This book talks about the city's reception of philosophy. The purpose of this chapter is to show that philosophy is essential for the maintenance of human security in our cities. The importance of this apology for philosophy is precisely to undo a common but erroneous conception of the nature and disadvantages of this discipline and to politically base its existence. To do this, we will present a characterization of philosophy and some of the most important criticisms of its development within (...) the city, and show that they are not sustainable. Subsequently, we will approach the concept of human security, constructed by Amartya Sen and Obuchi Keizo, and indicate how philosophy is fundamental to its preservation. /// Este livro fala sobre a recepção da filosofia pela cidade. O objetivo deste capítulo é mostrar que a filosofia é essencial para a manutenção da segurança humana de nossas cidades. A importância dessa apologia da filosofia é justamente desfazer uma concepção comum, porém errônea, da natureza e das desvantagens dessa disciplina e fundamentar politicamente sua existência. Para fazermos isso, apresentaremos uma caracterização de filosofia e algumas das mais importantes críticas ao seu desenvolvimento no seio da cidade, e mostraremos que elas não se sustentam. Posteriormente, abordaremos o conceito de segurança humana, construído por Amartya Sen e Obuchi Keizo, e indicaremos como a filosofia é fundamental para a sua preservação. (shrink)

This book deals with an internal theme of metaphysics, which is the metaphysics of the laws of nature. The author presents traditional contemporary theories, as well as his own original theory, and evaluates each one at a time. He also addresses the problem of the modality of the laws of nature and makes some criticism of the standard view of necessity as truth in all possible worlds, and shows an application of his discussion to the metaphysics of physics. / Este (...) livro trata de um tema interno à metafísica, que é a metafísica das leis da natureza. O autor apresenta as teorias tradicionais contemporâneas, tal como também a sua própria teoria original, e avalia cada uma delas por vez. Ele também aborda o problema da modalidade das leis da natureza e apresenta uma certa crítica à visão padrão da necessidade como verdade em todos os mundos possíveis, e mostra uma aplicação da sua discussão à metafísica da Física. (shrink)

O objetivo deste livro é propor uma reflexão sobre o ideário de centro, se perguntando se ele seria possível e como. Preferi chamar de “Uma Ideologia de Centro” em vez de “Ideário”, pois o termo “Ideologia” é instigante para um título. Entretanto tenho a noção de que essa palavra é bastante carregada de significados teóricos. No modelo marxista, grosso modo, a ideologia é um conjunto de crenças, construído pela parcela dominante da sociedade, para naturalizar a dominação. Não é nesse sentido (...) que utilizo o termo “ideologia”. Gostaria de um significado mais neutro para ele, tal como um conjunto de crenças, valores e/ou ações que respeita um conjunto de princípios. Nesse sentido, podemos pensar em uma ideologia para a direita política, para a esquerda política e para o centro político. Normalmente dividimos o espectro político de acordo com esses princípios; entretanto outras divisões são possíveis, ou ainda pode ser o caso que nenhuma divisão seja realmente objetiva. Como devemos, então, pensar essa divisão? Quais princípios subjazem as ações de diferentes atores políticos? Numa época de polarização política entre esquerda e direita, faz sentido refletirmos sobre posições mais moderadas? Qual conjunto de crenças, valores e ações poderia constituir moderação no cenário atual? Nosso livro tenta trazer uma reflexão sobre o ideário de centro, apresentando pensadores que refletem sobre a possibilidade de estabelecermos um centro, sobre a relação entre a ciência e o centro, sobre reformas centristas, entre outras coisas. Nossa intenção é que este livro promova uma reflexão inicial estimulante, e não a palavra final sobre as ideias apresentadas. Nesse sentido, este livro é ensaístico e tenta produzir algo original, ainda que incompleto. Nosso livro não têm uma unidade de visão; e acreditamos que isso é um mérito, pois não tenta estabelecer, em definitivo, se há e o que é o centro, mas nos leva a pensar sobre o conceito. A reflexão filosófica tem a característica de nos aprofundar nas questões investigadas. Podemos não chegar numa resposta final, mas nosso conhecimento sobre o problema e sobre as respostas para ele aprimoram nossa capacidade reflexiva. Pode-se acabar não concordando com nada do que aqui foi escrito. Maravilha! Se esse é o caso, o mais importante é saber por que não concordamos e construirmos nossa própria crítica argumentativa. Mas não paremos na crítica; construamos também uma teoria positiva, uma visão de mundo. É a partir do processo de criação, crítica, destruição e reconstrução, que tornamos mais fortes as nossas visões de mundo. Parafraseando a maior celebridade filosófica de todos os tempos, Sócrates: a vida só vale realmente a pena, se refletida. (shrink)

