À primeira vista, pode-se pensar que toda restrição à dúvida é contrária à progressão do conhecimento e antidemocrática. Este argumento é utilizado por diferentes sabores de negacionismo. No entanto, um exame do modo como funcionam dúvidas nos mostra que existem exigências epistêmicas para a legitimidade da dúvida que não são satisfeitas pelos negacionismos. Uma consequência deste argumento é que a normatividade epistêmica não é absorvida pela normatividade política. A especificidade da normatividade epistêmica, que explica porque a dúvida de negacionistas não (...) é legítima, desaparece em teorias construtivistas. Teses construtivistas resultam de uma confusão entre o fato de teorias serem construtos sociais e a tese que elas constroem os fatos sobre os quais portam a teoria ela mesma. A legitimidade da dúvida depende de processos sociais de filtragem epistêmica. Os filtros epistêmicos socialmente construídos refletem um fato profundo da evolução da cultura humana: a produção cumulativa, social e assimétrica do conhecimento. (shrink)

A principal crítica do internismo a teorias externistas é que elas parecem fazer o conhecimento o resultado de processos que permanecem inacessíveis ao sujeito. Epistemologias externistas buscaram acomodar esta exigência, como é o caso da epistemologia de Sosa. A incorporação das exigências internistas não se faz sem tensões – no caso de Sosa, os mecanismos reflexivos podem ser inacessíveis ao sujeito. Na medida em que buscamos compreender como podemos conhecer e refletir sobre nossas próprias crenças, encontramos mecanismos externos ao sujeito (...) que não podem ser internalizados: a dinâmica conversacional e o conhecimento científico dos mecanismos de funcionamento da cognição. A externalização do saber se estende para o conhecimento cientifico de maneira muito ampla. Uma pessoa que só tomasse como verdadeiro aquilo que pode provar (ou mesmo que pode compreender) seria alguém que recusaria boa parte do saber humano. Para todo leigo – isto é, para todo mundo, num ou noutro domínio –, assumir o que é produzido pela cultura é tomar como verdadeiras crenças cujo conteúdo resta opaco. Como exige um internista, o funcionamento interacional da razão não envolve mecanismos cegos à perspectiva do sujeito e não conceitualizados, mas, ao contrário, leva precisamente à articulação e à tomada de consciência das teses apresentadas. Este conhecimento não pode, contudo, ser internalizado. A externalização do conhecimento é um traço profundo do conhecimento e, mais geralmente, da cultura humana. No contexto de uma teoria evolutiva da cultura, muitos autores defendem, de diferentes modos, que a cultura humana é essencialmente social. O que talvez não seja tão usual seja conectar teorias mais gerais da evolução da cultura com preocupações tradicionais da epistemologia. Espero mostrar que este é um caminho frutífero. (shrink)

Algumas soluções medievais para o sofisma ´omnis homo de necessitate est animal´ postulam um tipo especial de ser, o ser da essência (esse essentiae), que explica como uma predicação necessária pode ser verdadeira sobre seres cuja existência é contingente. O ser da essência, distinto do ser efetivo (esse actuale), admite apenas propriedades necessárias. Deste traço se seguem duas diferenças em relação a teorias meinonguianas acerca do não ser. Inicialmente, segundo Meinong, o tipo de propriedade de um objeto é independente de (...) ele existir – o chamado ´Princípio da Independência´. Além disto, o ser da essência não é parte da explicação da intencionalidade. Teorias medievais que julgam dever explicar a intencionalidade pela postulação de um tipo especial de ser não o fazem pela postulação do esse essentiae. Objetos meinoinguianos, por seu vez, servem para explicar tanto a intencionalidade quanto a distribuição intuitiva de valores de verdade para sentenças sobre inexistentes. (shrink)

The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is often seen as a discussion about where to place pragmatic inferences: while minimalists think that they only come into play after the proposition is grasped, for contextualists, there are already pragmatic processes in the very determination of what is said, leading to ad hoc conceptual adjustments. There is, however, another way to look at this matter: we may keep a sensitive truth-distribution across contexts without ad hoc conceptual manoeuvres. An intuitive distribution of truth-values (...) may be explained as a variation in (kaplanian) circumstances, without any tampering with sentence constituents. This way of understanding the debate connects, maybe surprisingly, a first reaction to the semantics-pragmatics divide, in Cavell, and Predelli’s original stance on this debate. (shrink)

