Artificial intelligence is man's attempt to use software to emulate the intelligence of human beings. But the complexity of the human neurological system formed in the course of evolution is impossible to replicate: "Human languages and societies are complex systems, indeed complex systems of many complex systems," so much so that their mathematical modeling is impossible. Barry Smith, philosopher and professor at the University at Buffalo. shows no uncertainty about this. His latest book written with Jobst Landgrebe, a mathematician and (...) entrepreneur in the AI field, leaves no doubt – starting with the title: Why machines will never rule the world (Routledge 2023). The book was presented in Turin during an evening organized by the Fondazione CRT and the Bruno Leoni Institute, in which Smith was interviewed based on questions developed by generative Ai. We have accepted the challenge to conduct an interview parallel to the one done with GPT4. (shrink)

This essay is my review of Colleen Dyble’s book, Taming Leviathan: Waging a War of Ideas around the World. Dyble is affiliated with the legendary classical liberal British think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs. Her anthology is a collection of essays by people around the world who have been involved with similar free-market think tanks in countries with historically statist economic systems. These writers include Greg Lindsay, founder of the Center for Independent Studies in Australia; Margaret Tse, of the (...) Instituto Liberdade in Brazil; Michael Walker, co-founder of the Fraser Institute in Canada; Cristian Larroulet, of Libertad y Desarrollo in Chile; Giancarlo Ibarguen, of the Center for Economic and Social Studies in Guatemala (which actually founded a free-market-oriented university); Parth Shah, founder of the Center for Civil Society in India; Daniel Doron, co-founder of the Israeli Center for Social and Economic Progress; Alberto Mingardi, of the Instituto Bruno Leoni in Italy; Masaru Uchigama, founder of the Japanese for Tax Reform; Elena Leontjeva, co-founder of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute; Alexander Magno, co-founder of the Foundation for Economic Freedom in the Philippines; and last, Leon Louw, of the Free Market Foundation of South Africa. I then discuss seven important reasons why classical liberal think tanks are so important in modern societies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a constructive solution to Frege's puzzle (largely limited to the mathematical context) based on type theory. Two ways in which an equality statement may be said to have cognitive significance are distinguished. One concerns the mode of presentation of the equality, the other its mode of proof. Frege's distinction between sense and reference, which emphasizes the former aspect, cannot adequately explain the cognitive significance of equality statements unless a clear identity criterion for (...) senses is provided. It is argued that providing a solution based on proofs is more satisfactory from the standpoint of constructive semantics. (shrink)

In May 2021, Alan Bechaz, Racher Du, Will Cailes and Thomas Spiteri interviewed Sandra Leonie Field for UPJA’s Conversations from the Region. A series of discussions that invites philosophers from or based in Australasia to share their student and academic experiences. The segment looks into what inspires people to study philosophy, how they pursue their philosophical interests, and gives our audiences a better idea of philosophy as an undergraduate.

In this paper, I put the claim that sensitivity is a necessary condition for knowledge under pressure, by considering its applicability with regard to testimonially-formed beliefs. Building on, and departing from, Goldberg, I positively draw out how we might understand the required sensitivity as a social interaction between speaker and hearer in testimonial cases. In doing so however, I identify a concern which places the whole notion of testimonial sensitivity in potential jeopardy: the problem of the reliable liar. I find (...) an apparently paradoxical inverse relationship between better-differentiating methods that fulfil sensitivity conditions, and being able to have sensitive beliefs with regard to specific instances of testimony. After examining potential resolutions, I conclude that only a focus on minimally realising the problem, rather than “solving” it, will enable us to retain sensitivity as a necessary condition for testimonial-knowledge. (shrink)

Performative accounts of personhood argue that group agents are persons, fit to be held responsible within the social sphere. Nonetheless, these accounts want to retain a moral distinction between group and individual persons. That: Group-persons can be responsible for their actions qua persons, but that group-persons might nonetheless not have rights equivalent to those of human persons. I present an argument which makes sense of this disanalogy, without recourse to normative claims or additional ontological commitments. I instead ground rights in (...) the different relations in which performative persons stand in relation to one another. (shrink)

This article offers a distinctive way of grounding the regulative duties held by social media companies (SMCs). One function of the democratic state is to provide what we term the right to democratic epistemic participation within the public sphere. But social media has transformed our public sphere, such that SMCs now facilitate citizens’ right to democratic epistemic participation and do so on a scale that was previously impossible. We argue that this role of SMCs in expanding the scope of what (...) counts as fair democratic epistemic participation, and in becoming the providers of access to the digital public sphere, brings with it duties of regulation. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

