The Eleventh Aporia results from the breakup of the entire Greek philosophy previous to Aristotle in two manners of conceiving and proposing the first principles (archai), specially the One (to hen): (i) the manner by which Physiologoi conceived the One as a principle, namely, assuming an underlying nature, different from the One in itself, not adequately characterized by the simple fact of being one and which is denoted by the concept of One, and (ii) the manner inaugurated by the Pythagoreans (...) and later endorsed by Plato, marked by the abandonment of the appeal to an underlying nature and by conceiving the One in itself (auto to hen) as a principle, depriving it of any connection with some reality not strictly characterized by being one. Aristotle faces this aporia in Metaphysics Iota 2 and, according to the interpretation I propose: (a) refuses the Pythagorean-Platonic manner of conceiving and proposing principles, (b) endorses the course of action of the Physiologoi, and, in doing so, (c) steps back and retakes the “project” of the Physiologoi at the point where it was interrupted, namely, during the search for a principle of motion. From this scenario, I will try to show that the final outcome of the Eleventh Aporia can be the introduction of the Prime Mover as the properly Aristotelian (and cosmological) candidate to the title of One between the principles. (shrink)

In the following pages, the reader will find a detailed study of what Aristotle considered the most difficult aporia formulated in Metaphysics III (Beta), which is answered in chapter 2 of Book X (Iota): the Eleventh Aporia. In such aporia, Aristotle rivals: (i) the conception assumed by the ancient Physiologoi, which takes the One to be an underlying nature whose being is not exhausted by being One, and (ii) the Platonic-Pythagorean view, which prefers to conceive the One in itself, according (...) to its own determinations and apart from any connection with some reality outside it. (shrink)

The philosophical model of constellation has been applied to contemporary musical form, but it reveals too many limitations when confronted with late Adorno’s model of informal music. Once the component of heteronomy, in hierarchical and centered structures of traditional music, has been overcome, it reemerges in the opposite type, the decentered, non-hierarchical or free structures, between the opposites of serialism and aleatoric music. Therefore, the model of informal music, as an "image of freedom", pursues the realization of a musical-aesthetic nominalism (...) that is subtracted from all forms of heteronomy, ancient or modern. To do this, it has to achieve the 'actually constructed totality' of the work, integrating in it the opposite of free subjectivity. (shrink)

The two books reviewed here are different efforts to embrace the vast subject called “social thought.” The second edition of The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought, edited by William Outhwaite with Alain Touraine, contains numerous updates; yet it also has some disadvantages compared to the first edition. Social Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by Alan Sica, is a bold but controversial attempt at gathering in one anthology as many social thinkers as possible.

Essa dissertação de mestrado cuida do problema do conhecimento dos primeiros princípios em Aristóteles, mais precisamente, das vias de acesso adequadas a provê-lo. Dada a primordialidade de um tal conhecimento, erige-se a questão de método: por qual via estaria garantido o acesso àquilo que constitui todo o fundamento e “razão para” do edifício do conhecimento filosófico e científico? Aristóteles, nos Segundos Analíticos, atribui à indução (epagoge) e à inteligência (nous) este papel, mas nos Tópicos o filósofo menciona que a dialética (...) é util aos primeiros princípios. O propósito maior desta pesquisa está não tanto no conciliar estes métodos, procurando atribuir alguma significação tanto aos Segundos Analíticos quanto aos Tópicos, mas no procurar viabilizar alguma fala da dialética no que concerne ao conhecimento dos primeiros princípios, sem, contudo, extrapolar o que parece estar autorizado a partir da leitura dos textos aristotélicos. Neste intento, propõe-se a análise da diaporemática de que cuida Aristóteles em Metafísica Β, visando investigar se esta de algum modo excede a dialética nos limites com as quais esta se debate. (shrink)

Neste artigo, tivemos o objetivo de analisar como o racionalismo ético limita a ética. Frente a este propósito, expomos a fonte trágica da ética de Aristóteles, para quem a ética não é ciência e não tem uma fonte metafísica. A revelação de Aristóteles mostrou como o seu pensamento ético, por ultrapassar o racionalismo filosófico, inaugura uma corrente de pensamento moral cuja modéstia é mais adequada à fragilidade da condição humana.