A linguagem mental explica o caráter significativo das linguagens falada e escrita: seus elementos e estrutura são identificados através de critérios teóricos que servem a este fim. Estes critérios parecem manter uma certa indeterminação em relação aos elementos e estruturas da linguagem mental, se se espera que eles decidam entre diferentes formas de apresentação possíveis. Esta expectativa, contudo, não é razoável dentro da filosofia ockhamiana. A teoria da linguagem mental pode desempenhar os papéis teóricos a ela destinados sem determinar a (...) forma que deveria ter uma linguagem canônica que a apresentasse. Há no entanto uma outra indeterminação na forma da proposição mental, relativa a ocorrências de proposições, que efetivamente ocorre nos textos ockhamianos : proposições mentais podem ser atos mentais simples e ter uma semântica composicional. Esta tese surpreendente nos lembra que embora a análise semântica que identifica estruturas da linguagem mental descreva algo que tem uma realidade psicológica, a descrição psicológica ela mesma deve recorrer a outros elementos da filosofia ockhamiana, e em particular, sua teoria dos atos mentais. (shrink)

Na semântica ockhamiana, o predicado ‘verdadeiro’ deriva de uma outra relação semântica mais fundamental, a relação de suposição. O autor mostra como esta relação de dependência entre dois predicados semânticos figura na análise das condições de verdade de proposições passadas, um modelo que pode ser estendido a proposições futuras e possíveis. O texto procura indicar como a explicação das condições de verdade de proposições possíveis situa a semântica das modalidades aléticas em continuidade com a semântica de proposições não presentes. Este (...) último ponto ganha em interesse se o colocarmos ao lado de um outro aspecto da teoria modal ockhamiana, a saber, o fato de modalidades serem definidas como todo termo que pode ser predicado de proposições inteiras. Como conclusão, o autor expõe os diferentes níveis de análise de modalidades aléticas, dentro do quadro teórico ockhamiano. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the thesis suggested by Cappelen and Lepore, according to which if contextualism were true, communication would require many items, and therefore would be fragile; communication is not fragile, and therefore, communication does not demand a large number of conditions, and contextualism is false. While we should grant the robustness of communication, it is not guaranteed by some unchanging conditions, but by different flexible mechanisms that enhance the chances of mutual understanding at a relatively low (...) cost –– this is true, in particular, of different feedback mechanisms and of alternative ways to make the same information mutually available. Communication is not a series of successive, individual and independent actions; dialogues are a kind of joint activity in which misunderstandings are jointly repaired by participants as part of the very activity they are engaged in. Moreover, as we consider the roles of hearers in a conversation, we see that no construal makes Cappelen and Lepore’’s argument both plausible and relevant. The hearer can either be overhearer or a certified participant. If the hearer is an overhearer, it may be the case that he easily misunderstands what is said, but it has no consequence to the understanding of what takes place in a dialogue, since, ex hypothesi, he is not a party to it. If the hearer is a participant, many of the conditions of mutual understanding will be assured in the dialogical activity itself, and both he and the speaker will make efforts to assure that mutual understanding do take place, as part of their responsibilities as parties to a dialogue –– and their argument is not plausible. (shrink)

One of the main motivations for having a compositional semantics is the account of the productivity of natural languages. Formal languages are often part of the account of productivity, i.e., of how beings with finite capaci- ties are able to produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sen- tences, by offering a model of this process. This account of productivity con- sists in the generation of proofs in a formal system, that is taken to represent the way speakers grasp (...) the meaning of an indefinite number of sentences. The informational basis is restricted to what is represented in the lexicon. This constraint is considered as a requirement for the account of productivity, or at least of an important feature of productivity, namely, that we can grasp auto- matically the meaning of a huge number of complex expressions, far beyond what can be memorized. However, empirical results in psycholinguistics, and especially particular patterns of ERP, show that the brain integrates informa- tion of different sources very fast, without any felt effort on the part of the speaker. This shows that formal procedures do not explain productivity. How- ever, formal models are still useful in the account of how we get at the seman- tic value of a complex expression, once we have the meanings of its parts, even if there is no formal explanation of how we get at those meanings. A practice-oriented view of modeling gives an adequate interpretation of this re- sult: formal compositional semantics may be a useful model for some ex- planatory purposes concerning natural languages, without being a good model for dealing with other explananda. (shrink)

