O presente texto resulta de trabalho apresentado como pôster no Seminário de Estudos “Os Intelectuais e a Educação”, realizado de 19 a 23 de outubro na Faculdade de Educação da Unicamp, sob o tema “Gramsci e a Educação”. A intenção é apresentar resultado de leitura e fichamento realizada a partir dos Cadernos do Cárcere no item que trata acerca dos Intelectuais. Temas como o Estado Educador, os Intelectuais, Filosofia da Práxis, correspondem à fundamentação teórica da pesquisa que estamos desenvolvendo sobre (...) Avaliação Educacional em Revista. Daí a relevância de Gramsci para nossa investigação. (shrink)

This article focuses, through a transdisciplinary perspective, on Peter Greenaway’s films, operas, installations and artworks, exploring the elements that characterize this oeuvre as encyclopaedic. In order to do so, it investigates possible concepts of encyclopaedia, the rhizomatic character of the contemporary encyclopaedic model and its consonance with the demands of plurality and heterogeneity of the globalized world. This article approaches, moreover, the critical-creative appropriation that the director makes of the scientific systems of classification, showing that the use of taxonomies in (...) his work aims at not only revealing the insufficiency and arbitrariness of such systems, but also subverting the ordering logic that defines them. The article also links Greenaway to some of his literary precursors like Jorge Luis Borges and Georges Perec, who also brought together in their encyclopaedic works the rules of classification and the parodic laws of fiction. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Steffen Borge’s The Philosophy of Football. It has contributions from William Morgan, Murray Smith and Brian Weatherson with replies from Borge.

v. 1. Ensino secundário e médio -- v. 2. Estudos sobre o ensino primário -- Planejamento educacional e contribuições à educação do futuro.

Jorge Luis Borges is working for decades now on the execution of the nightmare. Perhaps his most celebrated instance is "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius ". It would take much work to sift the fabricated references in Borges' works from the ones deliberately misread from the over-emphasis on an author's casual remark, etc.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:.. MERELY A MAN OF LETTERS" an interview with Jorge Luis Borges* Philosophy and Literature: Why don't you tell us about some of the philosophers who have influenced your work and in whom you have been the most interested? Jorge Luis Borges: Well, I think that's an easy one. You might talk in terms of two: Berkeley and Schopenhauer. But I suppose Hume might be worked in (...) also, because, after all, Hume refutes Berkeley. Really, he comes from Berkeley—even if Berkeley comes from Locke. You might think of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume as being three links in an argument..... But I suppose that when someone refutes someone else in philosophy, he is carrying on the argument. P&L: And Schopenhauer? Borges: Schopenhauer is very different from Hume. Of course, Schopenhauer had his idea of the Will. That is not to be found in Hume.... The case of Berkeley was different. I suppose he thought of God as being aware of all things all the time, if I don't get him wrong. If we go away, does this room disappear? No, because God is thinking about it. Now, in the case of Schopenhauer, I was rereading Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea, and I was rather taken aback, or baffled I should say, puzzled by something that keeps on recurring in Schopenhauer. Of course it may have been a slip of the pen, but as he goes back to it, and as he was a very careful writer, I wonder if it is a slip of the pen. For example, Schopenhauer begins by saying that the universe, the stars, the spaces in between, the planets, *On April 14, 1976, two editors of Philosophy and Literature, along with an interested colleague, interviewed Jorge Luis Borges at Michigan State University, where he held a position as visiting professor for the winter term. These remarks are edited from the transcript of that conversation. 337 338Philosophy and Literature this planet, those things, have no existence—except in the mind which perceives them. But then, to my surprise—and I suppose you can explain this to me, since you are philosophers and I am not—what Schopenhauer says is that all those things have no existence except in the brain. And that the universe—I remember these words, I don't think I'm inventing them now—"ist ein Gehirnphänomen," that the world is a cerebral phenomenon. Now, I was baffled. Because, of course, if you think of the universe, I suppose the brain is as much a part of the external world as the stars or the moon. The brain after all is a system of visual, of tactile, perceptions. He keeps on insisting on the brain. I don't think, for example, that Bishop Berkeley insists on the brain, or Hume, who would have insisted on the mind, consciousness. P&L: People sometimes say that they see Berkeley in stories like "Orbis Tertius." Borges: Yes, I suppose they do. Well, of course. But in that story I was led by literary means also. P&L: How do you distinguish the literary from the philosophical means in that story? Could you explain that? Borges: Very easily.... Encyclopedias have been my chief reading. I have always been interested in encyclopedias. I used to go to the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires—and since I was so shy, I felt I could not cope with asking for a book, so I looked on the shelves for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I would pick up any chance volume and I would read it. One night I was richly rewarded, because I read all about the Druses, Dryden and the Druids—a treasure trove, no?—all in the same volume, "Dr-." Then I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia... a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked. For example, you would have a language and then a literature, and then a history and so on. Then I thought I would write a story of a fancy encyclopedia. Of course that would require many different people to write it... (shrink)

Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immediately concatenated with the demonstrative in such phrases (...) the ‘matrix’ of the expression. The question, then, is how we should construe the logical form of such expressions within a semantic theory for our language; and I wish to suggest that some recent answers to this question are, in fact, mistaken. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I wish to highlight two (often underlying) assumptions about the nature of noun phrases in general, and suggest that, if they are both adopted, they apparently constrain the possible accounts of the logical form of complex demonstratives to just three options. The second and third parts of the paper will be concerned with expanding these options and arguing that none of them are adequate; thus the major part of the paper is concerned with the negative claim that the most obvious moves to make in this area must actually fail on closer inspection. The fourth and final section will then (very briefly) sketch the positive thesis of the paper: that we can deliver a clear and cohesive account of complex demonstratives, armed simply with elements which we will draw from David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives, but only at the cost of rejecting (or at least refining) one assumption we recognised initially. (shrink)

The 'Gettier Problem' has been central to epistemology since 1963, when Edmund Gettier presented a powerful challenge to the standard analysis of knowledge. Now twenty-six leading philosophers examine the issues that arise from Gettier's challenge, setting the agenda for future work on the central problem of epistemology.

According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon (typically, a kind of conscious experience). In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In response to this bodily view, other recent experimental studies have provided evidence that the ordinary (‘folk’) concept (...) of pain is more complex than previously assumed: rather than tracking only bodily or only mental aspects of pain, the ordinary concept of pain can actually track either of these aspects. The polyeidic (or ‘many ideas’) analysis of the folk concept of pain, as proposed by Emma Borg et al., captures this complexity. Whereas previous empirical support for the polyeidic view has focused on the context-sensitivity of the folk concept of pain, here we discuss individual differences in people’s ‘pain priors’—namely, their standing tendencies to think of pain in relatively mind-centric or body-centric ways. We describe a preliminary empirical study and present a small number of findings, which will be explored further in future work. The results we discuss are part of a larger programme of work which seeks to integrate philosophical pain research into clinical practice. For example, we hypothesise that variations in how patients with chronic pain are thinking about pain could help predict their responses to treatment. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well (...) as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

Esta é uma resenha da obra: OLIVEIRA, Luiz Fernandes. Educação e Militância Decolonial. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Selo Novo, 2022. Aborda a crítica ao eurocentrismo e à colonialidade na educação, defendendo práticas decoloniais e a valorização de saberes subalternizados. Foca no papel da militância e na ressignificação do conhecimento.

Kant is categorical about the relation between virtue and the controlling of inclinations:Since virtue is based on inner freedom it contains a positive command to a human being, namely to bring all his capacities and inclinations under his reason's control and so to rule over himself. Virtue presupposes apathy, in the sense of absence of affects. Kant revives the stoic ideal of tranquilitas as a necessary condition for virtue: ‘The true strength of virtue is a tranquil mind’ . In the (...) Anthropology and the Doctrine of Virtue, apathy is taken in the sense of freedom from affects. In these texts, Kant maintains that we must strive toward a state in which affects are absent. (shrink)

Two particular forms of absolute space-time theories are examined. There follows a derivation of their predictions for measurements that are within present-day detection limits.

En los cien años del fallecimiento de Franz Kafka (1883-1924), este artículo estudia el valor de su obra para la tradicional discusión filosófica acerca de la naturaleza de la interpretación literaria. Particularmente, la tesis propuesta, sugiere el valor directriz de sus textos en la producción del sentido (apreciación literaria) de sus obras y, con ello, la peculiar intervención que desde allí se resuelve en el uso no-ficcional de nuestros conceptos. Así, el diseño del primer capítulo de El proceso es propuesto (...) como caso modélico de intervención de una ficción literaria en nuestra construcción cognitiva del mundo. (shrink)

Este ensaio visual consiste em um registro do trabalho “Muragens“, inserção de vídeos curtos da Praia do Forte (Cabo Frio, RJ), realizada às vésperas do verão de 2020 em painéis de LED destinados à propaganda, na Avenida Presidente Itamar Franco — centro de Juiz de Fora, MG. "Muragens" enquanto gesto pretende acender uma discussão acerca da influência das imagens na construção da vida no espaço público. Especialmente sob contexto de isolamento social, qual é o poder da simples inserção de uma (...) paisagem como o mar, tão cobiçado nessa época do ano, sob as vidas dos frequentadores da cidade? (shrink)

