The paper deals with a comparative analysis of several contemporary conceptions of biological evolutions and the problem of the origins of life. These conceptions are philosophically oriented in respect to establishing the relation between life and the rest of material reality, and also regarding the status of biology towards other domains of science. The approaches of I. Prigogine, M. Eigen, F. Dyson and B.O. Küppers are inclined to such an understanding of the genesis of biological information, in which it is (...) perceived as an inevitable consequence of a uniform sequence of transformations taking place in the Universe. At the same time it also implies a reductionist point of view on the question of how biology is situated in relation to other natural sciences. The conception of M. Kimura stands in opposition to the opinion that life phenomena ensue necessarily from the functioning physico-chemical regularities. It refers, however, to the theoretical possibilities from within the scope of chemistry and mathematical statistics. The only conception that advocates autonomy and a distinct identity of biology as a scientific domain, independent theoeretically of the other natural sciences, is the conception of evolution proposed by W. Kunicki-Goldfinger. Because his approach cares for the identity of biology as an independent scientific discipline, it deserves particular distinction. (shrink)

Summary In the epistemic frame of the biocultural turn and of the neuroaesthetics, we have developed neurohermeneutics as an approach to literature that aims at contributing to the current debate about the linkage between literary, cognitive and neuroscientific studies, focusing on the relationship between mindbrain processes mirrored in the formal features of the text and the strategies activated by the author in a text in order to guide the reader in imagining, emotionally feeling and cognitively getting meanings out of the (...) literary experience. The aim of the neurohermeneutical approach is to grasp and describe phenomenologically the mirroring process between the two extremes of the literary experience, i.e. the writer’s creative process as it is mirrored in the formal features of the literary work and the reader’s imaginative reconfiguration of the text, and what they share in common. The reader revives the mental imaginative processes of the author by creating his/her unrepeatable individual experiences of the text and subjectively redesigning it in an endless loop of features that trigger the imagination and its creative potential both while writing and by reading literature. (shrink)

Ontological reism remains a defensible metaphysical position, and Kotarbiński’s unwillingness to propose a more robust defence of his views has some identifiable historical causes, i.e. his post-war engagement in practical philosophy (both praxeology and ethics), more relevant in the context of a war-ravaged country. There is however one more reason why it remains difficult to justify the ontological part of the doctrine. Kotarbiński assumes indeed that “the fundamental justification of concretism is both naively intuitive and ordinarily inductive” (Kotarbiński 1958, 402). (...) Does this mean that no decent philosophical discussion can be proposed in defence of intuitively grasped ideas? Certainly not, as, once again, is shown by the contemporary works on qualia. Ontological reism should be pursued as a negative theory though, not as a positive one. This question of the burden of the proof was raised by Kotarbiński in 1966, surprised by the fact that it is the reist, the one who rejects imaginary entities, who is supposed to bring new evidence in favour of his positions, whereas those who assume their existence do not feel compelled to go beyond intuitive claims. It cannot rely on analysis of language alone, but has to engage in the investigation of the world. This idea is coherent with the naturalistic tendencies of Kotarbiński’s approach, even if they did not yield any substantial results on their own. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Preliminaries: Thinking about Language Oneself as Agent Mistaken Dichotomies Intention Action as a Story about the Agent References.

Authors of chapters: J. Blanc, D. Blitman, F. Couturier, P. Fasula, R. Lamarche-Perrin, D. Ross, R. Sandoz, S. Troubé .

A análise epistemológica das práticas das ciências da saúde vem se tornando mais presente no debate filosófico nas últimas décadas, e se torna premente diante do contexto dramático da pandemia em que atualmente vivemos. Para contribuir com a essa análise, o presente artigo apresenta uma introdução às temáticas da filosofia da medicina e da filosofia da epidemiologia, especialmente o exame do papel da causalidade, conceito fundamental para a compreensão da relação entre saúde e doença. A noção de causa INUS, formulada (...) pelo filósofo J. L. Mackie e adaptada para a epidemiologia por Kenneth Rothman, permite retratar com precisão as interações multicausais que cooperam para a alteração de um estado de saúde. Contudo, o modelo visual de Rothman não contempla conceitos importantes da epidemiologia, imprecisão que busco sanar com uma proposta de representação temporal do conjunto multicausal que, dentre outras coisas, facilita o planejamento de intervenções pontuais que visem a impedir a instalação de uma doença. A delimitação do conjunto causal também é posta em questão, uma vez que a perspectiva multicausal não delimita intrinsecamente qualquer critério acerca de onde finalizar a seleção de fatores causais. Aponto para a manipulabilidade como a abordagem própria das ciências da saúde para a seleção dos fatores nos quais intervir, e que o reconhecimento dessa perspectiva é importante para a própria compreensão filosófica da causalidade. (shrink)

