Philosophy of Action, Misc

I propose to present a relation between knowledge (Wissen) and human action (Handlung) from the perspective of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). For this, I will use mainly of the Phenomenology of Spirit (Phenomenologie des Geistes) - published in 1807. According the philosopher himself, this work is a science of the experience of consciousness – this was the first name chosen by Hegel for this work (Vaz, 2014, p. 11-12). Throughout the work, it we can see that (...) the philosopher does not make a separation between knowledge and action. That is, he does not regard them as two separate and distinct moments. Therefore, the comprehension of first we knowledge and that only after, we act, or that even the comprehension that we act for the, after that, we may know, are, according Hegel's philosophy, erroneous and insufficient as explanatory models of knowledge and of the human action. On the contrary, the philosopher seeks to unite the two aspects: knowledge and action. Conceiving them as distinct but inseparable. The subject who knowing is the same who is acting. Such a dichotomy between knowing and acting, as is commonly defined, maintains knowledge and characterize it with as passive, inert and static, in front of action, which is as defined as active, dynamic, and mobile. On the contrary, according to the Hegelian philosophy, knowledge itself is already an active, dynamic, and living process (Hegel, 2012, §378). The relation of knowledge between the subject and the object is not a ready, given and immediate relation. On the contrary, this relation presupposes a construction that the subject exercises when he is knowing. The same occur is when the subject is acting. Therefore, a human action is by no means something finished, readily established, and so it only as needs to be performed. On the contrary, an action same itself is a knowledge, that is happening and succeeding as the action unfolds. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel theory of what it is that makes vision a representational affair. Vision is a process of representation; a fact that does not depend on it being "contentfull" or "indirect". Even if it turns out that vision is direct and/or intrinsically "contentless", it is nevertheless defined by features that decisively make it count as a process or representation. The phenomenology of vision is key here: as we see, we are directly presented with aspects of the environment (...) that are at various distances away from us. Through the process of vision, aspects of the environment that would otherwise still be unavailable or “absent”, are made (quasi-)available, or (quasi-)present. This already by itself makes vision deserving of the name ‘representational’, even if those distant aspects of the world are presented to us directly and contentless. In part I, I provide a bit of an overview of the relevant theoretical landscape, and I give my own take on how we may frame and approach some of the issues with respect to mental representation. Then, in part II, I argue that the representational features of vision must primarily be sought at the level of conscious experience. In part III, I elaborate on the two most common theories that are associated with the view that vision is ‘representational’, and proceed to show that there is in fact a third, more direct, way in which vision can be considered as essentially a process of representation. Finally, in part IV, I show that the kind of interaction problems that arise with the more traditional notions of representation also arise with this newer, more direct, notion. (shrink)

It seems to be a humdrum fact of human agency that we act on intentions or decisions that we have made at an earlier time. At breakfast, you look at the Taco Hut menu online and decide that later today you’ll have one of their avocado burritos for lunch. You’re at your desk and you hear the church bells ring the noon hour. You get up, walk to Taco Hut, and order the burrito as planned. As mundane as this sort (...) of scenario might seem to be, philosophers have raised a problem in understanding it. If you are simply abiding by this morning’s decision, how are you acting autonomously? Your earlier self seems to be calling the shots; if you are just acting accordingly, without thinking through it or in some other way trying to ensure that the past decision conforms to your present standpoint, it is not clear how this amounts to an exercise of your present autonomous agency. It seems, rather, that your earlier self has succeeded in slaving you to her own purposes. She was the one who wanted (intended, judged it to be good, etc.) to have an avocado burrito. In simply following through, your current self seems to be just an automaton performing the commands left behind by your former self. Of course, you might not allow yourself to be shackled by your earlier self. You might refuse to follow anything but your own present judgments: you will only go to Taco Hut if this is what you judge you should do right now, and once at Taco Hut you will only eat the avocado burrito if that is what you want to eat once there. But if this is the way you generally operate, this seems to block your ability to make effective future-directed decisions. The puzzle, then, is one of explaining how the future self can do the bidding of her past self without losing her autonomy. We call this “the Problem of Diachronic Autonomy.” Philosophers raising this problem take it to show that there must be reasons or rational requirements to follow-through with our past decisions. According to these philosophers, we can only make sense of our diachronic autonomy if our past decisions put rational pressure on us to follow through. We argue that there is no Problem of Diachronic Autonomy. There is, in other words, no puzzling situation that needs explaining. Consequently, there is no need coming from this purported puzzle to think that our future-directed decisions generate reasons or rational requirements to follow through. The correct view of our diachronic autonomy is the “naïve” one: the “future self” can do the bidding of the “past self” without giving up its autonomy because, very simply, the past self is the same agent as the future self. I am acting autonomously when I get the avocado burrito, because I was the one who decided to get the burrito. I am acting on my own freely-formed decision. (shrink)

