Over the last decade, Axel Honneth has established himself as one of the leading social and political philosophers in the world today. Rooted in the tradition of critical theory, his writings have been central to the revitalization of critical theory and have become increasingly influential. His theory of recognition has gained worldwide attention and is seen by some as the principal counterpart to Habermass theory of discourse ethics. In this important new volume, Honneth pursues his path-breaking work on recognition (...) by exploring the moral experiences of disrespect that underpin the conduct of social and political critique. What we might conceive of as a striving for social recognition initially appears in a negative form as the experience of humiliation or disrespect. Honneth argues that disrespect constitutes the systematic key to a comprehensive theory of recognition that seeks to clarify the sense in which institutionalized patterns of social recognition generate justified demands on the way subjects treat each other. This new book by one of the leading social and political philosophers of our time will be of particular interest to students and scholars in social and political theory and philosophy. (shrink)

In this volume Axel Honneth deepens and develops his highly influential theory of recognition, showing how it enables us both to rethink the concept of justice and to offer a compelling account of the relationship between social reproduction and individual identity formation. Drawing on his reassessment of Hegel’s practical philosophy, Honneth argues that our conception of social justice should be redirected from a preoccupation with the principles of distributing goods to a focus on the measures for creating symmetrical relations (...) of recognition. This theoretical reorientation has far-reaching implications for the theory of justice, as it obliges this theory to engage directly with problems concerning the organization of work and with the ideologies that stabilize relations of domination. In the final part of this volume Honneth shows how the theory of recognition provides a fruitful and illuminating way of exploring the relation between social reproduction and identity formation. Rather than seeing groups as regressive social forms that threaten the autonomy of the individual, Honneth argues that the ‘I’ is dependent on forms of social recognition embodied in groups, since neither self-respect nor self-esteem can be maintained without the supportive experience of practising shared values in the group. This important new book by one of the leading social philosophers of our time will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology, politics and the humanities and social sciences generally. (shrink)

Resumen La metáfora de la "descomposición" domina aún nuestra manera usual de pensar el análisis conceptual. Se trata de una herramienta muy útil para pensar este proceso tan abstracto, pero tiene limitaciones importantes. Por ejemplo, nos hace pensar que los componentes de un concepto deben estar en algún sentido contenidos en él o que la única manera en que dos conceptos pueden estar relacionados es que uno contenga al otro. Estas limitaciones no nos permiten dar cuenta de conceptos complejos cuya (...) estructura no es tan simple, como los de color o de medida. Por ello es tiempo de superar esta metáfora y pensar al análisis conceptual no sólo como descomposición, sino también como la asignación de diferentes funciones a los componentes de un concepto.Our customary way of thinking about conceptual analysis remains dominated by the metaphor of 'containment', which has certainly been very useful, but which also has important limitations. For example, it makes us think that the components of a concept must be, in some sense, contained in it or that the only way that two concepts can be related is if one contains the other. These limitations have not allowed us to account for concepts whose structure is not so simple, such as the concepts of color or measurement, among others. It is time, therefore, to overcome this metaphor and think of conceptual analysis not only as decomposition but also as the assignment of different functions to the components of a concept. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle as applied to the life sciences describe the properties of (...) living systems, and their selection in evolution, in terms of variational inference. We argue that niche construction can be described using a variational approach. We propose new arguments to support the niche construction perspective, and to extend the variational approach to niche construction to current perspectives in various scientific fields. (shrink)

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense of (...) others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do. (shrink)

Autism Spectrum Condition presents a challenge to social and relational accounts of the self, precisely because it is broadly seen as a disorder impacting social relationships. Many influential theories argue that social deficits and impairments of the self are the core problems in ASC. Predictive processing approaches address these based on general purpose neurocognitive mechanisms that are expressed atypically. Here we use the High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism approach in the context of cultural niche construction to explain (...) atypicalities of the relational self, specifically its minimal, extended, and intersubjective aspects. We contend that the social self in ASC should not be seen as impaired, but rather as an outcome of atypical niche construction. We unpack the scientific, ethical, and practical consequences of this view, and discuss implications for how the challenges that autistic persons face should be approached. (shrink)