El presente trabajo examina las imágenes fotográficas publicadas en la revista prerrevolucionaria Mir iskusstva, entendida como uno de los íconos del simbolismo ruso de fin de siglo, y las compara con las fotografías de las revistas constructivistas LEF y Novyy LEF, revistas emblemáticas de la vanguardia soviética de principios de siglo XX. La investigación sostiene como hipótesis principal que cada revista definió a la fotografía según las creencias y convicciones de cada contexto artístico. Como hipótesis secundaria, se afirma que la (...) fotografía se encuentra íntimamente ligada a su tiempo y que fueron los discursos de cada contexto histórico los que determinaron su ontología. (shrink)

The AGM paradigm for belief revision provides a very elegant and powerful framework for reasoning about idealized agents. The paradigm assumes that the modeled agent is a perfect reasoner with infinite memory. In this paper we propose a framework to reason about non-ideal agents that generalizes the AGM paradigm. We first introduce a structure to represent an agent's belief states that distinguishes different status of beliefs according to whether or not they are explicitly represented, whether they are currently active and (...) whether they are fully accepted or provisional. Then we define a set of basic operations that change the status of beliefs and show how these operations can be used to model agents with different capacities. We also show how different operations of belief change described in the literature can be seen as special cases of our theory. (shrink)

It has been argued that belief in free will is socially consequential and psychologically universal. In this paper we look at the folk concept of free will and its critical assessment in the context of recent psychological research. Is there a widespread consensus about the conceptual content of free will? We compared English “free will” with its lexical equivalents in Lithuanian, Hindi, Chinese and Mongolian languages and found that unlike Lithuanian, Chinese, Hindi and Mongolian lexical expressions of “free will” do (...) not refer to the same concept free will. What kind people have been studied so far? A review of papers indicate that, overall, 91% of participants in studies on belief in free will were WEIRD. Thus, given that free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content and that most of the reviewed studies were based on WEIRD samples, belief in free will is not a psychological universal. (shrink)

We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from 'therapy culture', the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties. On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety (...) on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness? Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac , drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today. (shrink)

Nichols and Bruno claim that the folk judge that psychological continuity is necessary for personal identity. In this article, we evaluate this claim. First, we argue that it is likely that in thinking about hypothetical cases of transformations, the folk do not use a unitary concept of personal identity, but instead rely on different concepts of ‘person’, ‘identity’, and ‘individual’. Identity can be ascribed even when post-transformation individuals are no longer categorized as persons. Second, we provide new empirical evidence suggesting (...) that the folk do not consider psychological continuity to be necessary for an individual to be categorized as a person or for ascribing identity over time and through transformations. In this, we assume, along with Nichols and Bruno, that folk judgments about identity can be read off the use of proper names. Furthermore, we raise some doubts about the ability of current experimental designs to adequately distinguish between qualitative and numerical identity jud.. (shrink)

In this paper we report a study conducted in Mongolia on the scope of morality, that is, the extent to which people moralize different social domains. Following Turiel’s moral-conventional task, we characterized moral transgressions (in contrast to conventional transgressions) in terms of two dimensions: authority independence and generality of scope. Different moral domains are then defined by grouping such moral transgressions in terms of their content (following Haidt’s classification of morally relevant domains). There are four main results of the study. (...) First, since all five Haidtian domains were moralized by the Mongolian participants, the study provides evidence in favour of pluralism about moral domains. However, the study also suggests that the domain of harm can be reduced to the fairness domain. Furthermore, although the strong claim about reduction of all moral domains to the domain of fairness does not seem to hold a significant number of participants did indicate considerations of fairness across domains. Finally, a significant amount of participants moralized conventional transgressions a la Turiel, but it did not reach a statistical significance. (shrink)

