El sufismo del Sahel posee una gran riqueza simbólica. Las elaboradas cosmologías del sufismo akbariano, en el que se inspira el neo-sufismo, se entremezclan con tradiciones milenarias donde el genio (ǧinn) y el ángel (malāk) conviven con los humanos como otrora lo hacían los espíritus naturales y los ancestros. Este texto esboza, desde el trabajo de campo y las fuentes escritas, una aproximación a una lectura simbólica de las relaciones entre humanos, ángeles y genios en el sufismo de la etnia (...) pular y, en concreto, en la experiencia y la narrativa del maestro sufí senegalés Thierno Ḥassan Dem. -/- The elaborate cosmologies of Akbarian Sufism, in which neo-Sufism is inspired, are interspersed with millenary traditions where the genius (ǧinn) and the angel (malāk) coexist with humans as once the natural spirits and ancestors did. This paper outlines, from the field work and the written sources, an approach to a symbolic reading of the relations between humans, angels and geniuses in the Sufism of the Fulani people. This study focuses, mainly, in the experience and narratives of the Senegalese Sufi master Thierno Ḥassan Dem. (shrink)

RESUMENDesde la teoría postcolonial se han cuestionado los modelos de historia de las ideas impuestos por el africanismo y el orientalismo. Diferentes teóricos africanos –Bachir Diagne, Mundimbe, Wiredu o Kete Asante– han formulado diversas soluciones para superar las dificultades. Este trabajo explora las principales dificultades y las propuestas para elaborar una historia de la Filosofía africana. -/- The postcolonial theory was questioning the patterns of History of Ideas imposed by Orientalism and Africanism. Different African theorists –Bachir Diagne, Mundimbe, Kete Asante (...) or Wiredu– developed various solutions to overcome the dificulties. This paper explores the principal challenges and proposals so as to build a History of African philosophy. (shrink)

This paper proposes an Afroepistemological reading of the Ifá system. The policies of Western academic epistemology have disdained the traditiona African knowledge. Ifá has not been an exception. However, through this method a great deal of the socio-cultural and epistemological codes of Yorùbá society. So, Ifá becomes more important than a divination rite, because it represents socio-political and epistemological cohesion of a great proportion of the peoples of West Africa. This work vindicates this role and try to show epistemological complexity (...) of the system. (shrink)

En 1994 el shayj Ali Muhsin Al Barwani concluyó en el exilio su traducción del Corán al swahili. La principal característica es que huía del swahili estándar formulado por los británicos, para usar el swahili clásico que se enseñaba en las madâris (escuelas coránicas) de Kenya, Tanzania y Zanzíbar. Además, esta traducción introducía elementos (léxico, símbolos, construcciones sociales) del pensamiento tradicional islámico swahili. Nuestro trabajo es un análisis hermenéutico simbólico de la primera sûrâ del Corán, al Fâtiha, para determinar los (...) elementos tradicionales swahilis, descristianizantes y anti-colonialistas en el texto de Al Barwani. De ahí inferiremos qué papel tiene esta traducción como elemento de resistencia contra el colonialismo. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is reconstruct the proto-epistemology and the experience of knowledge in the boreoafroasiatic languages, with a special emphasis in Egyptians and Semitics. Our framework is the works by Ehret (1995) and the HSED edited by Orel & Stolbova (1995). So, we will analyze the roots *ken, *mɜʕ and *hq for reconstruct the proto-categories and the different kinds of cognoscitive experience.

La historia de África contemporánea no puede entenderse sin el sufismo. Una espiritualidad vibrante llena de historias increíbles de santos y santas quienes han configurado la identidad de los países del Sahel enlazándola con el resto del mundo islámico. Y es que el sufismo africano no es un fenómeno del pasado ni un proyecto concluido. Al contrario, sigue con mucha fuerza, agrupando a musulmanes y siendo una organización transnacional de primera línea para comprender todo esos procesos políticos y sociales de (...) África. -/- Este libro, una etnografía vital, surge de la experiencia de haber vivido y aprendido entre ellos. Es la experiencia de un extraño que, a fuerza de escuchar, se hizo familia de ellos. Una obra para comprender la diversidad y la importancia de los símbolos en un momento en el que la globalización intenta homogeneizarlos. Hoy más que nunca la protección del mito, del símbolo o la identidad es importante para evitar el radicalismo y el fanatismo que asolan el mundo. (shrink)

Nosotres, biólogues, ecologistas y otres profesionales dedicados a proteger la vida, les escribimos con una solicitud urgente. Les pedimos muy comedidamente que su organización o institución emita un comunicado oficial condenando la crisis en curso y abordando los impactos ambientales y humanitarios en Palestina.