Nossa pesquisa é pautada na tentativa de compreender alguns conceitos da filosofia aristotélica, mais especificamente as noções de forma, matéria, privação e potência, e um pouco sobre a metodologia usada pelo filósofo. As linhas abaixo compõem um capítulo da minha monografia de fim de curso, intitulada Dialogo com a tradição: A conquista de novas convicções acerca dos princípios de natureza no primeiro livro da Física aristotélica, realizada na Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. Nela tratei a respeito da metodologia (...) de Aristóteles que, dentre outras coisas, passa pela crítica à filosofia precedente, esclarecendo assim algumas questões do primeiro livro da Física – livro no qual o filósofo tenta determinar quantos e quais são os princípios da natureza. (shrink)

Com o propósito de analisar a relação entre ser e movimento a partir dos conceitos de ato e potência, elaboramos um mapeamento do livro Θ da Metafísica, capaz de orientar o entendimento de sua estrutura central. Visto como um dos modos de se dizer o ser, o ser em ato e em potência é parte integrante e fundamental da investigação metafísica. A distinção entre ser em ato e em potência pretende resolver o clássico problema do não-ser que vem a ser, (...) mostrando como o não-ser é apenas não-ser ainda em ato, mas já é ser em potência e este guarda as condições para sua necessária atualização. A reconstrução argumentativa de Θ procurou ressaltar três aspectos principais: (1) Ato e potência funcionam como um elemento de conexão entre as outras ciências – práticas, produtivas e teóricas – que são subordinadas à Ciência do Ser enquanto Ser, a Metafísica. (2) Há uma forte relação entre o par conceitual ato/potência e os outros conceitos fundamentais da filosofia aristotélica, tais como: substância, forma, matéria, ação, bem, natureza e fim. Desse modo, ato e potência somente serão plenamente compreendidos se também forem considerados esses outros conceitos. (3) Há uma relação direta entre os dois sentidos em que ato e potência podem ser entendidos - o cinético e o metafísico - e a seguinte divisão interna de Θ: de Θ1 a Θ5 a investigação está centrada sob o ângulo do movimento, é o momento cinético, em que Aristóteles dedica-se mais à análise da potência caracterizada como um princípio de movimento. (shrink)

A tese central deste trabalho consiste em reconstruir em bases filosóficas as linhas gerais da teoria aristotélica da verdade mostrando, a partir da análise do Livro IV da Metafísica, que esta teoria está fundada naquilo que é chamado nesta investigação de princípio transcendental de verdade, o qual é constituído pela bi- implicação modal dos princípios de não-contradição, do terceiro excluído e de identidade.

Nosso objetivo é mostrar como Bachelard edifica a noção de vida em sua filosofia ao esboçar uma reflexão sobre o problema filosófico do tempo junto às noções de instante e duração. O livro A intuição do instante (1932), obra dedicada a esta reflexão metafísica sobre o tempo confluindo, quatro anos mais tarde, para A dialética da duração (1936), obra que, por sua vez, define o conceito de duração a partir das várias temporalidades superpostas constitutivas da própria existência, são as referências (...) privilegiadas deste estudo. Ressaltaremos a importância da filosofia de Henri Bergson nesta discussão ao estabelecermos um contraponto entre suas teses sobre a vida e a duração às mesmas teses conceituais bachelardianas, sobretudo a partir da oposição entre as seguintes noções: vida vivida (circunscrita ao tempo comum/tempo transitivo em Bergson) e vida pensada (circunscrita ao tempo do espírito/tempo imanente em Bachelard). Partimos da hipótese a ser debatida de que é porque o espírito pode chocar-se com a vida vulgar, escorregadia e homogênea que a vida superior, ou seja, do próprio espírito, deve ser entendida nesta filosofia bachelardiana como sendo uma construção racional ancorada em uma dialética pluralista de saberes sobre o tempo. (shrink)

Na Metafísica, Aristóteles se debruça sobre a questão fundamental do ser, colocando que a substância primeira é expressamente sinônima de essência. Este artigo examina o critério para essência, partindo das Categorias e do livro Z da Metafísica. O conceito de essência desempenha um papel fundamental no entendimento da estrutura da metafísica aristotélica. Na Metafísica, Aristóteles se debruça sobre a questão fundamental do ser, colocando que a substância primeira é expressamente sinônima de essência. Este artigo examina o critério para essência, partindo (...) das Categorias e do livro Z da Metafísica. Duas perspectivas distintas do essencialismo são analisadas, a saber, essencialismo individual, alinhada com a abordagem modal contemporânea de essência, e essencialismo de tipo. Por meio de uma análise crítica, esse artigo defende que ambos os essencialismos não são suficientes para elucidar o conceito aristotélico de essência. Consequentemente, essa noção fundamental, governada por critérios aristotélicos, continua enigmática, desafiando tentativas contemporâneas a tentarem entender sua complexidade. (shrink)