Skepticism described by Sextus Empiricus faces the persistent charge that it is an inconsistent, self-refuting view. However, recently its consistency hasbeen defended in three important ways: it is a thesis with weak assertion, it is a practice without any assertion, and it is a process developing over time.The first option is not well supported by Sextus’ texts, where even a weak assertion is not allowed. The second option cannot explain the rationality of skeptical arguments. The third option reveals two levels (...) of Sextan skepticism; however, the developing skeptic has to accept the self-refutation charge, and the mature skeptic takes flight from the charge without any rational answer. I claim that Sextus embraces the self-refutation charge. The mature skeptic’s speech acts are pragmatically inconsistent: their content cannot be asserted without contradiction. As a result, the charge of inconsistency is not answered. (shrink)

In the current study, we examine the changes in disclosure practices on compliance and the fight against corruption at Siemens AG, a large German multinational corporation, over the period 2000–2011 during which a major corruption scandal was revealed. More specifically, we conduct a content analysis of the company’s annual reports and sustainability reports during that period to investigate the changes of Siemens’ corruption and compliance disclosure using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Through the lens of legitimacy theory, stakeholder analysis, and (...) organizational façades, we find evidence that Siemens changed its compliance and corruption disclosure practices to repair its legitimacy in the wake of the 2006 corruption scandal. We analyze these strategies more closely by using the rational, progressive, and reputation façades framework. Our primary findings suggest that the annual reports show peaks of disclosure amounts on corruption and compliance disclosures earlier than sustainability reports, which can be partly explained by analyzing the disclosures made about—and to—the different stakeholder groups. We find that the annual report focuses more on internal stakeholders such as employees, while the sustainability report focuses more on external stakeholders such as suppliers. We also find that the company uses the façades differently depending on which report is being analyzed. (shrink)

This paper argues that the function of moral education in the biomedical context should be exactly the same as in a general, philosophical framework: it should not provide ready-to-use kits of moral principles; rather, it must show the history, epistemology and conceptual structure of moral theories that would enable those who have to make decisions to be as informed and as responsible as possible. If this complexity cannot be attained, an incomplete product—i.e. bioethics or bioethical principles—should not be seen as (...) a viable substitute. This theoretical position is subsequently illustrated by a case study involving research ethics committees. It is argued that within these committees, that are carefully formed multidisciplinary bodies, what makes competent decision-making possible is not a bioethical theory, nor even a sound philosophical ethics, but the dynamics of the discussion of a number of experts coming from different disciplines. This multidisciplinary expertise is necessary and sufficient to undertake the challenges of complex decisions in the biomedical context. (shrink)

Children with HIV are dependent on taking continuous medication and care, and family preparation is required when disclosing HIV. This study aimed to unveil families’ experiences with HIV disclosure to children under 13 years old. Eight family members who have disclosed HIV to seropositive children were interviewed in‐depth and individually. The fieldwork took place at a public paediatric outpatient hospital in Rio de Janeiro. The results showed that the family members’ discourse highlighted two ways of knowing their own condition and (...) disclosing the condition of the children with HIV. First, they needed to address the communication of bad news and discover their own HIV status through their children's disease. Second, the disclosure was a process constituted by four stages: preparing for disclosure, identifying the time, deciding how and where to tell, and instilling silence after disclosure. They also recognized that nurses had a role in the process as part of an interprofessional team. Nurses can develop advocacy care and empower family members in the preparation of safe HIV disclosure. By systematizing and institutionalizing the care advocacy process, nurses may enable caretakers and children to participate in their therapeutic management, improving adherence to the treatment and self‐care with autonomy. (shrink)