In philosophy of language, a distinction has been proposed by Diego Marconi between two aspects of lexical competence, i.e. referential and inferential competence. The former accounts for the relation-ship of words to the world, the latter for the relationship of words among themselves. The aim of the pa-per is to offer a critical discussion of the kind of formalisms and computational techniques that can be used in Artificial Intelligence to model the two aspects of lexical competence, and of the (...) main difficulties related to the use of these computational techniques. The first conclusion of our discussion is that the dis-tinction between inferential and referential semantics is instantiated in the literature of Artificial Intelli-gence by the distinction between symbolic and connectionist approaches. The second conclusion of our discussion is that the modelling of lexical competence needs the advent of hybrid models integrating symbolic and connectionist frameworks. Our hypothesis is that Conceptual Spaces, a framework devel-oped by Gärdenfors more than fifteen years ago, can offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and gener-alize many aspects of the representational approaches mentioned above and to integrate “inferential” (=symbolic) and “referential” (=connectionist) computational approaches on common ground. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, to examine what beliefs, if any, underlie (a) the Pyrrhonist’s desire for ataraxia and his account of how this state may be attained, and (b) his philanthropic therapy, which seeks to induce, by argument, ejpochv and ataraxia in the Dogmatists. Second, to determine whether the Pyrrhonist’s philanthropy and his search for and attainment of ataraxia are, as scholars have generally believed, essential aspects of his stance.

The present paper has two, interrelated objectives. The first is to analyze the different senses in which arguments are characterized as persuasive in the extant writings of Sextus Empiricus. The second is to examine the Pyrrhonist’s therapeutic use of arguments in the discussion with his Dogmatic rivals – more precisely, to determine the sense and basis of Sextus’ distinction between therapeutic arguments that appear weighty and therapeutic arguments that appear weak in their persuasiveness.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to discuss some challenging issues concerning Sextus’ works and outlook, and to offer an overview of the influence exerted by Sextan Pyrrhonism on both early modern and contemporary philosophy.

This Element engages with the epistemic significance of disagreement, focusing on its skeptical implications. It examines various types of disagreement-motivated skepticism in ancient philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion, and general epistemology. In each case, it favors suspension of judgment as the seemingly appropriate response to the realization of disagreement. One main line of argument pursued in the Element is that, since in real-life disputes we have limited or inaccurate information about both our own epistemic standing and the epistemic standing of (...) our dissenters, personal information and self-trust can rarely function as symmetry breakers in favor of our own views. (shrink)

This paper argues for the following three claims. First, the Agrippan mode from disagreement does not play a secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment. Second, the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Five Modes of Agrippa, which nonetheless does not prevent him from non-doxastically assenting to them. And third, some recent objections to Agrippan Pyrrhonism raised by analytic epistemologists and experimental philosophers fail to appreciate the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem style of argumentation and the real (...) challenge posed by the mode from disagreement. (shrink)

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness (...) of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, (...) and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons. (shrink)

Pyrrhonism was one of the two main ancient skeptical traditions. In this second paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present and discuss some of the issues on Pyrrhonian skepticism which have been the focus of much attention in the recent literature. The topics to be addressed concern the outlooks of Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, and Sextus Empiricus.

In his Pyrrhonian Outlines , Sextus Empiricus employs an argument based upon the possibility of disagreement in order to show that one should not assent to a Dogmatic claim to which at present one cannot oppose a rival claim. The use of this argument seems to be at variance with the Pyrrhonian stance, both because it does not seem to accord with the definition of Skepticism and because the argument appears to entail that the search for truth is doomed to (...) failure. In the present paper, I examine the passages in which Sextus utilizes the argument from possible disagreement and offer an interpretation that makes the use of this argument compatible with the Pyrrhonian outlook. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter, I first offer an overview of the two themes addressed in the present collection - namely, disagreement and skepticism - and their connection, then present the purpose and content of the volume.

In this paper, I critically engage with Casey Perin's interpretation of Sextan Pyrrhonism in his book, The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. From an approach that is both exegetical and systematic, I explore a number of issues concerning the Pyrrhonist's inquiry into truth, his alleged commitment to the canons of rationality, and his response to the apraxia objection.