L’analisi classica sul Potere è sempre basata sulla definizione a posteriori del Potere. “La storia di tutta la società, svoltasi fin qua, è storia di lotta di classe” sono le affermazioni che rappresentano il Potere come un effetto di un predeterminato rapporto fra gruppi costituiti. Questi appunti invece vogliono partire dal Potere come un concetto di più alto livello nell’analisi sociologica. Il Marxismo analizza una istanza del Potere. Quello per il quale il capitale è predominante sul lavoro. Questa scelta di (...) campo che pone la relazione fra capitale e lavoro come determinata, è in realtà una relazione di Potere e come tale indeterminata a priori, ma solo osservabile. -/- Propongo una declinazione del Potere come una connotazione di unità culturali (concetto semiotico) descrivibili con il concetto di relazione, classe, profitto. (shrink)

The significance and use of absence of a thing is highlighted as its presence. The role of absence in various disciplines of mathematics, physics, semi-conductor electronics, computing and cognitive sciences for ease in conceptualizing is discussed. The use of null set, null vector and null matrix are also presented.

This paper brings together Thompson's naive action explanation with interventionist modeling of causal structure to show how they work together to produce causal models that go beyond current modeling capabilities, when applied to specifically selected systems. By deploying well-justified assumptions about rationalization, we can strengthen existing causal modeling techniques' inferential power in cases where we take ourselves to be modeling causal systems that also involve actions. The internal connection between means and end exhibited in naive action explanation has a modal (...) strength like that of distinctively mathematical explanation, rather than that of causal explanation. Because it is stronger than causation, it can be treated as if it were merely causal in a causal model without thereby overextending the justification it can provide for inferences. This chapter introduces and demonstrate the usage of the Rationalization condition in causal modeling, where it is apt for the system(s) being modeled, and to provide the basics for incorporating R variables into systems of variables and R arrows into DAGs. Use of the Rationalization condition supplements causal analysis with action analysis where it is apt. (shrink)

At the time of his death in May of 2012, Ralph Pred was working on a critical social theory inspired by process philosophy. In the book manuscript he left unfinished, Syntax and Solidarity, he develops a “radically empirical” sociology that enables him to identify and critically evaluate the different forms that social solidarity has taken in the history of civilization. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the importance of his unfinished project. The executors of Pred’s literary (...) estate would be happy to see his project, with due acknowledgment, publicized and continued. Keywords: Active Voice Bias, Concrescence, Middle Voice, Sociogeny, Solidarity, Substance. (shrink)

An important module in the Belief-Desire-Intention architecture for artificial agents (which builds on Michael Bratman's work in the philosophy of action) focuses on the task of intention reconsideration. The theoretical task is to formulate principles governing when an agent ought to undo a prior committed intention and reopen deliberation. Extant proposals for such a principle, if sufficiently detailed, are either too task-specific or too computationally demanding. I propose that an agent ought to reconsider an intention whenever some incompatible prospect is (...) sufficiently valuable along some dimension that can be assessed at zero or near-zero computational cost. (shrink)

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the experimental philosophy of action, focusing on the various different accounts of the Knobe Effect.

This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.

There is a wide range of things we do out of emotion. For example, we smile with pleasure, our voices drop when we are sad, we recoil in shock or jump for joy, we apologize to others out of remorse. It is uncontroversial that some of these behaviors are actions. Clearly, apologizing is an action if anything is. Things seem less clear in the case of other emotional behaviors. Intuitively, the drop in a sad person’s voice is something that happens (...) to her, rather than something she actively performs. Perhaps more interestingly, even jumping for joy can seem a problematic case: although its execution involves the active performance of certain movements, it has been argued to contrast, e.g., with an act of apology, in that it is not performed in order to achieve some end, such as repairing a relationship. This can make this behavior seem considerably different from paradigm actions. Our central concern in this paper is with which emotional behaviors should be classed as actions and why... (shrink)

In recent years, the number of studies examining mind wandering has increased considerably, and research on the topic has spread widely across various domains of psychological research. Although the term “mind wandering” has been used to refer to various cognitive states, researchers typically operationalize mind wandering in terms of “task-unrelated thought” (TUT). Research on TUT has shed light on the various task features that require people’s attention, and on the consequences of task inattention. Important methodological and conceptual complications do persist, (...) however, in current investigations of TUT. As we argue, these complications may be dampening the development of a more nuanced scientific account of TUT. Here, we outline three of the more prominent methodological and conceptual complications in the literature on TUT, and we discuss potential directions for researchers to take as they move forward in their investigations of TUT. (shrink)