My main purpose in this article is to present an argument for the idea that necessity qua truth in all possible worlds, without other qualifications, leads us to contradiction. If we do not want to accept the contradiction, we will face a dilemma: or accepting that everything we take as contingent is in fact necessary, or accepting that we cannot translate some sentences – at least the indexed to worlds sentences – to the possible worlds vocabulary. We have an intuition (...) – and we develop an argument for it – that if “P”, evaluated in w*, is a contingent truth, so it cannot be the case that “P in w*” is a necessary truth. Generally, the argument tries to show that “P”, evaluated in w*, and “P in w*” are made true by the same contingent fact. If we suppose that “P in w*” is necessary, we would have to suppose that the fact that makes it true is also necessary, which would be contradictory with the fact that makes “P” true in w*, if we accept that what makes “P” in w* and “P in w*” true is the same fact. I attain such an aim by presenting an argument that is divided in two parts, one to imply the contradiction and the other to show that there is no relevant difference between the indicated sentences, by showing how the dilemma arises, and by answering some possible objections. This is an important objective because the possible worlds vocabulary is the default vocabulary to treat the modalities of necessity and possibility. And if it is flawed, it is important that we identify the flaw and fix it – which is exactly what we intend to do at the end of this article, by suggesting some qualification at the necessity notion, that the necessity is the native truth in all possible worlds. And this would save the possible worlds vocabulary from the presented objection. (shrink)

With this book we want to illustrate the way we philosophers think that public argument and debate should be. Our goal is not to present a collection of academic texts. Although most of us are part of the academy, we want to present to the lay public shorter, more essay-like texts, originally published on an Internet page called Refutations. The page is not, of course, an academic journal; it is a digital magazine with opinion texts that share simplicity, rigor and (...) total accessibility to anyone not initiated to the philosophers' way of thinking. And although the magazine's columnists are friends, they actively disagree on the most diverse topics, such as politics, economics, ethics and art. The reader, therefore, has before him a book with the most varied opinions on some of the main contemporary themes. Naturally, we do not expect to have the last word on any matter. Our intention is much more modest, but also very important: to show that it is possible, even without putting an end to the debates, to think in a creative, clear and civilized way. / Com este livro queremos ilustrar a maneira como nós, filósofos, pensamos que a argumentação e o debate públicos devem ser. Nosso objetivo não é apresentar uma coletânea de textos acadêmicos. Embora a maioria de nós seja parte da academia, queremos apresentar ao público leigo textos mais curtos e ensaísticos, originalmente publicados em uma página na Internet chamada Refutações. A página não é, naturalmente, um periódico acadêmico; trata-se de uma revista digital com textos de opinião que compartilham a simplicidade, o rigor e a total acessibilidade a qualquer não iniciado ao modo de pensar dos filósofos. E, embora os colunistas da revista sejam amigos, eles discordam ativamente a respeito dos mais diversos temas, como política, economia, ética e arte. O leitor, portanto, tem diante de si um livro com as mais variadas opiniões a respeito de alguns dos principais temas contemporâneos. Naturalmente, não esperamos dar a última palavra a respeito de qualquer assunto. Nossa pretensão é bem mais modesta, mas também muito importante: mostrar que é possível, mesmo sem colocar pontos finais aos debates, pensar de forma criativa, clara e civilizada. (shrink)

When we ask ourselves about the meaning of life, two analyses are possible in principle: 1. that we are asking something about the purpose or the reason of being of life or of a life, or 2. that we are asking something the value of life or of a life. At the present article, I do not approach 1 neither the life as a whole, but I take the individual lives in the context of 2. I briefly explain what would (...) be to someone to have an objectivist conception of the meaning of life and what would be to someone to have a subjectivist one; and, then, I try to show how we can think in formulas that can capture the intuitions of those conceptions, without acquiring commitment with none of them. My way is to show that both objectivist and subjectivist conceptions think the meaning of life as related to projects or realizations that fulfill principles of value (the value can be objective or subjective according to the adopted conception), and ten I try to indicate that the projects or realizations from a person’s life come together through a simple sum to make the meaning of life of such a person’s life. The way I suggested for us to find the value of one of those realizations does not seem to present none theoretical problem. But the simple sum of realizations (and/or projects) to represent the value of the meaning of a person’s life simply did not work. That’s because it seems to lack some kind of index that is able to formalize the relations between realizations. Thus, although we couldn’t properly formalize the relation between the realizations that achieve the meaning of someone’s life at a certain moment, we get a good intuitive formalization of the value of a realization and we hope to have started an interesting investigation for future logicians, metaphysicians, mathematicians and theorists of value. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é ser uma introdução aos diversos tipos de possibilidades e mostrar o caminho que a discussão sobre a existência de possibilidades não-atuais deve seguir a partir da aceitação do determinismo. E essa discussão é relevante porque sua resposta tem bastante infl uência em nossos pensamentos e lógicas sobre as modalidades da necessidade e da possibilidade. Cumprimos tal objetivo através de um diálogo a respeito das possibilidades. Este formato de texto tem a vantagem de ser mais pedagógico (...) do que os ensaios em terceira pessoa, pois insere o problema fi losófi co das possibilidades em uma situação real particular sem que a generalidade do assunto e dos argumentos seja perdida. (shrink)

