Social wasps are broadly distributed in Brazil, and their distribution is closely related to local plant composition. However, only a few studies on the diversity of these insects have been carried out in northeastern Brazil, and in Caatinga Biome the diversity is probably underestimated due to the lack of inventories for the region. Aiming at advancing the knowledge about the wasp fauna, we carried out this study from October 2005 to September 2006 in Ibipeba, northeastern Brazil. We collected 172 wasps (...) of five genera and eight species, and recorded Polybia ruficeps Schrottky, 1902 for the first time in the state of Bahia. The most abundant species was Polybia ignobilis (Haliday, 1836) (n = 69), and the least abundant were Brachygastra lecheguana (Latreille, 1824) (n = 2) and Polistes canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) (n = 2). The present study inventory focused exclusively on the diversity of social wasps in an area of Caatinga, which contributes to advance the local fauna knowledge. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

En los últimos tiempos el derecho ambiental ha ganado un puesto importante en el ámbito jurídico, hecho que refleja la preocupación que hoy se tiene por la relación del hombre con su entorno. Desde hace quince años, la Universidad Colegio Mayor de Nuestra señora del Rosario, por intermedio de su Facultad de Jurisprudencia y concretamente de la Especialización y la línea de investigación en Derecho Ambiental, ha propuesto a través de diversos proyectos avanzar en el conocimiento y análisis del ordenamiento (...) jurídico ambiental, aportando así al desarrollo, estructura y consolidación de esta rama jurídica. Bajo estos parámetros, el objetivo de esta publicación es hacer algunas reflexiones en torno a distintos temas que dentro del derecho público impactan o influyen al derecho ambiental y responder a los enormes desafíos que se presentan en la materia. Por tanto, el programa quiere contribuir desde la academia al diálogo crítico y propositivo que permita dar solución a los problemas encontrados en la aplicación del derecho ambiental. En el primer capítulo, Gloria Amparo Rodriguez describe los ordenamientos jurídicos constitucionales de Colombia, Ecuador y Bolivia a fin de analizar la forma en que cada uno de ellos consagra el derecho a un ambiente sano. A continuación, Martha Ovalle y Zelba Nidia Castro de Perez realizan un estudio de los principios de precaución y prevención, exponiendo su alcance, su fundamento desde el derecho internacional y cómo vienen siendo entendidos por nuestro ordenamiento jurídico, tanto jurisprudencial como legal. Luis Adolfo Diazgranados se ocupa de la responsabilidad de los funcionarios públicos en materia ambiental, para lo cual realiza un análisis de los deberes consagrados en la normatividad vigente. Continuando con esta temática, el profesor Jorge Agudo Gonzalez, de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, explora la incidencia del ambiente y los recursos naturales en los procesos contractuales, a fin de mostrar cómo estas materias se han constituido en variable fundamental en el devenir de la formación, celebración y ejecución de los contratos, desde un punto de vista crítico, los aspectos importantes del proceso sancionatorio ambiental, evidenciando las falencias y vacios del a Ley 1333 de 2009. Jairo Cabrera plantea algunas reflexiones sobre la responsabilidad, valiéndose de la doctrina internacional, sobre la problemática de la reparación por daño ambiental. Por su parte, Leonardo Güiza Suárez explica el régimen general de la responsabilidad ambiental en el ordenamiento jurídico a partir del daño de los bosques naturales y su incidencia sobre los derechos humanos. Andres Gomez Rey, desde la teoría del acto administrativo, desarrolla el análisis crítico del régimen jurídico de las aguas superficiales en el derecho ambiental. Giovani J. Herrera Carrascal realiza una disertación sobre los recursos naturales y el ambiente como elementos del espacio público que a su vez constituye en un componente del medio ambiente urbano a partir de la jurisprudencia y de las competencias respectivas. Por último, Marybell Ochoa Miranda trate el tema de los residuos hospitalarios en Colombia, exponiendo su régimen jurídico, las competencias de las autoridades ambientales, los deberes que en estos asuntos tienen los ciudadanos, proponiendo lineamientos para avanzar en la consolidación de la gestión integral de residuos hospitalarios y similares. (shrink)

Opinionated state of the art paper on scientific explanation. Analysis and discussion of the most relevant models and theories in the contemporary literature, namely, the deductive-nomological model, the models of inductive-statistical and statistical relevance, the pragmatic theory of why questions, the unifying theory of standard arguments, and the causal/non-causal counterfactual theory.