This chapter aims to distinguish between pathologies of agency in the strict sense and mere sources of impediments or distortion. Expanding on a recent notion of necessarily less-than-successful agency, it complements a mainstream approach to mental disorders and anomalous psychological conditions in the philosophy of mind and action. According this approach, the interest of such clinical case studies is heuristic, to differentiate between facets of agency that are functionally and conceptually separate even though they typically come together. Yet, in the (...) absence of independent criterion for a pathology of as opposed to inner obstacle to agency, this heuristic is at risk of becoming circular or uninformative, falling back on a clinical diagnosis it is meant to take as a starting point only. The chapter develops such a criterion and shows how it could work tracking agential achievement across two core dimensions of agency: planning and responsiveness to reasons. The discussion concludes with some implications on assessing decisional capacity and safeguarding agent autonomy in psychiatric settings. (shrink)

My paper offers a new interpretation of Reid’s account of social operations of the mind. I argue that it is important to acknowledge the counterpart structure of social operations. By this I mean that for Reid every social operation is paired with a counterpart operation. On the view that I ascribe to Reid, at least two intelligent beings take part in a social operation and the social operation does not come into existence until both the social operation and its counterpart (...) operation have been exercised and the relevant mental thoughts made known to the other being by words or signs. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that martial arts training is maladaptive, contributes to psychological illness, and provides a social harm, whereas others argue that martial arts training is adaptive, contributes to psychological wellness, and provides a social benefit. This debate is important to scholars and the general public since beliefs about martial arts training can have a real impact on how we evaluate martial artists for job opportunities and career advancement, and in general, how we treat martial artists from different cultures in (...) our communities. This debate is also important for children and adults that have considered enrolling in martial arts training programs but remain uncertain about potential outcomes of training due to the lack of research in this area. This article therefore contributes to the literature on martial arts by (1) outlining a framework that characterizes psychological well-being in terms of five elements, (2) discussing how results from empirical research support the hypothesis that Muay Thai training can contribute to psychological well-being by contributing to all five component elements, (3) discussing the psychological benefits of martial arts training from the perspective of an Everlast Master Instructor, and (4) discussing how martial arts training involves the cultivation of combat-relevant affordances. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers debating the rationality of time-biases have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent empirical work, however, suggests that our preferences are more nuanced. First, there is evidence that our third-person preferences exhibit time-neutrality only when the individual with respect to whom we have preferences—the preference target—is a random stranger about whom we know nothing; given access to some information about the preference target, third-person (...) preferences mirror first-person preferences. As a result, the simulation hypothesis has been proposed, according to which third-person preferences will mirror first-person preferences when we can simulate the mental states of the preference target. Second, there is evidence that we prefer negative hedonic events to be in our past (we are first-person negatively hedonically future-biased) only when we view future events as fixed and in no way under our control. By contrast, when we perceive it to be within our power to mitigate the badness of future events, we are first-person negatively hedonically past-biased. This is the mitigation hypothesis. We distinguish two versions of the mitigation hypothesis, the squirrelling version and the heuristic version. We ran a study which tested the simulation hypothesis, and which aimed to determine whether the squirrelling or the heuristic version of the mitigation hypothesis enjoys more empirical support. We found support for the heuristic version of the hypothesis, but no support for the squirrelling version. (shrink)

Agents have powers to bring about change. Do agents have normative powers to bring about normative change directly? This chapter distinguishes between direct normative change and descriptive and institutional changes, which may indirectly be normatively significant. This article argues that agents do indeed have the powers to bring about normative change directly. It responds to a challenge claiming that all normativity is institutional and another claiming that exercises of normative powers would violate considerations of supervenience. The article also responds to (...) a challenge - generalizing Kent Hurtig’s recent challenge about consent - which states that exercises of normative powers are valid only in cases that do not matter - they never bring about a “normative transformation” of what the agent overall ought to do. It turns out that consent is normatively transformative in some cases, but the main contribution of exercises of normative powers is at the contributory level not that of overall oughts. Invalid exercises of normative powers are void of any normative effects. Rational agents as possessors of normative powers are not merely responsive to pre-existing normative reasons, but they can also create normative reasons. A “responsive” view of rational agency sees us as being able to track existing normative reasons and make descriptive changes (on which normative changes supervene). The “creative” view of rational agency sees us as being able not only to construct institutions but also to create normative reasons directly. The chapter concludes that agents are both responsive and creative. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 282-294, April 2022.

