A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a widespread tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which acts violate the rule. This tendency’s strength varied markedly across (k = 15) field sites, owing to cultural variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared to laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether, and consequently exhibited more pronounced textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for (...) the emergence of textualism: In a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (Ntotal = 5495) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an easily identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers and judges. (shrink)

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross‐cultural principles of law? In a between‐subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also (...) whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross‐culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice. (shrink)

in this article, we experience the exercise of a screen ethnocartography in agency with the film Beasts of the southern wild by the director Benh Zeitlin. We tested a film experimentation that led to a renewed writing ways of life. We bet on cinema and childhood as possibilities for creating cracks and a stutter of language for the creation of new worlds and ways of living. In cinema images less as a representation, and more as art that proposes incompleteness, fissure, (...) a hole in appearances. In childhood as an exercise of differentiation and resistance to dominant narratives in a given context. In childhood as a limiting experience of/in language, tirelessly exposing the human condition in front of the world. Thus, accompanying the main character of the plot, little Hushpuppy — a six-year-old resident of the “Charles Doucet Island”, experienced as “the Bathtub” —, we are shaken by the forms of life there, considered bestial and not recognized by city humans. Hushpuppy, his father and friends resist attempts to destroy their existence by the forms of the state that try to domesticate them, imbued with the logic that primitives must come to civilization, just as children must become adults. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In several works by the Circle (Bakhtin, Vološinov, Medvedev), the reference to Saussure and/or the specificities of Linguistics, as a science of language, can be found in a dialogue, more or less controversial, between thinkers and epistemological, theoretical and methodological trends that propose different approaches to the complexity represented by human language and, consequently, to its study. In this article, the objective is to circumscribe and discuss the presence of Linguistics, as a science of language established by Saussure, in (...) the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin. After an introduction, the text is organized into three sections, which deal with (1) Saussure’s strong presence in the Circle’s writings; (2) Bakhtin’s dialogue with science in the unity of culture; (3) the dialogue with the linguistic science of the Geneva school in “PCMF”; and, finally, of inconclusive but necessary considerations. Important key moments of reflection stand out in texts signed by Bakhtin, in which Saussure (although not named, but designated by the science he established) deserves to be highlighted, as a necessary scientific-philosophical counterpoint for the constitution of another possibility of understanding and study of language: the dialogical perspective. As a result, it is expected to demonstrate that, since the 1920s, the Bakhtin/Saussure dialogue has been established to distinguish and qualify two complementary ways of understanding language and the place of science in the unity of culture. (shrink)

RESUMO Em diversas obras do Círculo (Bakhtin, Volóchinov, Medviédev), a referência a Saussure e/ou às especificidades da Linguística, enquanto ciência da língua, pode ser encontrada em diálogo, mais ou menos polêmico, entre pensadores e tendências epistemológicas, teóricas e metodológicas que propõem diferentes abordagens para a complexidade representada pela linguagem humana e, consequentemente, para seu estudo. Neste artigo, o objetivo é circunscrever e discutir a presença da Linguística, enquanto ciência da língua instaurada por Saussure, nos escritos de Mikhail Bakhtin. Após uma (...) introdução, o texto se organiza em três seções, que tratam (1) de uma forte presença de Saussure nos escritos do Círculo; (2) do diálogo de Bakhtin com a ciência na unidade da cultura; (3) do diálogo com a ciência linguística da escola de Genebra em “O problema do conteúdo, do material e da forma”; e, finalmente, de considerações inconclusas, mas necessárias. Destacam-se importantes momentos-chave de reflexão em textos assinados por Bakhtin, em que Saussure (ainda que não nomeado, mas designado pela ciência por ele estabelecida) merece destaque, como contraponto científico-filosófico necessário para a constituição de outra possibilidade de compreensão e estudo da linguagem: a perspectiva dialógica. Como resultado, espera-se demonstrar que, desde os anos 1920, o diálogo Bakhtin/Saussure se estabelece, para distinguir e qualificar duas formas complementares de compreensão da linguagem e do lugar da ciência na unidade da cultura. (shrink)