In this article, I intend to show what the metaphysical possibility is, distinguishing it from the logical and the physical possibilities, and then to indicate that at least there is two kinds of metaphysical possibilities, i.e., the potentialities of the things and the possibilities of the events to occur. This is an important goal because it makes clearer the discussion about possibilities. To show what the metaphysical possibility is, I try to show that we need an absolute modality for the (...) debate about what is possible do not be trivial. And to indicate that there are two kinds of metaphysical possibilities, I show that we can talk independently about these two notions of possibility, and that the debate between determinism and indeterminism presupposes such distinction. The conclusion we achieve is that there really are these two kinds of metaphysical possibilities, and that if we don’t want to be ambiguous, we have good reasons to use such distinction in our theories about the possibilities. (shrink)

These days philosophy teaching in universities follows two main views: the continental philosophy and the analytic philosophy. Each one of those traditions has very different philosophical and pedagogical practices. My objectives in this article are: 1. to show the distinctions between the practices that continental and analytical philosophies cultivated at the universities; 2. to indicate that there is a confusion at the characterization of what is analytic philosophy, and that the critics driven to it are in fact driven to logical (...) positivism; 3. to show that the analytic practices are the ones we consider as genuinely philosophical. / Atualmente o ensino de Filosofia nas universidades tem seguido duas visões principais: a filosofia continental e a filosofia analítica. Cada uma dessas duas tradições diferem bastante em suas práticas filosófica e pedagógica. Meus objetivos neste artigo são: 1. mostrar as distinções entre as práticas cultivadas dentro das universidades pela filosofia continental e pela filosofia analítica; 2. indicar que há uma confusão na caracterização do que é filosofia analítica e que as críticas a ela dirigidas na verdade apontam para o positivismo lógico; 3. mostrar que as práticas analíticas são aquelas que consideramos como genuinamente filosóficas. (shrink)

It was argued by Célia Teixeira (2003) that the actualized descriptivist theory of names have the problem of generating undesired epistemic necessities. In this paper I want to argue for a descriptivis theory that does not suffer from such problem. For this I will explain Teixeira's objections and later present my own conception of an actualized descriptivist theory of names; it is, protected against the problem of undesired necessities.

We intend at this article to show some reasons to think the laws of nature as metaphysically necessary: to distinguish the metaphysical modality from the epistemical modality, and to have an absolute modality to face the relative physical and logical modalities. Lately, we indicate what does it mean to talk about metaphysically necessary laws, distinguishing two kinds of metaphysical modalities, and we account for the question about if the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. The conclusion we get is that (...) the laws, whichever they are, are metaphysically necessary. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to expose some of Nathan Salmon's arguments, which aim to show that the conceptual theories of the informational value of singular terms cannot be the case, and to present some objections to these arguments, objections which seek to restore the capacity of the conceptual theories to secure the referent, and to have a concept as the informational value of a singular term. I fulfill such goal by making an initial introduction, where I briefly explain Frege's (...) Puzzle, and then I show Salmon's presentation of Frege's Puzzle along with his arguments against the conceptual theories, and I intermittently present my objections to Salmon's arguments. Finally, I conclude that if the objections are satisfactory, they restore the capacity of conceptual theories that would have been removed by the arguments advanced by Salmon. (shrink)

This article intends to present the thought of Wittgenstein – mainly from his notes at Philosophical Investigations (PI), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (RPP), and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (LW) – and of his commentators about important thesis on memory. This one is a major epistemic problem, since our knowledge of the past facts comes from it. Provided that it sometimes fails, is important to know of what we are talking about when we use the term (...) “memory” and to know how can we trust it. (shrink)

The goal of this thesis to defend the philosophical view of the new ante rem substantivism against its supposed alternatives. To achieve such goal, we will present four views about the nature of laws, two kinds of realism and two kinds of anti-realism, and evaluate them critically. The disadvantages from those theories are going to be presented for us to show that they are insufficient to provide a metaphysics that is able to explain the world's counterfactuality, universality, and regularity, and (...) that just one form of realism, the new ante rem substantivism, can. This goal is important because the concept of laws of nature is widely used in many areas of science and philosophy, and because according to the view we accept, the laws may fulfill some theoretical roles, and not others. We intent to show that the new ante rem substantivism's laws are able to fulfill the roles that scientists would hope the natural laws to fulfill. (shrink)