Doxasticism is the thesis that intention is or involves belief in the forthcoming action (Velleman, Harman). Supporters claim that it is only by accepting that thesis that we can explain a wide array of important phenomena, including the special knowledge we have of intentional action, the roles intention plays in facilitating coordination, and the norms of rationality for intention. Others argue that the thesis is subject to counterexample (Davidson, Bratman). Yet some others contend that the thesis can be reformulated in (...) a way that avoids such counterexamples and preserves its explanatory significance (Pears, Setiya). Their suggestion is that we view intention as involving partial –rather than full—belief. I argue that while the move from full to partial doxasticism helps to accommodate such counterexamples, it does so in a way that undermines the ability of the resulting view to explain the coordinating roles of and rationality norms for intention. (shrink)

According to the ‘standard story’ in the philosophy of action, actions are those movements of a creature’s body that are caused and rationalized by the creature’s mental states. The attractions of the causal condition have been widely discussed. The rationalization condition is nearly ubiquitous, but it is notoriously obscure, and its motivation has rarely been made explicit. This paper presents a new argument for including the rationalization condition in the causal theory of action, and sketches a broadly Davidsonian theory of (...) what rationalization is. (shrink)

Most online platforms are becoming increasingly algorithmically personalized. The question is if these practices are simply satisfying users preferences or if something is lost in this process. This article focuses on how to reconcile the personalization with the importance of being able to share cultural objects - including fiction – with others. In analyzing two concrete personalization examples from the streaming giant Netflix, several tendencies are observed. One is to isolate users and sometimes entirely eliminate shared world aspects. Another tendency (...) is to blur the boundary between shared cultural objects and personalized content, which can be misleading and disorienting. A further tendency is for personalization algorithms to be optimized to deceptively prey on desires for content that mirrors one’s own lived experience. Some specific - often minority targeting -“clickbait” practices received public blowback. These practices show disregard both for honest labeling and for our desires to have access and representation in a shared world. The article concludes that personalization tendencies are moving towards increasingly isolating and disorienting interfaces, but that platforms could be redesigned to support better social world orientation. (shrink)

For almost half a century dual-stream advocates have vigorously defended the view that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in the primary visual cortex: a ventral, perception-related ‘conscious’ stream and a dorsal, action-related ‘unconscious’ stream. They furthermore maintain that the perceptual and memory systems in the ventral stream are relatively shielded from the action system in the dorsal stream. In recent years, this view has come under scrutiny. Evidence points to two overlapping action pathways: a (...) dorso-dorsal pathway that calculates features of the object to be acted on, and a ventro-dorsal pathway that transmits stored information about skilled object use from the ventral stream to the dorso-dorsal pathway. This evidence suggests that stored information may exert significantly more influence on visually guided action than hitherto assumed. I argue that this, in turn, supports the notion of skilled automatic action that is nonetheless agential. My focus here will be on actions influenced by implicit biases (stereotypes/prejudices). Action that is biased in this way, I argue, is in an important sense intentional and agential. (shrink)

