Cet article s’intéresse aux émotions dans l’internalisation et l’émergence des normes sociales. Nous y montrons comment les normes sociales ont un impact sur les émotions et comment les émotions ont un impact sur les normes sociales. Pour le faire, trois approches complémentaires mais souvent traitées indépendamment les unes des autres dans la littérature scientifique sont discutées. La première a trait à la façon dont les normes sociales (les normes émotionnelles) régulent les émotions. Cette régulation (...) se comprend comme l’internalisation de la normativité sociale dans les membres d’une société : les normes émotionnelles contribuent à la fabrique des dispositions émotionnelles des membres qui s’ajustent aux normes et aux valeurs valant dans leur société. La deuxième approche a trait au rôle des émotions dans le soutien aux normes sociales. Une fois que l’internalisation des normes et des valeurs est opérée et que les membres ont développé une sensibilité affective aux normes et aux valeurs de leur collectif, les émotions peuvent opérer comme des régulateurs des comportements : les émotions font que les membres se conforment aux normes et aux valeurs. Les normes internalisées suscitent des réactions émotionnelles qui contribuent au maintien de l’ordre normatif. La troisième approche affirme que les émotions contribuent à l’émergence des normes sociales et des valeurs dans une société donnée. En ce sens, les émotions peuvent contribuer à la transformation de l’ordre normatif. Il s’agit donc de la fabrique de la société. (shrink)

The normative phenomenon is ubiquitous in human interactions, emerging in a wide range of fields studied by social science and considered as one of the essential traits of human’s way of life. The modern subjectivist tradition of social science has been based on a model in which elements like self, freedom and reason play the most relevant roles in explaining normativity by connecting beliefs to behaviors by means of motives that are non-reducible to preferences, desires or impulses. In this paper (...) I will discuss normativity in general in order to turn into normativity as it is conceived in social science and then with a focus on normativity based on reasons. I will argue in favor of a naturalistic approach to normativity by means of a defense of a concept of will, which can provide a bridge between social and natural science, rather than giving further reason to sustain a dualistic approach to them. Moreover, I will claim that mental qualities usually alleged to be essential for assigning personality, agency, and moral responsibility, such as rationality, self-consciousness, and freedom, are neither sufficient nor necessary for a naturalistic characterization of moral agents, or for explaining normativity in human evaluative practices. (shrink)

This dissertation critically examines the writings of Max Stirner, especially his masterpiece The Ego and Its Own, as a discourse of resistance against modern forms of domination and, in particular, against the modern political State. I begin by examining Stirner's inversion of the Hegelian concept of the State, from the “actualization of freedom”to an instance of domination. The State appears, to Stirner as to Hegel, as the guardian of order and cohesion in modern societies. While both recognize the genesis of (...) sovereign power as violent, Hegel sustains that, with the progress of civilization, force is eradicated from the public order and private interests and common interest are reconciled. Stirner, on the contrary, insists that force is the other face of right, as the hidden pillar of the norm, which only reveals itself in moments of crisis. Stirner’s focus on the extreme case, largely anticipated and devalued by Hegel as unilateral and equivocal, seems to be anchored on the conviction that conflict is ineradicable, that between my own will and the (political, social) representation of that will there is always a gap, which cannot be filled by any collective arrangement. From this follows that, if conflict is scarcely manifest in modern societies, it is not because it was truly solved, but because it is effectively masked, due to the dissymmetry of power and the internalization of authority. The “unique one” appears, in this environment of great suspicion, as the one who cannot be represented, who surpasses every representation, threatening the authority of every representative. Accordingly, the “unique one” reclaims his own power, without allowing the satisfaction of his will to be mediated by obedience to collective institutions, affirming himself instead as sovereign over himself. Stirner suggests that the self-affirmation of the “unique one” inevitably leads to confrontation with the external powers that organize his existence. Stirner, nonetheless, chooses to think this confrontation in terms of a “revolt”, of a reflexive and individual act by which the individual emerges from the situation in which he finds himself, rather than as a “revolution”, a political or social act directed towards the systemic transformation of the status quo. Even if we admit the validity of the Stirnerian critique of the legitimizing discourses of modernity, the problem remains if this critique can be sustained on the “unique one”, “a thoughtless word”, an openly self-contradictory and self-destructive name, subject or principle (?). The possibility of founding a discourse of resistance on the egoism of Max Stirner seems to depend upon the answer that we choose to give to two intimately connected questions: what remains after the destructive vortex of the “unique one” that may sustain the resistance against a state that Max Stirner deems oppressive? Can this resistance be realized in the revolt of a unique one without the recognition of another one with whom to build the conditions of freedom? (shrink)

In recent years, a growing discussion about how we should design our cities has emerged, particularly for the more controversial modes of design such as “defensive,” “hostile,” or “disciplinary” architecture (i.e., benches on which one cannot sleep, or metal studs on which one cannot skate). Although this debate is relatively mature, many studies have argued that these design notions are undertheorized and are, thus, challenging to study from an empirical and normative perspective. In this paper, I will defne the most (...) common terms used in the literature and show how they are interconnected by utilizing a set of “conditions of adequacy” from philosophy to facilitate a more transparent and well-grounded discussion of them. Terms such as “hostile” and “defensive” design are underlined by several diferent phenomena, not just one as is sometimes commonly assumed. I will also show that these phenomena and their conceptualizations require—and sometimes force us to use—diferent moral reasons when justifying the utilization of diferent designs. (shrink)