O objetivo geral desta contribuição é elucidar um dilema envolvido no debate sobre a relação entre o conhecimento teórico-prático e o valor estético da literatura. Para atingir esse objetivo, são analisados os argumentos defendidos por Peter Lamarque contra a redução epistêmica do valor literário. Em primeiro lugar, mostra-se que a defesa do valor cognitivo da literatura não necessariamente implica um compromisso com uma teoria proposicional do valor estético da literatura. Em segundo, que o que determina o valor estético da literatura (...) é a forma específica com que ganha a “batalha pelas ideias”. Portanto, segundo esta interpretação desse dilema, a opacidade narrativa não só não exclui de maneira alguma o nosso conhecimento de mundo, como a forma específica de conhecimento literário que ela constitui é o que explica o valor estético das obras literárias. (shrink)

This article investigates the concepts of love and eroticism of the Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz, in his book The Double Flame. The purpose is to show how the author, in his treatment of the intersections between love, eroticism and sexuality in Western cultural life during several centuries, by way of an interdisciplinary and analogical method, makes as well a poetic manifesto in defence of sensitivity against the process of the commercialization of desire in the contemporary world and proposes (...) an erotic re-education of society at this century's end through the rehabilitation of the idea of love. (shrink)

Mirror neurons are neurons which fire in two distinct conditions: (i) when an agent performs a specific action, like a precision grasp of an object using fingers, and (ii) when an agent observes that action performed by another. Some theorists have suggested that the existence of such neurons may lend support to the simulation approach to mindreading (e.g. Gallese and Goldman, 1998, 'Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind reading'). In this note I critically examine this suggestion, in both (...) its original and a revised form (due to Iacoboni et al., 2005, 'Grasping the intentions of others with one's own mirror neuron system'), and argue that the existence of mirror neurons can in fact tell us very little about how intentional attribution actually proceeds. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

A standard objection to so-called ‘minimal semantics’ (Borg 2004, 2012, Cappelen and Lepore 2005) is that minimal contents are explanatorily redundant as they play no role in an adequate account of linguistic communication (those making this objection include Levinson 2000, Carston 2002, Recanati 2004). This paper argues that this standard objection is mistaken. Furthermore, I argue that seeing why the objection is mistaken sheds light both on how we should draw the classic Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, and how (...) we should think about the key philosophical notion of assertion. Specifically, it reveals that these ideas are best understood primarily in socio-linguistic terms (resting on the degree of liability a speaker is held to have for linguistically conveyed content). (shrink)

Entre 1843 e 1844, em dois textos polêmicos, Sobre a questão judaica e Glosas críticas ao artigo “O rei da Prússia e a reforma social”. De um prussiano, Karl Marx empreende sua crítica ao Estado e à sociedade civil-burguesa, após seu acerto de contas com o pensamento de Hegel, mas antes de seu estudo mais profundo de economia política. De um lado, o pensador faz a crítica da política, ainda que sem condições de fazer uma profunda crítica da economia política. (...) De outro, ele reconhece a impossibilidade de analisar o Estado sem adentrar a sociedade que lhe confere base, de maneira que não se furta de tentar compreender as determinações da sociedade civil-burguesa, esforço que tem início já nos textos em questão. (shrink)

Em que medida as alteridades não humanas se inscrevem na literatura brasileira contemporânea? Como alguns escritores brasileiros têm lidado com as relações paradoxais entre humanidade e animalidade, bem como com os problemas ecológicos do nosso tempo? Este artigo aborda a presença dos seres não humanos em obras de Nicanor Sena, Astrid Cabral, Olga Savary, Sérgio Medeiros e Josely Vianna Baptista, à luz de um referencial teórico transdisciplinar, que inclui pensadores como Ailton Krenak, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Dominique Lestel e Donna (...) Haraway. Outro tópico desenvolvido é o hibridismo cultural e textual que atravessa os trabalhos de alguns dos autores incluídos no repertório literário, de forma a mostrar como eles apresentam um caráter fronteiriço, com um forte viés transnacional, por estarem atravessados por elementos zoológicos e mitológicos, lendas indígenas, referências literárias diversas e diferentes espaços linguístico-geográficos. (shrink)

Texto que vem demonstrar a correlação entre disciplinas tidas, por vezes, como díspares, no caso a linguística e a matemática, e como existe um real enlaçamento entre as mesmas, principalmente no campo analítico. O autor vem discorrer sobre uma epistemologia respeitosa pelas categorias próprias a cada conhecimento, de modo a tornar o desenvolvimento lógico-científico numa abordagem multidisciplinar, congregando várias áreas, principalemente, nesse caso, a inguística e a literatura, como fomentadoras de uma estruturação lógico-analítica ímpar ao cientista.