Opinionated state of the art paper on mathematical explanation. After a general introduction to the subject, the paper is divided into two parts. The first part is dedicated to intra-mathematical explanation and the second is dedicated to extra-mathematical explanation. Each of these parts begins to present a set of diverse problems regarding each type of explanation and, afterwards, it analyses relevant models of the literature. Regarding the intra-mathematical explanation, the models of deformable proofs, mathematical saliences and the demonstrative structure of (...) mathematical induction are addressed. Regarding the extra-mathematical explanation, modal, abstract and deductive models are addressed. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, Axel Honneth has written extensively on the notion of social pathology, presenting it as a distinctive critical resource of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, in which tradition he places himself, and as an alternative to the mainstream liberal approaches in political philosophy. In this paper, I review the developments of Honneth's writing on this notion and offer an immanent critique, with a particular focus on his recent major work "Freedom's Right". Tracing the use of, and problems (...) internal to, Honneth's concept of social pathology serves to demonstrate his increasing reformism. It also serves to catalogue some of the dead ends that Critical Theory should avoid in taking up the idea of social pathology. The implication is not that this idea should be dropped. Rather, the paper is undertaking the necessary step of clearing the ground for further progress to take place on the question of what role the idea of social pathology can and should play in Critical Theory. The paper is critical in nature (and relentlessly so), but ultimately serves a constructive purpose. (shrink)

What is the scope of our conscious mental agency, and how do we acquire self-knowledge of it? Both questions are addressed through an investigation of what best explains our inability to form judgemental thoughts in direct response to practical reasons. Contrary to what Williams and others have argued, it cannot be their subjection to a truth norm, given that our failure to adhere to such a norm need not undermine their status as judgemental. Instead, it is argued that we cannot (...) form judgements at will because we subjectively experience them as responses to epistemic reasons, and because this is incompatible with our experiential awareness of direct mental actions, such as instances of imagining. However, this latter awareness does not extend to indirect agency, which relies on epistemic or causal processes as means. Judging may therefore still count as an indirect action - just like, say, breaking a window by throwing a stone. (shrink)

My primary aim in this article is to provide a philosophical account of the unity of hallucinations, which can capture both perceptual hallucinations (which are subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions) and non-perceptual hallucinations (all others). Besides, I also mean to clarify further the division of labour and the nature of the collaboration between philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Assuming that the epistemic conception of hallucinations put forward by M. G. F. Martin and others is largely on the right track, I will (...) focus on two main tasks: (a) to provide a satisfactory phenomenology of the subjective character of perceptions and perceptual hallucinations and (b) to redress the philosophers’ neglect of non-perceptual hallucinations. More specifically, I intend to apply one of the central tenets of the epistemic conception—that hallucinations can and should be positively characterised in terms of their phenomenological connections to perceptions—to non-perceptual hallucinations as well. That is, I will try to show that we can positively specify the class of non-perceptual hallucinations by reference to the distinctive ways in which we first-personally experience them and perceptions in consciousness. The task of saying more about their underlying third-personal nature may then be left to the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In his paper, The Transparency of Experience, M.G.F. Martin has put forward a well- known – though not always equally well understood – argument for the disjunctivist, and against the intentional, approach to perceptual experiences. In this article, I intend to do four things: (i) to present the details of Martin’s complex argument; (ii) to defend its soundness against orthodox intentionalism; (iii) to show how Martin’s argument speaks as much in favour of experiential intentionalism as it speaks in favour of (...) disjunctivism; and (iv) to argue that there is a related reason to prefer experiential intentionalism over Martin’s version of disjunctivism. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno inspired much of Germany’s 1960s student movement, but he came increasingly into conflict with this movement about the practical implications of his critical theory. Others – including his friend and colleague Herbert Marcuse – also accused Adorno of a quietism that is politically objectionable and in contradiction with his own theory. In this article, I recon- struct, and partially defend, Adorno’s views on theory and (political) praxis in Germany’s 1960s in 11 theses. His often attacked and maligned (...) stance during the 1960s is based on his analysis of these historical circumstances. Put provocatively, his stance consists in the view that people in the 1960s have tried to change the world, in various ways; the point – at that time – was to interpret it. (shrink)

A growing amount of media is paid for by its consumers through their very consumption of it. Typically, this new media is web-based and paid for by advertising. It includes the services offered by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. We offer an ethical assessment of the attention economy, the market where attention is exchanged for new media. We argue that the assessment has ethical implications for how the attention economy should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics (...) for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market tends to engender extremely harmful outcomes for individuals or society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates not to the outcomes of the market, but rather, to whether it somehow reflects or has its source in weakened agency. We argue that the attention economy animates concerns with respect to both criteria and that new media should be subject to the same sort of regulation as other harmful, addictive products. (shrink)