When and why do we need the indexical ‘I’? Perry (1979) thinks that ‘I’ is an essential ingredient to the explanation and prediction of action. We need ‘I’ to classify the kind of belief that causes an agent to produce a new action. In his view, classifying the agent’s belief in terms of ‘I’ makes sense because, when asked to explain her behavior, the agent will be disposed to say ‘I’. Here, we argue that this dispositional assumption is problematic. The (...) disposition to act according to an essential indexical and the disposition to make a speech act that contains ‘I’ are two very different things that are not always related. The most common circumstances in which we need to say ‘I’ to explain ourselves involve other agents: when we coordinate in joint actions or when we engage in self-talk to save face before the eyes of potential witnesses. Finally, we revisit Perry’s famous messy shopper anecdote to offer a better story about why its main character is disposed to say ‘I’. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of them (...) believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objeto llevar a cabo un estudio pragmático y analítico sobre la acción de valoración, el valor y los valores a la luz de la ciencia semiótica y de la ciencia cibernética. Por ello, se desarrollará un proceso axiológico que ilustre cómo sucede el ingreso, la transición y la salida de códigos morales en función de un esquema cognitivo. Así pues, el proceso axiológico se postula, primero, en fundamento de tres sistemas: de mentalidad, de valores y (...) de biomoralidad y, segundo, conforme a la teoría de la información y de la teoría general de sistemas. (shrink)

Kant’s metaphilosophy has three main parts: (1) an essentialist project (“What is philosophy?”); (2) a methodological project (“How do we do philosophy?”); and (3) a taxonomic project (“What are the different parts of philosophy, and how are they related?”). This paper focuses on the third project. In particular, it explores one of the most intriguing yet puzzling aspects of Kant’s philosophy, viz. the relationship between what Kant calls ‘pure’ philosophy vs. ‘applied’, ‘empirical’ or what we can broadly refer to as (...) ‘impure’ philosophy. (As we shall see, in order to be able to address this third project, we shall also need to examine the other two projects in detail.) My plan is as follows. First, I discuss four main areas of pure vs. impure philosophy: (i) ‘pure logic’ vs. ‘applied logic’; (ii) ‘rational psychology’ vs. ‘empirical psychology’; (iii) ‘pure metaphysics of nature’ vs. ‘physics’ and (iv) ‘pure morality’ or a ‘metaphysics of morals’ vs. ‘moral anthropology’, ‘practical anthropology’ or ‘applied moral philosophy’. Based on this, I identify four key differences between pure and impure philosophy. Second, I critically examine four different readings of Kant’s views about the status of ‘impure’ philosophy: (a) that it is not genuine philosophy; (b) that it is bad or inferior philosophy; (c) that it is instrumentally valuable; and (d) that it constitutes an indispensable part of Kant’s philosophy, both in a theoretical and practical sense. I argue that Kant is best interpreted as endorsing readings (c) and (d). Third, I offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

The Dead Past Growing Block theory of time—DPGB-theory—is the metaphysical view that the past and the present tenselessly exist, whereas the future does not, and that only the present hosts mentality, whereas the past lacks it and is, in this sense, dead. One main reason in favour of this view is that it is immune to the now-now objection or epistemic objection (which aims at undermining the certainty, within an A-theoretical universe, of being currently experiencing the objective present time). In (...) this paper, I examine the additional arguments offered by P. Forrest and G. A. Forbes to back the DPGB-theory and show that they do not work. I also examine a proposal to rescue the DPGB-theory suggested by an anonymous reviewer for this journal and argue that it does not work either. Moreover, in line with D. Braddon-Mitchell and against Forbes, I argue that the DPGB-theory is indeed committed to the existence of zombies in the past. Being ad hoc and burdened by a very odd and counterintuitive ontological commitment, the DPGB-theory turns out to be rather unpalatable. (shrink)