In this paper we challenge the notion of ‘normativity’ used by some enactive approaches to cognition. We define some varieties of enactivism and their assumptions and make explicit the reasoning behind the co-emergence of individuality and normativity. Then we argue that appealing to dispositions for explaining some living processes can be more illuminating than claiming that all such processes are normative. For this purpose, we will present some considerations, inspired by Wittgenstein, regarding norm-establishing and norm-following and show that attributions of (...) normativity to non-social agents are deeply paradoxical. The main conclusions of our discussion are: (1) circular and internal explanations centred on the stability of living systems are insufficient to account for processes where the environment plays an important role, such as adaptation. Enactivism is not an explanatory alternative to evolutionary biology but needs it as a complement to accounts focused on the internal self-assembly of organisms; (2) though we share enactivism’s anti-representational spirit, we argue that ecological psychology can offer a better account of perception. (shrink)

Prometheus has grown four years older since its last and highly controversial special issue, published in 2017 on the Shaken Baby Debate. But, as always, Prometheus is committed to open discussion and dissemination of scientific research, regardless of the potential backlash or controversy that may ensue from such a venture, a venture that is at the core of authentic scholarship. Since the beginning of 2020, the world has changed irrevocably, making once-held norms seem obsolete in favour of new ways of (...) being in the world and new technologies emerging to face these new ways of living. Although it has been a long-held insight in the philosophy of technology that technical systems are carriers of values, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made manifest how these values, and their incarnations in sociotechnical systems, can likewise change. Prometheus has, since its inception, danced in tandem with the critical interpretations, theories, and methods for understanding innovation, and how innovations fundamentally impact and are impacted by the world in which they emerge and are situated. For this reason, Steffen Steinert, Tristan de Wildt, and I chose to guest edit this special issue on designing for value change and chose Prometheus as its home. (shrink)

Cet article s’intéresse au problème de la maintenance, c’est-à-dire au moment où les membres d’un collectif social tentent d’assurer dans le temps l’existence de leur collectif en instituant des règles pour réguler leurs comportements. Ce problème se pose avec acuité lorsque certains membres ne respectent pas ces règles communes. Pour maintenir la coopération sociale, les membres peuvent décider d’instituer des règles secondaires visant à sanctionner les transgressions des règles primaires déjà établies. La maintenance d’un collectif peut ainsi reposer sur l’ (...) class='Hi'>émergence de pouvoirs déontiques qui donnent aux membres l’autorité de légitimement punir et expulser les transgresseurs. Mais d’où viennent ces règles ? On peut penser qu’elles émergent des émotions éprouvées par les membres envers les transgresseurs. Je le démontre à l’aide d’une étude de cas qui établit que, dans le collectif Occupy Geneva, l’institutionnalisation de normes pour punir, exclure et réintégrer les déviants s’ancraient respectivement dans l’indignation, le mépris et le pardon. -/- This article focuses on the problem of maintenance; that is the moment when the members of a social collective attempt to ensure the existence of their collective over time by instituting rules to regulate their behavior. This problem becomes critical when certain members do not respect the common rules. To maintain social cooperation, members can decide to institute secondary rules aimed at sanctioning the transgressions of the already established primary rules. The maintenance of a collective can thus rely on the emergence of deontic powers that give members the authority to legitimately punish and expel transgressors. But where do these rules come from? The hypothesis is that they emerge from the emotions felt by the members towards the transgressors. I show this with the help of a case study, which establishes that the institutionalization of norms allowing the punishment, the exclusion, and the reintegration of deviants within the “Occupy Geneva” collective, was grounded in indignation, contempt, and forgiveness respectively. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

Nous proposons dans ce texte une hypothèse explicative de la méfiance plus grande observée entre des individus différents les uns des autres sur un aspect identitaire jugé pertinent par ceux-ci. Nous débutons par présenter une esquisse de définition de la confiance et nous plaçons les normes de rationalité et de moralité au centre de cette définition. Nous faisons confiance à autrui pour qu’il respecte certaines normes explicites ou implicites. Cette définition nous permet d’éviter deux écueils : celui de (...) considérer qu’il est immoral de ne pas faire confiance à autrui, et celui de considérer qu’il est irrationnel de ne pas faire confiance à autrui. Nous ne pouvons donc pas critiquer la tendance à ne pas faire confiance à des individus différents d’un pont de vue moral ou rationnel. Nous terminons en proposant une hypothèse permettant d’expliquer comment peut émerger la méfiance entre individus différents. (shrink)

Abstract: Economists are accustomed to distinguishing between a positive and a normative component of their work, a distinction that is peculiar to their field, having no exact counterpart in the other social sciences. The distinction has substantially changed over time, and the different ways of understanding it today are reflective of its history. Our objective is to trace the origins and initial forms of the distinction, from the English classical political economy of the first half of the 19th century to (...) the emergence of welfare economics in the first half of the 20th century. This sequential account will also serve to identify the main representative positions along with the arguments used to support them, and it thus prepares the ground for a discussion that will be less historical and more strictly conceptual. -/- Résumé : Les économistes ont coutume de distinguer entre une composante positive et une composante normative de leurs travaux, ce qui est une singularité de leur discipline, car cette distinction n'a pas de répondant exact dans les autres sciences sociales. Elle a fortement évolué au cours du temps et les différentes manières de la concevoir aujourd'hui en reflètent l'histoire. On se propose ici d'en retracer les origines et les premières formes, de l'économie politique classique anglaise de la première moitié du XIXe siècle jusqu'à l'apparition de l'économie du bien-être dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Ce parcours séquentiel vise aussi à identifier les positions les plus représentatives et les arguments invoqués pour les soutenir, en préparant ainsi une discussion qui serait moins historique et plus strictement conceptuelle. (shrink)