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to present four theories of the nature of natural laws, (2) to show that only one of them is capable of adequately answering to Tooley's Cases, and (3) indicate why these cases are relevant for our ontology. These purposes are important since the concept of "natural law" is used in many (if not all) realms of natural science and in many branches of philosophy; if Tooley's cases are possible, they represent situations that must (...) be adequately described. If there is only one theory that can adequately describe such cases, there are strong reasons to prefer this theory over the other ones. (shrink)

My aim here is to answer the question about why is there something rather than nothing by arguing for the existence of some necessary beings (that, as such, couldn’t not exist) – the space, the time, and the natural basic laws – and by showing that the existence of nothingness is logically impossible. I also try to account for the fact that contingent beings arise from necessary beings by distinguishing between necessary existence and necessary arising, as to answer the question (...) about why is there anything contingent at all and to propose a solution to the Dilemma of Contingency. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to present the Dilemma of Continuity of Matter and a possible solution to it. This dilemma consists in choosing between two misfortunes in explaining the continuity of matter: or to say that material objects are infinitely divisible and not explain what constitutes the continuity of some kind of object, or to say that there is a certain kind of indivisible object and not explain what constitutes the continuity of such an object. The solution we provide (...) is precisely the thesis that material objects consists of points, a thesis we try to make clearer, although we have not developed it much. (shrink)

Antes de começarmos a falar sobre as leis da natureza, creio que vale a pena explicar algumas coisas sobre o título dessa conferência. Nele, digo que farei uma introdução à metafísica das leis da natureza. Uma introdução, em filosofia, consiste da apresentação de um problema filosófico, indicando as razões pelas quais tal problema é um problema, e das principais posições que tentam resolvê-lo, com suas respectivas dificuldades mais aparentes. Uma introdução não deve dar respostas definitivas sobre qual posição devemos aceitar, (...) nem argumentar decisivamente contra ou a favor de uma posição qualquer frente a outras; mas deve fornecer um quadro geral, para que os filósofos que não conhecem o tema possam começar a sua própria investigação. Dessa forma, o que pretendemos fazer aqui é uma introdução. (shrink)

My main aim at this paper is to present Lewis Carrol’s Paradox on the justification of logical principles inasmuch as some attempts of solving it. This is important because if there are basic logical principles, it also seems necessary to exist some justification for them. By considering some observations from Ryle, Devitt and Kripke about the theme, we intend to briefly display their theories and their core critics among themselves and, mainly, the critics against adoption theory.

If we want to say what “fundamentality” means, we have to start by approaching what we generally see at the empty place of the predicate “____ is fundamental”. We generally talk about fundamental entities and fundamental theories. At this article, I tried to make a metaphysical approach of what is for something to be fundamental, and I also tried to talk a little bit of fundamental incomplete and complete theories. To do that, I start stating the notion of “entity” and (...) looking at the difference at perceived entities. The difference led us to talk about the entities’ structures and their powers, and about the supervenience between these last two. The supervenience talk made us to see the fight between emergentism and reductionism as the difference between the irreducibility of laws and the reducibility of powers and structures to lower-order domains. Then, we conclude that “fundamentality” is a mereological relation – a relation that a whole structure has to a certain combination of its structural parts or that a power has to a certain combination of its constituent powers – of to be identical and to exist in virtue of them. (shrink)

It is common, even among the laity, the doubt about the reality of time. We think it is possible that time is an illusion and that the perception of his passage is just awareness of something other than time. There are a number of arguments made by philosophers, both to defend and to attack the intuition that time is real. One of them, and perhaps the best known, is the argument of McTaggart, which tries to establish some condition for the (...) existence of time and that time, thought through that condition and applied to reality, leads to a contradiction, which makes him conclude that time can not exist, and therefore does not exist. What I intend in this article is to present the argument of McTaggart along with some original and non-original objections, and try to show that if we accept the Prior’s approach of the flow of time, the cogency of the argument of McTaggart is lost. (shrink)

In “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier (1963) attacked the thesis ‘S knows that P iff P is true, S believes that P, and S is justified in believing that P’. His intention was to sustain that someone can have a justified true belief without knowing that belief. He made that by creating two counter-examples to that thesis. In this article, I try to show that Gettier’s arguments are based in a weak account of justification, and that such a (...) weak view cannot talk about someone knowing something. I begin by presenting his counter-examples, and then I show they do not work. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to argue against Alexander Bird‟s thesis (2001) that the law salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary. I briefly indicate Bird‟s argument for the necessity of such law, and then I provide a counter-argument to his thesis. In a general way, Bird wants to show that the existence of certain substances depends on the truth of certain laws, and that because of this the existence of such substances implies the existence of such laws. That would (...) make the laws existing at least while the substance it rules exists; what, for Bird, makes such laws metaphysically necessary. My counter-argument to Bird is that such conception apprehends just what we call “weak necessity”, and not the strong necessity we would like a metaphysically necessary law to have. (shrink)