Phylogeography, a relatively new subdicipline of evolutionary biology that attempts to unify the fields of phylogenetics and population biology in an explicit geographical context, has hosted in recent years a highly polarized debate related to the purported benefits and limitations that qualitative versus quantitative methods might contribute or impose on inferential processes in evolutionary biology. Here we present a friendly, non-technical introduction to the conflicting methods underlying the controversy, and exemplify it with a balanced selection of quotes from the primary (...) biological literature, to invite the philosophy of biology community to pay attention to the elements that have played a primary role in its presumed resolution. We also present the basic features of our own metascientific take on the debate, and point out—as a preliminary step in preparation for upcoming, more detailed treatments—the importance that appeals to authority in fields external to phylogeography per se have played in the current status of this highly visible evolutionary biology dispute. (shrink)

Presentism is, roughly, the ontological view that only the present exists. Among the philosophers engaged in the metaphysics of time there is wide agreement that presentism is intuitive (or commonsensical) and that its intuitiveness counts as evidence in its favour. My contribution has two purposes: first, defending the view that presentism is intuitive from some recent criticisms; second, putting forth a genealogical (or debunking) argument aimed at depriving presentism’s intuitiveness of the evidential value commonly granted to it.

We provide here irrefutable facts that prove the falsehood of the claims published in [1] by Dehmer and Mowshowitz (DM) against our paper published in [2]. We first prove that Dehmer’s definition of node probability [3] is flawed. In addition, we show that it was not Dehmer in [3] who proposed this definition for the first time. We continue by proving how the use of Dehmer’s definition does not reveal all the physico-mathematical richness of the walk entropy of graphs. Finally, (...) we show a few facts about the failure of DM themselves to cite properly the relevant literature in their field. We also show here how the Editors of Complexity have failed to manage the publication of [1] in an appropriate way according to the accepted guidelines given in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (shrink)

In a series of recent papers Francesco Orilia has presented an argument for the moral desirability of presentism. It goes, in brief, as follows: since the existence of painful events is morally undesirable, presentism, which denies that past painful events (tenselessly) exist, is morally more desirable than non-presentism, which instead affirms that past painful events (tenselessly) exist. An objection against this argument, which has already been taken into consideration by Orilia, is the ugly history objection or radical objection: what really (...) matters in the moral appraisal of a world is the history of it, and since the presentist and the non-presentist versions of our world share the same ugly history, they are morally on a par. This paper aims at corroborating this objection and defending it from Orilia’s criticisms. This will be done by bringing into play various thought experiments and a distinction between relevance (of an event or a fact about the occurrence of an event) to the moral evaluation of a world and moral (and psychological) involvement (in an event or in a fact about the occurrence of an event). (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como propósito criticar y reformular la teoría de valores del autor y filósofo argentino Risieri Frondizi. Para ello, se someterán a falsacionismo las tesis según las cuales la cualidad estructural es, primero, estructuralista y no analítica y, segundo, empírica, de acuerdo con la metodología holista de la ciencia. La crítica, así, se desarrollará a partir de los siguientes interrogantes. Inicialmente, ¿el autor acude al holismo o al reduccionismo como enfoques metodológicos de desarrollo? Finalmente, ¿cuál es la (...) distinción lógica entre el valor como cualidad sui géneris y el valor como cualidad estructural? (shrink)