It is generally thought that suspension of judgment about a proposition p is the doxastic attitude one is rationally compelled to adopt whenever the epistemic reasons for and against p are equipollent or equally credible, that is, whenever the total body of available evidence bearing on p epistemically justifies neither belief nor disbelief in p. However, in a recent contribution to this journal, Jan Wieland proposes “to broaden the conditions for suspension, and argue that it is rational to suspend belief (...) on a certain issue even if one’s current evidence is not neutral (or even close to neutral)”. My aim in this paper is to point to a number of problems in Wieland’s position, some of which in connection with the account of Pyrrhonian skepticism found in the extant works of Sextus Empiricus. (shrink)

The question of whether the Pyrrhonist adheres to certain logical principles, criteria of justification, and inference rules is of central importance for the study of Pyrrhonism. Its significance lies in that, whereas the Pyrrhonist describes his philosophical stance and argues against the Dogmatists by means of what may be considered a rational discourse, adherence to any such principles, criteria, and rules does not seem compatible with the radical character of his skepticism. Hence, if the Pyrrhonist does endorse them, one must (...) conclude that he is inconsistent in his outlook. Despite its import, the question under consideration has not received, in the vast literature on Pyrrhonism of the past three decades, all the attention it deserves. In the present paper, I do not propose to provide a full examination of the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards rationality, but to focus on the question of whether he endorses the law of non-contradiction (LNC). However, I will also briefly tackle the question of the Pyrrhonist’s outlook on both the canons of rational justification at work in the so-called Five Modes of Agrippa and the logical rules of inference. In addition, given that the LNC is deemed a fundamental principle of rationality, determining the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards it will allow us to understand his general attitude towards rationality. (shrink)

This paper approaches the current epistemological debate on peer disagreement from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, thus adopting a form of skepticism which is more radical than those discussed in the literature. It makes use of argumentative strategies found in ancient Pyrrhonism both to show that such a debate rests on problematic assumptions and to block some maneuvers intended to offer an efficacious way of settling a considerable number of peer disputes. The essay takes issue with three views held in the peer (...) disagreement debate: there is an objective fact of the matter about at least most controversial questions; we possess theory-neutral evidence bearing on those questions which grants us access to the truth of the matter; and many peer controversies are resolved by attending to which disputant has correctly evaluated the objective evidence. With respect to the first two views, it is argued that the belief in both objective facts and theory-neutral evidence is subject to fierce dispute, and should not therefore be taken for granted in the discussion of peer disagreement. As for the third view, it is argued that from either a first- or a third-person perspective, there seems to be epistemic symmetry between the disputants which makes it necessary to suspend judgment. (shrink)

This paper engages with Svavar Svavarsson’s recent essay, “Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence,” arguing against both (i) his interpretation of whether two rival arguments appear equipollent to the Pyrrhonist because he himself is equally persuaded by both of them, and (ii) his interpretation of the way in which the argument from possible disagreement is supposed to induce suspension of judgment in the Pyrrhonist. In so doing, I aim to dispel some serious misunderstandings regarding key aspects of the Pyrrhonist’s skeptical (...) outlook and argumentative practice. (shrink)

This book explores the nature and significance of Pyrrhonism, the most prominent and influential form of skepticism in Western philosophy. Not only did Pyrrhonism play an important part in the philosophical scene of the Hellenistic and Imperial age, but it also had a tremendous impact on Renaissance and modern philosophy and continues to be a topic of lively discussion among both scholars of ancient philosophy and epistemologists. The focus and inspiration of the book is the brand of Pyrrhonism expounded in (...) the extant works of Sextus Empiricus. Its aim is twofold: to offer a critical interpretation of some of the central aspects of Sextus’s skeptical outlook and to examine certain debates in contemporary philosophy from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective. The first part explores the aim of skeptical inquiry, the defining features of Pyrrhonian argumentation, the epistemic challenge posed by the Modes of Agrippa, and the Pyrrhonist’s stance on the requirements of rationality. The second part focuses on present-day discussions of the epistemic significance of disagreement, the limits of self-knowledge, and the nature of rationality. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in skepticism. (shrink)

A multidisciplinary study of trust. The papers in this publication address the question of what generates, maintains, substitutes or collapses trusting relations.