A relação entre o sublime e a arte, a princípio, soa natural e certa, mas ao longo do século XVIII algumas teorias afastaram essa categoria da produção artística. Foram décadas notadamente frutíferas nas questões sobre o sublime, período em que não só o sublime recebe seu título de categoria estética como destacadamente participa das questões epistemológicas da recém cunhada disciplina Estética. Nesse cenário, alguns pensadores se voltam exclusivamente para o sublime natural. Esse artigo procurará mostrar o caminho percorrido por esse (...) conceito a partir da recepção pelos ingleses, em 1689, do tratado sobre retórica do século I d.C. intitulado Peri Hypsos, traduzido por Boileu-Despréaux como Sobre o Sublime e atribuído ao crítico grego Cassius Longinus. Visitaremos as teorias de pensadores como Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke e Immanuel Kant, que apontam para o sublime exclusivamente como contemplação da natureza, e encerraremos essa jornada na reinserção do drama trágico na categoria sublime por Friedrich Schiller. Fecha-se, dessa forma, o que chamamos aqui de “ciclo do sublime natural”, que se inicia na leitura característica dos britânicos empiristas, encontra sua mais bem acabada teoria na terceira Crítica kantiana e se encerra no trabalho teórico e literário do poeta de Weimar. (shrink)

O objetivo desse trabalho é apresentar a proposta do filósofo Nelson Goodman para adeterminação da relação de confirmação válida entre hipóteses e enunciados de prova a partir dotratamento de David Hume para seu problema da indução. Goodman reconhece, no que ele chama de“velho” problema de Hume, uma possibilidade de se superar um grande desafio enfrentado pela filosofiada ciência: o de distinguir as inferências indutivas válidas das inválidas. Com a indicação do hábitocomo o responsável pela nossa confiança em certas inferências indutivas, (...) Hume abria passagem para aformulação, por parte de Goodman, de uma justificativa circular para a determinação da validadeindutiva. Como Goodman reconhece essa validade, e sob quais condições ela poderá ser determinada, éo que discutiremos ao longo desse artigo. (shrink)

A discussão que nos incita a elaborar este artigo centra-se na questão do direto das crianças pequenas à literatura. A partir de várias mudanças sociais, a educação é um direito; em meio a isso, também os livros literários estão presentes em políticas públicas de leitura. Desde 2008, crianças de educação infantil podem usufruir de livros infantis. Desfrutar desse direito é importante, pois a leitura crítica do texto literário propicia a ampliação e/ou transformação dos conceitos já construídos, uma vez que o (...) ato de ler é um processo de interação entre escritor e leitor por meio da linguagem escrita, processo este que é formado por sujeitos com vivências e pontos de vista diferentes acerca do mundo. Nesse sentido, experienciar a literatura é uma forma de humanização e de melhor compreensão do mundo, do “outro” e de si mesmo. Portanto, defendemos a necessidade de a escola incluir em seu currículo um trabalho planejado cujo foco seja a estética literária com crianças desde a mais tenra idade, garantindo-lhes acesso à aprendizagem e a um mundo maior. Como na Educação Infantil os pequeninos ainda não sabem ler o signo escrito convencionalmente, é fundamental que o educador tenha um papel de mediador nesse processo e, assim, sua formação teórica acerca dos conceitos de leitura e literatura faz-se necessária para garantir às crianças o direito à literatura. Palavras-chave: Direitos humanos. Literatura Infantil. Educação Infantil. (shrink)

"Introspection" in its broad sense (Shoemaker, Armstrong) is each non-inferential access a person has to his/her own current mental states and events. It includes both introspection as a conscious act and introspection as pre-introspective awareness. "Introspection" in its narrow sense (Ryle, Dretske, Dennett) excludes pre-intro-spective awareness as not self-sufficient kind of access and part of some other conscious act. Introspection as a self-sufficient conscious act can be explained as second-order thought or reduced to third person knowledge but pre-introspective awareness can (...) not (it is left as a mystery). Author claims that either pre-introspective awareness deserves the name "experience" and in source of special first-person knowledge (even if it is part of other sources of knowing and can be brought to consciousness only by proper introspection), either introspection as an act is a kind of experience and source of knowledge (sense experience is also some very fast interpretation of stimuli). Both pre-introspective awareness and proper introspection are kinds of experience if experience equals direct acquaintance, without any inference and stages. "Perception" can be left for sense perception of external objects. The result of introspection are not incorrigible but persons have "privileged access" to their own thoughts. (shrink)