In this article, I present two objections against the view that aesthetic judgements – that is, judgemental ascriptions of aesthetic qualities like elegance or harmony – are justified non‐inferentially. The first is that this view cannot make sense of our practice to support our aesthetic judgements by reference to lower‐level features of the objects concerned. The second objection maintains that non‐inferentialism about the justification of aesthetic judgements cannot explain why our aesthetic interest in artworks and other objects is limited to (...) only some of their lower‐level features that realise their higher‐level aesthetic qualities. Although my concern with the view that aesthetic judgements are subject to non‐inferential justification is very general, my discussion is primarily structured around Sibley's well‐developed and influential version of this view. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at (...) all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness—in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved. (shrink)

Prediction-based decisions, which are often made by utilizing the tools of machine learning, influence nearly all facets of modern life. Ethical concerns about this widespread practice have given rise to the field of fair machine learning and a number of fairness measures, mathematically precise definitions of fairness that purport to determine whether a given prediction-based decision system is fair. Following Reuben Binns (2017), we take ‘fairness’ in this context to be a placeholder for a variety of normative egalitarian considerations. We (...) explore a few fairness measures to suss out their egalitarian roots and evaluate them, both as formalizations of egalitarian ideas and as assertions of what fairness demands of predictive systems. We pay special attention to a recent and popular fairness measure, counterfactual fairness, which holds that a prediction about an individual is fair if it is the same in the actual world and any counterfactual world where the individual belongs to a different demographic group (cf. Kusner et al. (2018)). (shrink)

Algorithms influence every facet of modern life: criminal justice, education, housing, entertainment, elections, social media, news feeds, work… the list goes on. Delegating important decisions to machines, however, gives rise to deep moral concerns about responsibility, transparency, freedom, fairness, and democracy. Algorithms and Autonomy connects these concerns to the core human value of autonomy in the contexts of algorithmic teacher evaluation, risk assessment in criminal sentencing, predictive policing, background checks, news feeds, ride-sharing platforms, social media, and election interference. Using these (...) case studies, the authors provide a better understanding of machine fairness and algorithmic transparency. They explain why interventions in algorithmic systems are necessary to ensure that algorithms are not used to control citizens' participation in politics and undercut democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Holm (2022) argues that a class of algorithmic fairness measures, that he refers to as the ‘performance parity criteria’, can be understood as applications of John Broome’s Fairness Principle. We argue that the performance parity criteria cannot be read this way. This is because in the relevant context, the Fairness Principle requires the equalization of actual individuals’ individual-level chances of obtaining some good (such as an accurate prediction from a predictive system), but the performance parity criteria do not guarantee any (...) such thing: the measures merely ensure that certain population-level ratios hold. (shrink)

Within the debate on the epistemology of aesthetic appreciation, it has a long tradition, and is still very common, to endorse the sentimentalist view that our aesthetic evaluations are rationally grounded on, or even constituted by, certain of our emotional responses to the objects concerned. Such a view faces, however, the serious challenge to satisfactorily deal with the seeming possibility of faultless disagreement among emotionally based and epistemically appropriate verdicts. I will argue that the sentimentalist approach to aesthetic epistemology cannot (...) accept and accommodate this possibility without thereby undermining the assumed capacity of emotions to justify corresponding aesthetic evaluations – that is, without undermining the very sentimentalist idea at the core of its account. And I will also try to show that sentimentalists can hope to deny the possibility of faultless disagreement only by giving up the further view that aesthetic assessments are intersubjective – a view which is almost as traditional and widely held in aesthetics as sentimentalism, and which is indeed often enough combined with the latter. My ultimate conclusion is therefore that this popular combination of views should better be avoided: either sentimentalism or intersubjectivism has to make way. (shrink)

One central fact about hallucinations is that they may be subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions. Indeed, it has been argued that the hallucinatory experiences concerned cannot— and need not—be characterized in any more positive general terms. This epistemic conception of hallucinations has been advocated as the best choice for proponents of experiential (or “naive realist”) disjunctivism—the view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their introspectible subjective characters. In this chapter, I aim to formulate and defend an intentional alternative to experiential (...) disjunctivism called experiential intentionalism. This view not only enjoys some advantages over its rival but is also compatible with the epistemic conception of hallucinations, as well as with the disjunctivist view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their third-personal structures (e.g., their causal, informational, or reason-providing links to reality). It also maintains that there are actually two aspects to the subjective indistinguishability of mental episodes: (i) we cannot distinguish their first-personal characters in introspective awareness; and (ii) we cannot distinguish their third-personal structures in experiential awareness—that is, in how they are given to consciousness. While experiential disjunctivism makes the mistake of ignoring (ii) and reducing subjective indiscriminability to (i), experiential intentionalism correctly identifies (ii) as the primary source of the subjective indistinguishability of perception-like hallucinations. Accordingly, the intentional error involved in such hallucinations is due to the fact that we consciously experience them as possessing a relational structure. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the view that we can acquire factual knowledge – that is, contingent propositional knowledge about certain (perceivable) aspects of reality – on the basis of imaginative experience. More specifically, I argue that, under suitable circumstances, imaginative experiences can rationally determine the propositional content of knowledge-constituting beliefs – though not their attitude of belief – in roughly the same way as perceptual experiences do in the case of perceptual knowledge. I also highlight some philosophical consequences of (...) this conclusion, especially for the issue of whether imagination can help us to learn something from fictions. (shrink)