My first aim in this paper is to use time diagrams in the style of Brentano to analyze constructions in Brouwer's separable mathematics more precisely. I argue that constructions must involve not only pairing and projecting as basic operations guaranteed by the intuition of twoity, as sometimes assumed in the literature, but also a recalling operation. My second aim is to argue that Brouwer's views on the intuition of twoity and arithmetic lead to an ontological explosion. Redeveloping the constructions of (...) natural numbers and systems sketched in an appendix to Brouwer's Cambridge lectures, I observe that the only plausible way he can make some elementary arithmetic in his separable mathematics is by allowing for the same canonical number to be determined by multiple separable entities, resulting in an overabundant mathematical ontology. (shrink)

This chapter brings together important contributions from geographers, historians, sociologists and media theorists, and looks at these through the lens of social philosophy on the nature of resistance and oppression, to articulate and understand both the positive and negative ways in which industrial nostalgia shapes present-day working-class identities. Celebrations of abandoned industrial sites have been criticised by some as inflicting a form of violence on working-class people (High and Lewis 2007), transforming sites of working-class loss into objects of nostalgic appreciation (...) in ways which marginalise those who worked there, and which close the past off from the working-class present (Lasch 1991). More positive views about industrial nostalgia argue that it provides a way to assert working-class pride in hostile environments, serving as a basis for present-day solidarity (Loveday 2014; Gibbs 2021). By examining this existing literature on deindustrialisation through a social philosophical perspective, our aim here is to shed some light on this phenomenon, in which industrial nostalgia can function both as a tool of oppression but also as a form of resistance against oppression. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed study of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focussing on their concept of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as potestas, authorised power. The focus on power as potentia generates a new conception of popular power. Radical democrats–whether drawing on Hobbes's 'sleeping sovereign' or on Spinoza's 'multitude'–understand popular power as something that transcends ordinary institutional politics, as for instance popular plebsites or mass movements. However, the book argues that these (...) understandings reflect a residual scholasticism which Hobbes and Spinoza ultimately repudiate. Instead, on the book's revisionist conception, a political phenomenon should be said to express popular power when it is both popular (it eliminates oligarchy and encompasses the whole polity), and also powerful (it robustly determines political and social outcomes). Two possible institutional forms that this popular power might take are distinguished: Hobbesian repressive egalitarianism, or Spinozist civic strengthening. But despite divergent institutional proposals, the book argues that both Hobbes and Spinoza share the conviction that there is nothing spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence. From this point of view, the book accuses radical democrats of pernicious romanticism; the slow, meticulous work of organizational design and maintenance is the true centre of popular power. Three minute video summary available via HPBin3. Extended discussion on The Political Theory Review podcast. First chapter open access available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Videos of book talks at National University of Singapore (Centre for Legal Theory) and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani) available via YouTube. (See links below.). (shrink)

I argue against the interpretation of propositions as intentions and proof-objects as fulfillments proposed by Heyting and defended by Tieszen and van Atten. The idea is already a frequent target of criticisms regarding the incompatibility of Brouwer’s and Husserl’s positions, mainly by Rosado Haddock and Hill. I raise a stronger objection in this paper. My claim is that even if we grant that the incompatibility can be properly dealt with, as van Atten believes it can, two fundamental issues indicate that (...) the interpretation is unsustainable regardless: (1) it is hard to determine, without appealing to propositional intentions on pain of circularity, what intention a proof-object should be understood as a fulfillment of; (2) due to a difficult fulfillment dilemma, it is unclear, at best, what the object of an intention corresponding to a proposition is. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

It is a well-worn platitude that knowledge excludes luck. According to anti-luck virtue epistemology, making good on the anti-luck platitude requires an explicit anti-luck condition along the lines of safety: S knows that p only if S’s true belief that p could not have easily been mistaken. This paper offers an independent, virtue epistemological argument against the claim that safety is a necessary condition on knowledge, one that adequately captures the anti-luck platitude. The argument proceeds by way of analogy. I (...) focus on two paradigmatic kinds of normative achievements that also exclude luck: (i) – having a doxastically justified belief, and (ii) – performing a morally worthy action. I then show that while (i) and (ii) exclude luck, they are nevertheless susceptible to what I call ‘modal luck’. I then move on to show that knowledge, or at least some instance of knowledge, is a normative achievement, which I claim provides strong reasons to expect that knowledge is also susceptible to modal luck. Since safety entails that knowledge is incompatible with modal luck, the argument provides strong reasons to reject safety as a necessary condition on knowledge. (shrink)

