role in the research and the virtues of the research. The resulting framework clarifies the similarities and differences among participatory projects and can help guide the responsible design of such projects. (shrink)

I discuss Aristotle's anomalous terminology in Physics A.1 (involving "universals" and "particulars") and its coherence with Aristotle's notion of scientific demonstration.

ABSTRACTLinguistic evidence supports the claim that certain, weak rejections are less specific than assertions. On the basis of this evidence, it has been argued that rejected sentences cannot be premisses and conclusions in inferences. We give examples of inferences with weakly rejected sentences as premisses and conclusions. We then propose a logic of weak rejection which accounts for the relevant phenomena and is motivated by principles of coherence in dialogue. We give a semantics for which this logic is sound and (...) complete, show that it axiomatizes the modal logic KD45 and prove that it still derives classical logic on its asserted fragment. Finally, we defend previous logics of strong rejection as being about the linguistically preferred interpretations of weak rejections. (shrink)