Catulo (século I a.C.), o primeiro grande autor lírico romano, traz a elegia grega com temática variada, inclusive amorosa. Assim a poesia elegíaca latina desenvolve-se e ganha contorno de um gênero autônomo em Roma, com temática própria, a elegia erótica romana. O tema do amor passa a ser fundamental, nos autores do século de Augusto (século I a.C.), Tibulo, Propércio e Ovídio, que escrevem livros inteiros para uma amada. Contudo, unida à temática do amor encontramos também o tema morte, (...) constante em Propércio e encontrado também em Ovídio na esfera mítica. Através de fragmentos de poemas dos autores elegíacos, veremos como os temas amor e morte encontram-se unidos na elegia latina. (shrink)

The article introduces and defends the Nomological Account of ground, a reductive account of the notion of metaphysical explanation in terms of the laws of metaphysics. The paper presents three desiderata that a theory of ground should meet: it should explain the modal force of ground, the generality of ground, and the interplay between ground and certain mereological notions. The bulk of the paper develops the Nomological Account and argues that it meets the three desiderata. The Nomological Account relies on (...) two central notions: the notion of a ‘law of metaphysics’ and the notion of ‘determination via the laws’. The paper offers the constructional conception of the laws of metaphysics, on which the metaphysical laws are general principles that characterize construction–operations such as composition, constitution, or set-formation. The role of determination in the account is explained and some reductive approaches to the notion are sketched. The case for the Nomological Account presented in this article is also a case for the laws of metaphysics. Since the Nomological Account offers a promising approach to metaphysical explanation we should take the laws of metaphysics seriously. (shrink)

Realists about laws of nature and their Humean opponents disagree on whether laws ‘govern’. An independent commitment to the ‘governing conception’ of laws pushes many towards the realist camp. Despite its significance, however, no satisfactory account of governance has been offered. The goal of this article is to develop such an account. I base my account on two claims. First, we should distinguish two notions of governance, ‘guidance’ and ‘production’, and secondly, explanatory phenomena other than laws are also candidates for (...) governance. My goal is to develop a unified account which captures both guidance and production as well as the governance of phenomena, such as essence and logical consequence. The account of governance I develop belongs to the family of modal accounts, which was popularized by David Armstrong, but it also employs essentialist resources. If successful, this modal-essentialist account not only reveals the costs that proponents of governance incur, but it also puts that important notion on a solid theoretical foundation. (shrink)

O avanço de lutas em torno dos direitos sexuais e reprodutivos vem sendo tratado por diversos segmentos políticos e religiosos como uma ameaça às hierarquias tradicionais. Diante deste campo que envolve diferentes perspectivas conflitantes, o artigo apresentado propõe uma análise sobre o uso da noção de “ideologia de gênero” como elemento fundamental na ofensiva contra esses direitos. Para isso, o texto proposto será dividido em duas partes: na primeira, serão apresentados os seus antecedentes e sua posterior difusão; na segunda, será (...) realizada uma análise genealógica acerca da literatura produzida por distintos autores que se reconhecem como conservadores, adotando uma postura reativa em relação aos estudos de gênero e sexualidade; e por fim, na terceira parte, mostraremos como essa premissa acerca da existência de uma natureza humana e sexual universalmente diferenciada entre homens e mulheres não se sustenta, tomando como referência distintas pesquisas sobre gênero e sexualidade publicadas nas últimas décadas. (shrink)