Abstract: The standard picture of rationality requires that the agent acts so as to realize her most preferred alternative in the light of her own desires and beliefs. However, there are circumstances where such an agent can predict that she will act against her preferences. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is the paradigmatic example of such cases. In those circumstances the orthodoxy requires the agent to be ‘sophisticated’. That is to say, she should take into account her expected (...) future choices and prevent her future self to act in certain ways. She should ‘bind’ herself to a certain course of action. This is a form of causal commitment. It is generally recognized that this form of self-commitment is the only one that is available to a rational agent. Rational commitment, where the agent gives herself a reason to act in a certain way rather than making herself act in that way, is considered not feasible. In this paper, I question this verdict. I sketch the broad outlines of a model of rational commitment, which takes as its starting point Michael Bratman’s ‘planning theory’ of intention. There are two important objections against this theory (one by John Broome and one by the Dutch philosopher Govert den Hartogh.) Both criticisms claim that such a theory is a form of ‘bootstrapping’ reasons for action into existence. In the remainder of the paper, I will defend the theory against these objections. This way, I hope to establish that defending the feasibility of rational commitment is not an obvious mistake. (shrink)

Quanto segue intende proporsi come il resoconto di una conversazione che Andrea Oliani, Bruno Cortesi e Pietro Vigiani, tutti studenti presso l’Almo Collegio Borromeo di Pavia, hanno intrattenuto con Emanuele Severino, volta ad enucleare, muovendo da spunti talvolta anche polemici, alcune delle concettualità fondanti quel corpus di dottrine che cade sotto il nome di severinismo. Severino è stato squisito nell’accoglierci e ospitarci nella sua dimora di Brescia, lucido e assolutamente puntuale nel controbattere alle nostre provocazioni. La discussione ha poi (...) trovato naturale seguito in una conferenza di carattere più divulgativo tenuta dal filosofo presso il Collegio Borromeo, dal titolo Sulla Tecnica. Severino consegue la laurea in Filosofia nel 1950 come alunno del Collegio Borromeo, discutendo una tesi intitolata Heidegger e la metafisica sotto la supervisione di Gustavo Bontadini. Solo un anno più tardi ottiene la libera docenza in filosofia teoretica. Nel 1964 pubblica lo scritto Ritornare a Parmenide, che, insieme a La Struttura Originaria rappresenta la miccia che innescherà negli anni successivi quello che molti hanno definito lo “scandalo” del severinismo. Questi scritti, come altri, posseggono una portata teorica tanto dirompente che già nel 1969, a seguito di un lungo e accurato esame condotto da Cornelio Fabro, la Chiesa cattolica proclamerà l’insanabile pposizione tra il pensiero di Severino e il Cristianesimo. Comprendere tale pensiero è cosa ardua, se prima non ci sia volti alla grecità delle origini: essa è, per Severino, il luogo ove in maniera inaudita (nel senso letterale di “mai udita prima”) viene pensato l’Incontrovertibile, il “Sempre Salvo”, ciò la cui egazione è auto-negazione, e che pertanto non può in alcun modo essere contraddetto; In altri termini: la Verità. Essa è anche stata in grado per la prima volta di concepire in maniera radicale L’Essere e il suo corrispettivo: il Niente inteso come radicale assenza di qualsiasi positività. L’aver inteso la Verità come Saphés (“Ciò che brilla di luce propria” da cui Philo-Sophìa) da un lato, e l’aver posto L’Essere e il Niente dall’altro, sono gli atti che per Severino fondano quell’immenso edificio culturale che ancora oggi domina il pianeta tutto: L’Occidente. È possibile, dunque, individuare una pars construens e una pars destruens negli scritti di Emanuele Severino: da una parte sembra che, facendo uso di un apparato logico e ontologico raffinatissimo, egli cerchi di porre in questione le categorie di pensiero occidentali risolvendo il Problema dell’Occidente alla radice, cioè eliminandolo (accenneremo a quale sia questo problema e a cosa significhi eliminarlo); in questa che è una vera e propria opera di demolizione, il Nostro (pars construens) intende mostrare come tutto quanto si mostra nell’orizzonte esperienziale sia “da sempre salvo” perché eterno. Ciò sfocia, in scritti quali Pensieri sul Cristianesimo, Technè, Il Giogo, Il Nulla e la Poesia, in una “ricostruzione” volta a mostrare come le categorie introdotte dal pensiero greco si riverberino in ogni forma della razionalità occidentale, dall’arte, alla filosofia, al diritto, alla politica, determinandone in maniera necessaria gli sviluppi. Precisiamo, per correttezza, che lo stesso non è stato rivisto da Severino. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2014). 'Hobbes and the question of power'. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 52(1), 61-86. Thomas Hobbes has been hailed as the philosopher of power par excellence; however, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s conceptualization of political power is not stable across his texts. Once the distinction is made between the authorized and the effective power of the sovereign, it is no longer sufficient simply to defend a doctrine of the authorized power of the sovereign; such (...) a doctrine must be robustly complemented by an account of how the effective power commensurate to this authority might be achieved. Nor is this straightforward: for effective political power can fluctuate, sometimes severely. In this light, the prevalent juridical reading of Hobbes’s political philosophy is inadequate. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should solve paradoxes for propositions (such as the Russell–Myhill paradox) in essentially the same way that we solve Russellian paradoxes for sets. That is, the standard, iterative approach to sets is extended to include properties, and then the resulting hierarchy of sets and properties is used to construct propositions. Propositions on this account are structured in the sense of mirroring the sentences that express them, and they would seem to serve the needs of philosophers of (...) language and metaphysicians who rely on such propositions. The resulting account has limitations, comparable to those faced by the iterative approach to sets, but it is argued to be in important ways preferable to others that have been proposed. (shrink)