A primeira tese de Sober é que não podemos agir livremente, a não ser que o Argumento da Causalidade ou o Argumento da Inevitabilidade tenham alguma falha. O Argumento da Causalidade é o seguinte: nossos estados mentais causam movimentos corporais; mas nossos estados mentais são causados por fatores do mundo físico. Nossa personalidade pode ser reconduzida à nossa experiência e à nossa genética. E tanto a experiência quanto a genética foram causados por itens do mundo físico. Assim, o meio ambiente (...) e os genes são os causadores de nossas crenças e desejos. E estes, por sua vez, causam o nosso comportamento. Como, em última instância, não escolhemos nem os nossos genes e nem o meio ambiente no qual adquirimos as nossas experiências, também não escolhemos o nosso comportamento: ele é causado por fatores além do nosso controle; isso nos faz não ser livres. E o Argumento da Inevitabilidade é exposto por Sober assim: se uma ação foi praticada livremente, então deve ter sido possível ao agente agir de outra forma. Mas, dado que as causas de nossas ações são as nossas crenças e desejos, não poderíamos ter agido diferentemente de como elas nos determinam a agir. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to indicate the purpose of education and how it implies changes in the curricula of basic education and in the methods of teaching, guidance and evaluation. We start with the concepts of capacities and overlapping consensus, created respectively by Amartya Sen and John Rawls, and find something that we can call a good life and what it means to improve life. So, we established that education should have as its primary function to enable the (...) subject to lead a good life in harmony with the social environment. To decide whether the basic educational curriculum fulfills this function, we started with an analysis of school subjects. We realized that both the curriculum and the teaching methods were important for the fulfillment of the function of education, and that Brazilian basic education fails to fulfill these two points satisfactorily, as the current curriculum does not fully enable the individual to lead a good life and teaching methods are not guided and evaluated pedagogically by professionals. Anyway, the conclusion we reached was that we need certain changes in the curriculum and teaching methods. / O objetivo deste artigo é indicar qual a finalidade da educação e como isso implica modificações nos currículos da educação básica e nos métodos de orientação e avaliação de ensino. Partimos dos conceitos de capacidades e consenso sobreposto, criados respectivamente por Amartya Sen e John Rawls, e encontramos algo que podemos chamar de vida boa e o que significa melhoria de vida. Então, estabelecemos que a educação deve ter como função primordial capacitar o sujeito a levar uma vida boa em harmonia com o meio social. Para decidirmos se o currículo educacional básico cumpre essa função, partimos para uma análise das disciplinas escolares. Percebemos que tanto o currículo, quanto os métodos de ensino eram importantes para a realização da função da educação, e que a educação básica brasileira não consegue cumprir esses dois pontos satisfatoriamente, pois o currículo atual não capacita plenamente o indivíduo a levar uma vida boa e os métodos de ensino não são orientados e avaliados pedagogicamente por profissionais. Enfim, a conclusão que chegamos foi a de que precisamos de certas mudanças no currículo e nos métodos de ensino. (shrink)

Neste capítulo, Loux apresenta alguns problemas com relação às modalidades e algumas das relações entre elas e o vocabulário dos mundos possíveis, expondo as duas principais posições ontológicas com relação a tais mundos e às modalidades e com relação à natureza das modalidades, a saber, o possibilismo e o actualismo, defendidos respectivamente por Lewis e Plantinga. Essas são teorias inconsistentes entre si, que intentam nos dizer se os mundos possíveis são concretos ou abstratos e se existe algo além do que (...) é actual. (shrink)

The main intent of this thesis is to defend that the laws of nature are better thought as transcendent universals, such as platonic governism suggests, and that they are metaphysically necessary in a strong way, such as the heterodox version of such platonism defends. With this intention, we sustain that physical symmetries are essential consequences of the laws of nature – what solves the challenge of symmetries – thus being metaphysically necessary, without being governist's necessitation laws. First, we will show (...) what laws of nature are and the reasons to reject other metaphysical theories and to accept platonic governism. Soon after, we will present the challenge of symmetries and the reasons to prefer the platonic governist answer over dispositionalist, regularist, aristotelic (governism), counterfatualist and primitivist ones. At last, we will define what is the metaphysical necessity, argue for the strong metaphysical necessity of laws and their consequences, and show why the reasons for the contingency or weak necessity of laws are bad theoretical paths. (shrink)

O problema no qual se inserem nominalismo e realismo, diz-nos MacBride, é o de como explicar as características repetidas das coisas. Enquanto o realista nos diz que as características repetidas se explicam por serem universais, ou seja, por serem as naturezas comuns que várias coisas compartilham, o nominalista nos diz que é possível explicar essas características repetidas com apenas particulares concretos (sem universais).