In his account of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus talks about the disturbance concerning matters of opinion that afflicts his dogmatic rivals and that he himself was afflicted by before his conversion to Pyrrhonism. The aim of the present paper is to identify the distinct sources of doxastic disturbance that can be found in that account, and to determine whether and, if so, how they are related. The thesis to be defended is that it is possible to discern three sources of doxastic (...) disturbance and that two of them are to be explained by reference to the third, which is the real cause of mental distress. The paper also considers whether the thesis in question entails that there is no reason for the Pyrrhonist to suspend judgment across the board, but only to suspend judgment about evaluative matters. (shrink)

My purpose in this article is to revisit an issue concerning the state of undisturbedness or tranquility (ἀταραξία) in ancient Pyrrhonism as this skeptical stance is depicted in Sextus Empiricus’s extant works. The issue in question is whether both the pursuit and the attainment of undisturbedness in matters of opinion should be regarded as defining features of Pyrrhonism not merely from a systematic standpoint that examines Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy, but mainly according to Sextus’s own account of that (...) skeptical stance. In exploring this issue, I will develop an interpretation defended in previous work, responding to some objections, discussing alternative interpretations, offering further textual support, and putting forward new arguments. It is my contention that examining whether both the pursuit and the attainment of undisturbedness in matters of opinion are essential to Pyrrhonism will make it possible to gain a more accurate understanding of this brand of skepticism. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that one of the key differences between ancient skepticism and modern and contemporary skepticism is that the ancient skeptic does not call into question the existence of the external world, but only our ability to know the properties or qualities of external objects. In this paper, I argue that in Sextus Empiricus's attack on the Epicurean criterion of truth one finds evidence that the ancient Pyrrhonist also suspends judgment about the existence of external objects.

La présente étude a deux objectifs. Le premier est d’examiner les différentes formulations de l’objection de l’ἀπραξία telle qu’elle fut soulevée contre le scepticisme académicien et le pyrrhonisme, ainsi que les réponses à cette objection proposées par Arcésilas et Sextus Empiricus. Le second objectif consiste à évaluer la force de la version de l’objection de l’ἀπραξία selon laquelle le sceptique ne peut réaliser les actions rationnelles propres à l’être humain.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo a compreensão da ação em Aristóteles. Para este fim será utilizado o livro III da Ética a Nicômaco, passando antes por uma breve definição da virtude, tal como aparece no livro II, a qual, pode-se dizer ser o bem para a ação, na medida em que é aquilo que se deve alcançar com ela. No campo específico da ação será visto como ela pode ser distinguida entre voluntária, involuntária e não-voluntária. Neste espectro insere-se igualmente a (...) discussão sobre o que significa agir por e na ignorância. Além disso, se abordará também a questão relacionada à deliberação e à escolha.: This study aims to understand the action in Aristotle. For this purpose, we will use the book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, after doing a brief definition of virtue, as it appears in the Book II, which can be said to be the good for the action, as that is what should be reached by her. In the specific field of action, it will be seen how she can be distinguished between voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary. This spectrum is also part of the discussion about what it means to act by and in the ignorance. In addition, the study will also address the issue related to deliberation and choice. Keywords: Deliberation, Choice, Action, Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonian skeptic’s stance, as described by Sextus Empiricus, is in good part defined by his suspending judgment or belief about all the matters he has so far investigated. Most interpreters of Pyrrhonism maintain that it is a mistake to understand this form of skepticism in terms of doubt because suspension as conceived of by the Pyrrhonist is markedly different from the state of doubt. In this article, I expound the reasons that have been offered in support of that prevailing (...) view and assess their strength. (shrink)

Sextus Empiricus associates the skeptical stance with the activity of inquiry or investigation. My purpose in this paper is to examine the Pyrrhonist's involvement in that activity because getting an accurate understanding of the nature and purpose of skeptical inquiry makes it possible to delineate some of the distinctive traits of Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy. I defend the minority view among specialists according to which (i) Sextus describes both the prospective Pyrrhonist and the full-fledged Pyrrhonist as inquirers into (...) truth, and (ii) the full-fledged Pyrrhonist can, without inconsistency, engage in truth-directed inquiry. (shrink)

When involved in a disagreement, a common reaction is to tell oneself that, given that the information about one’s own epistemic standing is clearly superior in both amount and quality to the information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing, one is justified in one’s confidence that one’s view is correct. In line with this natural reaction to disagreement, some contributors to the debate on its epistemic significance have claimed that one can stick to one’s guns by relying in part on information (...) about one’s first-order evidence and the functioning of one’s cognitive capacities. In this article, I argue that such a manoeuvre to settle controversies encounters the problem that both disputants can make use of it, the problem that one may be wrong about one’s current conscious experience, and the problem that it is a live possibility that many of one’s beliefs are the product of epistemically distorting factors. I also argue that, even if we grant that personal information is reliable, when it comes to real-life rather than idealized disagreements, the extent of the unpossessed information about one’s opponent’s epistemic standing provides a reason for doubting that personal information can function as a symmetry breaker. (shrink)