Is there any interesting sense in which we can speak of an act as 'evil', in contrast to simply "morally bad' or "immoral"? In ordinary language, we typically judge actions as evil that somehow differ significantly, in terms of degree or intensity, from commonplace wrongdoing. If taken to an extreme, however, this view simply reduces the difference between evil and immoral acts to a mere quantitative analysis. At worst, it leads to a wholly trivial account of evil as just those (...) actions we tend to regard as "really bad". In this paper, I outline a distinctively Kantian theory of evil that instead defends a fundamental qualitative difference between evil and more ordinary immoral actions, locating the main distinction in terms of the structure of the agent's will itself Broadly understood, this strategy endorses a Kantian account of "evil as dehumanization" in which a "material" -- as opposed to purely "formal" -- difference exists between the respective maxims of the immoral and the evil agent. In such instances, unlike typical cases of Kantian immoral actions, direct violation of another person's humanity qua human somehow comprises a necessary part of the "material object" of an evil agent's will. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea of authenticity, both what it is and why it’s valuable. First, I identify and criticize three popular approaches to authenticity: Individual Authenticity, Natural Authenticity, and Truthful Authenticity. Second, I defend a fourth approach to authenticity – what I call Existential Authenticity (EA) – which is comprised of three basic elements: (a) self- understanding, (b) self-expression, and (c) self-concern – in particular, concern about what kind of person one is and what type of life one lead. (...) Third, I explore why EA is valuable in both instrumental and non-instrumental ways. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to synthesize the two most influential contemporary ethical approaches that appeal to moral intuitions, viz., Rawlsian reflective equilibrium and Audi’s moderate intuitionism. This paper has two parts. First, building upon the work of Audi and Gaut, I provide a more detailed and nuanced account of how these two approaches are compatible. Second, I show how this novel synthesis can both (1) fully address the main objections to reflective equilibrium, viz., that it provides neither necessary nor (...) sufficient conditions for the justification of our moral beliefs and (2) help ethical intuitionism to deal with the fundamental problem of peer disagreement over our basic moral intuitions. In doing so, I sketch out a novel and attractive diachronic way of thinking about peer disagreement more generally. (shrink)

*Honorable Mention for the 2024 American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) Lenssen Prize*: In recent years, ‘philosophy as a way of life’ [PWOL] courses have emerged as an exciting new pedagogical approach. I explain what a PWOL-course is. Next, I argue that the standard method for teaching such courses—what I call the ‘Smorgasbord Model’—presents us with a basic problem: viz., the challenge of how to enable students in the context of the modern university to truly experience what a PWOL even (...) is. I propose a solution to this problem by exploring a PWOL that most teachers and students alike already find themselves immersed in, what I describe as political liberalism applied to the university classroom context. I show how this overlooked fact not only offers us a novel resource for teaching PWOL-courses. It also helps philosophy teachers—in a meta-pedagogical sense—to become more self-reflective about and appreciative of our fundamental ethical commitments when teaching philosophy. (shrink)

*Runner-up for the 2021 Royal Institute for Philosophy Essay Prize*: What should we think about ‘acts of conscience’, viz., cases where our personal judgments and public authority come into conflict such that principled resistance to the latter seems necessary? Philosophers mainly debate two issues: the Accommodation Question, i.e., ‘When, if ever, should public authority accommodate claims of conscience?’ and the Justification Question, i.e., ‘When, if ever, are we justified in engaging in acts of conscience – and why?’. By contrast, a (...) third important topic – the Conduct Question, i.e., ‘How should we act, morally speaking, when engaging in acts of conscience?’ – has been mostly neglected. This paper aims to offer concrete guidance for persons wishing to engage in acts of conscience in morally virtuous ways. I argue that such agents are subject to two basic prima facie duties: duties to oneself related to demands of integrity and duties to others related to demands of civility. I explain both duties in detail, arguing with regard to, that in light of what I call ‘the paradox of conscience’, we need to rethink our views about both ‘conscience’ and ‘integrity’; and with regard to, that, building upon Rawls’ ‘duty of civility’, we should embrace at least seven general principles for undertaking acts of conscience in a morally conscientious manner. (shrink)

In order to make some headway on the debate about whether Kant was a constructivist, nonconstructivist, or instead defends a hybrid view that somehow entirely sidesteps these categories, I attempt to clarify the terms of the debate more carefully than is usually done. First, I discuss the overall relationship between realism and constructivism. Second, I identify four main features of Kantian constructivism in general. Third, I examine three rival versions of metanormative Kantian constructivism, what I’ll call axiological, constitutivist, and rationalist (...) constructivist. I argue that Kant is best seen as a rationalist constructivist. I conclude by arguing that although it’s a constructivist view, this reading avoids the main pitfalls of traditional Kantian constructivism. In doing so, it helps us to achieve a satisfying rapprochement between constructivist and non-constructivist readings of Kant. (shrink)