It is argued that logic, and in particular mathematical logic, should play a key role in the undergraduate curriculum for students in the computing fields, which include electrical engineering (EE), computer engineering (CE), and computer science (CS). This is based on 1) the history of the field of computing and its close ties with logic, 2) empirical results showing that students with better logical thinking skills perform better in tasks such as programming and mathematics, and 3) the skills students are (...) expected to have in the job market. Further, the authors believe teaching logic to students explicitly will improve student retention, especially involving underrepresented minorities. Though this work focuses specifically on the computing fields, these results demonstrate the importance of logic education to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as a whole. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider a kind of social group that I call ‘epistemic’. It is constituted by its members’ possession of perceptually grounded common knowledge, which endows them with a particular kind of epistemic authority. This authority, I argue, is invoked in the activity of ‘joint reminiscing’—of remembering together a past jointly experienced event. Joint reminiscing, in turn, plays an important role in the constitution of social and personal identity. The notion of an epistemic group, then, is a concept (...) that helps explain an important aspect of a subject’s understanding of who she is. (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy (in particular towards popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy) that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core (populist ideology) turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism (properly specified) can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal (purely electoral) as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious (liberal) conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss five meta-ethical challenges to Naturalistic Moral Realism, which includes secular moral codes such as Secular Humanism that, in my view, naturalists need to address to keep their commitment to moral realism from looking like special pleading. The five challenges are as follows: 1. The Ontological Problem (OP): How do such moral principles exist? 2. The Epistemic Problem (EP): How does our moral sense/intuition track such principles? 3. The Influence Problem (IP): What authority does the existence (...) of such principles have to supervene on our behavior? 4. The Axiological Problem (AP): What entities have moral value and deserve moral consideration? 5. Methodological Problem (MP): How do we go about arbitrating between moral claims when they conflict? (shrink)

Ordinary human perceivers know that visual objects are perceivable from standpoints other than their own. The aim of this paper is to provide an explanation of how perceptual experience equips perceivers with this knowledge. I approach the task by discussing a variety of action-based theories of perception. Some of these theories maintain that standpoint transcendence is required for shape perception. I argue that this standpoint transcendence must take place in the phenomenal present and that it can be explained in terms (...) of the experience of perceivers who jointly attend to an object. Joint perceivers experience objects as being perceived from standpoints other than their own. They operate in what I call “social space”, in which they single out objects by triangulating targets’ locations relative to their co-perceivers’ standpoints on these targets. It is then possible to explain the public character of the objects of individual experience by appeal to what I call “public space”. This is a spatial framework whose locations are presented as standpoints whence joint attention to the target would ensue, were they occupied by co-perceivers. If shape perception requires standpoint transcendence, then shape perceivers operate in public space and are thus capable of singling out targets by triangulating their locations from standpoints other than their own. If it doesn’t, then the introduction of a public spatial framework is an additional step whose introduction explains how perceivers come to experience objects as perceivable from standpoints other than their own. (shrink)

The way citizens regard and treat one another in everyday life, even when they are not engaged in straightforwardly “political” activities, matters for achieving democratic ideals. This claim provokes an underexamined unease in many. Here I articulate these concerns, which I argue are prompted by the approaches most often associated with these issues. Such theories, like democratic communitarianism, require problematic sorts of unity in everyday social life. To avoid these difficulties, I offer an alternative, called procedural democratic informal politics, which (...) allows democrats to evaluate everyday life without demanding questionable forms of unity within it. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a brief overview of ideas from Reformed Epistemology, and the relationship between faith, evidence, and belief. I discuss what makes belief in God rationally warranted, and how reformed epistemology strikes a middle ground between fideism and evidentialism. In effect, reformed epistemology avoids the fideist idea that belief in God must be taken on "blind faith," but also avoids some of the epistemic issues present in evidentialism, such as its self-referential incoherence. The reformed epistemologist says belief (...) in God is rational, but not for the reasons demanded by evidentialists. (shrink)

The question of what is shared in joint action has been discussed mainly with reference to the notion of collective intentionality. The problem of how to account for intentional states that are shared between two or more jointly engaged creatures is particularly relevant for actions that involve distal intentions. Yet there is another important kind of joint action, which so far has received less interest, at least by philosophers. This kind of action can be described in terms of a shared (...) motor engagement of two or more creatures with their surroundings. In this paper, I address the question of what is shared in such motor engagements. I suggest that joint motor actions come off through sharing particular kinds of feelings. In order to flesh out what it means to share feelings, I introduce the notion of ‘cross-creature embodiment’—the idea that a certain type of embodied mental event is constitutively tied to the body state of another, perceptually present creature in broadly the same way in which it is tied to the experiencing creature’s own. I end by suggesting that this notion makes available a new, albeit tentative, interpretation of recent neuroscientific evidence. (shrink)