What is it to be a better ape? This is the question Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell ask in their book on the evolution of the moral mind, an ambitious story that starts with the common ancestor of the modern apes—humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Of all of us, it’s the humans who remain in the running for being a better ape, because we’re the ones who have all the necessary ingredients: the binding emotions of sympathy and loyalty which (...) we share with our nonhuman cousins, but also the collaborative emotions of trust and respect and the reactive emotions of guilt and resentment. Importantly, only humans are thought to have norms, and to be biologically prepared to learn norms. For Kumar and Campbell, the co-evolution of emotions and norms is what set humans on this path so we can become a better ape. -/- The story they tell is artfully woven from major theories in psychology and anthropology, and those of us who have pre-existing opinions about these theories have points where we can quibble regarding the nature of the emotions–whether only humans imitate, what norms of fairness amount to, or whether any other species are generalists who can survive in a wide range of habitats. Rather than focusing on these, I want to turn to an exciting hypothesis Kumar and Campbell propose about the evolution and function of norms. While it is most common to think that norms helped our ancestors solve the collective action problems that emerged when larger groups of individuals started living together, Kumar and Campbell suggest a different, though complementary, function for norms. They propose that norms provide a more precise and flexible means for coordinating behavior in quickly changing societies. On their view, it isn’t the size of community that is the most significant variable, but rather the speed at which culture evolves. -/- That norms are a human universal is indubitable. Our contemporary human societies are rife with rules constraining our behaviors, governing aspects of our lives from birth to death, prescribing practices about what to wear, how to work, what to eat, when and how to sleep as well as rules about rare practices that are proscribed. However, Kumar and Campbell also presume that norms are human unique. Here I have more than a quibble, given the burgeoning empirical and theoretical literature on the question of animal normativity (Andrews 2020; Danón 2019; Fitzpatrick 2020; de Waal 2014; von Rohr et al. 2011; Rohr et al. 2015; Whiten et al. 2005; Westra et al., in prep)... (shrink)

Qu’est-ce que l’indignation ? Cette émotion est souvent conçue comme une émotion morale qu’une tierce-partie éprouve vis-à-vis des injustices qu’un agent inflige à un patient. L’indignation aurait ainsi trait aux injustices et serait éprouvée par des individus qui n’en seraient eux-mêmes pas victimes. Cette émotion motiverait la tierce-partie indignée à tenter de réguler l’injustice en l’annulant et en punissant son auteur. Cet article entreprend de montrer que cette conception de l’indignation n’est que partielle. En effet, l’indignation ne porte pas que (...) sur les injustices, mais plus généralement sur les torts injustifiés. Ce faisant, l’indignation peut être une émotion morale, mais aussi une émotion conventionnelle ou esthétique. De plus, elle peut être éprouvée par les individus victime des torts : elle n’est pas uniquement éprouvée par des tierces-parties. De la sorte, les individus indignés qui subissent les torts peuvent eux-mêmes chercher à les annuler et à punir leurs auteurs. Puisqu’elle peut être éprouvée tant par des spectateurs que par les personnes qui subissent les torts et qu’elle incline ceux qui l’éprouvent à faire appel à d’autres personnes pour réguler ces torts, l’indignation vécue individuellement est partageable : elle peut devenir une émotion collective jouant un rôle fondamental dans la régulation sociale en contribuant au renforcement de normes sociales existantes ou à l’émergence de nouvelles normes sociales associées aux idées du juste prévalant dans la société considérée. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a distinctive norm of assertion. A plausible idea is that there is an analogous, perhaps weaker, norm for indirect communication via implicatures. I argue against this type of proposal. My claim is that the norm of assertion is a social norm governing public updates to the conversational record. Off the record implicatures are not subject to social norms of this type. I grant that, as happens in general with intentional actions, off the record (...) communicative acts may be subject to normative assessments on different levels (for instance, regarding their moral or prudential appropriateness). However, such assessments do not generate distinctive norms that apply to all cases of implicature. (shrink)

Why and how do norms emerge? Which norms emerge and why these ones in particular? Such questions belong to the ‘problem of the emergence of norms’, which consists of an inquiry into the production of norms in social collectives. I address this question through the ethnographic study of the emergence of ‘norms against violence’ in the political collective Occupy Geneva. I do this, first, empirically, with the analysis of my field observations; and, second, theoretically, by discussing my findings. In consequence (...) of two episodes categorized as sexual assaults that occurred in their camp, the members of Occupy Geneva decided to tackle those issues in a general assembly. Their goal was to amend their first charter of good conduct in order to reform its norms and complete it with norms aiming to regulate ‘facts’ of ‘unjustified violence’. During a collective deliberation, new norms were devised, debated and consensually adopted. The writing of the new charter took place in a second general assembly during which the wording of the written norms was collectively decided. I show that indignation over the sexual assaults was the main motive that led to the collective deliberation, and that the entire process of the making of these norms was characterized by different collective emotions. Indeed, indignation, contempt and fear played major roles in the emergence of norms prohibiting violence, allowing punishment and exclusion of wrongdoers, and prescribing collective intervention against an aggressor to neutralize the threat represented. These findings prompt me to hypothesize that social norms emerge from emotions thanks to the latters’ internal structure; and that emotions provide causal and grounding explanations for this emergence. Thus, emotions allow us to answer the questions: ‘Why do norms emerge?’ and ‘Why do they have their specific forms?’ In short, I argue that social norms have emotional foundations. (shrink)

A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do (...) appear to play an important role in people's beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity remains the same when its features improve than when its features deteriorate. Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect. (shrink)

Book review of "The Emergence of Norms.