A number of findings in the field of machine learning have given rise to questions about what it means for automated scoring- or decisionmaking systems to be fair. One center of gravity in this discussion is whether such systems ought to satisfy classification parity (which requires parity in accuracy across groups, defined by protected attributes) or calibration (which requires similar predictions to have similar meanings across groups, defined by protected attributes). Central to this discussion are impossibility results, owed to Kleinberg (...) et al. (2016), Chouldechova (2017), and Corbett-Davies et al. (2017), which show that classification parity and calibration are often incompatible. This paper aims to argue that classification parity, calibration, and a newer, interesting measure called counterfactual fairness are unsatisfactory measures of fairness, offer a general diagnosis of the failure of these measures, and sketch an alternative approach to understanding fairness in machine learning. (shrink)

Farben sind für uns sowohl objektive, als auch phänomenale Eigenschaften. In seinem Buch argumentiert Fabian Dorsch, daß keine ontologische Theorie der Farben diesen beiden Seiten unseres Farbbegriffes gerecht werden k ann. Statt dessen sollten wir akzeptieren, daß letzterer sich auf zwei verschiedene Arten von Eigenschaften bezieht: die repräsentierten Reflektanzeigenschaften von Gegenständen und die qualitativen Eigenschaften unserer Farbwahrnehmungen, die als sinnliche Gegebenheitsweisen ersterer fungieren. Die Natur der Farben gibt einen detaillierten Überblick über die zeitgenössischen philosophischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Theorien der Farben und (...) bietet sich aufgrund seines systematischen und umfassenden Charakters auch als ein seminar- oder vorlesungsbegleitendes Textbuch an. (shrink)

I discuss a contemporary solution to the dynamic problem of old evidence (POE), as proposed by Sprenger. Sprenger’s solution combines the Garber–Jeffrey–Niiniluoto (GJN) approach with Howson’s suggestion of counterfactually removing the old evidence from scientists’ belief systems. I argue that in the dynamic POE, the challenge is to explain how an insight under beliefs in which the old evidence E is known increased the credence of a scientific hypothesis. Therefore, Sprenger’s counterfactual solution, in which E has been artificially removed, does (...) not resolve the problem. I consider several potential responses. (shrink)

This chapter overviews Hume’s thoughts on the nature and role of imagining and focusses primarily on three important distinctions that Hume draws among our conscious mental episodes: (i) between impressions and ideas; (ii) between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination; and (iii), among the ideas of the imagination, between ideas of the judgement and ideas of the fancy. In addition, the chapter considers Hume’s views on the imagination as a faculty of producing ideas, as well as on (...) the part that imagining plays in the acquisition of modal knowledge and in the comprehension of, and resistance to, false or fictional opinions. (shrink)

Doxasticism about our awareness of normative (i.e. justifying) reasons – the view that we can recognise reasons for forming attitudes or performing actions only by means of normative judgements or beliefs – is incompatible with the following triad of claims: -/- (1) Being motivated (i.e. forming attitudes or performing actions for a motive) requires responding to and, hence, recognising a relevant reason. -/- (2) Infants are capable of being motivated. -/- (3) Infants are incapable of normative judgement or belief. -/- (...) It should be clear that (3) is true, given that infants lack the required reflective and conceptual capacities. So doxasticists have to reject either (1) or (2) (or both). But this forced choice may be understood as a dilemma for doxasticism. On the hand, doxasticists may adopt a Kantian approach and reject (2), precisely because they think that motivation presupposes the doxastic recognition of reasons, and because infants lack the capacity to doxastically recognise reasons. But this choice seems to wrongly reduce the responses of infants to mere reflexes or instinctive reactions. On the other hand, doxasticists may choose a Humean route and deny (1) by espousing a purely causal or teleological account of motivation. But this would mean detrimentally ignoring the normative nature of (some instances of) motivation. -/- One elegant way of avoiding this dilemma is to give up doxasticism and instead endorse experientialism – the view that we enjoy some experiential access to reasons, which is independent of, and perhaps more fundamental than, our capacity to form normative judgements and beliefs. In this talk, I would like to provide an argument for the existence of such a non-doxastic form of access to reasons. More specifically, I aim to defend the claim that our basic awareness of reasons is phenomenal in nature. What this means is that it forms part of our access from the inside to those of our mental episodes that provide us with access to reasons. In other words, when we introspectively attend to reason-giving mental episodes and what they are about, we have the impression of the presence of a reason for us. My defence of this experientialist alternative to doxasticism will primarily focus on perceptual reasons for first-order beliefs about the external world. (shrink)