Frequency-based arguments against rational belief in a miracle occurring have been present for centuries, the most notable being from David Hume. In this essay, the authors show Hume's argument rests on an equivocation of probability, with him using the term interchangeably to refer to two different and incompatible perspectives: Bayesianism and Frequentism. Additionally, the authors show that any frequentist arguments against miracles relies on a view of probability that is only dubiously linked to rationality. In other words, the frequentist cannot (...) have it both ways: if probability is indeed frequency, then miracles are indeed improbable but not necessarily irrational to believe. On the other hand, if probability is an agent's confidence in a given belief, than under certain assumptions miracles are indeed highly probable and thus rational to believe despite their rarity. As a result, regardless of which view of probability one takes, it does not follow that believing in a miracle is irrational simply because miracles are rare. (shrink)

What is an inference and when is an inference deductive rather than inductive, abductive, etc. The goal of this paper is precisely to determine what is that we, humans, do when we engage in deduction, i.e., whether there is something that satisfies both our pre-theoretical intuitions and theoretical presuppositions about deduction, as a cognitive process. The paper is structured in two parts: the first one deals with the issue of what is an inference. There, I will defend the hypothesis that (...) an inference is a causal process where an initial cognitive state causes another in such a way that the causal translation depends essentially on the content of the involved states. In other words, in an inference, a mental state A causes another B, partially because they have the content they have. Based on the conclusion from the first part, I will develop an account of deductive inference in the second part of the article. In order to achieve this, I will start by setting the stage and developing four constraints that an adequate account of deductive inference ought to satisfy. Then, I will present six different hypotheses that one might propose to characterize inferences of this kind. I have divided the proposals in two groups, the first one – which I will call the “logical proposals” – assume that whether an inference is a deduction or not depends exclusively on the content of the mental states involved in the inference, while the second – which I will call the “cognitive proposals” – reject the aforementioned assumption and instead recognize that extra cognitive information is required to determine whether an inference is a deduction or not. I will evaluate each proposal in turn, according to whether they satisfy the constraints introduced at the beginning of this second part. As a result of such evaluation, I will conclude that only one of the cognitive proposals actually satisfies the four constraints and therefore should be considered to give an adequate characterization of deductive inference. (shrink)

In this article, I will discuss some of the arguments for and against the existence of God, in particular the monotheistic God believed in the Abramahamic religions (Judiasm, Islam, and Christianity) as well as Babism, the Bahai Faith, and Sikhism. Arguments for the existence of God try to argue that either God exists (based on other things people agree with) or that belief in God is reasonable. Arguments against the existence of God try to argue that the existence of God (...) leads to some contradiction or other absurdity. (shrink)

It is argued that Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) is wrong, both conceptually and in terms of results it produces (except in two very special cases, which are discussed). While the use of MLE can still be justified on the basis of its practical performance, we argue there are better estimation methods that overcome MLE's empirical and philosophical shortcomings while retaining all of MLE's benefits.

After the publication of Marshall’s theorem (2009), it has been widely accepted that the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction cannot be analyzed in broadly logical terms, but instead requires appealing to more robust metaphysical notions like grounding, naturalness or duplication. However, in this article I will defend that this is not so. Instead of showing the limitations of Marshall’s undoubtedly impressive result, I will present here a broadly logical definition of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, and show that it is extensional adequate regardless of our (...) preferred conception of property identity. (shrink)

Este breve ensayo se inscribe en la tradición de buscar similitudes entre los epítetos y otros fenómenos lingüísticos, tanto inofensivos como discriminatorios. En particular, trataré de motivar la introducción de una distinción entre el blanco de un epíteto y su extensión y mostraré cómo esta distinción nos sirve para ver similitudes entre el comportamiento de este tipo de expresiones y el del complemento “de verdad” en expresiones como “tacos de verdad”. De paso, trataré también de explorar si estas teorías, desarrolladas (...) en su mayor parte en los Estados Unidos de América, sirven de herramienta teórica para dar cuenta de como ciertas expresiones contribuyen a la exclusión y discriminación de grupos minoritarios en nuestro contexto, es decir, en el castellano de México. (shrink)