Il breve saggio si propone di esaminare la centralità della figura materna nell’opera di un ingegnoso costruttore di storie della letteratura italiana del Novecento: Alberto Moravia. La scelta dell’Autore nasce dalla rilevanza della tematica nella sua opera, in cui peraltro è quasi sempre assente il punto di vista femminile delle “voci” delle donne. Ciò sembra paradossale e questa circostanza è di grande interesse critico. In particolare, a dispetto delle interpretazioni più canoniche, secondo cui Moravia – negli scritti realizzati tra il (...) 1929 e il 1964 – ha inteso compiere una “distruzione” dell’immagine materna nel quadro di una visione pessimista della famiglia borghese, dovremo considerare un più complesso e articolato universo materno nello scrittore romano, in cui è possibile ricostruire cinque modelli – la “madre autoritaria”, la “madre-non madre”, la “madre padrona”, la “madre-angelo custode” e la “madre-seduttrice” –, ben esemplificati nei principali romanzi ma che si ritrovano nei racconti che Moravia scrive ininterrottamente dagli anni Trenta agli anni Sessanta, la cui mole ha determinato, ancor oggi, una mancanza di studi sistematici. In secondo luogo, la tematica della madre sarà esaminata nelle trasposizioni cinematografiche italiane delle opere letterarie di Moravia. Va ricordato che il rapporto dello scrittore con il cinema fu particolarmente intenso. Per un verso, la “settima arte” rivestì un ruolo non secondario nella formazione ed esperienza estetica dell’Autore romano, che al cinema si interessò anche professionalmente nelle vesti di critico cinematografico, a partire dal primo dopoguerra, dapprima, per La nuova Europa e Libera stampa, poi, per L’Europeo e L’Espresso, a cui dobbiamo aggiungere l’attività di saggista per numerose riviste specializzate. Per altro verso, il cinema italiano non solo ha attinto a “mani basse” dall’opera di Moravia per sceneggiature di pellicole, che furono pietre miliari della sua storia. L’elenco dei romanzi e racconti adattati al grande schermo rende conto della grande influenza nella cultura italiana degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta: La provinciale (1953) di Mario Soldati, La romana (1954) di Luigi Zampa, Peccato che sia una canaglia (1954) di Alessandro Blasetti, Racconti romani (1955) di Gianni Franciolini, La ciociara (1960) di Vittorio de Sica, La giornata balorda (1960) di Mauro Bolognini, Risate di gioia (1960) di Mario Monicelli, Agostino (o la perdita dell’innocenza) (1962) di Mauro Bolognini, La noia (1963) di Damiano Damiani, Gli indifferenti (1964) di Francesco Maselli, Le ore nude (1964) di Marco Vicario, La donna invisibile (1969) di Paolo Spinola, Una ragazza piuttosto complicata (1969) di Damiano Damiani, L’amore coniugale (1970) di Dacia Maraini, Il conformista (1970) di Bernardo Bertolucci, e molti altri ancora. Come avremo modo soltanto di accennare, il successo della letteratura moraviana nel mondo del cinema italiano si deve a molteplici fattori, tra cui la raffigurazione dei personaggi e degli ambienti, la focalizzazione su certe tematiche e, non da ultimo, lo stile narrativo, particolarmente adatto alle trasposizioni cinematografiche. Come caso di studio, ci soffermeremo, infine, sulla figura materna della versione filmica de La noia di Damiani, con l’obiettivo di verificare se nel passaggio dal libro alla pellicola, quella particolare connotazione della madre autoritaria abbia subito delle alterazioni. L’ipotesi che muove l’analisi è che la stesura delle sceneggiature, la raffigurazione dei personaggi e la messa in scena delle sequenze filmiche facciano emergere un riadattamento adeguato al largo pubblico, con il sovvertimento dell’andamento cronologico, alcune “lacune” di ordine psicologico nella raffigurazione dei protagonisti e un certo cedimento moralistico alla cultura ancora dominante negli anni ’50 e ’60, in cui la figura materna, sia quando è incattivita dalla povertà che quando è inaridita dalla ricchezza, anela comunque agli affetti familiari, trovando in essi una qualche forma di redenzione. (shrink)