Este livro marca o início da Série Investigação Filosófica. Uma série de livros de traduções de textos de plataformas internacionalmente reconhecidas, que possa servir tanto como material didático para os professores das diferentes subáreas e níveis da Filosofia quanto como material de estudo para o desenvolvimento pesquisas relevantes na área. Nós, professores, sabemos o quão difícil é encontrar bons materiais em português para indicarmos. E há uma certa deficiência na graduação brasileira de filosofia, principalmente em localizações menos favorecidas, com relação (...) ao conhecimento de outras línguas, como o inglês e o francês. Tentamos, então, suprir essa deficiência, ao introduzirmos traduções de textos importantes ao público de língua portuguesa, sem nenhuma finalidade comercial e meramente pela glória da filosofia. O presente volume é constituído de três traduções de verbetes importantes sobre lógica, da Enciclopédia de Filosofia da Stanford: (1) A Lógica de Aristóteles, (2) Lógica Clássica, (3) Lógica Modal. (shrink)

Resenha de "Sobre o sentido e a referência" / Review of "On sense and reference".

A review of the concept of nature by Plotinus thinking from the necessity of a new philosophy of nature to understand the significant density of matter and physis.

It is often claimed that fear has an important epistemological function in making us aware of danger. Reactive theories challenge this view. According to them, fear is a response to real or apparent danger. In other words, real or apparent danger is the reason for which we experience fear. Thus, fear depends on awareness of danger instead of making us aware of danger. Proponents of the reactive theory have appealed to phenomenological and, most prominently, linguistic observations to support their views. (...) In particular, they argue that how we talk about the objects of fear supports the view that fear is a response (rather than a perception), and that how we talk about reasons for fear supports the view that reasons for fear are necessarily evaluative (about danger). Building on systematic linguistic observations in the form of corpus analyses and survey data, we argue that how we talk about the objects of fear and how we talk about reasons for fear do not support the reactive theory. Indeed, these linguistic considerations undermine the reactive theory. Most importantly, they suggest that there are non-evaluative reasons for fear. This is good news for rival theories, like perceptual theories, which hold that emotions have epistemic value in contributing to knowledge of evaluative properties such as danger. (shrink)

This study divides some of the philosophical anthropologies developed after the Holocaust into three frameworks. To do this the author shows how the present modern crisis is an anthropological one and unites the sum of the different crisis dimensions mankind is currently facing. The article approaches the postmodern journey from its two routes—the relativistic and the metaphysical. The second is presented as “status quo-oriented” or as a form of modernized democracy. Because of its popularity, the neologism “transhumanism” is here examined (...) togeth er with the hypothetical coming of a post-human era. This in turn is viewed as a revival of the illustrated myth of the happy world. The author first offers a “status quo” criticism “transhumanism” from the metaphysical anthropology viewpoint and then proposes an approach to a “third way, that is, the convergence of other anthropologies revolving around a person’s dignity born of his or her metaphysical roots together with a recovery of the value of human carnality. The article concludes by putting the different philosophers’ viewpoints face-to-face with the Person of Jesus Christ. (shrink)

La literatura sobre razonamiento probatorio busca incidir en la determinación de los hechos en los procesos judiciales. Para alcanzar dicho propósito, no basta con dirigir la mirada hacia disciplinas extrajurídicas exitosas e integrar lo que de ellas pueda extraerse a las teorías jurídicas de la prueba y a la práctica judicial. Es necesario, además, considerar el tipo de hechos a probar, los roles de las reglas jurídicas aplicables, y asumir que litigantes y jueces, actuando en un contexto institucional, podrán ser (...) más o menos agudos en la discusión fáctica, entre otras cosas. Minimizar la influencia de tales factores expone a los estudios probatorios a tener un bajo rendimiento práctico. Algo de esto ha ocurrido con la llamada concepción racionalista de la prueba. Su innegable aporte al debate académico en español no ha ido a la par de su impacto judicial. Para explicar esta brecha entre teoría y práctica, identificamos tres creencias-obstáculo que afectan a su discurso sobre la prueba y que deben ser sorteadas si lo que se busca es influir en la forma en que se juzgan los hechos en un sistema judicial realmente existente. (shrink)

John N. Williams argued that Peter Klein's defeasibility theory of knowledge excludes the possibility of one knowing that one has (first-order) a posteriori knowledge. He does that by way of adding a new twist to an objection Klein himself answered more than forty years ago. In this paper I argue that Williams' objection misses its target because of this new twist.