En este texto retomo una pregunta importante que había quedado abierta al final del segundo capítulo de mi (2019): ¿cuáles son los límites del análisis? Sabemos que por obvias limitaciones materiales, todo análisis siempre será incompleto y por lo tanto, limitado. A estos límites les hemos llamado “metodológicos”, para distinguirlos de los metafísicos. Si el análisis tiene límites en este segundo sentido, aun si termináramos de analizar por completo un concepto, no podremos estar seguros de conocer todas sus propiedades esenciales (...) (ya que hay propiedades de este tipo que no las capta ningún análisis) o de ser capaces de distinguirlo de todos los conceptos (pues lo que lo distingue de otros conceptos puede ser inanalizable). Comúnmente se dice que el análisis no nos da todo el contenido de los conceptos, sino sólo su forma lógica o estructura semántica. Por lo tanto, otra manera de reformular la pregunta por los límites del análisis es ¿cuál es la relación entre forma y contenido? (shrink)

The problem of evil is one of the most significant challenges to theism and Christianity in particular, asking why there seems to be so much evil if an omnibenevolent (all good), loving God exists. The problem of evil, as posed by many atheists and agnostics today, (following Epicurus) often asserts that the following premises cannot all be true: 1. God exists, and is omnipotent (all-powerful) 2. God exists, and is omnibenevolent (all-good) 3. God exists, and is omniscient (all-knowing) 4. Evil (...) exists Christian thinkers over the past two thousand years have given various responses to the problem of evil in the form of various theodicies, or attempts to explain why evil exists (or appears to exist) given the existence of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God. This document serves as a brief overview of different theodicies offered by Christian thinkers throughout history. (shrink)

Article presenting basic methodological tenets in Goodman's philosophical development with their mutual connections, like the new riddle of indutcion, counterfactual conditionals and his use of reflective equilibrium as a methodological basis.

Peter Strawson holds that on a proper conception of personhood, the problem of Other Minds does not arise. I suggest that the viability of his proposal depends on a particular account of person perception. I argue that neither the theory theory nor the simulation theory of mindreading constitutes a suitable basis for this account. I then go on to defend Peter Hobson's notion of 'feeling perception' as an intersubjectivist alternative that, if properly developed, delivers a basis for a viable account (...) of person perception. In developing that alternative, I draw on John Campbell's suggestion that self-understanding is constituted, in part, by an understanding of oneself as a cause of many events. (shrink)

In this paper, I am concerned with persons' capacity for joint action. I start by suggesting that approaches which seek to account for that capacity in terms of collective intentionality face a problem: there are actions that clearly seem to qualify as collective even though the involved persons cannot be said to entertain an overarching 'We'-intention (however one characterizes this notion). I then go on to develop an alternative account of action that loosely draws on Elizabeth Anscombe's action theory and (...) show how this alternative account can be applied to joint action. In so doing, I stress the importance of the phenomenal dimension of agency. (shrink)

In this article, I elucidate the significance of Heidegger’s ‘question of being’ from a topological point of view by explaining the relationship between his thought of place and language. After exploring various hermeneutic strategies of reading Heidegger’s oeuvre, I turn to Richard Capobianco’s interpretation of Heidegger and critically engage with his idea of the experience of being itself as the ‘luminous self-showing of logos’. In doing so, I explain the later turn from ‘truth’ to ‘place’ and articulate why logos needs (...) to be conceived as the gathering site of the presencing of being. In arguing against the primacy of passive receptivity and active projection, I put forward the primacy of language as the topos and logos of being. In returning to the Capobianco-Sheehan debate, I conclude by explaining why Heidegger’s place-related notions cannot be thought metaphorically. (shrink)

Despite the current surge of interest in loneliness, its health consequences, and possible remedies, the concept itself remains poorly understood. This paper seeks to contribute to a more fully worked out account of what loneliness consists in. It does this by stressing that loneliness always has an experiential component and by introducing a simple psychological structure to analyze the experience. On this basis, it suggests that we can distinguish between three ways of thinking about the phenomenal dimension of loneliness. There (...) are objectivist views that seek to understand loneliness by a description of its intentional object, subjectivist views that consider its holistic relation to other aspects of the sufferer's psyche, and embodied and enacted views that focus on the relation between the lonely person's mental life and her social environment. The aim is not to adjudicate between these views or to suggest that they are mutually exclusive. Rather, this paper recommends a pluralistic framework on which all three approaches have something to contribute to a fuller understanding of the condition and may be of use in devising measures aimed at improving sufferers' health. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualism involves general mistrust of scholars, academics, and ex- perts, often as pretentious or power-motivated. While scholars have described currents of anti-intellectualism in American public life, evangelical Christianity, in responses to COVID, and rural identity, to my knowledge none have looked at how anti-intellectualism specifically manifests in the New Atheism movement. In this work, we explore the way anti-intellectualism is commonly found and expressed in New Atheism and the modern Skeptical Movement, including scientific skepticism more generally.