The Surprise Exam Paradox is well-known: a teacher announces that there will be a surprise exam the following week; the students argue by an intuitively sound reasoning that this is impossible; and yet they can be surprised by the teacher. We suggest that a solution can be found scattered in the literature, in part anticipated by Wright and Sudbury, informally developed by Sorensen, and more recently discussed, and dismissed, by Williamson. In a nutshell, the solution consists in realising that the (...) teacher's announcement is a blindspot that can only be known if the week is at least 2 days long. Along the way, we criticise Williamson's own treatment of the paradox. In Williamson's view, the Surprise is similar to the Paradox of the Glimpse and, because of their similarities, both these paradoxes ought to receive a uniform treatment-one that involves locating an illicit application of the KK Principle. We argue that there's no deep analogy between the Surprise and the Glimpse and that, even if there were, the Surprise reasoning reaches a paradoxical conclusion before the KK Principle is used. Rather, in both the Surprise and the Glimpse, the blame should be put on other epistemic principles-respectively, a knowledge retention and a margin for error principle. (shrink)

Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are explained (...) by logically simpler ones. For example, disjunctions are explained by their (true) disjuncts, while generalizations are explained by their (true) instances. This would seem as plausible in the case of mathematics as elsewhere. Also, it would seem to be something that the anti-realist approaches at issue would want to preserve. It will be argued, however, that these approaches cannot do this: they lead not merely to violations of the familiar principles relating logical and explanatory structure, but even to reversals of these. That is, there are cases where generalizations explain their instances, or disjunctions their disjuncts. (shrink)

During his Jena period, Fichte endorses a curious dictum: ‘the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is’. How can Fichte’s dictum support a vindication of German idealism over Spinozism, which he also calls ‘dogmatism’? I will show that the answer to this seemingly straightforward question reveals a rather complex series of metametaphysical objections that shape the development of the entire German idealist tradition. Ultimately, as I will suggest, the series of metametaphysical questions that shape (...) the German idealist tradition must culminate in the question of how to understand the relation between philosophy and its presuppositions. I will conclude by briefly considering a hermeneutical response to this question. (shrink)

Kripke [1975] gives a formal theory of truth based on Kleene's strong evaluation scheme. It is probably the most important and influential that has yet been given—at least since Tarski. However, it has been argued that this theory has a problem with generalized quantifiers such as All—that is, All ϕs are ψ—or Most. Specifically, it has been argued that such quantifiers preclude the existence of just the sort of language that Kripke aims to deliver—one that contains its own truth predicate. (...) In this paper I solve the problem by showing how Kleene's strong scheme, and Kripke's theory based on it, can in a natural way be extended to accommodate the full range of generalized quantifiers. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that blameworthiness is epistemically constrained. If one lacks sufficient epistemic access to the fact that some action harms another, then one cannot be blamed for harming. Acceptance of an epistemic condition for blameworthiness can give rise to a worry, however: could agents ever successfully evade blameworthiness by deliberately stunting their epistemic position? I discuss a particularly worrisome version of such epistemic shirking, in which agents pre-emptively seek to avoid access to potentially morally relevant facts. As Roy (...) Sorensen and Jan Willem Wieland have argued, we seem to be faced with a potentially troubling regress when trying to explain what goes wrong in such situations. I argue that the solution to this so-called Shirker Problem is not to be found in complicated and demanding anti-shirking-principles with universal scope and potentially self-reflexive content. Instead, careful consideration of the necessary motivational make-up of genuine shirkers reveals their ignorance to lack the necessary depth to be exculpatory. Since shirkers by definition react to the possibility of the revelation of morally relevant facts with acts of epistemic self-limitation, they necessarily prove guilty of a form of culpable moral recklessness. Epistemic shirking thus does not pose a worrisome problem for ethical theory. (shrink)

The European Hobbes Society Online Colloquium featured my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics. This is a précis of the book.