I argue that fitting resentment tracks unacceptable ‘ecological’ imbalances in relative social strength between victims and perpetrators that arise from violations of legitimate moral expectations. It does not respond purely, or even primarily, to offenders’ attitudes, and its proper targets need not be fully developed moral agents. It characteristically involves a wish for the restoration of social equilibrium rather than a demand for moral recognition or good will. To illuminate these contentions, I focus on cases that I believe demonstrate a (...) corollary thesis, namely, that strength, broadly construed, is a necessary condition of resentment-worthiness. I argue that weakness can make resentment unfitting in two ways. First, weakness may prevent a wrongdoer from shifting the balance of social power. Second, a weak wrongdoer may do social damage but be so lowly that resentment, which would represent him as excessively strong, would be inapt. Finally, I consider how accepting the ecological view might affect our theorizing about moral responsibility and the ethics of blame. (shrink)

In emotion research, both conceptual analyses and empirical studies commonly rely on emotion reports. But what do people mean when they say that they are angry, afraid, joyful, etc.? Building on extant theories of emotion, this paper presents four new studies (including a pre-registered replication) measuring the weight of cognitive evaluations, bodily changes, and action tendencies in people’s use of emotion concepts. The results of these studies suggest that the presence or absence of cognitive evaluations has the largest impact on (...) people’s emotion attributions, and that bodily changes and action tendencies are considered to depend on cognitive evaluations. Implications for theories of emotion (concepts) and the interpretation of emotion reports are discussed. (shrink)

En este ensayo argumento que, en la ontología social de John Searle, existe un círculo virtuoso entre la cooperación, las instituciones y los poderes deónticos. Son categorías de la realidad social que se retroalimentan y fortalecen mutuamente. La primera sección es introductoria a los conceptos y problemas aquí tratados, mientras que la segunda versa sobre el abecé de la ontología social. En la tercera sección abordo cómo las instituciones están ligadas a prácticas sociales; es decir, las primeras de alguna manera (...) sintetizan la existencia de las segundas. Sin instituciones no podría haber ciertas prácticas, y estas necesariamente llevan a la creación de instituciones. Finalmente, en la última sección argumento acerca de la existencia de un círculo virtuoso entre la cooperación (y la confianza), las instituciones y los poderes deónticos en la realidad social. Es decir, sostengo que existe un fenómeno de retroalimentación y de fortalecimiento mutuo, en tanto la existencia de una categoría fortalece la existencia de las demás categorías. (shrink)

A critical and reflexive approach to God's question from diverse lines of the Postmodernity; showing roots, shadows and lights of some of the nowadays philosophies.

In a recent paper in this journal, David Chalmers introduced the meta-problem of consciousness as “the problem of explaining why we think consciousness poses a hard problem” (Chalmers, 2018, p. 6). A solution to the meta-problem could shed light on the hard problem of consciousness. In particular, it would be relevant to elucidate whether people’s problem intuitions (i.e. intuitions holding that conscious experience cannot be reduced to physical processes) are driven by factors related to the nature of consciousness, or rather (...) by factors that are independent of consciousness. Whether people hold problem intuitions, and what factors drive those intuitions, are largely empirical questions. However, there is a lack of empirical research on these issues to date. The results of four studies will show that (1) problem intuitions are not widespread, and (2) when they arise, they do so because of factors that are unrelated to the nature of consciousness. This suggests that consciousness is, after all, not so problematic. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that emotion concepts are purely descriptive. However, recent investigations suggest that the concept of happiness includes information about the morality of the agent's life. In this study, we argue that normative influences on emotion concepts are not restricted to happiness and are not about moral norms. In a series of studies, we show that emotion attribution is influenced by whether the agent's psychological and bodily states fit the situation in which they are experienced. People consider that (...) emotions are not just about feeling in certain ways, but also about feeling the right way. (shrink)

Can we experience emotion without the feeling of accelerated heartbeats, perspiration, or other changes in the body? In his paper “What is an emotion”, William James famously claimed that “if we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind” (1884, p. 193). Thus, bodily changes are essential to emotion. This is known as the Subtraction Argument. The Subtraction Argument is still (...) used to support Embodied theories of emotion. Proponents of Disembodied theories, however, have different intuitions regarding the role of bodily changes in the experience of emotion. In order to advance this debate, I conducted a series of studies testing people’s intuitions regarding the Subtraction Argument. Results show that, against James’ claims, most people consider that their hypothetical (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) emotions persist in the absence of bodily feelings. Furthermore, Study 1 found that participants’ responses were not related to individual differences in reflection or interoceptive awareness. These results pose a problem for Embodied theories of emotion and challenge extant explanations for the persistence of emotional experience in cases of impaired interoception. (shrink)

Are feelings an essential part or aspect of emotion? Cases of unconscious emotion suggest that this is not the case. However, it has been claimed that unconscious emotions are better understood as either (a) emotions that are phenomenally conscious but not reflectively conscious, or (b) dispositions to have emotions rather than emotions proper. Here, I argue that these ways of accounting for unconscious emotions are inadequate, and propose a view of emotions as non-phenomenal attitudes that regard their contents as relevant (...) to one's motivations. (shrink)