The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed by future ontologists; these (...) recommendations are intended as guidelines for institutions and organizations that may consider establishing a program for training ontologists. Further, we recommend a number of specific actions for the community to pursue. (shrink)

One prominent ambition of theories of colour is to pay full justice to how colours are subjectively given to us; and another to reconcile this first-personal perspective on colours with the third-personal one of the natural sciences. The goal of this article is to question whether we can satisfy the second ambition on the assumption that the first should and can be met. I aim to defend a negative answer to this question by arguing that the various kinds of experienced (...) colour resemblances – notably similarities in hue distance, sameness in superdeterminables, and colour resemblances between surfaces, volumes and illuminants – cannot be accounted for in terms of the mental representation of the scientifically studied properties, which colours are best identified with in response to the second ambition. (shrink)

Deontic logic is devoted to the study of logical properties of normative predicates such as permission, obligation and prohibition. Since it is usual to apply these predicates to actions, many deontic logicians have proposed formalisms where actions and action combinators are present. Some standard action combinators are action conjunction, choice between actions and not doing a given action. These combinators resemble boolean operators, and therefore the theory of boolean algebra offers a well-known athematical framework to study the properties of the (...) classic deontic operators when applied to actions. In his seminal work, Segerberg uses constructions coming from boolean algebras to formalize the usual deontic notions. Segerberg’s work provided the initial step to understand logical properties of deontic operators when they are applied to actions. In the last years, other authors have proposed related logics. In this chapter we introduce Segerberg’s work, study related formalisms and investigate further challenges in this area. (shrink)

One of the tasks of ontology in information science is to support the classification of entities according to their kinds and qualities. We hold that to realize this task as far as entities such as material objects are concerned we need to distinguish four kinds of entities: substance particulars, quality particulars, substance universals, and quality universals. These form, so to speak, an ontological square. We present a formal theory of classification based on this idea, including both a semantics for the (...) theory and a provably sound axiomatization. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a version of the so-called conversational hypothesis of the ontogenetic connection between language and mindreading (Harris 1996, 2005; Van Cleave and Gauker 2010; Hughes et al. 2006). After arguing against a particular way of understanding the hypothesis (the communicative view), I will start from the justificatory view in philosophy of social cognition (Andrews 2012; Hutto 2004; Zawidzki 2013) to make the case for the idea that the primary function of belief and desire (...) attributions is to justify and normalize deviant patterns of behaviour. Following this framework, I elaborate upon the idea that development of folk psychological skills requires the subjects to engage in conversationally mediated joint and cooperative activities in order to acquire the conceptual capacity of ascribing propositional attitudes. After presenting the general version of the hypothesis, I present several testable sub-hypotheses and some psychological studies that give empirical plausibility to the hypothesis. (shrink)

New media (highly interactive digital technology for creating, sharing, and consuming information) affords users a great deal of control over their informational diets. As a result, many users of new media unwittingly encapsulate themselves in epistemic bubbles (epistemic structures, such as highly personalized news feeds, that leave relevant sources of information out (Nguyen forthcoming)). Epistemically paternalistic alterations to new media technologies could be made to pop at least some epistemic bubbles. We examine one such alteration that Facebook has made in (...) an effort to fight fake news and conclude that it is morally permissible. We further argue that many epistemically paternalistic policies can (and should) be a perennial part of the internet information environment. (shrink)

There is a long-standing gap in the literature as to whether Gödelian incompleteness constitutes a challenge for Neo-Logicism, and if so how serious it is. In this paper, I articulate and address the challenge in detail. The Neo-Logicist project is to demonstrate the analyticity of arithmetic by deriving all its truths from logical principles and suitable definitions. The specific concern raised by Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem is that no single sound system of logic syntactically implies all arithmetical truths. I set (...) out some responses that initially seem appealing and explain why they are not compelling. The upshot is that Neo-Logicism either offers an epistemic route only to some truths of arithmetic; or that it has to move from a syntactic to a semantic notion of logical consequence, which risks undermining its epistemic goals. I conclude by considering Crispin Wright’s recent attempt to address Gödelian incompleteness, which I argue is not satisfactory. (shrink)

The claim that consciousness is propositional has be widely debated in the past. For instance, it has been discussed whether consciousness is always propositional, whether all propositional consciousness is linguistic, whether propositional consciousness is always articulated, or whether there can be non-articulated propositions. In contrast, the question of whether propositions are conscious has not very often been the focus of attention.