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genevieve Lloyd argues that when we follow Spinoza in understanding reason as a part of nature, we gain new insights into the human condition. Specifically, we gain a new political insight: we should respond to cultural difference with a pluralist ethos. This is because there is no pure universal reason; human minds find their reason shaped differently by their various embodied social contexts. Furthermore, we can use the resources of the imagination to bring this ethos about. In my response, (...) I offer a friendly challenge to Lloyd’s characterisation of the lessons of Spinoza’s philosophy. I argue that Lloyd’s Spinoza remains excessively unpolitical, even in the moment that he is brought to bear on contemporary politics. An unpluralistic attitude may well be rationally inferior, but is it really explained by insufficient or inappropriate imagination? To the contrary, a properly Spinozist account of reason must include an account of the concrete determinants of reason’s imperfect realisation in the world. In Spinoza’s own oeuvre, this is carried out through an ever-increasing—and ever more sociological—interest in the political structures within which individual reason flourishes or withers. (shrink)

O pensamento de Leibniz foi, sem dúvida, essencial para o desenvolvimento das linhas fundamentais da filosofia crítico-transcendental de Kant. A interlocução entre Kant e Leibniz é evidente no decorrer do pensamento kantiano, seja diretamente, nos diversos momentos em que Kant busca um enfrentamento explícito com seu predecessor, seja indiretamente, quando Kant discute com os autores da escolástica alemã que são considerados discípulos de Leibniz Pretendo observar, em particular, que uma das discussões pouco noticiadas, mas de grande relevância para o desenvolvimento (...) do pensamento kantiano, é aquela em relação ao problema da teodiceia. Com isso em foco, meu objetivo nesse capítulo é o de tentar mostrar alguns aspectos do diálogo de Kant com a teodiceia de Leibniz. Primeiro, apresentarei alguns aspectos da teodiceia de Leibniz. Depois, mostrarei o tratamento que Kant dispensa ao problema da teodiceia em alguns de seus escritos iniciais. Por fim, apresentarei o seu tratamento no período crítico, da maneira como se expõe em um artigo de 1791 intitulado Sobre o Fracasso de todas as Tentativas Filosóficas na Teodiceia. De modo complementar, ao abordar o problema no período crítico, farei algumas remissões às três Críticas, às Lições sobre a Doutrina Filosófica da Religião de 1783/84, às Lições de Ética e à Religião nos Limites da Simples Razão de 1793. (shrink)

According to a recent interpretive orthodoxy, Spinoza is a profoundly democratic theorist of state authority. I reject this orthodoxy. To be sure, for Spinoza, a political order succeeds in proportion as it harnesses the power of the people within it. However, Spinoza shows that political inclusion is only one possible strategy to this end; equally if not more useful is political exclusion, so long as it maintains what I call the depoliticised acquiescence of those excluded.

While the idea that philosophy requires self-transformation is historically pervasive, it exerts considerable influence on the post-Kantians who first aim to systematize Kant’s idealism by grounding it on a first principle. In the 1790s, Fichte and Schelling offer competing accounts of the self-transformation that they regard as essential to positing a first principle. Their accounts raise two central questions. First, what makes this kind of self-transformation possible? Second, are there different possible expressions of philosophical self-transformation? In what follows, I will (...) articulate the Fichtean and Schellingian answers to these central questions. For Fichte, the one who summons me to posit a first principle makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has an exclusively idealist expression in that I can only genuinely posit the I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation depends on mutual recognition and vindicates precisely one philosophical system (Section 1). For Schelling, a brute act of will makes possible my philosophical self-transformation, although the latter has either an idealist or a realist expression in that I can genuinely posit either the I or the not-I as first principle, which is to say that philosophical self-transformation does not depend on mutual recognition and vindicates one of two possible philosophical systems (Section 2). Thus, whereas Fichtean self-transformation is recognitive and non-pluralistic, Schellingian self-transformation is pluralistic and non-recognitive. I conclude with a discussion of how Jacobi poses a challenge to Fichte’s and Schelling’s answers to the two central questions (Section 3). (shrink)