Several scholars familiar with Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrhonism who have attentively read his Against the Ethicists have gotten the impression that something strange is going on in this book. For, at variance with the ‘official’ Pyrrhonian attitude of universal suspension of judgment, a number of passages of Against the Ethicists seem to ascribe to the Pyrrhonist both a type of negative dogmatism and a form of realism, which together amount to what may be called ‘moderate ethical realism’. The purpose of this (...) paper is to determine whether Sextus does embrace such a position in Against the Ethicists. (shrink)

Ancient philosophy knew two main skeptical traditions: the Pyrrhonian and the Academic. In this final paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present some of the topics about Academic skepticism which have recently been much debated in the specialist literature. I will be concerned with the outlooks of Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Philo of Larissa.

Is skeptical theism tenable once one acknowledges, as proponents of that view do, one's cognitive limitations vis-à-vis religious matters? In this article, I aim to answer that question both by examining the apparent radical skeptical implications of the skeptical component of skeptical theism and by comparing this view with fideism and Pyrrhonism, which also lay emphasis on our cognitive limitations. My ultimate purpose is to determine which of the three stances it makes more sense to adopt once the limitations of (...) human cognitive powers are recognized. (shrink)

Book Description (Blurb): Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds explains the crucial role that human cognition research plays in the design and realization of artificial intelligence systems, illustrating the steps necessary for the design of artificial models of cognition. It bridges the gap between the theoretical, experimental and technological issues addressed in the context of AI of cognitive inspiration and computational cognitive science. -/- Beginning with an overview of the historical, methodological and technical issues in the field of Cognitively-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, (...) Lieto illustrates how the cognitive design approach has an important role to play in the development of intelligent AI technologies and plausible computational models of cognition. Introducing a unique perspective that draws upon Cybernetics and early AI principles, Lieto emphasizes the need for an equivalence between cognitive processes and implemented AI procedures, in order to realise biologically and cognitively inspired artificial minds. He also introduces the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a pragmatic method to rank the different degrees of biologically and cognitive accuracy of artificial systems in order project and predict their explanatory power with respect to the natural systems taken as source of inspiration. -/- Providing a comprehensive overview of cognitive design principles in constructing artificial minds, this text will be essential reading for students and researchers of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

Assume que o estudo da produção científica pode oferecer entendimento sobre os temas abordados, tendências da comunidade, autores mais citados, indicação de maturação da área e consolidação ou silenciamento da área. Tem como objetivo mapear como a Filosofia está contida na Ciência da Informação brasileira. Coleta os dados dos artigos científicos publicados entre 1972 e 2018 na Coleção de Publicações Brasileiras em Ciência da Informação - BRAPCI. Analisa uma amostra de 300 artigos e deriva algumas questões descritivas. Conclui que a (...) Ciência da Informação brasileira mantém um discurso filosófico ocidental canônico com uso equilibrado de autores e principais correntes filosóficas. Não aponta ao uso de pensadores e temas periféricos. Propõe a continuidade desse tipo de pesquisa para incentivar debates sobre uma relação interdisciplinar saudável entre Ciência da Informação e Filosofia. (shrink)

We defend, from a contractarian perspective, that the fair price of an insurance policy is the amount that the contracting parties agree when they are both equally uncertain about the insured event. Drawing on the approach developed by R. Sugden in _The Community of Advantage_, we answer two standard objections raised against contractarianism in the actuarial sciences: (1) people are not wise enough to assess their actuarial risks; (2) they are not rational enough to decide which insurance policy suits them (...) better. We show under which circumstances people can make fair actuarial agreements, without presupposing any objective risk or rationality benchmarks. (shrink)

This paper assesses both the practical and the epistemic value of Pyrrhonism as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant writings. It first explores whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment and undisturbedness make us behave in a moral or immoral way, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possible to live well. It then examines whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment makes it possible to reach the epistemic goals of attaining truth and avoiding (...) error. It finally considers whether the results of the previous analyses show that Pyrrhonism is of no philosophical interest to a contemporary audience. (shrink)