Are norms of inquiry in tension with epistemic norms? I provide a (largely) negative answer, turning to a picture of epistemic practices as rule-governed games. The idea is that, while epistemic norms are correctness standards for the attitudes involved in epistemic games, norms of inquiry derive from the aims of those games. Attitudes that, despite being epistemically correct, are inadvisable regarding the goals of some inquiry are just like bad (but legal) moves in basketball or chess. I further consider cases (...) in which the aims of inquiry recommend breaking epistemic norms. I compare them to strategic infractions, which are common in many coherent games. Finally, I explore the connections between rules and aims in games and in inquiry. I show that in both cases respecting the rules is constitutively required for satisfying the aims of the practice. (shrink)

Trata-se de mostrar em que sentido a concepção normativa de pessoa em John Rawls pressupõe uma transformação semântica da concepção kantiana de subjetividade transcendental, em particular do seu ideal de personalidade. Uma reinterpretação kantiana da concepção normativa de pessoa logra explicar o dispositivo procedimental do equilíbrio reflexivopara responder a críticas comunitaristas em defesa do individualismo inerente ao liberalismo político, concebido não mais como uma doutrina abrangente da auto-identidade mas como um construtivismo, num modelo coerentista dejustificativa epistêmico-moral.The article seeks to show (...) in which sense Rawls’s normative conception of the person does presuppose a semantic transformation of the Kantian conception of transcendental subjectivity, particularly of his ideal of personhood . A Kantian reinterpretation of the normative conception of the person succeeds in accounting for the procedural device of reflective equilibrium so as to address communitarian criticisms in defense of the individualism inherent in political liberalism, conceived no longer as a comprehensive doctrine of self-identity but as a constructivism, within a coherentist model of moral epistemology. (shrink)

Ce texte vise à proposer quelques arguments pour une critique empiriste de la hiérarchie des normes, c'est-à-dire pour les besoins d'une science du droit descriptive et explicative. La hiérarchie des normes est à la fois objet d’étude scientifique, et théorie construisant cet objet. Une approche empiriste nécessite la formalisation de quelques concepts et une justification minimale de la possibilité d'une science juridique empiriste : ce seront les objets des premiers points de ce texte. Il s'agira ensuite de proposer (...) une formulation de la conception de la hiérarchie des normes à laquelle l’empirisme peut conduire, permettant de réévaluer la théorie (normativiste) de la hiérarchie des normes proposée par Kelsen comme une théorie politique, qui ne décrit pas son objet mais le construit comme contrainte. (shrink)

Technical artifacts have the capacity to fulfill their function in virtue of their physicochemical make-up. An explanation that purports to explicate this relation between artifact function and structure can be called a technological explanation. It might be argued, and Peter Kroes has in fact done so, that there issomething peculiar about technological explanations in that they are intrinsically normative in some sense. Since the notion of artifact function is a normative one an explanation of an artifact’s function must inherit this (...) normativity.In this paper I will resist this conclusion by outlining and defending a ‘buck-passing account’ of the normativity of technological explanations. I will first argue that it is important to distinguish properly between a theory of function ascriptions and an explanation of how a function is realized. The task of the former is to spell out the conditions under which one is justified in ascribing a function to an artifact; the latter should show how the physicochemical make-up of an artifact enables it to fulfill its function. Second, I wish to maintain that a good theory of function ascriptions should account for the normativity of these ascriptions. Provided such a function theory can be formulated — as I think it can — a technological explanation may pass the normativity buck to it. Third, to flesh out these abstract claims, I show how a particular function theory — to wit, the ICE theory by Pieter Vermaas and Wybo Houkes — can be dovetailed smoothly with my own thoughts on technological explanation. (shrink)

This paper deals with Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco’s answer to the paradox of the normativity of law: How can autonomous self-legislating persons act, without compromising their autonomy and their will, following legal rules? Regarding Rodriguez-Blanco’s answer, I offer two main critiques. The first one is based on Rodriguez-Blanco’s comments to David Enoch’s paper in which I argue against the idea that a descriptive theoretical account of law can, and should, give an answer to general problems of normativity due to the fact that (...) a theoretical approach that engages in questions about the normativity of law cannot be purely descriptive, therefore against Rodriguez-Blanco I conclude that Enoch’s answer is the only response a descriptive account is able to offer. The second criticism focuses on Rodriguez-Blanco’s response to the paradox and argues that her solution is not, in fact, a descriptive one, but one that relies on strong normative premises, which as it turns out defend a perfectionist perspective towards the law.Resumen:Este trabajo analiza la respuesta que Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco propone para resolver la paradoja de la normatividad del derecho: ¿Cómo es posible que una persona autónoma actúe siguiendo los mandatos de normas jurídicas sin comprometer su autonomía ni su voluntad? El autor ofrece dos críticas a la respuesta de Rodriguez-Blanco. La primera de ellas está basada en los comentarios que Rodriguez-Blanco ha hecho sobre la propuesta de David Enoch. En este punto, el autor argumenta en contra de la idea según la cual una perspectiva descriptiva del derecho puede, y debe, tratar de responder a los problemas generales de la normatividad del derecho. De acuerdo con el autor, una perspectiva que pretenda dar respuesta a los problemas de la normatividad del derecho no puede ser una perspectiva puramente descriptiva. En este sentido, el autor sostiene que la respuesta que ofrece Enoch es la única respuesta que una perspectiva descriptiva del derecho puede dar. La segunda crítica está dirigida a la respuesta que Rodriguez-Blanco da sobre la paradoja de la normatividad. En este segundo punto el autor argumenta que la perspectiva de Rodriguez-Blanco no es una perspectiva descriptiva como ella presume, sino que adopta una perspectiva normativa la cual, además, está comprometida con una idea perfeccionista del derecho. (shrink)