Two concepts of the internal should be distinguished in the current epistemic internalism/externalism debate: (1) the internal in an introspective sense as what is accessible by introspection and (2) the internal in a biological sense as what is inside the organism's nervous system. When "internal" is meant in the introspective sense, Goldman's process reliabilism is externalist, but when "internal" is taken in the biological sense, Goldman's process reliabilism is internalist. Goldman as a naturalist prefers "internal" in the biological sense, but (...) the concept is unsuitable for presenting the current epistemic internalism/externalism controversy. If one understands "internal" in the introspective sense, Goldman's reliabilism is strongly externalist. (shrink)

This study intends to contribute to the delimitation of selected offensive language categories based on an analysis of a corpus of contributions to discussion forums in Czech online national newspapers and news platforms called Czech Corpus of Offensive Language (CCOL). It endeavours to study three problematic areas (1) delimitation between the speech acts performed, (ii) lexical realisation of specific properties of the target and (iii) identification and categorisation of implicit offence (e.g. figurative semantic shifts) by exploring contextual cues for the (...) speech act identification, the keywords indicating the properties of the target and the types of semantic shifts in implicit expressions of offence. The findings indicate that annotation systems that do not use context information for the detection of offensive language may face problems with adequate interpretation of the language means under investigation. (shrink)

The rise of nationalist, racist and anti-feminist ideologies is one of the most frightening repercussions of the collapse of socialism. Using psychoanalytic theories of fantasy to investigate why such extremist ideologies have taken hold, Renata Salecl argues that the major social and political changes in post-communist Eastern Europe require a radical re-evaluation of notions of liberal theories of democracy. In doing so she offers a new approach to human rights and feminism grounded in her own active partipation in the (...) struggles, first against communism and now against nationalism and anti-feminism. (shrink)

The core of this special issue of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education emerged from the Broken Narratives and the Lived Body conference held in 2016. The ‘Broken Narrative’ essays included in this issue open up a critical space for understanding and theorising illness narratives that defy a conventional cognitive ordering of the self as a bounded spatial and temporal entity. Here, we discuss how narratives might be ‘broken’ by discourse, trauma, ‘ill’ lived bodies and experiences that exceed linguistic representation. (...) We trouble distinctions between coherent and incoherent narratives, attending to what gaps, silences and ‘nonsenses’ can convey about embodied illness experiences. Ultimately, we suggest that ‘breaks’ are in fact a continuation of embodied narration. This is shown in the ‘Art and Trauma’ forum of essays, which reveal how narrative silences can ‘infect’ other embodied subjects and be transformed, achieving musical or visual representation that allow us to apprehend the ‘constitutive outside’ of narratives of illness or trauma. (shrink)

Pretendemos, no presente artigo, abordar o conceito de dever (Sollen) no interior da filosofia moral de Kant. Por considerarmos a noção do dever moral enquanto um dos conceitos centrais no (e ao) pensamento prático kantiano e com o intuito de tentar oferecer uma elucidação da busca (e desenvolvimento) de Kant pelo princípio supremo da moral – os fundamentos da ação detentora de valor moral, buscaremos expor: i) o que caracteriza uma ação por dever no pensamento moral kantiano e, ii) porque (...) exatamente, segundo Kant, apenas a ação precisamente por dever é a única ação com o genuíno valor, a saber, o valor moral. (shrink)

O presente artigo procura avaliar a política de terror como estratégia de controle social a partir da constituição de uma natureza feminina e de propostas para sua remodelagem. Para tanto, foram analisadas mensagens eletrônicas (hoaxes) que circulam na internet. Tais mensagens acabam por propor a segregação social de grupos minoritários. A temática base de tal remodelagem é garantida pela difusão do terror, que serve a estratégias de controle social.

One of the motivations for the researches leaded by the members of Vienna Circle with regard to the foundations of scientific language is found on Wittgenstein’s “ Tractatus Logico-Philophicus ”. Even though there are divergences about the legitimacy of this influence, thebook was, in effect, taken as a theoretical motivation for the structuring of scientific language, developed by logical empiricists. This paper will present the theories developed by members of Vienna Circle emphasizing the elements presents in Tractatus that were taken, (...) largely, as influence over the “criterion of meaning” of a philosophical proposition adopted by logical empiricists in an attempt to set a foundation for knowledge. (shrink)