Na Religião nos Limites da Simples Razão, Kant se propõe a investigar o núcleo racional da religião e sua relação com a religião histórica. O ponto de vista da filosofia crítico-transcendental e os princípios da religião racional-moral desenvolvidos nas três Críticas são apresentados como a base de uma análise da religião histórica, sobretudo da religião cristã. Com efeito, o conjunto de dogmas e estatutos da religião cristã é interpretado como um conjunto de símbolos que representam os meios pelos quais os (...) princípios morais puramente racionais se tornam intuitivos na experiência humana. De um modo geral, o propósito dessa exegese é verificar e demonstrar, respeitando certos limites, que existe compatibilidade e unidade entre os princípios da religião racional e os dogmas da religião cristã. Ao mesmo tempo, ela se propõe a acusar os elementos que não são compatíveis ou não são essenciais à religião. O resultado disso é um discurso consistente sobre a “essência moral” do cristianismo que culmina em um manifesto contra todo tipo de “entusiasmo” religioso e contra as “práticas religiosas” contraprodutivas à moralidade. Em última instância, pode-se argumentar ainda que o objetivo de Kant na Religião ultrapassa o empreendimento de oferecer um discurso sobre a essência da religião ou mesmo uma interpretação moral do cristianismo, dirigindo-se a uma investigação sobre as condições de possibilidade do progresso moral da humanidade e da realização do objeto último da razão, para o qual tanto a religião racional quanto a religião histórica desempenham um papel fundamental. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to argue that all—or almost all—logical rules have exceptions. In particular, it is argued that this is a moral that we should draw from the semantic paradoxes. The idea that we should respond to the paradoxes by revising logic in some way is familiar. But previous proposals advocate the replacement of classical logic with some alternative logic. That is, some alternative system of rules, where it is taken for granted that these hold without exception. (...) The present proposal is quite different. According to this, there is no such alternative logic. Rather, classical logic retains the status of the ‘one true logic’, but this status must be reconceived so as to be compatible with (almost) all of its rules admitting of exceptions. This would seem to have significant repercussions for a range of widely held views about logic: e.g. that it is a priori, or that it is necessary. Indeed, if the arguments of the paper succeed, then such views must be given up. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Metaphysically possible worlds have many uses. Epistemically possible worlds promise to be similarly useful, especially in connection with propositions and propositional attitudes. However, I argue that there is a serious threat to the natural accounts of epistemically possible worlds, from a version of Russell’s paradox. I contrast this threat with David Kaplan’s problem for metaphysical possible world semantics: Kaplan’s problem can be straightforwardly rebutted, the problems I raise cannot. I argue that although there may be coherent accounts of epistemically possible (...) worlds with fruitful applications, any such an account must fundamentally compromise the basic idea behind epistemic possibility. (shrink)

The concept of facticity denotes conditions of experience whose necessity is not logical yet whose contingency is not empirical. Although often associated with Heidegger, Fichte coins ‘facticity’ in his Berlin period to refer to the conclusion of Kant’s metaphysical deduction of the categories, which he argues leaves it a contingent matter that we have the conditions of experience that we do. Such rhapsodic or factical conditions, he argues, must follow necessarily, independent of empirical givenness, from the I through a process (...) of ‘genesis.’ I reconstruct Fichte’s argument by tracing the origin of his neologism, presenting his Jena critique of Kant’s rhapsodic appeal to the forms of judgment, and illustrating the Jena period’s continuity with the Berlin period’s genetic method, while noting a methodological shift whereby Fichte directs his critique against his own doctrine of intellectual intuition in order to eliminate its ‘factical terms.’. (shrink)

In a series of papers Ladyman and Presnell raise an interesting challenge of providing a pre-mathematical justification for homotopy type theory. In response, they propose what they claim to be an informal semantics for homotopy type theory where types and terms are regarded as mathematical concepts. The aim of this paper is to raise some issues which need to be resolved for the successful development of their types-as-concepts interpretation.