O objetivo geral da pesquisa da qual esse artigo faz parte é investigar o sistema metafísico que emerge dos trabalhos de David Lewis. Esse sistema pode ser decomposto em pelo menos duas teorias. A primeira nomeada como realismo modal genuíno (RMG) e a segunda como mosaico neo-humeano. O RMG é, sem dúvida, mais popular e defende a hipótese metafísica da existência de uma pluralidade de mundos possíveis. A principal razão em favor dessa hipótese é a sua aplicabilidade na discussão de (...) problemas losó cos, esse motivo não será diretamente abordado neste artigo. Pois, o foco está em compreender o mosaico neo-humea- no e como ele relaciona-se com a metafísica de mundos possíveis. Em outras palavras, o meu objetivo é entender as bases losó cas que sus- tentam o realismo modal genuíno. (shrink)

Platão trata no Parmênides das formas ideais e do seu modelo de identidade relacionando-o ao modelo de ser eleata através da noção de um. Tendo concluído a incompatibilidade entre este modelo de atribuição e os seres mutáveis em uma realidade múltipla, ele percebeu que a noção de não-ser deveria ser desvinculada do entendimento de Parmênides através da nova noção de não-ser como diferença apresentada no Sofista. Paralelamente, Aristóteles apresenta um ordenamento parecido através da sua teoria física sobre o movimento, baseada (...) na ideia de contrários, e do princípio de não- contradição e identidade desenvolvidos na Metafísica. Em Aristóteles, contrariedade, contradição, movimento, mudança e identidade são conceitos fundamentais para se compreender em um nível elementar como ele trata o problema da relação entre conhecimento e contingencia. (shrink)

Las lecciones inaugurales son una clásica tradición en la Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, con ellas se da inicio al año académico. Para estas ocasiones, el Consejo Universitario designa a un profesor del claustro que tendrá el honor de pronunciar la lección inaugural. Allí, el catedrático ofrece una clase magistral en la que da cuenta de una investigación reciente, o vuelve sobre el trabajo académico al que ha dedicado años, o reflexiona sobre asuntos de importancia, ya sea del ámbito universitario (...) o de la actualidad nacional. Al cumplirse veinte años de nuestra universidad, y en un momento de crecimiento y consolidación, es importante mantener el vínculo con los tiempos fundacionales para observar el camino recorrido y preparar la senda para todo lo que viene. Así, las diecinueve lecciones inaugurales que se presentan en este volumen muestran temas que han acompañado desde siempre nuestra propuesta: una educación con enfoque humanista, vinculada a su entorno y siempre preocupada por la promoción de la justicia; el estudio académico del fenómeno de la espiritualidad y el dialogo fructífero entre la fe y la razón; el pasado y presente de la Compañía de Jesús y su aporte a la sociedad peruana; el examen a la historia del Perú, con el propósito de encontrar lecciones que nos sirvan en nuestro devenir; y, finalmente, el proyecto de vida que se construye en la universidad, con una introspección que también se dirige a construir liderazgos orientados a profundizar el diálogo social, tan urgente entre nosotros. (shrink)

The aim of the research is to identify the relationship between the performance criteria and the achievement of the objectives of supervision which is represented in the performance of the job at the Islamic University in Gaza Strip. To achieve the objectives of the research, the researchers used the descriptive analytical approach to collect information. The questionnaire consisted of (22) paragraphs distributed to three categories of employees of the Islamic University (senior management, faculty members, their assistants and members of the (...) administrative board). A random sample of 314 employees was selected, 276 responses were retrieved with a return rate of 88.1%. The SPSS program was used to enter, process, and analyze the data. The results of the study showed a positive relationship between the performance criteria and the achievement of the control objectives represented by the job performance in the Islamic University from the point of view of the members (senior management, faculty and their assistants and the administrative board). The researchers also recommended a number of recommendations, including the provision of an appropriate level of control system components today through the continuous updating and development of performance standards and the need to provide the necessary physical and financial resources to continue the development and achievement within the university. Expand the development of technology in the various activities of the university through the construction of a complete and integrated system to support the control systems in the university to suit its size. The researchers also recommended the follow-up, review of the performance standards and work to modify them in line with the mission of the university and the goals that the university seeks to reach. (shrink)