We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure, that is, a set of fundamental physical elements whose individuation and behavior are described in purely relational terms, without any need for a background spacetime. Although the specification of the fundamental elements of the ontology depends on the particular physical domain considered---and is thus susceptible to scientific progress---, the empirically successful structural features of the (...) framework are preserved through theory change. The kinematics and dynamics of these self-subsisting structures are technically implemented using the theoretical framework of Pure Shape Dynamics, which provides a completely relational physical description of a system in terms of the intrinsic geometry of a suitably defined space called shape space. (shrink)

In this article we present an advanced version of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system aimed at extending the capabilities of artificial systems in conceptual categorization tasks. It combines different sorts of common-sense categorization (prototypical and exemplars-based categorization) with standard monotonic categorization procedures. These different types of inferential procedures are reconciled according to the tenets coming from the dual process theory of reasoning. On the other hand, from a representational perspective, the system relies on the hypothesis of conceptual (...) structures represented as heterogeneous proxytypes. Dual-PECCS has been experimentally assessed in a task of conceptual categorization where a target concept illustrated by a simple common-sense linguistic description had to be identified by resorting to a mix of categorization strategies, and its output has been compared to human responses. The obtained results suggest that our approach can be beneficial to improve the representational and reasoning conceptual capabilities of standard cognitive artificial systems, and –in addition– that it may be plausibly applied to different general computational models of cognition. The current version of the system, in fact, extends our previous work, in that Dual-PECCS is now integrated and tested into two cognitive architectures, ACT-R and CLARION, implementing different assumptions on the underlying invariant structures governing human cognition. Such integration allowed us to extend our previous evaluation. (shrink)

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build arti cial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the (...) comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the fi nal part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges. (shrink)

The paper discusses from a metaphysical standpoint the nature of the dependence relation underpinning the talk of mutual action between material and spatiotemporal structures in general relativity. It is shown that the standard analyses of dependence in terms of causation or grounding are ill-suited for the general relativistic context. Instead, a non-standard analytical framework in terms of structural equation modeling is exploited, which leads to the conclusion that the kind of dependence encoded in the Einstein field equations is a novel (...) one. (shrink)

El concepto de trastorno mental permite justificar intervenciones médicas, psicológicas y judiciales. Además, facilita a la/el consultante acceder a tratamientos mediante reembolsos o programas de salud pública, y por otro lado, podría conllevar estereotipos sociales. No obstante, el significado de dicho concepto no ha dejado de suscitar debate. En el presente artículo argumentaré que los trastornos de personalidad, tal como son definidos en el DSM-5, no cumplen con los criterios de patología de las propuestas principales (i.e. teoría bio-estadística de la (...) salud, disfunción dañina, o entidad patológica) debido a tres razones independientes: (i) no se han propuesto dis/funciones a la base de cada trastorno y, dado el estado del arte de la psicología evolucionista, es poco probable que se pueda llevar a cabo ese programa en el futuro; (ii) el concepto de daño (distrés, perjuicio) aplicable a los trastornos de personalidad es constitutivamente social (aunque no exclusivamente social), por lo que resulta más adecuado hablar de grados de discapacidad que de trastornos del individuo; y (iii) que la ausencia de condiciones patognomónicas para cada trastorno, junto a la elevada comorbilidad y multimorbilidad entre trastornos de personalidad, horada la validez de la nosología actual y de los diagnósticos diferenciales. Propondré como solución la eliminación de los trastornos de personalidad de la nosología psiquiátrica. Eliminar los trastornos de personalidad no equivale a desconocer el sufrimiento de las personas diagnosticadas, ni a ignorar que dicho sufrimiento precede a, –y no acaba con la disolución de– la etiqueta diagnóstica. Por ello, se propondrá una reconceptualización de dicho sufrimiento en términos de discapacidad, entendida desde el modelo social, y que no presupone patología. (shrink)

Scholarship on ancient skepticism has undergone a remarkable renaissance in the last three decades. Specialists in ancient philosophy have explored the complex history of the Greco‐Roman skeptical traditions and discussed difficult philological and exegetical issues. But they have also assessed the philosophical significance of the various ancient skeptical outlooks. In this first paper, I provide a general presentation of this area of study, while in the two subsequent articles I will focus on some of the topics that have been the (...) object of much attention in the recent literature on ancient skepticism. (shrink)

An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this ontology fares when it comes to general relativistic physics. Using a Humean strategy, we regard the gravitational field as a means to represent the overall change in the distance relations among point particles in a way that achieves the best combination of being simple (...) and being informative. (shrink)