In this chapter, I argue against empiricist positions which claim that empirical evidence can be sufficient to defeasibly justify aesthetic judgements, or judgements about the adequacy of aesthetic judgements, or sceptical judgements about someone's capacity to form adequate aesthetic judgements. First, empirical evidence provides neither inferential, nor non-inferential justification for aesthetic opinions. Second, while empirical evidence may tell us how we do respond aesthetically to artworks, it cannot tell us how we should respond to them. And, third, empirical insights into (...) the irrationality of many of our aesthetic judgements do not warrant the sceptical conclusion that we ought to refrain from forming aesthetic opinions. As a consequence of these limitations to aesthetic empiricism, we should endorse the rationalist position that aesthetic criticism is largely a matter of reasoning and, moreover, a collective undertaking. (shrink)

This dissertation provides a theory of the nature of aesthetic experiences on the basis of a theory of aesthetic values. It results in the formulation of the following necessary conditions for an experience to be aesthetic: it must consist of a representation of an object and an accompanying feeling; the representation must instantiate an intrinsic value; and the feeling must be the recognition of that value and bestow it on the object. Since representations are of intrinsic value for different reasons, (...) there are different kinds of aesthetic experiences . By means of certain conceptual links, it is possible to extend this account to other aesthetic entities thus enabling the formulation of a general theory of the aesthetic in non-aesthetic terms. In particular, aesthetic values are identical with subjective dispositions to elicit aesthetic experiences under normal conditions. Accordingly, I endorse anti-realism about aesthetic values: their existence, nature and exemplification are mind-dependent, while their ascriptions to objects have genuine truth-values. I back up this account by arguing against the alternative positions that either take aesthetic values to be objective or deny the truth-aptness of their attributions. Furthermore, I put forward a relativist variant of anti-realism according to which ascriptions of different aesthetic values to a particular object are all correct, given that the aesthetic experiences involved are made under normal conditions and concern the same aesthetically nonevaluative features of that object. For there is no specifically aesthetic norm by means of which one of the faultless aesthetic experiences can be picked out as the only appropriate one. That aesthetic values nevertheless show a normative dimension is ensured by their conformity to a general account of values as capacities to satisfy, or dissatisfy, rational desires. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present the disagreement between Moran and Walton on the nature of our affective responses to fiction and to defend a view on the issue which is opposed to Moran’s account and improves on Walton’s. Moran takes imagination-based affective responses to be instances of genuine emotion and treats them as episodes with an emotional attitude towards their contents. I argue against the existence of such attitudes, and that the affective element of such responses should (...) rather be taken to be part of what is imagined. In this respect, I follow Walton; and I also agree with the latter that our affective responses to fiction are, as a consequence, not instances of real emotion. However, this gives rise to the challenge to be more specific about the nature of our responses and explain how they can still involve a phenomenologically salient affective element, given that propositionally imagining that one feels a certain emotion is ruled out because it may be done in a dispassionate way. The answer —already suggested, but not properly spelled out by Walton— is that affectively responding to some fictional element consists in imaginatively re-presenting an experience of emotional feeling towards it. The central thought is that the conscious and imaginative representation of the affective character of an instance of genuine emotion itself involves the respective phenomenologically salient affective element, despite not instantiating it. (shrink)

Recently, there has been much discussion of ‘fair machine learning’: fairness in data-driven decision-making systems (which are often, though not always, made with assistance from machine learning systems). Notorious impossibility results show that we cannot have everything we want here. Such problems call for careful thinking about the foundations of fair machine learning. Sune Holm has identified one promising way forward, which involves applying John Broome's theory of fairness to the puzzles of fair machine learning. Unfortunately, his application of Broome's (...) theory appears to be fatally flawed. This article attempts to rescue Holm's central insight – namely, that Broome's theory can be useful to the study of fair machine learning – by giving an alternative application of Broome's theory, which involves thinking about fair machine learning in counterfactual (as opposed to merely statistical) terms. (shrink)

El presente texto pretende analizar el concepto de 'destino' atribuido a Heráclito por ciertos autores de la antigüedad a la luz de los fragmentos del corpus heraclíteo y la doxografía disponibles. Se pretende mostrar la pertinencia de leer a los filósofos presocráticos, como Heráclito de Éfeso, en un contexto enriquecido por fragmentos y material textual de otras clases (doxografía, reminiscencias y paráfrasis) a fin de ofrecer una explicación para la atribución del término ειμαρμεν-eta o su correspondiente en latín 'fatum', al (...) filósofo Efesio. (shrink)