O termo respeito é derivado do latim respectus, que corresponde ao uso substantivo do particípio passado do verbo respicere, cujo significado literal é "olhar para trás", "olhar de volta", "olhar novamente", "considerar" (do latim re "de novo" e spicere "olhar"). Derivações do termo latino respectus são encontradas tanto no francês antigo (sec. VIII-XIX), cujo termo respit significa "descansar", "repousar", quanto no inglês médio (sec. XI-XV), cujo termo respect aparece, assumindo a função de nome, no sentido de "relação ou referência a (...) uma coisa ou situação específica" e, na função de verbo, no sentido de "ser digno de consideração ou estima". Na linguagem comum, respeito é uma das palavras cotidianas que aparece em uma multiplicidade de contextos. De um modo mais amplo, poder-se-ia definir respeito como o reconhecimento do valor e da dignidade de algo, do qual decorre um conjunto de comportamentos e estados de ânimo como resposta. Em primeira instância, é importante observar que o conceito de respeito implica sempre uma relação, como no caso em que utilizamos a locução "a respeito de". O respeito leva em conta uma relação responsiva entre sujeito e objeto na qual o sujeito responde ao objeto devido ao reconhecimento de certas características nele. Como o termo latino nos sugere, essa relação envolve um "olhar de volta" que é, ao mesmo tempo, um "considerar", ou seja, trata-se de um certo tipo de apreciação do objeto baseada em elementos tais como a atenção, o julgamento, o conhecimento, a valorização e a deferência. Nesse sentido, respeitar é uma maneira particular de se apreender objeto, na qual uma atenção especial é requerida com o propósito de reconhecer o objeto, não segundo as distorções perpetradas pela nossa subjetividade, mas em sua própria dignidade. Embora o ato de respeitar tenha origem no sujeito, ele não diz respeito primariamente ao sujeito, mas, em vez disso, ao objeto, na medida em que envolve o reconhecimento de uma propriedade que o objeto reivindica para si. Este é o motivo pelo qual respeitar não é meramente uma questão discricionária, baseada em nosso querer e não querer, mas uma experiência [...]. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic future-bias), and that our preferences regarding non-hedonic events (both positive and negative) exhibit no such bias (non-hedonic time-neutrality). Further, it has been assumed that our third-person preferences are always time-neutral. Some have attempted to use these (presumed) differential patterns of future-bias—different across kinds of events and perspectives—to argue for the irrationality of hedonic future-bias. This (...) paper experimentally tests these descriptive hypotheses. While as predicted we found first-person hedonic future-bias, we did not find that participants were time-neutral in all other conditions. Hence, the presumed asymmetry of hedonic/non-hedonic and first/third-person preferences cannot be used to argue for the irrationality of future-bias, since no such asymmetries exist. Instead, we develop a more fine-grained approach, according to which three factors—positive/negative valence, first/third-person, and hedonic/non-hedonic—each independently influence, but do not determine, whether an event is treated in a future-biased or time-neutral way. We discuss the upshots of these results for the debate over the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

When are you in a position to rely on p in practical reasoning? Existing accounts say that you must know that p, or be in a position to know that p, or be justified in believing that p, or be in a position to justifiably believe it, and so on. This paper argues that all of these proposals face important problems, which I call the Problems of Negative Bootstrapping and of Level Confusions. I offer a diagnosis of these problems, and (...) I argue that an adequate epistemic norm must be transparent in the following sense: According to the correct epistemic norm, a consideration counts in favor of (or against) relying on p in practical reasoning iff, and to the extent that, this consideration also counts in favor of (or against) p being true. I introduce a candidate epistemic norm that satisfies this condition. According to this norm, one should rely on p in practical reasoning only if it must be that p. If we adopt a non-factualist account of “must”, this amounts to a novel and attractive proposal, a proposal that satisfies the transparency condition. (shrink)

Review of Agnes Callard's Aspiration. Forthcoming in a symposium on the book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Empirical support is offered for the claim that the original Knobe effect, whereby our intentional action ascriptions exhibit certain asymmetries in light of our moral attitudes, can be successfully cancelled. This is predicted by the view that the Knobe effect can be explained in purely pragmatic terms (Adams and Steadman 2004a, 2004b, 2007). However, previous cancelling studies (Adams and Steadman 2007; Nichols and Ulatowski 2007) have failed to identify evidence of cancellability. The key to the successful cancelling strategy presented here (...) is to provide subjects with the opportunity to assent to statements that involve sufficiently strong forms of moral censure. (shrink)

This article starts from the assumption that there is a connection between art and language and responsibility. What is it based on? It follows on from the research of the Hamburg Circle in the 1920s by Ernst Cassirer and Aby M. Warburg, and was strengthened in the 2000s by Hartmut Böhme. Their joint starting point is the emotional life of human beings. Thus, they assume that already the perception is shaped by it and can be increased in rituals. Comparably hardly (...) noticed by us, it continues to have an effect in art and language and thus influences the recipient. From this derives the demand that both the one who speaks and the one who is creatively active bears responsibility for his or her doing. With the knowledge of the effect of art and language, however, the recipient is also required to take responsibility for his actions influenced by it. The article aims to show this connection, which is deeply rooted in the nature of human beings. -/- The article was originally published in German. It has now been translated by the author with the kind permission of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Additions were made only in the notes and in the bibliography. The concept for the text goes back to a conference of the Evangelical Academy of the Martin Luther City of Wittenberg (Saxony). On this basis, the author was invited to contribute to the publication of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) Mitteilungen—Zur Erneuerung evangelischer Predigtkultur (Kirche im Aufbruch 5), edited by Kathrin Oxen and Dietrich Sagert. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2013. The selection of the text for this issue of Art Style Magazine was based on one of the fundamental ideals of Metropolis, which sees itself as democratic and based on the responsibility of each member in dealing with art and language. (shrink)