Five aspects of visual change detection are reviewed. The first concerns the concept of change itself, in particular the ways it differs from the related notions of motion and difference. The second involves the various methodological approaches that have been developed to study change detection; it is shown that under a variety of conditions observers are often unable to see large changes directly in their field of view. Next, it is argued that this “change blindness” indicates that focused attention is (...) needed to detect change, and that this can help map out the nature of visual attention. The fourth aspect concerns how these results affect our understanding of visual perception—for example, the implication that a sparse, dynamic representation underlies much of our visual experience. Finally, a brief discussion is presented concerning the limits to our current understanding of change detection. (shrink)

Recent empirical work appears to suggest that the moral intuitions of professional philosophers are just as vulnerable to distorting psychological factors as are those of ordinary people. This paper assesses these recent tests of the ‘expertise defense’ of philosophical intuition. I argue that the use of familiar cases and principles constitutes a methodological problem. Since these items are familiar to philosophers, but not ordinary people, the two subject groups do not confront identical cognitive tasks. Reflection on this point shows that (...) these findings do not threaten philosophical expertise—though we can draw lessons for more effective empirical tests. (shrink)

Frankfurt cases are supposed to provide us with counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities. Among the most well known responses to these cases is what John Fischer has dubbed the flicker of freedom strategy. Here we revisit a version of this strategy, which we refer to as the fine-grained response. Although a number of philosophers, including some who are otherwise unsympathetic to Frankfurt’s argument, have dismissed the fine grained response, we believe there is a good deal to be said (...) on its behalf. We argue, in particular, that reflection on certain cases involving omissions undermines the main objections to the response and also provides the groundwork for an argument in support of it. (shrink)

Experiments are presented showing that visual search for Mueller-Lyer (ML) stimuli is based on complete configurations, rather than component segments. Segments easily detected in isolation were difficult to detect when embedded in a configuration, indicating preemption by low-level groups. This preemption—which caused stimulus components to become inaccessible to rapid search—was an all-or-nothing effect, and so could serve as a powerful test of grouping. It is shown that these effects are unlikely to be due to blurring by simple spatial filters at (...) early visual levels. It is proposed instead that they are due to more sophisticated processes that rapidly bind contour fragments into spatially-extended assemblies. These results support the view that rapid visual search cannot access the primitives formed at the earliest stages of visual processing; rather, it can access only higher-level, more ecologically-relevant structures. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight the extent to which Kant’s account of belief draws on the views of his contemporaries. Situating the non-evidentialist features of Crusius’s account of belief within his broader account, I argue that they include antecedents to both Kant’s distinction between pragmatic and moral belief and his conception of a postulate of pure practical reason. While moving us closer to Kant’s arguments for the first postulate, however, both Crusius’s and Meier’s arguments for the immortality of the soul (...) fail to anticipate the most important aspect of their Kantian counterparts. Developing the non-evidentialist features of Basedow’s account of belief, I distinguish it from its Pascalian and Jamesian relatives and argue that it is the clearest antecedent to Kant’s arguments for the first and second postulates. Finally, I consider the development of Kant’s account of belief after the first Critique in light of the foregoing, and discuss the broader implications of my analysis. (shrink)

We show that early vision can use monocular cues to rapidly complete partially-occluded objects. Visual search for easily detected fragments becomes difficult when the completed shape is similar to others in the display; conversely, search for fragments that are difficult to detect becomes easy when the completed shape is distinctive. Results indicate that completion occurs via the occlusion-triggered removal of occlusion edges and linking of associated regions. We fail to find evidence for a visible filling-in of contours or surfaces, but (...) do find evidence for a "functional" filling-in that prevents the constituent fragments from being rapidly accessed. As such, it is only the completed structures—and not the fragments themselves—that serve as the basis for rapid recognition. (shrink)