Relationalism about perception minimally claims that instances of perception -- in contrast to instances of hallucination -- are constituted by the external objects perceived. Most variants of relationalism furthermore maintain that this difference in constitution is due to a difference in mental kind. One prominent example is acquaintance relationalism, which argues that perceptions are relational in virtue of acquainting us with external objects. I distinguish three variants of acquaintance relationalism -- which differ in their answers to the question of which (...) kind of awareness hallucinations involve -- and object to all of them on two main grounds. First, none of the variants can explain how hallucinations can be introspectively indistinguishable from perceptions, despite their essential difference in awareness. Second, all three variants are unable to identify the feature of hallucinations that ensure that these experiences possess the same motivational power as corresponding perceptions. Since aquaintance relationalism can satisfy neither of these two desiderata on relationalist views, it should be rejected. Hence, if we want to be relationalists about perception, we should endorse a form of relationalism that treats perceptions -- as well as hallucinations -- as representational. (shrink)

A widespread view in philosophy claims that inner speech is closely tied to human metacognitive capacities. This so-called format view of inner speech considers that talking to oneself allows humans to gain access to their own mental states by forming metarepresentation states through the rehearsal of inner utterances (section 2). The aim of this paper is to present two problems to this view (section 3) and offer an alternative view to the connection between inner speech and metacognition (section 4). According (...) to this alternative, inner speech (meta)cognitive functions derivate from the set of commitments we mobilize in our communicative exchanges. After presenting this commitment-based approach, I address two possible objections (section 5). (shrink)

It is now increasingly accepted that many existing biological and medical ontologies can be improved by adopting tools and methods that bring a greater degree of logical and ontological rigor. In this chapter we will focus on the merits of a logically sound approach to ontologies from a methodological point of view. As we shall see, one crucial feature of a logically sound approach is that we have clear and functional definitions of the relational expressions such as ‘is a’ and (...) ‘part of ’. (shrink)

This study is concerned with linguistic competence and relationship between the socio-demographic profile in terms of parents’ education background and assigned household chores. The researcher made questionnaires and essay tests and administered among senior high school students who were randomly chosen as respondents. To analyze and interpret data, mean, standard deviation, T-test, and One-Way Analysis of Variance were utilized. ANOVA was conducted to determine whether there was a significant relationship between the socio-demographic profile and the level of linguistic competency of (...) the senior high school students. Findings revealed that there was no significant relationship between the parents’ educational attainment and linguistic competences. ANOVA was conducted again to determine whether there was a significant relationship between the assigned household chores and the level of linguistic competency of the senior high school students. Similarly, results indicate that linguistic competences do not differ among respondents with different assigned household chores. In addition, T-test was conducted to determine whether there was a significant difference among the level of linguistic competencies of the senior high school students in Ormoc City Regional Sports Academy, but the gathered results revealed that there was no significant difference among linguistic competence level. However, there was a significant difference in the linguistic competence in organization of ideas among senior high school students. Grade 11 students have significantly higher mean in organization of ideas than Grade12 students. Major findings revealed that the respondents were at the basic level under the Common European Framework of References for Languages. Generally, the linguistic competence of the senior high school students should be improved. A proposed remedial activity in English writing skills is adapted to level up the linguistic competence of the senior high school students. (shrink)

The recent debate on cognitive phenomenology has largely focused on phenomenal aspects connected to the content of thoughts. By contrasts, aspects pertaining to their attitude have often been neglected, despite the fact that they are distinctive of the mental kind of thought concerned and, moreover, also present in experiences and thus less contentious than purely cognitive aspects. My main goal is to identify two central and closely related aspects of attitude that are phenomenologically salient and shared by thoughts with experiences, (...) namely the rational role that they play in our mental lives and their determination by factors external to them, such as external objects or reasons. In particular, I aim to defend Phenomenal Rationalism about judgemental thoughts and perceptual experiences: the view that their phenomenal character reflects their rational role, that is, their capacity to provide and/or respond to reasons. I conclude with some remarks about how this view may be extended to other kinds of th... (shrink)

This paper examines the practice of using predictive systems to lengthen the prison sentences of convicted persons when the systems forecast a higher likelihood of re-offense or re-arrest. There has been much critical discussion of technologies used for sentencing, including questions of bias and opacity. However, there hasn’t been a discussion of whether this use of predictive systems makes sense in the first place. We argue that it does not by showing that there is no plausible theory of punishment that (...) supports it. (shrink)

This paper examines the convergence of large language models, multimodal AI, and generative spatial technologies to enable sophisticated simulated worlds for studying agentic behavior. Recent developments in generative architectures, particularly GenEx and topology-aware mesh generation, facilitate the creation of coherent, explorable environments with artificial agents capable of complex interactions. The proposed framework for "virtual anthropology" presents novel opportunities for studying emergent behaviors and cognitive processes in controlled, generative environments, with implications for both theoretical research and practical applications in artificial intelligence.