This paper aims at the construction of a structural coupling between object-oriented philosophy and Whitehead’s philosophy of organism by making a case for the primacy of the ontological principle through the proposal of a social object hypothesis. The social object here differs from traditional renderings of sociology, which are centered on humans’ activity and personalities, by way of recuperating Tarde’s social theory of associations. This theory provides us with a non-anthropocentric reading of sociality. This hypothesis will be furthered by the (...) introduction of the systemic category of internal/external, or system/environment, as a self-enclosure feature of social objects. Equipped with these two notions, we will discuss Graham Harman’s paper “Whitehead and Schools X, Y, and Z,” while rerouting his assessments to our own social object hypothesis. The final idea is to propose an alliance through the conception of a macro-ontological approach to philosophy of organism. We intend to show that this is not only coherently feasible regarding Whitehead’s own categoreal scheme, but also meets the requirements of being a real object in object-oriented ontology’s directives. (shrink)

Na crise estrutural do capital, iniciada na década de 1970, foi inaugurado o chamado capitalismo neoliberal, no cerne do qual o tema da formação política parece ter assumido destacada importância. Em sua radicalidade emancipatória, a formação política encontra-se inextrincavelmente vinculada à luta dos movimentos sociais populares, atravessando, portanto, a totalidade das atividades desenvolvidas pelos sujeitos coletivos em movimento. O objetivo do artigo é tecer algumas considerações sobre o tema da formação política no interior dos movimentos sociais populares. Para tanto, lançaremos (...) mão de uma pesquisa bibliográfica ancorada em alguns breves relatos de militantes colhidos através de entrevistas semiestruturadas, a partir do nosso trabalho militante no seio da luta social. Alguns desses relatos constituem igualmente resultados parciais da nossa pesquisa de mestrado no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Brasileira da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC). O título da pesquisa é: Práxis político-educativa do sujeito potencialmente revolucionário nas associações de moradores: a experiência da Associação de Moradores do Bairro da Serrinha (AMORBASE). O campo empírico da pesquisa é o território Serrinha, situado na periferia da cidade de Fortaleza, capital do estado do Ceará. O artigo encontra-se fundamentado nos pressupostos do materialismo dialético tal como formulado por Marx e Engels (2007). No artigo, a formação política, no interior dos movimentos sociais populares é compreendida como um fenômeno mais abrangente e mais denso complexamente articulado uma vez que atravessa a totalidade das atividades organizadas pelos sujeitos coletivos em movimento. (shrink)

Este ensaio pretende explorar a noçãoheideggeriana de angústia existencial comosuporte epistêmico da concepção psicanalítica depsicopatologia fundamental. Nessa medida oestudo apontará, através do conceito de angústia,alguns aspectos que unem filosofia e psicanálise.

Entendemos que promover a qualidade na educação para crianças pequenas é uma das metas da Educação Básica brasileira e que, nesse sentido, há ainda muito por fazer no cenário nacional. Desse modo, busca-se inspiração na experiência de décadas do trabalho nos serviços educativos com crianças pequenas na Itália para pensar peculiaridades da etapa Educação Infantil que contribuam para qualificá-la. Assim, este artigo propõe-se a discutir aspectos relacionados à qualidade dos serviços educativos destinados a crianças pequenas na Itália. Para analisar a (...) questão posta, apoiamo-nos em Galardini e Malaguzzi. O estudo segue delineamento qualitativo e parte da observação de serviços educacionais na cidade de Pistóia, região da Toscana, na Itália, durante período de estágio de doutoramento no ano de 2018. Dessa observação, emergem categorias que serão problematizadas: a formação do professor que atua com crianças pequenas, o papel do coordenador pedagógico nas escolas e, por fim, a relevância do espaço, seja interno ou externo, como um princípio educativo. Aponta-se como resultados que qualificar o espaço nos serviços educativos significa construir um ambiente bem dimensionado e articulado às demandas infantis e que o coordenador pedagógico e os educadores são profissionais fundamentais para garantir a qualidade nos serviços ofertados. (shrink)