Although there is increasing recognition that theory and practice in science are often inseparably intertwined, discussions of scientific controversies often continue to focus on theory, and not practice or methodologies. As a contribution to constructing a framework towards understanding controversies linked to scientific practices, we introduce the notion of borrowed epistemic credibility, to describe the situation in which scientists exploit fallacious similarities between accepted tenets in other fields to garner support for a given position in their own field. Our proposal (...) is based on the analysis of a recent controversy in phylogeography, a biological subdiscipline concerned with the study of the historical causes of variation in genetic diversity within species in concrete biogeographical locations. Through a review of the arguments that support the two conflicting phylogeographic schools, we show that ‘theory’ plays essentially no role as a foundation of the controversy, whereas both sides borrow epistemic credibility from sources such as formal logic, similarity of results to those in other scientific areas, the authority of prominent scientists, or the presumed superiority of quantitative vs. verbal reasoning. Our case study underscores the indivisibility of theory and practice and provide a means to re-examine important philosophical issues such as the meaning of inference, rationality, justification, and objectivity in scientific practice. (shrink)

The study of complex systems, although an interdisciplinary endeavor, it is considered as an integrating part of physical sciences. Contrary to the historical fact that the eld is already mature, it still lacks a clear and unambiguous denition of its main object of study. Here, I propose a denition of complex systems based on the conceptual clarications made by Edgar Morin about the bidirectional non-separability of parts and whole produced by the nature of interactions. The concept to which I arrived (...) here is clear, not circular, neither too cryptic nor to explicit, and does not include any accompanying features of the own system dened. It allows, as shown in the paper, to derive some of the main properties that such systems must have as well as to propose its mathematical formalization. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivism is a philosophical theory that has received special attention in the recent years. Particularly because it has been seen by many as a way of renewing discussions that range from the nature of justification of our daily beliefs to the possibility of unveiling the structure of the problem of radical skepticism and of responding to it. Duncan Pritchard is one of the authors who have offered a particular view of disjunctivism and ways of conceiving of disjunctivist treatments to (...) such questions. His work has as its main source of inspiration the seminal work of John McDowell. In this paper, I present a way of understanding the problem ofradicalskepticism and the mannerin which epistemological disjunctivism aimsto offer solutionsto it. In orderto do that, I present McDowell’s general proposal and discuss in which way his account differs from Pritchard’s own disjunctivism. At the end, I try to show how Pritchard’s approach tries to respond to radical skepticism not only by appealing to a disjunctivist reading of our epistemic position, but also by offering a revision of our structure of reasons. (shrink)

This paper argues that many of the conceptual controversies in evolutionary biology are due to the use of different operational definitions. Since the set of operations is not consistent, then there are many ways to understand, in practice, how concepts should be investigated. In this paper we introduce a formal analysis to study the scope of operationalism and we conclude that the controversial concepts are in fact umbrella variables, that is, a single term can be referring to different processes, phenomena (...) or entities linked by a large ontological commitment driving operationalism. If this is correct, then many of the controversies in evolutionary biology are due, in part, to the operationalization of the objects of study. (shrink)

A Grã-Bretanha setecentista foi um dos períodos mais preocupados e que mais escreveu sobre galanteria, moral, modéstia, virtudes, cavalheirismo e boas maneiras; em uma palavra: polidez. Uma das razões que justifica a preocupação de grande parte dos autores britânicos com esse tema (Hume, Chesterfield, Gregory, Mandeville, Wollstonecraft, Fordyce, Shaftesbury – só para citar alguns) estaria atrelada a uma necessidade de evidenciar a diferença entre os povos bárbaros e os civilizados. As boas maneiras seriam um dos principais divisores de águas entre (...) a barbárie e a civilização, inculcadas principalmente através de textos de morais práticas, refletiriam a superioridade de caráter, o acúmulo de virtudes e de conhecimentos, tornando as faculdades mentais aptas para agirem sempre da melhor forma possível. Um dos pontos que usualmente são esquecidos ou ignorados por esses autores – e por seus comentadores – diz respeito ao caráter da hipocrisia exposto por Davidson. Meu objetivo será apresentar de que forma estas relações se constituíam através da compreensão da formação de caráter proporcionada aos considerados cavalheiros e mulheres de mérito e em que medida pode-se caracterizá-los como hipocrisia. (shrink)