I present three versions –Grimm, Offe and Streeck—of a general argument that is often used to establish that the EU-institutions meets a legitimacy-disabling condition, the so called “no demos” argument (II), embedding them in the context of the notorious “democratic deficit” suspicions against the legal system and practice of the EU (I). After examining the logical structure behind the no-demos intuition considered as an argument (III), I present principled reasons by Möllers and Habermas that show why the “no demos” argument (...) fails to have bite in discussions of the legitimacy and status of the supranational level in the multi-level EU-architecture. These are complemented by another principled reason arising from John Dewey’s conception of the “public” as a clearer alternative for the “popular” requirement of democratic legitimation (IV). I conclude that all three conceptions together suggest that the hunt after pre-politically existing peoples as foundations of democratic legitimacy expresses no more than methodological nationalism without any footing in the material and conceptual requirements of democratic legitimation. Given the absence of a principled problem with the legitimacy of the priority and interference of supranational EU-law in the national legal and political orders, there are thus also no principled reasons to abandon or discredit the European project in the absence of a European nation or society. (shrink)

In this article, I define a cultural epistemology as a set of socially reinforced assumptions about how knowledge and truth are produced. Unlike a philosophical epistemology, a cultural epistemology is largely the product of culture and largely invisible. As products of culture, cultural epistemology are relatively unquestioned and, in many cases, philosophically unsophisticated. There are three common types of cultural epistemologies, influenced by who holds power in a given society: an epistemological monarchy, an epistemological oligarchy and an epistemological democracy. A (...) given cultural epistemology subsequently influences the legitimacy of culture and government itself. I argue argue that Americans tend to hold an "epistemological democracy" with two distinct facets: a trust in consensus, linked to living in a democratic republic, and a trust in their own self-interest, linked to market economics and capitalism more generally. These two facets combine, interact, and even oppose each other to legitimize and challenge American culture and its political and economic systems. (shrink)

Western, secularized capitalism appraises the “worth” of a worker through a wage, a numerical value assumed to reflect the value of one’s time (in the case of hourly jobs) or contribution (in the case of salary or commision-based work). Computers and AI models are capable of matching and even exceeding human performance on a variety of tasks such as mathematical computation, handwritten digit recognition, and even complex tasks such as playing the game Go. Furthermore, they can work around the clock (...) with no need for sleep, healthcare, or even a salary. As a result, computers are more “valuable” than humans under capitalism because they are more productive (in terms of quantity and, in many cases, quality of work). Combined with an erosion of the religious idea of explicit human worth or dignity, other humans are seen as mere means to the ends of those powerful enough to exploit them. Any hope of reducing inequality or promoting justice must come from an explicit belief in the “value” of human life independent of his or her ability to produce. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to criticize the notion that consensus is an epistemology. While I have never seen it explicitly claimed that “consensus is an epistemology,” I have nonetheless seen it implied in many scholarly (and layperson) articles. This occurs whenever articles cite, “a majority of scholars agree that…” or “most scientists/researchers think…” In our democratic, individualistic society, we put a value on high value votes and the quantification of majority viewpoints, whether it be in political polls (due to (...) living in a democracy), online on websites with ranking or voting systems such as Reddit, YouTube, or Instagram. The danger here is we may defer too much to the consensus view without appropriate justification. I will give several reasons why we should be skeptical of appeals to consensus (including a consensus of experts), which include its non-obvious link to ontology, the fact that consensus changes, and a lack of specificity of who counts as an ``expert,'' the lack of specificity on how to handle consensus (if it does occur), and epistemic undercutting defeaters from evolutionary epistemology. While an appeal to consensus may not tell us much about whether a theory is true, they can give us practical or pragmatic reasons for trusting a position. (shrink)