Our visual experience of the world is one of diverse objects and events, each with particular colors, shapes, and motions. This experience is so coherent, so immediate, and so effortless that it seems to result from a single system that lets us experience everything in our field of view. But however appealing, this belief is mistaken: there are severe limits on what can be visually experienced. -/- For example, in a display for air-traffic control it is important to track all (...) moving items. For a single item, this can be done without problem. Three or four can also be tracked, although some degree of effort may be needed. As the number is increased further, accurate tracking becomes more and more difficult—and eventually, impossible. Performance is evidently affected by a factor within the observer which enables certain kinds of perception to occur, but is limited in some way. This factor is generally referred to as attention. -/- At various times, attention has been associated with clarity of perception, intensity of perception, consciousness, selection, or the allocation of a limited “resource” enabling various operations (see Hatfield, 1998). During the past several decades, considerable progress has been achieved by focusing on the idea of selection (Broadbent, 1982). In particular, attention can be productively viewed as contingently selective processing. This can be embodied in various ways by various processes—there need not be a single quantity identified with all forms of attention, or a single site where it operates (Allport, 1993; Tsotsos, 2011). Although “paying attention” is often considered to be a unitary operation, it may simply refer to the control of one or more selective processes, ideally in a co-ordinated way. While this view has some cost in terms of conceptual simplicity, it can help make sense of a large set of phenomena. -/- This article surveys several of the major issues in our understanding of attention and how it relates to perception. It focuses on vision, since many—if not all—considerations are similar for all sensory modalities, and the level of understanding achieved in this domain is currently the most advanced. (shrink)

When hospitals face surges of patients with COVID-19, fair allocation of scarce medical resources remains a challenge. Scarcity has at times encompassed not only hospital and intensive care unit beds—often reflecting staffing shortages—but also therapies and intensive treatments. Safe, highly effective COVID-19 vaccines have been free and widely available since mid-2021, yet many Americans remain unvaccinated by choice. Should their decision to forgo vaccination be considered when allocating scarce resources? Some have suggested it should, while others disagree. We offer a (...) framework for evaluating when it is ethical and briefly discuss its legality in American law. (shrink)

Recent scientific approaches to aesthetics include evolutionary theories about the origin of art behavior, psychological investigations into human aesthetic experience and preferences, and neurophysiological explorations of the mechanisms underlying art experience. Critics of these approaches argue that they are ultimately irrelevant to a philosophical aesthetics because they cannot help us understand the distinctive conceptual basis and normativity of our art experience. This criticism may seem plausible given the piecemeal nature of these scientific approaches, but a more comprehensive naturalistic framework can (...) help us understand the conceptual basis and normativity of art. In particular, the ecology of art, an understanding of how individuals interact within particular environments, can help us understand the engineered art niches in which we create and experience art. Each niche is associated with a particular deme, or set of individuals that interact within that niche, and a set of cognitive, epistemic, and pedagogical technologies that form the conceptual basis of a niche-dependent normativity. This is to be contrasted with the niche-independent normativity revealed by many of the scientific approaches. This framework, and the conflicting streams of normativity it reveals, allows us to better understand conflicts in normativity and the implausibility of unequivocal and universal normative principles. (shrink)

Earthbodies describes how our bodies are open circuits to a sensual magic and planetary care that when closed off leads to disastrous detours, such as illness, ...

Analytic philosophers have a tendency to forget that they are human beings, and one of the reasons that P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, has been so influential is that it promises to bring discussions of moral responsibility back down to earth. Strawson encouraged us to “keep before our minds...what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal relationships”, which is, after all, the context in which questions about responsibility arise in the first place. In this (...) essay I explore what we can learn about ordinary interpersonal relationships from three works of literature – Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. My intention is to try to heed Strawson’s advice without imposing upon the data any particular theoretical agenda, and my hope is that the data collected will prove useful for future theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

Coherentists on epistemic justification claim that all justification is inferential, and that beliefs, when justified, get their justification together (not in isolation) as members of a coherent belief system. Some recent work in formal epistemology shows that “individual credibility” is needed for “witness agreement” to increase the probability of truth and generate a high probability of truth. It can seem that, from this result in formal epistemology, it follows that coherentist justification is not truth-conducive, that it is not the case (...) that, under the requisite conditions, coherentist justification increases the probability of truth and generates a high probability of truth. I argue that this does not follow. (shrink)

Many healthcare practices expose people to risks of harmful outcomes. However, the major theories of moral philosophy struggle to assess whether, when and why it is ethically justifiable to expose individuals to risks, as opposed to actually harming them. Sven Ove Hansson has proposed an approach to the ethical assessment of risk imposition that encourages attention to factors including questions of justice in the distribution of advantage and risk, people’s acceptance or otherwise of risks, and the scope individuals have to (...) influence the practices that generate risk. This paper investigates the ethical justifiability of preventive healthcare practices that expose people to risks including overdiagnosis. We applied Hansson’s framework to three such practices: an ‘ideal’ breast screening service, a commercial personal genome testing service, and a guideline that lowers the diagnostic threshold for hypertension. The framework was challenging to apply, not least because healthcare has unclear boundaries and involves highly complex practices. Nonetheless, the framework encouraged attention to issues that would be widely recognised as morally pertinent. Our assessment supports the view that at least some preventive healthcare practices that impose risks including that of overdiagnosis are not ethically justifiable. Further work is however needed to develop and/or test refined assessment criteria and guidance for applying them. (shrink)