Most scholars describe Kant’s idea of dignity as what I term his “vertical” account—that is, our human dignity insofar as we rise above heteronomous natural inclinations and realize human freedom by obeying the moral law. In this paper, I attempt to supplement this traditional view by exploring Kant’s neglected “horizontal” account of dignity—that is, our human dignity insofar as we exist in relationship with others. First, I examine the negative aspect of this horizontal account of dignity, found in Kant’s discussion (...) of public heteronomy perpetuated by unjust social institutions. Second, I explore Kant’s idea of public dignity realized via social interaction: both (1) at the interpersonal level of education and friendship, and (2) at the societal level, in terms of moral education in the public sphere and a communal moral striving towards the highest good. I argue that we cannot realize our full human dignity for Kant outside of the context of concrete social relations with other moral agents. (shrink)

In filosofia spesso si segue un metodo stando al quale una tesi o teoria che sia più in sintonia con il senso comune deve essere preferita alle posizioni meno in sintonia con esso, per lo meno fino a quando non si mostri che quella tesi o teoria è inadeguata e che una delle posizioni avverse costituisce un adeguato sostituto. Nel presente contributo si vuole offrire una caratterizzazione della nozione di senso comune generalmente in uso nei dibattiti filosofici contemporanei; illustrare criticamente (...) i principali metodi impiegabili per determinare contenuti filosoficamente rilevanti del senso comune; chiarire e giustificare il metodo filosofico dell'appello al senso comune; presentare, d'altro canto, alcune delle strategie argomentative attuabili da chi si trovi a sostenere una tesi o teoria contrastante con il senso comune. (shrink)

Presentism is the view that only present temporal entities (tenselessly) exist. A widely-discussed problem for presentism concerns causation and, more specifically, the supposed cross-temporally relational character of it. I think that the best reply to this problem can already be found in the literature on temporal ontology: it consists, roughly, in showing that (at least) some of the main approaches to causation can be rephrased so as to avoid commitment to any cross-temporal relation, including the causal relation itself. The main (...) purpose of this paper is to extend this reply to the process view, an approach to causation that has not been considered within this debate until now. I shall do this by taking into account Dowe’s conserved quantity theory—a recent and prominent theory of this sort— and employing it as a proxy for the other major process theories of causation. In dealing with Dowe’s process theory of causation, however, two additional problems must be faced: one concerns the four-dimensional spacetime framework on which its formulation relies; the other concerns the very notion of causal process (and the companion notion of causal interaction). While the presentistic account of Dowe’s theory (and, virtually, of the process view of causation in general) put forth in this paper is intended primarily as a contribution to the mentioned paraphrase- based enterprise of reconciliation between presentism and causation, I shall also offer some reasons for presentists to prefer the process view of causation to the other views of causation that have already been reconciled with presentism. (shrink)

El propósito central del presente artículo, es formular un enfoque sistémico-jurídico para el análisis de los sistemas sociales. Para esto, se proponen tres tipologías de consensos denominados límites del sistema social: consenso normal, consenso normativo y consenso legítimo. La función de estas tipologías es, primero elaborar una explicación sobre la constitucionalización y democratización del poder político, con base en la regla de reconocimiento y la norma fundamental de un Estado; segundo postular dos metodologías normativas, un registro positivo y una demarcación (...) positiva, que desplieguen, tanto sobre las conductas sociales como sobre la estructura del sistema social, un proceso de legalidad emergente, cuya función sea, tercero regular, realimentar y optimizar el funcionamiento de la constitución política. Finalmente, se analizan los conceptos de completitud y de legitimidad del sistema normativo, con el fin de definir el alcance institucional que debe poseer un sistema jurídico sobre los subsistemas culturales del sistema social. (shrink)

This paper shows how an efficient and parallel algorithm for inference in Bayesian Networks (BNs) can be built and implemented combining sparse matrix factorization methods with variable elimination algorithms for BNs. This entails a complete separation between a first symbolic phase, and a second numerical phase.

L'ontologia temporale è la riflessione sullo statuto ontologico delle entità meramente passate o future. In questo contributo intendo chiarire il significato di questa questione, presentare le principali opzioni teoriche che si delineano rispetto ad essa e, concentrandomi sulle due principali teorie contendenti, B-eternismo e presentismo, illustrare gli argomenti più rilevanti formulati a favore dell'una e dell'altra.