Im Ausgang von den Differenzierungen, die bereits der junge Hegel an dem Begriff der Anerkennung vorgenommen hat, unternehme ich in diesem Aufsatz den Versuch, die Skizze eines moralphilosophischen Programms in ersten Zügen zu umreißen. Dabei soll in einem ersten, gewissermaßen negativen Schritt der Zusammenhang von Moral und Anerkennung dadurch vorgeführt werden, daß als der Kern moralischer Verletzungen die Erfahrung analysiert wird, in bestimmten Aspekten der eigenen Selbstbeziehung nicht anerkannt oder respektiert zu werden. Im Ausgang von dieser Beobachtung führt dann der (...) Vorschlag, drei Aspekte der individuellen Selbstbeziehung zu unterscheiden, zu einer Typologie von moralischen Verletzungen. Aus diesen Überlegungen gewinne ich die These, daß die Moral den Innenbegriff all der Einstellungen darstellt, die wir wechselseitig einzunehmen verpflichtet sind, um gemeinsam die Bedingungen unserer persönlichen Identität zu sichern. Am Ende führt dieses ethische Verständnis von Moral als differenziertes Verhältnis von Anerkennungsverpflichtungen zu einer Neuinterpretation der moralphilosophischen Tradition, derzufolge in den drei großen Begriffen der Fürsorge, der Gerechtigkeit und der Solidarität jeweils eine der Einstellungen artikuliert worden ist, die den drei Anerkennungsformen entsprechen, mit denen wir zusammengenommen unsere persönliche Integrität als menschliche Wesen schützen. (shrink)

This article analyzes whether Brandom’s ISA (inferential-substitutional-anaphoric) semantics as presented in Making It Explicit (MIE) and Articulating Reasons (AR) can cope with problems resulting from inferentialism’s near-implied meaning holism. Inferentialism and meaning holism entail a radically perspectival conception of content as significance for an individual speaker. Since thereby its basis is fixed as idiolects, holistic inferentialism engenders a communication-problem. Brandom considers the systematic difference in information among individuals as the „point“ of communication and thus doesn’t want to diminish these effects (...) of inferentialism. Instead, explains communication with a model of “navigating among perspectives without sharing contents”. The crucial element in this navigation-model is the functioning of anaphoric connections between tokens uttered in discourse that can be used by every individual speaker in their own perspectival semantic substitution-economies. The heart of Brandom’s semantics is the thesis of the purely inferential, hence non-referential nature of anaphora, coupled with the claim that anaphoric-inferential semantic mechanisms yield sufficient conditions for mutually successful “information-extraction” or interpretation. This article disputes the thesis and denies the claim. Regarding the former it is observed that all of Brandom’s plausible reconstructions of anaphoric discourse-structures rely on covert “reference-infiltrations” that can’t be eliminated. Regarding the latter, a new argument based on context-sensitive semantic phenomena in anaphoric settings shows that the crucial distinction between initiator or anaphoric antecedent and anaphoric dependent cannot be drawn according to Brandom’s own premises without overt and irreducible referential premises. The article concludes that either Brandom’s semantics can offer determinate contents, but then must accept genuinely referential semantic primitives, or else it leaves utterance-contents undeterminable and hence cannot explain communication. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on the pragmatic presuppositions involved in the use of general terms in inductive practices. The main thesis is that the problem of characterizing the assumptions underlying the projection of predicates in inductive practices and the ones underlying the classification of crtain general terms as «natural kind terms» coincide to a good extent. The reason for this, it is argued, is that both classifications, «projectibility» and «natural kind term», are attempts to answer to the same (...) semantico-epistemological phenomenon, viz. underdertermination. It is proposed a «deflationary» reading of the so-called «theory of direct reference» as to enable an evaluation of its contribution to epistemological problems associated with this kind of phenomena, as well as it is argued that a purely de facto account of projectibility is not viable. The resulting hypothesis is that the conception of «natural kind terms» is only interesting insofar as they are seen as a kind of projectible general terms and thus as parts of classifications used in natural science, more generally, in inductive practices, and that this is a perspective that makes undue metaphysical readings avoidable. (shrink)

This work deals with problems involving infinities and infinitesimals. It explores the ideas behind zero, its relationship to ontological nothingness, finititude (such as finite numbers and quantities), and the infinite. The idea of infinity and zero are closely related, despite what many perceive as an intuitive inverse relationship. The symbol 0 generally refers to nothingness, whereas the symbol infinity refers to ``so much'' that it cannot be quantified or captured. The notion of finititude rests somewhere between complete nothingness and something (...) having no end. -/- My concern is that many of the philosophers arguing for or against the ontology (or possibility) of an actual infinite set are unaware or unfamiliar with the mathematical literature attempting to clearly and rigorously define these terms. I believe it is a mistake to leave mathematicians out of this conversation, as analysts in particular have defined (and used) infinity in a way that is relevant to the ongoing debate between philosophers. -/- For this paper, I have selected examples from Principles of Analysis by Walter Rudin, which has become a standard text for Real Analysis classes taken by pure mathematicians and engineers. I will also restrict the scope of examples to Euclidean spaces for simplicity. Finally, I will be using addition, + and multiplication * in their usual way. (shrink)