Infants and children are suffering from a lots of nausea and vomiting problems. Doctors, usually face various difficulties dealing with these problems because of their similarities. In this paper, we present an expert system to help users in getting the correct diagnosis of problems of nausea and vomiting in infants and children (Gastro-esophageal reflux, Gastroenteritis, Systemic Infection, Bowel obstruction, Tumors, A bleeding disease, tonsillitis, and Hepatitis pharynx). Furthermore, this expert system provide information about the disease and how to deal with (...) it. SL5 Object expert system language was used to design and implement this expert system. (shrink)

The study determined the influence of innate mathematical characteristics on the number sense competencies of junior high school students in a Philippine public school. The descriptive-correlational research design was used to accomplish the study involving a nonrandom sample of sixty 7th-grade students attending synchronous math sessions. Data obtained from the math-specific Learning Style and Self-Efficacy questionnaires and the modified Number Sense Test (NST) were analyzed and interpreted using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s Chi-Square, and Simple Linear Regression analysis. The research instruments and (...) statistics were all validated and tested for reliability. The analysis revealed that the students are visual learners, had no or slight self-efficacy, and their number sense competency level is poor. They encountered difficulty in all the components and domains of the NST. Moreover, the students’ mathematical self-efficacy is significantly related and may influence their number sense competency level. Building upon the learners’ self-efficacy to further their understanding and skills in number sense is necessary. (shrink)

Art museums are built to elicit a wide variety of feelings, emotions, and moods from their visitors. While these effects are primarily achieved through the artworks on display, museums commonly deploy numerous other affect-inducing resources as well, including architectural solutions, audio guides, lighting fixtures, and informational texts. Art museums can thus be regarded as spaces that are designed to influence affective experiencing through multiple structures and mechanisms. At face value, this may seem like a somewhat self-evident and trivial statement to (...) make. However, in this article, I argue that niche construction theory enables us to make several illuminating observations about the ways in which art museums are engineered to influence our feelings. To expound on this claim, I single out for discussion the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which for its entire lifespan (1939–52)—and prior to its evolution into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—was expressly organized to kindle in its visitors a special, spiritual form of aesthetic experience: a liberating feeling of cosmic rhythm and order, no less. -/- The argument will proceed as follows: In Part 1, I introduce the basics of niche construction theory and specify the sense in which I apply it to museums and aesthetic affective experiencing. In Part 2, I outline the origins and ethos of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, after which I pin down the type of affective experience it fostered by drawing from visitors’ self-reported reactions to the artworks on display. Then, in Part 3, I use niche construction theory to explain how the Museum consciously fashioned itself, by means of various mutually supportive resources and technologies, into a fertile setting for the specified feelings. Finally, in Part 4, I extend beyond the discussed case to assess the implications of niche construction theory for a broader understanding of how art museums make us feel. In other words, by tracing the early steps of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting towards the present-day Guggenheim, I call attention to the general variation in affective niches as regards their structure, technologies, and affective aims. Overall, the article elucidates the functioning of art museums as affective niches and furthers the conceptual development of niche construction theory in aesthetics. (shrink)

In sections 2.21.23-25 of An Essay concerning Human Understanding, John Locke considers and rejects two ways in which we might be “free to will”, which correspond to the Thomistic distinction between freedom of exercise and freedom of specification. In this paper, I examine Locke’s arguments in detail. In the first part, I argue for a non-developmental reading of Locke’s argument against freedom of exercise. Locke’s view throughout all five editions of the Essay is that we do not possess freedom of (...) exercise (at least in most cases). In the second part, I argue that, when Locke asks whether we possess freedom of specification, his question is intentionally ambiguous between two readings, a first-order reading and a higher-order reading. Locke’s view is that, on either reading, we do not possess freedom of specification (at least in any interesting sense). (shrink)