Theorists attending to the epistemic condition on responsibility are divided over whether moral ignorance is ever exculpatory. While those who argue that reasonable expectation is required for blameworthiness often maintain that moral ignorance can excuse, theorists who embrace a quality of will approach to blameworthiness are not sanguine about the prospect of excuses among morally ignorant wrongdoers. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that moral ignorance always reflects insufficient care for what matters morally, and therefore that moral ignorance never excuses. Furthermore, (...) quality of will theorists treat their skepticism about excuses for the morally ignorant as a natural implication of their approach. It is therefore unsurprising that, while many have argued for the blamelessness of certain morally ignorant agents on grounds concerning reasonable expectation, the possibility that morally ignorant agents might be blameless even according to quality of will views has not been adequately addressed. I illustrate and explain how it is possible for morally ignorant agents to display sufficient care for the morally relevant features of their wrong behavior. Thus, even if quality of will views are correct, moral ignorance sometimes excuses. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a case for the modularity of the motor system. I start where many do in discussions of modularity, by considering the extent to which the motor system is cognitively penetrable, i.e., the extent to which its processing and outputs are causally influenced, in a semantically coherent way, by states of central cognition. I present some empirical findings from a range of sensorimotor adaptation studies that strongly suggest that there are limits to such influence under certain (...) conditions. These results cry out for an explanation. In the remainder of the paper, I provide one: The motor system is cognitively penetrable, but nonetheless modular along broadly Fodorian lines, insofar as it is informationally encapsulated. This means that its access is limited to its own proprietary database in computing its function from input to output, which does not include the information stored in central cognition. I then offer a model of action control, from distal intention to action outcomes, that further helps to illustrate this picture and can accommodate the target empirical findings. (shrink)

The evolution of language represents one of the main complex systems investigated by different scientific domains and philosophy. The phylogeny of the trait is analyzable from different perspectives, which make evident its weaved and multilayered nature. In the present essay it is presented the dialogue between some researchers from different disciplines who propose original views regarding the analysis of the evolutionary perspective, in an inclusive and hybrid horizon. Secondly, it is exposed the theoretical frontier which identifies in language not only (...) a decisive feature in social contexts, but also an environment itself. (shrink)

Strategies are mentioned across a variety of domains, from business ethics, to the philosophy of war, philosophy of sport, game theory, and others. However, despite their wide use, very little has been said about how to think about what strategies are or how they relate to other prominently discussed concepts. In this article, I probe the close connection between strategies and plans, which have been much more thoroughly characterized in the philosophy of action. After highlighting the challenges of analyzing strategies (...) in terms of plans, I show how the work done on the connection between plans and intentions can inspire further questions about the nature of strategy. I conclude by showing how one particular innovation in the understanding of plans—how they can be more or less partial—can be used to help us to mark what makes for a good strategy. (shrink)

In the last 70 years there has been an explosion of philosophical and theological work on the nature of virtue and the process of virtue formation. Yet philosophers and theologians have paid little attention to the phenomenon of temptation and its role in developing virtue. Indeed, little analytic work has been done on the nature of temptation. This study aims to fill this gap in moral philosophy and theology by offering an analytic moral conception of temptation and explicating its connection (...) to the development of virtue. This project deploys a new iteration of an older methodology of integrating philosophy and theology that may now appropriately be called “analytic moral theology.” In discerning the nature of temptation and its role in virtue formation, theological sources provide foundational guidance. Analytic moral philosophy provides illumination, coherence, and conceptual robustness to the theological foundation. The argument developed follows in the footsteps of John Hick’s soul-making theodicy by contending that the development of virtue requires a world that permits of experiences of temptation. This conclusion is substantiated by a close moral analysis of the nature of temptation that builds on key works done in philosophical moral psychology, philosophy of action, and philosophical theology. The emerging conceptualization of temptation is then compared and contrasted with the closely related moral phenomenon of akrasia and weakness of will, and finally interfaced with a neo- Aristotelian conception of virtue development. In the end, Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of infused virtue is employed as a theological test of the thesis and conditions the scope of the thesis. In light of this constructive analysis of the nature of temptation and its argument for temptation’s role in acquiring moral virtue, this project makes a contribution to philosophical Christian ethics. (shrink)

Discursive cognition of the sort that accompanies the grasp of a natural language involves an ability to self-govern by framing and following rules concerning what reason prescribes. In this essay I argue that the formal features of a planning semantics for the deontic and intentional modalities suggest a picture on which shared intentional mental states are a more primitive kind of cognition than that which accompanies the ability to frame and follow a rule, so that deontic cognition—and the autonomous rationality (...) attending the ability to speak a natural language—might be understood as an evolutionary development out of the capacity to share intentions. In the course of defending this picture, I argue that it is supported by work in social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and primatology concerning the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of norm psychology and shared intentionality in human beings. (shrink)