Resumo: o presente artigo tem o objetivo central de sugerir uma aproximação entre a teoria da justiça de Rawls e o liberalismo de Mill. Vamos nos apoiar em dois elementos metodológicos para isso: o fato de Rawls ter admitido um tipo de consequencialismo pela via institucional e a sua filiação a um nível mitigado de intuicionismo na base da sua teoria da justiça. A primeira característica busca a correção de políticas institucionais, levando em consideração determinadas finalidades sociais de comunidades políticas (...) liberais: coordenação, eficiência e estabilidade; a segunda, por seu turno, se refere a não podermos provar uma teoria normativa, no sentido tradicional de prova empírica, algo antecipado por Mill. Para Rawls, teorias normativas em geral devem ter a sua disposição elementos de especulação que não podem ser demonstrados aprioristicamente. No construtivismo político, essa postura não está expressa no sentido reducionista, empregado pelo princípio da utilidade de Mill, mas enquanto procedimento. Por fim, vamos apresentar uma vantagem do consequencialismo utilitarista tendo em vista a adjudicação em casos de dolo e culpa, nos quais, segundo tal interpretação, é extrapolado o limite institucional. Mesmo assim, resguarda-se o mérito de Rawls de se aproximar do liberalismo político de Mill, se afastando de uma teoria moral abrangente. (shrink)

Nosso objetivo neste trabalho é, em primeiro lugar, apresentar o modelo de liberalismo proposto por John Stuart Mill como relevante para o construtivismo da teoria política de John Rawls. Para tal, vamos mostrar que o contratualista americano em alguma medida subscreve o liberalismo do utilitarista inglês. Vamos aproximar ambos os autores no tocante ao método intuicionista e verificar se ainda há alguma vantagem no consequencialismo de Mill. Para Rawls, um procedimento intuicionista é ligado a um conjunto de princípios que não (...) pode ser reduzido. Mill se encaixa na definição, portanto, na medida em que advoga um tipo de hedonismo, característica que o americano descarta, por poder ser listada como teoria moral abrangente. Mesmo assim, precisamos verificar até que medida é possível considerar o utilitarismo de Mill como tendo influenciado o liberalismo de Rawls. Assim, levaremos em conta que ele autorizou, pelo menos parcialmente, um método intuicionista e mostraremos que isso se deu por influência da filosofia política de Mill. Fica assim admitido que o apelo à intuição está na base da teoria da justiça, mas tudo somado pode ficar perfeitamente claro onde reside o equilíbrio lógico proposto por Rawls. Mesmo com o desacordo final, é possível notar a influência do projeto liberal do londrino em torno da teoria política que resultou na _Teoria da Justiça_. Restará ainda tentar saber se realmente é possível se afastar de um consequencialismo e se há alguma vantagem teórica em se manter filiado a uma teoria política e ética como a de Mill do ponto de vista jurídico institucional. Isso porque o consequencialismo com um viés estritamente constitucional, como aquele sugerido por Rawls, não parece ser capaz de solucionar um problema jurídico externo ao hermético sistema teórico proposto nas teorias da justiça contemporâneas. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I consider Bernard Suits’ Utopia where the denizens supposedly fill their days playing Utopian sports, with regard to the relevance of the thought experiment for understand...

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Volume 6, Issue 3, Page 401-406, August 2012.

Philosophers often assume that folk hold pain to be a mental state – to be in pain is to have a certain kind of feeling – and they think this state exhibits the classic Cartesian characteristics of privacy, subjectivity, and incorrigibility. However folk also assign pains (non-brain-based) bodily locations: unlike most other mental states, pains are held to exist in arms, feet, etc. This has led some (e.g. Hill 2005) to talk of the ‘paradox of pain’, whereby the folk notion (...) of pain is inherently conflicted. Recently, several authors have rejected the paradox view, arguing instead that folk hold a univocal, bodily view (i.e. pains are properties of various body parts, not of minds). This paper presents six objections to the bodily view of the folk concept of pain. We then outline a direction for future research – the ‘polyeidic approach’ – whereby the folk notion of pain is held to encompass various divergent (potentially conflicting) strands and we suggest that certain problems surrounding the treatment and communication of pain might be usefully be viewed through the lens of the polyeidic approach. (shrink)

John Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects has meet resistance. In this paper I bypass the traditional critiques of the distinction and instead concentrate on two specific counterexamples to the distinction: Killer yellow and the puzzle of multiple dispositions. One can accommodate these puzzles, I argue, by adopting Thomas Reid’s version of the primary/secondary quality distinction, where the distinction is founded upon conceptual grounds. The primary/secondary quality distinction is epistemic rather than metaphysical. A consequence of Reid’s primary/ (...) secondary quality distinction is that one must deny the original version of Molyneux’s question, while one must affirm an amended version of it. I show that these two answers to Molyneux’s question are not at odds with current empirical research. (shrink)