Violence against women is a crime that causes countless victims all over the world. Specially when it occurs within the domestic and familiar environment, usually at home and perpetrated by people who are intimately related to the victims, calling the police might not be an option. Despite that, the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro State answers around five thousand calls every month reporting cases of domestic violence against women. But how can the police improve the prevention of such invisible (...) crimes? How to prevent repetition? How to interrupt the cycle of violence? Based on a collaborative approach with stimuli to the behavioral change, the Motivational Interviewing has been broadly used in several areas, including domestic violence. Considering that this approach may contribute to the interruption of the domestic violence cycle, this research how it can be used by the police to tackle and prevent these crimes. Rio de Janeiro State – Brazil, was chosen as the scenario of research considering its leading position in reports of violence against women in the country. The Military Police of this state, is the subject of research, playing an interventive role in the response to emergency calls but also providing the follow-up of the applicable protective measures. (shrink)

People more frequently select norm-violating factors, relative to norm- conforming ones, as the cause of some outcome. Until recently, this abnormal-selection effect has been studied using retrospective vignette-based paradigms. We use a novel set of video stimuli to investigate this effect for prospective causal judgments—i.e., judgments about the cause of some future outcome. Four experiments show that people more frequently select norm- violating factors, relative to norm-conforming ones, as the cause of some future outcome. We show that the abnormal-selection effects (...) are not primarily explained by the perception of agency (Experiment 4). We discuss these results in relation to recent efforts to model causal judgment. (shrink)

(1996). What the prophet and the philosopher told their nations: A multi‐modal systems view of norms and civilisation. World Futures: Vol. 47, Unity and Diversity in Contemporary Systems Tinking: Systematic Pictures at an Exhibition, pp. 53-67.

The objective of this work is to present Michel Foucault's perspective on the formation of moral subjectivity according to his text entitled “The use of pleasures and the techniques of self”. In the referred text, Foucault emphasizes that moral action should not be constituted in acts according to a rule of conduct supported by moral concepts, but in acts according to a pure relation of the subject with his internal wisdom (subjectivity), a relationship that should not be understood as simply (...) a “self-awareness” as a moral subject, but as a “constitution of the self” as a moral subject In this article, Foucault's position on the formation of moral subjectivity is considered to analyze the place of desire in the autonomy of oneself and of practical attitudes, especially if they are considered: the subject's experience as a process in which both subjectivity and desires are modified or annulled by specific norms or laws, established in certain societies and culture, almost always linked to norms of sexuality; the power of the strongest, insofar as it influences institutions to spread interests in society, corrupting the particular desires of individuals; the “techniques of self”, as rational and voluntary practices that curb desires, by which human beings determine for themselves rules of conduct that correspond to aesthetic values. (shrink)

In this chapter, one considers finance at its very foundations, namely, at the place where assumptions are being made about the ways to measure the two key ingredients of finance: risk and return. It is well known that returns for a large class of assets display a number of stylized facts that cannot be squared with the traditional views of 1960s financial economics (normality and continuity assumptions, i.e. Brownian representation of market dynamics). Despite the empirical counterevidence, normality and continuity assumptions (...) were part and parcel of financial theory and practice, embedded in all financial practices and beliefs. Our aim is to build on this puzzle for extracting some clues revealing the use of one research strategy in academic community, model tinkering defined as a particular research habit. We choose to focus on one specific moment of the scientific controversies in academic finance: the ‘leptokurtic crisis’ opened by Mandelbrot in 1962. The profoundness of the crisis came from the angle of the Mandelbrot’s attack: not only he emphasized an empirical inadequacy of the Brownian representation, but also he argued for an inadequate grounding of this representation. We give some insights in this crisis and display the model tinkering strategies of the financial academic community in the 1970s and the 1980s. (shrink)

People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories, and we provide novel experimental evidence (...) for it. (shrink)

People often reason about omissions. One line of research shows that people can distinguish between the semantics of omissive causes and omissive enabling conditions: for instance, not flunking out of college enabled you (but didn’t cause you) to graduate. Another line of work shows that people rely on the normative status of omissive events in inferring their causal role: if the outcome came about because the omission violated some norm, reasoners are more likely to select that omission as a cause. (...) We designed a novel paradigm that tests how norms interact with the semantics of omissive enabling conditions. The paradigm concerns the circuitry of a mechanical device that plays music. Two experiments used the paradigm to stipulate norms and present a distinct set of possibilities to participants. Participants chose which causal verb best described the operations of the machine. The studies revealed that participants’ responses are best predicted by their tendency to consider the semantics of omissive relations. In contrast, norms had little to no effect in participants’ responses. We conclude by marshaling the evidence and considering what role norms may play in people’s understanding of omissions. (shrink)

In this paper, I interview Francesca De Vecchi (Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Vita-Salute San Raffaele University) about her qualitative ontology and its social and normative implications. If at the foundation of our lifeworld there are significantly qualitative experiences, phenomenology can investigate the most important contemporary issues, such as gender disparity, socio-virtuality depersonalizations and political urgencies.