Despite growing appreciation in recent decades of the importance of shared intentional mental states as a foundation for everything from divergences in primate evolution, to the institution of communal norms, to trends in the development of modernity as a socio-political phenomenon, we lack an adequate understanding of the relationship between individual and shared intentionality. At the same time, it is widely appreciated that deontic reasoning concerning what ought, may, and ought not be done is, like reasoning about our intentions, an (...) exercise of practical rationality. Taking advantage of this fact, I use a plan-theoretic semantics for the deontic modalities as a basis for understanding individual and shared intentions. This results in a view that accords well with what we currently have reason to believe about the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of norm psychology and shared intentionality in human beings, and where original intentionality can be understood in terms of the shared intentionality of a community. (shrink)

Anglophone philosophy in the last three decades has seen a growing interest in the way participation in human society—as characterized by our doing things that count as taking up and conferring norm-governed roles within institutions like language, the law, social custom, and education—is part of what explains our existence as rational (to whatever extent we are) animals. Using the label discursive norms to refer to the standards of evaluation that attend the exercise of rational thought and agency, this development in (...) philosophy can be understood as a growing interest over the the social institution of discursive norms. The essays in this volume present a sample—by no means representative—of the sorts of issues that arise when we ask and look to answer questions about the way our social lives constrain and support our lives as rational animals. (shrink)

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the assumption that relations are primary to the constitution of the person, hence acting in the early Chinese context necessarily is interacting and co-acting along with others –human and nonhuman actors. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical (...) Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency –what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin 因). As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action also conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires great capacity of self and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response, which allows the agent to co-raise courses of action ad-hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines, opening a brand-new topic in Chinese and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

This paper leads us in reflections regarding the ontological status of a situation inspired by two main sources: the Zhuangzi--a multifarious compilation from Warring States China (ca. 4th c. BCE)--and José Ortega y Gasset's (1883-1955) Unas Lecciones de Metafísica (Some Lessons in Metaphysics)--the transcripts of a course on metaphysics by a Spanish philosopher of the early 20th century. Much as other ontologically subjective entities and events, situations do not preexist the intentional subject: instead, they are created alongside our act of (...) noticing. In Classical Chinese, shi , commonly rendered "propensity" and the closest the language comes to our concept of situation, denotes a dynamic process that incorporates the conscious subjective agent as well as other entities as constitutive elements. Here a situation is not reducible to the discrete phenomena and events that we can discern within a given space-time; rather, it necessitates our thinking about it to arise. These ontological reflections are important for a philosophy of action. They help us notice the role of attention in the creation of situations--as in the creation of worlds--hence the importance of understanding what the agent notices and fails to notice, what we privilege as worthy of our attention and what passes inadvertent among the world's plural affordances. The relational affordances that we actualize and reify as constituting a situation depend on what we are socialized and educated to see when looking at the world, thus situations and agents co-create one another over time. This acknowledgement is crucial to retrain our agency in order to illuminate our blind spots, overcome our uncritical certainties which generate absolutist tendencies, and move beyond fixed, reduced, and contingent corners from which to interpret the world. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a trend in psychiatry to try and explain disorders of action in terms of an over-reliance on the habitual mode of action. In particular, it has been hypothesized that compulsions in obsessive-compulsive disorder are driven by maladaptive habits. In this paper, I argue that this view of obsessive-compulsive disorder does not fit the phenomenology of the disorder in many patients and that a more refined conceptualization of habit is likely to be helpful in clarifying (...) the distinctions between disorders of action. There are thus two aims to this paper. The first is to highlight the issues pertaining to the view that compulsions are the result of an over-reliance on the habitual mode of action, leading to a loss of agentive control. The second aim is to examine the view of agentive control implicit in those accounts and see how other conceptions of agentive control might do a better job at accounting for the distinct ways in which persons suffering from pathologies of action may be said to lack control. (shrink)

Joe Horton argues that partial aggregation yields unacceptable verdicts in cases with risk and multiple decisions. I begin by showing that Horton’s challenge does not depend on risk, since exactly similar arguments apply to riskless cases. The underlying conflict Horton exposes is between partial aggregation and certain principles of diachronic choice. I then provide two arguments against these diachronic principles: they conflict with intuitions about parity, prerogatives, and cyclical preferences, and they rely on an odd assumption about diachronic choice. Finally, (...) I offer an explanation, on behalf of partial aggregation, for why these diachronic principles fail. (shrink)