My purpose in this text is to offer a general roadmap for navigating most current debates in the metaphysics of social categories regarding what sort of fact it is for a person to inhabit one social category or another—for example, what makes a person Mexican, or gay, or rich. With this goal in mind, I propose classifying the debating positions into three broad camps: common sense theories, socio-historical accounts, and performative theories. I characterise their main differences, identifying the main challenges (...) and achievements of each. I show that for persons well integrated into their categories, the differences between these three broad camps are minuscule, yet become crucial when we try to account for people not so well integrated. Then, I sketch a pluralist proposal that reconciles the three camps I have identified, while doing justice to the challenges presented by interstitial phenomena such as mestizaje, transition, passing, migration, etc. (shrink)

In this essay, I will explain why Methodological Naturalism (MN) fails as a demarcating criteria for science. I will argue that MN is not precise enough to be useful for demarcation, unable to follow the evidence where it leads, not theologically neutral (despite its stated goals as such), and difficult to justify (and currently unjustified) as an ontological or epistemic principle.

Capitalismo e riconoscimento" presenta, in cinque saggi per la prima volta raccolti insieme e tradotti in italiano, una densa e pregnante analisi di taluni cruciali processi socio-strutturali, morali e normativi delle società capitalistiche contemporanee dalla prospettiva delle dinamiche del reciproco riconoscimento e del disrispetto concernenti la sfera del lavoro. Particolare attenzione è dedicata ai paradossali rovesciamenti delle istanze di autorealizzazione, autonomia e responsabilità personale registratisi negli ultimi decenni nel quadro di un mercato del lavoro sempre più deregolato.

Arguably the most foundational principle in perception research is that our experience of the world goes beyond the retinal image; we perceive the distal environment itself, not the proximal stimulation it causes. Shape may be the paradigm case of such “unconscious inference”: When a coin is rotated in depth, we infer the circular object it truly is, discarding the perspectival ellipse projected on our eyes. But is this really the fate of such perspectival shapes? Or does a tilted coin retain (...) an elliptical appearance even when we know it’s circular? This question has generated heated debate from Locke and Hume to the present; but whereas extant arguments rely primarily on introspection, this problem is also open to empirical test. If tilted coins bear a representational similarity to elliptical objects, then a circular coin should, when rotated, impair search for a distal ellipse. Here, nine experiments demonstrate that this is so, suggesting that perspectival shapes persist in the mind far longer than traditionally assumed. Subjects saw search arrays of three-dimensional “coins,” and simply had to locate a distally elliptical coin. Surprisingly, rotated circular coins slowed search for elliptical targets, even when subjects clearly knew the rotated coins were circular. This pattern arose with static and dynamic cues, couldn’t be explained by strategic responding or unfamiliarity, generalized across shape classes, and occurred even with sustained viewing. Finally, these effects extended beyond artificial displays to real-world objects viewed in naturalistic, full-cue conditions. We conclude that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape “out there,” and their perspectival shape “from here.”. (shrink)

For years, the European world saw millions of swans, and all of them without exception were white. If inductive reasoning is valid, one may conclude that all swans are white. However, this would be incorrect: in 1667 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh observed black swans in Australia, falsifying the hypothesis that all swans are white. While often used as a cautionary tale for the use of induction, such as with Popper’s falsification principle, I want to explore a slightly different idea: (...) does the existence of fabricated or otherwise failed accounts of Black swans give me a reason to ignore future arguments or doubt their existence? I argue that while faulty or fabricated reports do not give us a logical reason to reject a claim, they can give us a practical one for refusing to consider future arguments. This practical vs logical distinction gives an inductive reason for believing that future arguments will be invalid, but keeps one from being able to necessarily deny the claim in question without further argumentation. (shrink)