Aristotle’s influence on D’Arcy Thompson was praised by Thompson himself and has been recognized by others in various respects, including the aesthetic and normative dimensions of biology, and the multicausal explanation of living forms. This article focuses on the relatedness of organic forms, one of the core problems addressed by both Aristotle’s History of Animals (HA), and the renowned chapter of Thompson’s On Growth and Form (G&F), “On the Theory of Transformations, or the Comparison of Related Forms.” We contend that, (...) far from being an incidental inspiration stemming from Thompson’s classicist background, his translation of HA played a pivotal role in developing his theory of transformations. Furthermore, we argue that Thompson’s interpretation of the Aristotelian method of comparison challenges the prevailing view of Aristotle as the founder of “typological essentialism,” and is a key episode in the revision of this narrative. Thompson understood that the method Aristotle used in HA to compare animal forms is better comprehended as a “method of transformations,” leading to a morphological arrangement of animal diversity, as opposed to a taxonomical classification. Finally, we examine how this approach to the relatedness of forms lay the foundation for a causal understanding of parts and their interconnections. Although Aristotle and Thompson emphasized distinct types of causes, we contend that they both differ in a fundamental sense from the one introduced by Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which was formulated as a solution to the species problem rather than the form problem. We conclude that Thompson’s interpretation of Aristotle’s approach to form comparison has not only impacted contemporary scholarship on Aristotle’s biology, but revitalized a perspective that has regained significance due to the resurgence of the problem of form in evo-devo. (shrink)

This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which natural theological arguments are based rely on intuitions that emerge early in development, and that underlie our expectations for everyday situations, e.g., about how causation works, or how design is recognized. In spite of the universality of these intuitions, the cogency of natural theological (...) arguments remains a matter of continued debate. To understand why they are controversial, we draw on social theories of reasoning and argumentation. (shrink)

The objective of this article is twofold. First, a methodological issue is addressed. It is pointed out that even if philosophers of mathematics have been recently more and more concerned with the practice of mathematics, there is still a need for a sharp definition of what the targets of a philosophy of mathematical practice should be. Three possible objects of inquiry are put forward: (1) the collective dimension of the practice of mathematics; (2) the cognitives capacities requested to the practitioners; (...) and (3) the specific forms of representation and notation shared and selected by the practitioners. Moreover, it is claimed that a broadening of the notion of ‘permissible action’ as introduced by Larvor (2012) with respect to mathematical arguments, allows for a consideration of all these three elements simultaneously. Second, a case from topology – the proof of Alexander’s theorem – is presented to illustrate a concrete analysis of a mathematical practice and to exemplify the proposed method. It is discussed that the attention to the three elements of the practice identified above brings to the emergence of philosophically relevant features in the practice of topology: the need for a revision in the definition of criteria of validity, the interest in tracking the operations that are performed on the notation, and the constant and fruitful back-and-forth from one representation to another in dealing with mathematical content. Finally, some suggestions for further research are given in the conclusions. (shrink)

The emerging crealectic frame posits that there are three complementary and effectual domains of intelligence, namely analytic, dialectic, and crealectic, being alternatively or complementarily used in human interactions with the world. The focus of crealectic intelligence is the relative possibilization and local realization of absolute possibility, the becoming real, biological, and social of creation. This multimodal externalization and asymptotic unification of a cosmological flux expresses itself via three realms of possibilization: physical, psychological, and philosophical. But the philosophical possible is not (...) merely abstract; it originates a generative process of exteriorizations, interiorizations, dissolutions, and unifications transforming the possible into realities. The term “crealectics,” coined by philosopher and author Luis de Miranda, is a compound of “Creal” and of two possible suffixes: “logos” or “ektos”. The ontological core of crealectics, the Creal, is the immanent process of creation understood as a ubiquitous stream of absolute possibility exteriorizing itself. For a crealectician, philosophy is not the mere logical analysis of truth conditions, but the self-questioning enterprise of thought regarding its own possibilizing and world-making power. (shrink)

The problem addressed in this article is the relationship between law and morality. It is asked (1) to what extent law and morality are connected and separated and (2) since when has it been so. To the extent that law and morality are distinct normative orders, it is asked (3) whether they rule exactly the same behaviors or whether each order rules dierent kinds of behaviors. If they rule at least some of the same behaviors, it is asked (4) whether (...) there can be antinomies (contradictions) between them. If there are an- tinomies, it is asked (5) whether the antinomies are only apparent (prima facie) and are therefore mistakes of human reason, or are definite and real. If the antinomies are apparent or real, it is asked (6) whether law or morality prevails (or should prevail) in the case of an antinomy. If one of these prevails, it is asked (7) whether this is always so, or whether law sometimes prevails (and should prevail) over morality and vice versa. In the case of existing coherence or at least solvable antinomies between law and morality, it is asked (8) whether the consequent achieved unity of practical reason is a specifically moral unity and whether it is a matter of cognition, of institutionalization, of individual or collective construction, or of consensus. (shrink)