Content disjunctivism is the view that veridical experience involves contents and objects that differ from those of corresponding hallucinations. On one formulation of this view, we are aware of ordinary material things in our surroundings when we experience veridically, and we are aware of mere appearances when we hallucinate. This paper proposes a way of developing this view and offers some considerations in support. Central to the proposed regimentation will be a distinction between different notions of appearance. We distinguish between (...) the notion of something merely appearing to have a property and the notion of mere appearances, which are types of objects that we can refer to and be aware of. Mere appearances are not sense data or Meinongian non-existent objects but existing objects that do not have the properties that they appear to have. These notions of appearance will be elucidated, in particular by characterizing how they are involved in hallucination and illusion. I argue that the resulting view is supported by how our mental life seems to us when we experience our environment. (shrink)

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal intentions can (...) be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model,and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action. (shrink)

There are two foundational, but not fully developed, ideas in paraconsistency, namely, the duality between paraconsistent and intuitionistic paradigms, and the introduction of logical operators that express meta-logical notions in the object language. The aim of this paper is to show how these two ideas can be adequately accomplished by the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) and by the Logics of Formal Undeterminedness (LFUs). LFIs recover the validity of the principle of explosion in a paraconsistent scenario, while LFUs recover the (...) validity of the principle of excluded middle in a paracomplete scenario. We introduce definitions of duality between inference rules and connectives that allow comparing rules and connectives that belong to different logics. Two formal systems are studied, the logics mbC and mbD, that display the duality between paraconsistency and paracompleteness as a duality between inference rules added to a common core– in the case studied here, this common core is classical positive propositional logic (CPL + ). The logics mbC and mbD are equipped with recovery operators that restore classical logic for, respectively, consistent and determined propositions. These two logics are then combined obtaining a pair of logics of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness (LFIUs), namely, mbCD and mbCDE. The logic mbCDE exhibits some nice duality properties. Besides, it is simultaneously paraconsistent and paracomplete, and able to recover the principles of excluded middle and explosion at once. The last sections offer an algebraic account for such logics by adapting the swap-structures semantics framework of the LFIs the LFUs. This semantics highlights some subtle aspects of these logics, and allows us to prove decidability by means of finite non-deterministic matrices. (shrink)

This short article is a “conversation” in which an android, Mort, replies to Richard Marc Rubin’s android named Sol in “The Robot Sol Explains Laughter to His Android Brethren” (The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 2022). There Sol offers an explanation for how androids can laugh--largely a reaction to frustration and unmet expectations: “my account says that laughter is one of four ways of dealing with frustration, difficulties, and insults. It is a way of getting by. If you need to label (...) my conception of humor, you might call it an adjustment theory, or perhaps an accommodation theory” (Rubin 256). Mort is intrigued but has his doubts. Mort contends that synesthesia likely has something to do with how humans develop humor. Perhaps, he considers, human designers crossed the androids' sensory wires, allowing them to be able to smash up concepts that do not otherwise seem to fit together, reconstruct incongruities in a manner that is not nonsensical, express the aha-eureka moment of a serendipitous discovery, and even feel blue when they fail at a given task that we were expected to complete. (shrink)

In current philosophy of mind, there is lively debate over whether emotions, moods, and other affects can extend to comprise elements beyond one’s organismic boundaries. At the same time, there has been growing interest in the nature and significance of so-called existential feelings, which, as the term suggests, are feelings of one’s overall being in the world. In this article, I bring these two strands of investigation together to ask: Can the material underpinnings of existential feelings extend beyond one’s skull (...) and skin? To begin, I introduce and adopt a componential-systemic view of extended affectivity. In doing so, I specify the vehicle externalist criteria for extension employed in my analysis. I then define what existential feelings are and pinpoint several key issues in their potential extension. More specifically, I identify sensorimotor ‘know-how’ as a possibly extending component of existential feeling and posit it as the fulcrum of my argument. Finally, I move on to consider the extension of existential feeling via sensory substitution, especially through so-called Tactile Visual Sensory Substitution (TVSS) devices. Informed by both philosophical and empirical studies, I argue that, under certain conditions, (a) the agent’s implicit sensorimotor processing and a TVSS device can become coupled into a new systemic whole, which in turn (b) reconfigures the material underpinnings of the agent’s pre-intentional world-experience. This, I conclude, counts as a cogent case for extended existential feeling. (shrink)

This brief elucidation of two quotes from the Genealogy will be apt for more accessible interpretation following the completion of my next paper. Stay tuned for some hard-fought philosophy.