Pronpongo una nueva manera de concebir la aceptación de proposiciones y su relación con la creencia y la inferencia. Argumento además que adoptar esta propuesta nos permite resolver de manera relativamente sencilla algunas paradojas aparentemente tan disímbolas cómo la del prefacio, la lotería y el sorites. Según esta propuesta, el error detrás de la paradoja sorítica es pensar que quién cree que hay una línea divisoria entre lo que cae dentro de la extensión de un término y lo que cae (...) fuera de él debe creer también de algún lugar que ahí se encuentra dicha línea divisoria. Espero convencerlos de que no es así, y que por lo tanto, nuestros juicios de sentido común no nos llevan a ninguna contradicción. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es establecer algunas distinciones fundamentales para el estudio de las representaciones epistémicas, y en particular, de las representaciones epistémicas visuales. Para ello, presento tres distinciones estrechamente relacionadas: La primera es una distinción entre las restricciones impuestas a una herramienta por la tarea (que se busca nos ayude a realizar), y aquellas impuestas por nuestras características como usuarios. La segunda es una distinción entre la función estrecha de una representación (que no es sino representar) y su (...) objetivo más amplio, el cual puede ser epistémico, estético, litúrgico etc. La tercera es una distinción entre la interpretación y la aplicación de una representación, es decir, entre determinar cómo las cosas son de acuerdo a la representación, y determinar si realmente las cosas son como son representadas. Ilustro la utilidad de estas distinciones aplicándolas a un par de ejemplos: un caso de “final de fotografía” y un diagrama en geometría euclidiana. (shrink)

Using conjunction as an example, I show a technical and philosophical problem when trying to conciliate the currently prevailing views on the meaning of logical connectives: the inferientialist (also called 'syntactic') one based on introduction and elimination rules, and the representationalist (also called 'semantic') one given through truth tables. Mostly I show that the widespread strategy of using the truth theoretical definition of logical consequence to collapse both definitions must be rejected by inferentialists. An important consequence of my argument is (...) that there are different notions of conjunction at play in standard first order logic, and that the technical and philosophical connections between them are far from well established. (shrink)

Before he reached his mature metaphysical view of being as gradual in the Republic (Allen 1961), Plato claims that neither can negative facts explain positive facts, nor vice versa (Phaedo 103b) (this is very likely a corollary of his principle of opposites according to which if A and B are of opposite ontological categories, A cannot explain B (González-Varela and Barceló 2023). Yet, it seems obvious that we explain positive facts by appealing to negative facts and vice versa, all the (...) time. We say things like "Pat must be sick, because she would not have missed the party otherwise", "The Plant died because we forgot to water it", "The suitcase was so large, it did not fit in the trunk", etc. So this seems like a strange and obviously wrong take on the limits of metaphysical explanation. Yet here I will defend that this counter-intuitive metaphysical thesis has been unjustly dismissed and will argue that, instead, it is a plausible metaphysical principle. My defense of this metaphysical principle can also be seen as part of a larger defense of an under-explored metaphysical hypothesis, Ontological Manichesim, according to which positive and negative facts, if both belong in our ontology, are separate realms of being with no interaction whatsoever. (shrink)

En "Elementos esenciales de una hermenéutica analógica", Mauricio Beuchot trata de ubicar su hermenéutica analógica como una posición intermedia entre lo que él llama el univocismo y la hermenéutica alegórica. En este comentario busco mostrar, tomando como punto de partida que los objetivos teóricos de la hermenéutica no se encuentran muy distantes de los de las teorías analíticas de la interpretación, que el debate sobre el papel de los elementos extralingüísticos en la interpretación es mucho más complejo de lo que (...) el trilema de Beuchot sugiere. In "Essential Elements for an Analogical Hermeneutics", Mauricio Beuchot seeks to place his analogical hermeneutics in a position between what he calls univocism and allegorical hermeneutics. In this commentary I intend to show, taking into account that the theoretical goals of hermeneutics are not so different from those of analytical theories of interpretation, that the debate over the role played by extralinguistic elements in interpretation is much more complex than what Beuchot's trilemma suggests. (shrink)

This short paper grew out of an observation—made in the course of a larger research project—of a surprising convergence between, on the one hand, certain themes in the work of Mary Hesse and Nelson Goodman in the 1950/60s and, on the other hand, recent work on the representational resources of science, in particular regarding model-based representation. The convergence between these more recent accounts of representation in science and the earlier proposals by Hesse and Goodman consists in the recognition that, in (...) order to secure successful representation in science, collective representational resources must be available. Such resources may take the form of (amongst others) mathematical formalisms, diagrammatic methods, notational rules, or—in the case of material models—conventions regarding the use and manipulation of the constituent parts. More often than not, an abstract characterization of such resources tells only half the story, as they are constituted equally by the pattern of (practical and theoretical) activities—such as instances of manipulation or inference—of the researchers who deploy them. In other words, representational resources need to be sustained by a social practice; this is what renders them collective representational resources in the first place. (shrink)