Despite the fact that common sense taxes emotions with irrationality, philosophers have, by and large, celebrated their functionality. They are credited with motivating, steadying, shaping or harmonizing our dispositions to act, and with policing norms of social behaviour. It's time to restore emotion's bad rep. To this end, I shall argue that we should expect that some of the “norms” enforced by emotions will be unevenly distributed among the members of our species, and may be dysfunctional at the individual, social, (...) moral, or even species levels. I”ll adduce three considerations in support of that pessimistic view: The fallacy of adaptive fixation, the moral randomness of group selection, and the lack of fit between “natural norms” set up by evolution and those moral and social norms we would like philosophy to justify. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we (...) will first criticize the main current view of phronesis and its bearer (the phronimos), then offer another view of the nature of phronesis and of its relation to the other ethical virtues. Our proposal should not be intended as an interpretation of Aristotle’s own view; rather, it should be seen as a broadly Aristotelian theoretical proposal, which we believe can satisfyingly address most of the problems that afflict the more traditional accounts of practical wisdom. In section 2 of this paper, after criticizing first-nature naturalistic views of moral virtue, we take practical reason to be the cornerstone of second-nature naturalistic views; in section 3, we will outline criticisms to which, in our view, the traditional views of phronesis are ill-suited to respond, and, in section 4, we will outline our view of phronesis as ethical expertise – a view which in our view is immune to the above-mentioned criticisms – by spelling out the three main tenets of phronesis as ethical expertise: a conceptual thesis, an epistemic thesis, and the educational implications of the two. Finally, we will support our proposal with some empirical evidence taken from cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not factual. We highlight a problematic assumption shared by the two most influential trends in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science, reductionism and enactivism. Our intentional, normative explanations are referential, descriptive or factual. Underneath this assumption lies the idea that only facts can make true or false our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of (...) reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy. Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected. (shrink)

There is widespread excitement in the literature about the method of arbitrary functions: many take it to show that it is from the dynamics of systems that the objectivity of probabilities emerge. In this paper, I differentiate three ways in which a probability function might be objective, and I argue that the method of arbitrary functions cannot help us show that dynamics objectivise probabilities in any of these senses.

This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir’s reading of the 18th century writer and libertine Marquis de Sade, in her essay “Must we Burn Sade?”; a difficult and bewildering text, both in pure linguistic terms and philosophically. In particular, Beauvoir’s insistence on Sade as a “great moralist” seems hard to reconcile with her emphasis, in The Ethics of Ambiguity, on the interdependency of human beings and her exhortation to us to promote other people’s freedom, as well as the aspiration of The (...) Second Sex to equal relations between the genders. While earlier scholars addressed the ethico-political implications of Beauvoir’s essay, they insisted that the ambiguity so fundamental in her philosophy is denied by the Sadean hero, and that the Other can never be attained in his system. In this essay, I argue that Sade paradoxically emerges as an ethical model in Beauvoir’s text: as a writer, he assumes the ambiguity of the human condition in the extreme. Further, Sade reveals the potential of sexuality if it is explored in a form of eroticism that largely transgresses behavior constructed as normal: his writings open up new forms of existence, where, contrary to prevailing ideas, woman’s sexual freedom is claimed as equal to man’s, where genders are unstable and heterosexuality no longer the standard. Beauvoir’s fascination with Sade in this essay can be linked with the seemingly unresolvable asymmetry in the relation between men and women in The Second Sex: in his writings is revealed sexuality’s potential to subvert patriarchal norms and mystifications, and perhaps, in the end, even gender itself. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a criticism, inspired by Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, of the enactivist account of perception and action. We start by setting up a non-descriptivist naturalism regarding the mind and continue by defining enactivism and exploring its more attractive theoretical features. We then proceed to analyse its proposal to understand normativity non-socially. We argue that such a thesis is ultimately committed to the problematic idea that normative practices can be understood as private and factual. Finally, we offer a (...) characterization of normativity as an essentially social phenomenon and apply our criticisms to other approaches that share commitments with enactivism. (shrink)

Contemporary political philosophy is, to a certain degree, dominated by a family of theories that invoke hypothetical procedures as a method of normative justification. This article intends to analyze Axel Honneth’s critique of the so-called “proceduralism” in theories of justice, as well as to examine the author’s alternative proposal for a justification method, what he calls “normative reconstruction”. Honneth’s complaints are divided in three parts: critiques of the understanding of justice, the method of justification, and the scope of proceduralist theories (...) of justice are raised, each one receiving an alternative formulation by the author. After reading texts by Axel Honneth, John Rawls — author of "A theory of justice", in which he presents one of the most well-known proceduralist arguments — Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, who raise problems for Honneth’s normative reconstruction, we suspect that even though Honneth’s critique of proceduralism and his proposal of normative reconstruction seem initially plausible, they are only possible if we abandon the framework of political philosophy to do what is usually called “social philosophy”. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: From Continental Europe to Latin America The First Generation The Second Half of the Twentieth Century Conclusion References Further Reading.