Summary: The paper provides an argument for modal primitivism, the view that necessity is not defined and is therefore part of the structure of reality. It then raises the explanation-challenge for primitivists: how can modal truths be explained by hyper-intensional truths, if necessity is not defined in terms of hyper-intensional phenomena? To address the challenge, the paper introduces 'sophisticated modal primitivism' which gives a substantive analysis of the notion of a 'source of necessity'. The final part of the paper offers (...) some applications of that novel piece of ideology. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the counter-intuitive conclusion that the same adaptive preference can be both prudentially good and prudentially bad for its holder: that is, it can be prudentially objectionable from one temporal perspective, but prudentially unobjectionable from another. Given the possibility of transformative experiences, there is an important sense in which even worrisome adaptive preferences can be prudentially good for us. That is, if transformative experiences lead us to develop adaptive preferences, then their objects can become prudentially (...) better for our actual selves than the objects of their non-adaptive alternatives would now be. I also argue, however, that the same worrisome adaptive preferences might still be prospectively prudentially objectionable: that is, our pre-transformation selves might be prudentially better off undergoing a non-adaptive alternative transformative experience instead. I argue that both claims hold across the range of the most broadly-defended accounts of well-being in the literature. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the social sciences cannot be reduced to a lower-level individualistic science. The standard argument for this position is the Fodorian multiple realizability argument. Its defenders endorse token–token identities between “higher-level” social objects and pluralities/sums of “lower-level” individuals, but they maintain that the properties expressed by social science predicates are often multiply realizable, entailing that type–type identities between social and individualistic properties are ruled out. In this paper I argue that the multiple realizability argument for explanatory (...) holism is unsound. The social sciences are indeed irreducible, but the principled reason for this is that the required token–token identifications cannot in general be carried through. In consequence, paradigmatic social science predicates cannot be taken to apply to the objects quantified over in the lower-level sciences. The result is that typical social science predicates cannot even be held to be co-extensive with individualistic predicates, which means type–type identifications are ruled out too. Multiple realizability has nothing to do with this failure of co-extensiveness, because the relevant social science predicates are not multiply realized in the sense intended by the explanatory holists, a sense which presupposes reductive token–token identifications. (shrink)

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main (...) theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

0. Philippe Huneman and Charles T. Wolfe: Introduction 1. Tobias Cheung, “What is an ‘organism’? On the occurrence of a new term and its conceptual transformations 1680-1850” 2. Charles T. Wolfe, “Do organisms have an ontological status?” 3. John Symons, “The individuality of artifacts and organisms” 4. Thomas Pradeu, “What is an organism? An immunological answer” 5. Matteo Mossio & Alvaro Moreno, “Organisational closure in biological organisms” 6. Laura Nuño de la Rosa, “Becoming organisms. The organisation of development (...) and the development of organisation” 7. Denis Walsh, “Two Neo-Darwinisms” 8. Philippe Huneman, “Assessing the prospects for a return of organisms in evolutionary biology” 9. Johannes Martens, “Organisms in evolution” 10. Susan Oyama, “Biologists behaving badly: Vitalism and the language of language” . (shrink)

In this article I offer an analysis of harms associated with sexual objectification. Objectification can be benign, but harm tends to occur in three circumstances: (i) when objectification is non-consensual, (ii) when a phenomenon that I term ‘context-creeping’ occurs, and (iii) when the objectification is also enacting or reinforcing some kind of oppression. I defend the view that objectification is not always harmful, and I explain the popular intuition to the contrary by demonstrating that these three harm-generating circumstances are especially (...) prevalent. The phenomenon of ‘context-creeping’ objectification is introduced to capture what is intuitively wrong with much objectification in media and advertising. This phenomenon describes when instances of sexual objectification (which may be, in themselves, benign) regularly occur outside sexual contexts, in a way that reinforces particular rape myths and thereby contributes to harms. This means that the ubiquity of discussion of pornography in the objectification literature is misleading, and a shift in focus to other media is warranted. I end with a warning, though: we should be very careful in how we respond to these problems, as attempts to mitigate any harms associated with objectifying media can badly misfire. (shrink)