RESUMO Neste artigo, busco identificar, por meio de algumas passagens da "Fundamentação da Metafísica dos Costumes" e da "Crítica da Razão Prática", o debate de Kant com a Filosofia Prática Universal de Wolff. Em um primeiro momento, apresento, de forma sucinta, alguns aspectos gerais da metafísica e da ética wolffiana com o intuito de, em um segundo momento, explicitar como algumas considerações de Kant, em suas duas primeiras obras morais, incidem diretamente nas teses de seu predecessor. A crítica de Kant (...) é apresentada nas seguintes etapas. Primeiro, destaco, diante das teses de Wolff, o argumento kantiano sobre a impossibilidade de se estabelecerem os princípios da faculdade superior de apetição e da obrigação moral a partir do prazer baseado nas representações e, por conseguinte, no princípio da felicidade. Em um segundo momento, sublinho a reivindicação kantiana de uma razão prática pura como a única base da faculdade superior de apetição. A partir disso, é notável o surgimento dos novos conceitos kantianos de lei formal, de liberdade e de perfeição moral. Por último, destaco, ainda em diálogo com Wolff, como a razão prática pura, compreendida como faculdade superior de apetição, pode representar não apenas as bases da necessidade moral, mas também uma fonte adequada de motivação. ABSTRACT In this Paper, I seek to identify Kant's debate with Wolff`s Universal Practical Philosophy in some passages of the "Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals" and of the "Critique of Practical Reason". At first, I briefly present some general aspects of Wolff`s metaphysics and ethics aiming at, in a second step, stressing how some of Kant's considerations, in his first two moral works, have a direct impact on the theses of his predecessor. First, stressing the discussion with Wolff, I highlight Kant's argument about the impossibility of establishing the principles of the superior faculty of desire and of moral obligation from the pleasure on the representations and, therefore, in the principle of happiness. In a second step, I stress the Kantian claim of pure practical reason as the basis of the superior faculty of desire. Thence, I show how the new Kantian concepts of formal law, freedom and moral perfection emerge. Finally, I highlight, still in a dialogue with Wolff, how the pure practical reason may represent not only the foundations of moral necessity, but also how it may be a proper source of motivation. (shrink)

In his article Banicki proposes a universal model for all forms of philosophical therapy. He is guided by works of Martha Nussbaum, who in turn makes recourse to Aristotle. As compared to Nussbaum’s approach, Banicki’s model is more medical and less based on ethical argument. He mentions Foucault’s vision to apply the same theoretical analysis for the ailments of the body and the soul and to use the same kind of approach in treating and curing them. In his interpretation of (...) philosophical therapy, there are, however, some controversial issues, to which we would like to call attention: -/- Is restoring health by a philosophical method of treatment – health understood as a person’s ability to reach his/her vital goals – a convincing explication of philosophical therapy in general? In order to answer this question, it may be useful to look at Plato. It is not only Platonism (and especially Neo-platonism since Plotinus) that questions the idea that therapy is necessarily connected with „vital goals“. Buddhist and Gnostic philosophies are questioning „the vital“ in general. The immense effort in the history of philosophy to liberate the mind from the body casts doubt on the project to explain philosophical therapy solely in analogy to medical therapy. -/- According to Banicki a therapeutic philosophy has to identify the diseases it attempts at curing. There are, however, reasons for associating the term therapy with suffering/risk rather than disease. If a therapy aims at reducing the fear of death, as for example many classical philosophical therapies do, then there is no disease to be cured. A model based on chances and risks also has the advantage that the Buddhist and Stoic reinterpretation of desires/emotions as “diseases” can be dropped in contemporary philosophical therapy. -/- Banicki mentions the comparison of therapies as one of the primary goals of modelling. Methods should be verified by a statistical correlation between method and therapeutic success and/or by a theory which justifies the method. Some forms of therapies, however, avoid theory-specific terms and concepts in favor of an unprejudiced interpretation of the patient’s statements. Others share the (Nietzschean) aspiration to explore and change measures of value. If the therapeutic process is seen as a unique phenomenon, then there can be no theory and no statistics with co-occurrences. -/- According to Banicki philosophical therapy has to describe techniques which qualify as genuinely philosophical. Techniques like maieutics and hermeneutics, however, are antique philosophical “inventions”, which were later adopted by psychotherapy. If meditation is accepted as a therapeutic tool – as it was in ancient times – then there is not only a methodical but also an emotional relation to religion. If finally, the Socratic search for a good life is seen as one of the characteristics of philosophical therapy, then delimitation even turns into a criterion for non-philosophical therapies. The search for a good life requires an interdisciplinary approach. -/- For the concretization of the formal structure, we suggest a typology of therapies, which is based on chances and risks. Such a typology has the advantage, that it can model conflicting (and even opposing) forms of therapies. The variety of therapeutic goals and methods is a consequence of the historical development towards conceptual freedom. (shrink)