This paper argues that habits, just like beliefs, can guide intentional action. To do this, a variety of real-life cases where a person acts habitually but contrary to her beliefs are discussed. The cases serve as dissociations showing that intentional agency is possible without doxastic guidance. The upshot is a model for thinking about the rationality of habitual action and the rationalizing role that habits can play in it. The model highlights the role that our history and institutions play in (...) shaping what actions become habitual for us. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

“Do Anthropocene narratives confuse an important distinction between the natural and the historical past?” asks Giuseppina D’Oro. D’Oro defends the view that the concept of the historical past is sui generis and distinct from that of the geological past against a new, Anthropocene-inspired challenge to the possibility of a humanistically oriented historiography. She argues that the historical past is not a short segment of geological time, the time of the human species on Earth, but the past investigated from the perspective (...) of a distinctive kind of interest, that of uncovering the norms which governed historical agents in different periods of time. The past for the Egyptologist, or for the Roman historian, is not the same past studied by the palaeontologist or the geologist, not because it is infinitesimal short in comparison to geological time, but because the questions asked by historians concerned with the Egyptian or Roman civilization are not the same kind of questions asked by empirically minded scientists. She argues that the accusation that the distinction between the historical and the natural/geological past, rests on unacceptable form of human exceptionalism is based on the conflation of the concept of the historical past with that of the human past and that keeping alive the nature/culture distinction has important implications for praxis. If the distinction between nature and culture is collapsed, and the corollary that historical agents are not distinct in kind from natural agents (such as yeast and microbes) is accepted, then “the anticipation of the future would become a mere spectator’s sport analogous to the activity of predicting the weather”: collapsing the nature culture distinction, D’Oro argues, undermines the possibility of political action against the very threat (climate change) that motivates Anthropocene narratives in the first instance. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the following hypotheses: The Davidsonian language thesis, which presupposes a set of beliefs and shared desires, is a quasi-rational phenomenon that weights the truths, and from them, is able to derive other objective thoughts in the domain of values. This view of Davidson conceives that thinking and language are prior to convention, and that necessarily implies the acknowledgement of humans as thinking beings; capable of understanding even when deprived of content, this is to say, (...) negating naturalism or substance in beliefs and innate desires. (shrink)

Incluido a modo de prólogo en el libro Epistemología crítica de la violencia del capital. Verdad y violencia epistémica, el trabajo “Verdad y violencia epistémica. Desafíos al conocimiento humanista sobre lo universal” busca analizar críticamente esa forma particular de violencia que, utilizando herramientas epistemológicas, se basa en el control monopólico de la verdad y en el secuestro de la universalidad humana por parte de aquellos que encarnan los intereses asociados a la lógica del capital y que, precisamente gracias a ese (...) control y a ese secuestro, hacen pasar por verdadera y universal su propia visión del mundo. Al mismo tiempo, se devela la complicidad que con tal posición posee en los hechos, sea o no consciente de ello, aquella postura teórica que, para supuestamente enfrentar tal usurpación de la verdad y la universalidad, asume como salida la negación en abstracto de la existencia misma de la una y la otra. En contraste crítico con esta postura, el trabajo se propone mostrar las condiciones de posibilidad real y concreta del conocimiento verdadero sobre lo universal. (shrink)

This paper shows that our popular account of weakness of will is inconsistent with dilemmas. In dilemmas, agents judge that they ought to do one thing, that they ought to do something else, and that they cannot do both. They must act against either of their two judgments. But such action is commonly understood as weakness of will. An agent is weak-willed in doing something if she judges that she ought to and could do something else instead. Thus, it seems (...) that, in a dilemma, the agent is weak-willed by definition. But this is puzzling: clearly, the two are different phenomena. The puzzle may support scepticism about weakness of will or dilemmas. Here, I argue that the two are consistent on a revised understanding of weakness of will. To do so, I further distinguish the mental states of an agent in a dilemma from those of a weak-willed person. (shrink)

In the book, I provide an account of what it is for an agent to have an ability. According to the Success View, abilities are all about success across possible situations. In developing and applying the view, the book elucidates the relation between abilities on the one hand and possibility, counterfactuals, and dispositions on the other; it sheds light on the distinction between general and specific abilities; it offers an understanding of degrees of abilities; it explains which role intentions and (...) performances play for the having of an ability, how abilities relate to success and failure, and gives an outlook at how the view might be applied to the free will debate and time travel. (shrink)