The aim is to examine the performative acts and gender constitution in the context of the Second British Invasion. Despite the pervasive character of patriarchy and the prevalence of sexual difference as an operative cultural distinction, gender was not passively scripted on the bodies of many British singers. The subversive performances did not exclude suffering and marginalization but simultaneously undermined compulsory coherence.

This paper is about the role of self-knowledge in the cognitive life of a virtuous knower. The main idea is that it is hard to know ourselves because introspection is an unreliable epistemic source, and reason can be a source of insidious forms of self-deception. Nevertheless, our epistemic situation is such that an epistemically responsible agent must be constantly looking for a better understanding of her own character traits and beliefs, under the risk of jeopardizing her own status as a (...) knower, ruining her own intellectual life. (shrink)

Nos anos 1970s, Hilary Putnam defendeu a tese que designadores de espécies naturais, como “água”, “tigre” e “ouro”, são termos indexicais que mudam de significado a cada contexto. No entanto, Tyler Burge rejeitou essa tese, e Putnam veio a adotar a posição de Burge. A rejeição de Burge está apoiada na distinção entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. Nesse artigo veremos os pontos de contato entre as posições de Putnam e Burge, a posição de Putnam nos anos 1970s, (...) os principais argumentos de Burge contra a tese da indexicalidade dos designadores de espécies naturais e a diferença entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. (shrink)

Minha proposta, nesta introdução a “Autoconhecimento e os limites da autenticidade”, texto de Sven Bernecker traduzido e publicado neste número de Sképsis, é dar razões para que defensores do anti-individualismo que sejam partidários da estratégia do autoconhecimento básico, no que diz respeito ao debate sobre a compatibilidade entre anti-individualismo e conhecimento de si, mudem de posição, e passem a defender anti-individualismo com teoria da autenticidade.

In this essay, I reflect on the implications of intellectual virtues in scientific endeavor. To this end, I first offer a depiction of scientific endeavor by resorting to the notion of academic attitude, which involves aspects concerning the generation and possession of knowledge. Although there are differences between these activities, they have in common the engagement of diverse intellectual agents (scientists). In this sense, I analyze how intellectual virtues are linked to 1) scientific research tasks, such as theory appraisal, and (...) 2) those tasks of vigilance and intervention in the uses of scientific knowledge. I conclude that intellectual virtues play a leading role in achieving higher quality scientific research and adequate foresight on the uses and impacts of scientific findings. In this order of ideas, I propose an agenda for further inquiries on these matters, highlighting the relevance of reflecting and empirically researching the relationship between intellectual virtues and science, as well as cultivating intellectual virtues in various stages of scientific training. (shrink)

In recent decades, investigation of brain injuries associated with amnesia allowed progress in the philosophy and science of memory, but it also paved the way for the hubris of assuming that memory is an exclusively neural phenomenon. Nonetheless, there are methodological and conceptual reasons preventing a reduction of the ecological and contextual phenomenon of memory to a neural phenomenon, since memory is the observed action of an individual before being the simple output of a brain (or, at least, so we (...) will argue), and there is no good reason to suppose that it is necessary to postulate a more basic reality to memory lying behind the mere individual actions. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to engage with C. Thi Nguyen’s characterization of the echo chamber and to propose two things. First, I argue that a proper reading of his concept of echo chamber should make use of the notion of ignorance in the form of a structural epistemic insensitivity. My main contention is that ignorance as a substantive structural practice accounts for the epistemically deleterious effects of echo chambers. Second, I propose that from the talk of ignorance we (...) should be able to see echo chambers in terms of their more harmful impacts in our daily lives. To do that, I argue that we should think of echo chambers as tools to promote hermeneutical domination. If my representation of Nguyen’s concept is accurate, I believe we can see some important theoretical consequences stemming from the way Nguyen understands it. (shrink)

Successful biomedical data mining and information extraction require a complete picture of biological phenomena such as genes, biological processes, and diseases; as these exist on different levels of granularity. To realize this goal, several freely available heterogeneous databases as well as proprietary structured datasets have to be integrated into a single global customizable scheme. We will present a tool to integrate different biological data sources by mapping them to a proprietary biomedical ontology that has been developed for the purposes of (...) making computers understand medical natural language. (shrink)