Emergency situations require individuals to make important changes in their behavior. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, official recommendations to avoid the spread of the virus include costly behaviors such as self-quarantining or drastically diminishing social contacts. Compliance (or lack thereof) with these recommendations is a controversial and divisive topic, and lay hypotheses abound regarding what underlies this divide. This paper investigates which cognitive, moral, and emotional traits separate people who comply with official recommendations from those who don't. In (...) four studies (three pre-registered) on both U.S. and French samples, we found that individuals' self-reported compliance with official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic was partly driven by individual differences in moral values, disgust sensitivity, and psychological reactance. We discuss the limitations of our studies and suggest possible applications in the context of health communication. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of moral responsibility are in widespread agreement that we can only be blamed for actions that express, reflect, or disclose something about us or the quality of our wills. In this paper I reject that thesis and argue that self disclosure is not a necessary condition on moral responsibility and blameworthiness: reactive responses ranging from aretaic appraisals all the way to outbursts of anger and resentment can be morally justified even when the blamed agent’s action expresses or discloses (...) nothing significant about his or her “deep self,” judgments and cares, or the quality of his or her will. I argue that the self-disclosure requirement on responsibility overestimates the extent to which our blaming practices and responsibility judgments are responsive to agents as opposed to actions, and that this mistake has the potential to distort both our reactive responses and our understanding of blamed agents’ characters. (shrink)

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of (...) Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning. (shrink)

Jonathan Haidt’s _Moral Foundation Theory _has been criticized on many fronts, mainly on account of its lack of evidence concerning the genetic and neurological bases of the evolved moral intuitions that the theory posits. Despite the fact that Haidt’s theory is probably the most promising framework from which to integrate the different lines of interdisciplinary research that deal with the evolutionary foundations of moral psychology, _i) _it also shows a critical underspecification concerning the precise mental processes that instantiate the triggering (...) of our evolved moral intuitions, and that _ii) _that underspecification coexists with and overspecification of the structure of human nature when it comes to exploring alternatives to capitalist societies. (shrink)

Human emotional expressions can communicate the emotional state of the expresser, but they can also communicate appeals to perceivers. For example, sadness expressions such as crying request perceivers to aid and support, and anger expressions such as shouting urge perceivers to back off. Some contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) systems can mimic human emotional expressions in a (more or less) realistic way, and they are progressively being integrated into our daily lives. How should we respond to them? Do we have reasons (...) to reply to the appeals made by AI emotional expressions? In this paper, we examine the conditions under which AI emotional expressions could give us prudential or even moral reasons to change our behavior. We argue that these conditions do not depend on whether the emotional expression is genuine or not, but rather on the presence of features some of which can be implemented in emotive AI given our current level of technological development. We extract recommendations and warnings for the development of emotive AI. (shrink)

Within the framework of the epistemological debate on disagreement, this paper aims to examine the sceptical thesis that holds that, if it is impossible to rationally choose among two excluding positions, the only sensible or rational thing to do is to suspend judgement. The idea that ordinary life does not constitute the source of scepticism is presented, which rules out real disagreement between epistemic pairs as its foundation. Sceptical scenes differ ontologically from everyday scenes, without such ontological difference entailing an (...) epistemic difference, since epistemic practices do not vary from one sceptical scene to other types of scenes. (shrink)

Pese a su uso e importancia, no hay investigaciones semánticas sobre los pseudónimos. Aunque resulta claro que los nombres ficticios son importantes en la definición de la identidad de un artista, no ha habido mayor investigación sobre el rol que desempeñan. Aquí, justamente intento mostrar que son fundamentales en el arte, porque permiten crear la identidad de un personaje, pero ello ocurre principalmente en el mundo social. Dada la escasez de investigaciones sobre los pseudónimos y sobre su conexión con la (...) identidad, este artículo muestra: i) que no pueden ser designadores rígidos kripkeanos; ii) que la identidad que conllevan es puramente artística, y no metafísica. En la primera sección, apoyo parte de la propuesta de Kripke acerca de los designadores rígidos: los nombres propios, como tales designadores, deben analizarse a la luz de los mundos posibles; esto es, en términos de cómo podrían haber resultado las cosas de otra manera. En la segunda sección, examino los antecedentes y las consecuencias de que dichos nombres sean designadores rígidos. En la tercera, en cambio, argumento que los pseudónimos no pueden ser designadores rígidos como los nombres propios. Dicha conclusión es alcanzada a partir de la variación de un experimento mental kripkeano, uno que versa sobre Dios y el esfuerzo de Él para crear objetos. En la sección final muestro que los pseudónimos, en vez de designar rígidamente, crean personajes en el mundo social. Por ello la identidad que conllevan no es interna a los objetos; por el contrario, es un tipo de identidad que solo pertenece al mundo social. (shrink)