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen’s view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at which level (...) his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the discussion of religious freedom and the anti-racist fight in the Black Diaspora in Latin America, considering the historical processes that involve such discussion, including legal apparatus such as Human Rights and local legislation. Therefore, as a starting point, we take the historical conditions of the emergence of Candomblé in Brazil, that are linked to the trafficking of enslaved African peoples and their resistance to keep alive in their memories, their religious beliefs and their worldviews. (...) Wherefore, it is a discussion in which religious freedom is not dissociated from the anti-racist struggle in the case of Brazil, where, in the 20th century, the myth of racial democracy is produced in the light of studies carried out by Gilberto Freyre in the midst of the 1922 post-week modernist movement. (shrink)

The principal objective of this study is to present and discuss the elements that emerge from Michel Foucault's archeological undertakings, which, in our view, configure the existence of a new rhetoric that deals with what the French philosopher called the rarefaction of the subject and rarefaction of discourse in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France (Foucault, 1996). This new rhetoric would be in charge of reflecting and analyzing the phenomena that result from both the rarefaction of the subject (...) and the rarefaction of discourse, that is, such rhetoric invests in what is responsible for imposing on the speaking subject what to say and how to say it. Therefore, it turns to certain mechanisms of control of discourses that Foucault presented in The Discourse on Language, a work that completes five decades of its publication. This Foucauldian rhetoric also has as its main function to deal with the history of the present, that is, to reflect on what we do and think at this exact moment, which, in turn, would be in charge of contributing to the history of how we became subjects in a culture like ours, at this stage of high modernity and the Information Age. From this perspective, she would be interested in the processes of identification and subjectivation that result from the ways in which we become subjects. In short, it is a study that seeks to present elements that demonstrate the emergence of a new rhetoric that emerges from the work of Michel Foucault, who, according to Deleuze (1992), increasingly invested in a generalized pragmatics. (shrink)

Existe-il une corrélation entre le pouvoir d’un organe et le rang hiérarchique de ses normes ? La théorie réaliste de l’interprétation pourrait sembler indiquer le contraire. En effet, si, comme elle l’enseigne, c’est l’interprète d’un énoncé qui en détermine la signification, les agents de l’administration qui mettent en œuvre les politiques publiques devraient exercer un pouvoir plus important que le législateur qui les élabore. L’auteur de l’article soutient toutefois qu’une semblable conclusion serait erronée car les organes qui produisent les (...) énoncés juridiques généraux et abstraits peuvent généralement mobiliser des ressources qui leur permettent de contraindre les organes de concrétisation à prendre leurs préférences en considération. La représentation du droit comme étant constitué d’un ensemble de normes hiérarchisées confère certaines des ressources dont ils disposent. Celles-ci doivent être identifiées et leur efficacité évaluée afin de déterminer dans quels cas il existe.. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are two importantly distinct normative relations that can be referred to using phrases like ‘X is obligated to Y,’ ‘Y has a right against X,’ or ‘X wronged Y.’ When we say that I am obligated to you not to read your diary, one thing we might mean is that I am subject to a deontological constraint against reading your diary that gives me a non‐instrumental, agent‐relative reason not to do so, and which you are (...) typically in a unique position to waive with consent. I call this first relation the constraint relation. A second thing we might mean is that you are in a position to fittingly hold me personally accountable for reading your diary by demanding that I not read your diary, resenting me if I do so without excuse, and deciding whether to forgive me for this afterwards. I call this second relation the accountability relation. Though these two kinds of directed obligation often coincide, I argue that they are extensionally dissociable and play different normative roles. We cannot provide an adequate theory of ‘obligation to’ until we recognize that this phrase denotes not one relation, but two. (shrink)

How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an ‘epistemic arc’, consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we (...) cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call ‘aesthetic’. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

Joint practical deliberation is the activity of deciding together what to do. In this dissertation, I argue that several speech acts that we can use to alter our moral obligations – promises, offers, requests, demands, commands, and agreements – are moves within joint practical deliberation. -/- The dissertation begins by investigating joint practical deliberation. The resulting account implies that joint deliberation is more flexible than we usually recognize, in two ways. First, we can make joint decisions not only about what (...) we will do together, but also about what you or I will do alone. Second, we can deliberate by means of two distinct methods: propose-and-ratify, in which a proposed joint decision must be explicitly accepted to come into effect, and propose-and-challenge, in which a proposed joint decision comes into force unless it is explicitly challenged. -/- Varying these parameters generates a botany of different kinds of proposals we can make within joint deliberation. When we look at these proposals more closely, we make a surprising discovery: for each kind of proposal we can make in joint practical deliberation, there is an everyday speech act with the very same properties. A certain kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one’s own actions has the same normative effects, under the same conditions, as a promise. One kind of proposal to make a joint decision regarding one’s addressee’s actions has all the essential features of a command; another kind of deliberative proposal – with the same content but a different method of evaluation – looks exactly like a request. And so on. -/- These similarities are too systematic to be coincidental. The only explanation, I argue, is that these ordinary speech acts are identical to their doppelgängers within joint practical deliberation. Promises and offers are proposals to make joint decisions about what I will do. Commands, demands, and requests are proposals to make joint decisions about what you will do. And agreements are joint decisions about what we will do. Call this the deliberative theory of these speech acts. -/- Considering each speech act in turn, I defend the deliberative theory by arguing that it provides a uniquely powerful explanation of its targets’ social and moral significance. Once we see how naturally these speech acts fall out of our practice of joint deliberation, theories that treat them as sui generis – as many moral philosophers now do – will come to seem redundant and nonexplanatory. Conversely, thinking of promises, offers, commands, demands, requests, and agreements as moves within joint practical deliberation allows us to give an elegant and generative theory of these phenomena that have confounded moral philosophers for so long. (shrink)