El presente artículo discute sobre la inclusión del contrarrevolucionario Joseph de Maistre en la problemática categoría de reaccionario político, pero sostiene que se trata de un conservador. Para llevar a cabo este objetivo, se hace un análisis de tipo teórico de acuerdo con las exigencias de la hermenéutica textual y considerando los aportes de la historia de las ideas y de la historia conceptual. Con esto en mente, en la primera parte de este trabajo se detectan los problemas del uso (...) del concepto de reacción para la teoría política y se demuestra su injustificada aplicación al pensamiento de De Maistre. En la segunda parte, se despliega el concepto de conservadurismo sustantivo para definir la corriente conservadora con vistas a, en la tercera parte, reconsiderar su obra a partir del marco conceptual presentado. Se concluye la conveniencia heurística de la categoría propuesta para la comprensión del autor saboyano. (shrink)

Two particular approaches to the imagination as a recreative capacity have recently gained prominence: neo-Humeanism and simulationatism. According to neo-Humeanism, imaginings have cognitions as a constitutive part of their representational contents; while simulationalists maintain that, in imagining, we essentially simulate the occurrence of certain cognitive states. Two other kinds of constitutive dependence, that figure regularly in the debate, concern the necessity of cogni­tions for, respectively, the causation and the semantic power of imaginings. In what follows, I dis­cuss each of these (...) kinds of dependence and assess how useful they are for spelling out the concep­tion of imaginings as recreations of cognitions. A particular focus will thereby be on the details of Hume's original conception of imaginings as causal reproductions (or ‘copies’) of cog­nitions, as well as on the influence of his view on contemporary approaches to the topic which replace Hume's causal understanding of the representational link between imaginings and cognitions with either an intentional or a relational understanding. My conclusion will be that, if imaginings should be taken to be recreations at all, then they should be taken to be representational recreations. That is, neo-Humeanism turns out to be the most plausible way of understanding imaginings as re­creations of cognitions. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahren ist es recht populär geworden, traditionelle Fragen der philosophischen Ästhetik – wie zum Beispiel die nach der Natur und Rechtfertigung ästhetischer Beurteilungen – mithilfe empirischer Forschungsergebnisse zu beantworten zu versuchen. Diesem empiristisch geprägten Ansatz möchte ich gerne eine rationalistisch orientierte Auffassung der ästhetischen Erfahrung und Bewertung von Kunstwerken entgegensetzen. Insbesondere werde ich die ästhetische Relevanz dreier verschiedener Arten empirischer Studien kritisch diskutieren: (i) solcher, die einzelne Kunstwerke unter Einsatz der Natur- oder Geschichtswissenschaften erforschen; (ii) solcher, die (...) sich der empirischen Methoden der Psychologie und der Soziologie bedienen, um unsere ästhetischen Beurteilungen einzelner Werke oder Werkgruppen zu untersuchen; und schliesslich (iii) solcher, die unser allgemeines ästhetisches Urteilsvermögen einer kognitionswissenschaftlichen Überprüfung unterziehen. (shrink)

Esta tesis estudia el pensamiento del conservador español Juan Donoso Cortés (1809- 1853). Más precisamente, se ocupa de responder cómo resuelve el problema de la decadencia de la autoridad monárquica en Europa a partir de las revoluciones de 1848. Para abordar este objetivo general elaboramos dos objetivos específicos. El primero busca señalar las continuidades y discontinuidades de la obra donosiana, escindida generalmente en dos períodos: el juvenil, con un Donoso Cortés liberal, y el maduro, que luego de una “conversión religiosa” (...) se vuelca hacia el catolicismo reaccionario. El segundo objetivo hace foco en el concepto de dictadura, bajo la sospecha de que en esta noción reside la clave de su proyecto conservador. Con esto en mente construimos dos hipótesis. La primera afirma que nuestro autor es consciente de la imposibilidad de restituir el proyecto monárquico. La segunda, sugiere la presencia de una fórmula parcialmente decisionista como alternativa a dicho proyecto. Luego de un trabajo de lectura de primera mano de los textos donosianos, las conclusiones confirman las hipótesis y observan que existe una continuidad estructural en las ideas del español, pero también que hay discontinuidades, de las cuales la más importante es su particular noción de dictadura, que denominamos dictadura catolizante. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to link empirical findings concerning environmental inequalities with different normative yard-sticks for assessing whether these inequalities should be deemed unjust, or not. We argue that such an inquiry must necessarily take into account some caveats regarding both empirical research and normative theory. We suggest that empirical results must be contextualised by establishing geographies of risk. As a normative yard-stick we propose a moderately demanding social-egalitarian account of justice and democratic citizenship, which we take to (...) be best suited to identify unjust as well as legitimate instances of socio-environmental inequality. (shrink)