Stroke is one of the most common causes of acquired disability, leaving numerous adults with cognitive and motor impairments, and affecting patients’ capability to live independently. Virtual Reality (VR) based methods for stroke rehabilitation have mainly focused on motor rehabilitation but there is increasing interest toward the integration of cognitive training for providing more effective solutions. Here we investigate the feasibility for stroke recovery of a virtual cognitive-motor task, the Reh@Task, which combines adapted arm reaching, and attention and memory training. (...) 24 participants in the chronic stage of stroke, with cognitive and motor deficits, were allocated to one of two groups (VR, Control). Both groups were enrolled in conventional occupational therapy, which mostly involves motor training. Additionally, the VR group underwent training with the Reh@Task and the control group performed time-matched conventional occupational therapy. Motor and cognitive competences were assessed at baseline, end of treatment (1 month) and at a 1-month follow-up through the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Single Letter Cancelation, Digit Cancelation, Bells Test, Fugl-Meyer Assessment Test, Chedoke Arm and Hand Activity Inventory, Modified Ashworth Scale, and Barthel Index. Our results show that both groups improved in motor function over time, but the Reh@Task group displayed significantly higher between-group outcomes in the arm subpart of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment Test. Improvements in cognitive function were significant and similar in both groups. Overall, these results are supportive of the viability of VR tools that combine motor and cognitive training, such as the Reh@Task. Trial Registration: This trial was not registered because it is a small clinical study that addresses the feasibility of a prototype device. (shrink)

It is argued that philosophers who adopt the perdurance theory of persistence and who subscribe to the principle of Unrestricted Mereological Composition (UMC) are in a position to regard “Phosphorus is Hesperus” as false.

Bien que l’agenda international ait souligné la nécessité de diversifier le personnel enseignant, les recherches portant sur les étudiants en situation de handicap en formation initiale d’enseignant sont assez rares. Pourtant, la formation des enseignants est confrontée à un véritable dilemme: l’obligation de proposer des aménagements raisonnables tout en respectant un parcours de formation qui soit conforme aux standards de la profession (“dilemme de la compétence professionnelle”). Cet article propose une revue systématique concernant (1) les principales questions liées aux étudiants (...) en situation de handicap dans le cadre de la formation initiale et (2) les différentes formes que revêt le “dilemme de la compétence professionnelle” au sein du programme. Vingt études empiriques, publiées entre 1990 et 2018, ont été incluses. Sept domaines thématiques et trois formes de dilemme (institutionnel, personnel et culturel) sont ressortis des analyses. Les principales conclusions montrent que le parcours personnel des étudiants en situation de handicap dans le domaine de la formation initiale est difficile et complexe. Bien qu’elles révèlent le rôle crucial du “dilemme de la compétence professionnelle,” elles montrent aussi la nécessité de le redéfinir en tenant compte du rôle actif joué par les étudiants en situation de handicap dans l’adoption de stratégies d’adaptation, au-delà des aménagements raisonnables obtenus. La possibilité d’une pluralité de profils de compétences dépassant l’idée stricte d’un profil uniforme est également discutée. (shrink)

The Snowden revelations and the emergence of ‘Big Data’ have rekindled questions about how security practices are deployed in a digital age and with what political effects. While critical scholars have drawn attention to the social, political and legal challenges to these practices, the debates in computer and information science have received less analytical attention. This paper proposes to take seriously the critical knowledge developed in information and computer science and reinterpret their debates to develop a critical intervention into the (...) public controversies concerning data-driven security and digital surveillance. The paper offers a two-pronged contribution: on the one hand, we challenge the credibility of security professionals’ discourses in light of the knowledge that they supposedly mobilize; on the other, we argue for a series of conceptual moves around data, human–computer relations, and algorithms to address some of the limitations of existing engagements with the Big Data-security assemblage. (shrink)

Memes have been proposed to explain wide swathes of human culture and language use. I argue that what is really doing the explanatory work in many of these cases is a basic mechanism of information...