In the Freedom essay, Schelling charges that (1) idealism fails to grasp human freedom’s distinctiveness and that (2) this failure undermines idealism's attempt to refute pantheism, as exemplified by Spinoza. This raises two questions, which I will answer in turn: what, for Schelling, is distinctive of human freedom; and how does the idealists’ failure to grasp it render them unable to refute pantheism? To answer these questions, I will reconstruct Schelling’s argument that freedom has the distinctness of being the unconditioned (...) condition of the world’s intelligibility. My reconstruction will illustrate how Schelling’s notion of freedom as primal will grounds the alleged primacy of practical reason as Kant and Fichte conceive it. I will then consider three objections to Schelling’s argument. Throughout, I will develop the Schellingian idea that freedom is enacted in an unprethinkable decision that cannot be anticipated by any law or principle. (shrink)

A necessarily true sentence is 'brute' if it does not rigidly refer to anything and if it cannot be reduced to a logical truth. The question of whether there are brute necessities is an extremely natural one. Cian Dorr has recently argued for far-reaching metaphysical claims on the basis of the principle that there are no brute necessities: he initially argued that there are no non-symmetric relations, and later that there are no abstract objects at all. I argue that there (...) are nominalistically acceptable brute necessities, and that Dorr's arguments thus fail. My argument is an application of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. (shrink)

On the classical understanding, an agent is fully excused for an action if and only if performing this action was a case of faultless wrongdoing. A major motivation for this view is the apparent existence of paradigmatic types of excusing considerations, affecting fault but not wrongness. I show that three such considerations, ignorance, duress and compulsion, can be shown to have direct bearing on the permissibility of actions. The appeal to distinctly identifiable excusing considerations thus does not stand up to (...) closer scrutiny, undermining the classical view and giving us reason to seek alternative ways of drawing the justification/excuse distinction. (shrink)

A precursor to the hard problem of consciousness confronts nihilism. Like physicalism, nihilism collides with the first-personal fact of what perception and action are like. Unless this problem is solved, nature’s inclusion of conscious experience will remain, as Chalmers warns the physicalist, an “unanswered question” and, as Jacobi chides the nihilist, “completely inexplicable". One advantage of Kant’s Copernican turn is to dismiss the question that imposes this hard problem. We need not ask how nature is accompanied by the first-person standpoint (...) because “I think” is an apperceptive form of thinking that must be able to accompany any cognition of nature. Kant’s formal conception of apperception worries Fichte in his Nova Methodo lectures. This conception arguably cannot exhaust the ground of experience, for it does not show why we posit objects “at all". For Fichte, it is our agency that first opens a world of objects, viz., as subjects, means, ends, and obstacles. In what follows, I argue that, for Fichte, the I poses no hard problem because it collides exclusively with nihilistic views like Spinozism, which are refuted by a properly transcendental idealist conception of apperception, according to which the first-person standpoint is the absolute ground of our experience of nature. If transcendental idealism refutes nihilism, nature is no more explicable than that there is something it is like for me to perceive and act. In Section 1, I show why Kantian apperception is necessary for possible experience. In Section 2, I reconstruct Fichte’s argument that a modified conception of apperception refutes guises of nihilism, thereby solving the hard problem of consciousness. In Section 3, I suggest that transcendental idealism undermines Chalmers’ proposed solution to and Dennett’s dismissal of this problem. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the theory of function levels proposed by Frege in Grundgesetze der Arithmetik anticipates the hierarchy of types that underlies Church’s simple theory of types. This claim roughly states that Frege presupposes a type of functions in the sense of simple type theory in the expository language of Grundgesetze. However, this view makes it hard to accommodate function names of two arguments and view functions as incomplete entities. I propose and defend an alternative interpretation of first-level (...) function names in Grundgesetze into simple type-theoretic open terms rather than into closed terms of a function type. This interpretation offers a still unhistorical but more faithful type-theoretic approximation of Frege’s theory of levels and can be naturally extended to accommodate second-level functions. It is made possible by two key observations that Frege’s Roman markers behave essentially like open terms and that Frege lacks a clear criterion for distinguishing between Roman markers and function names. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways to exist. It is a position with deep roots in the history of philosophy, and in which there has been a recent resurgence of interest. In contemporary presentations, it is stated in terms of fundamental languages: as the view that such languages contain more than one quantifier. For example, one ranging over abstract objects, and another over concrete ones. A natural worry, however, is that the languages proposed by the pluralist (...) are mere notational variants of those proposed by the monist, in which case the debate between the two positions would not seem to be substantive. Jason Turner has given an ingenious response to this worry, in terms of a principle that he calls ‘logical realism’. This paper offers a counter-response on behalf of the ‘notationalist’. I argue that, properly applied, the principle of logical realism is no threat to the claim that the languages in question are notational variants. Indeed, there seems to be every reason to think that they are. (shrink)

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that he grants—and (...) in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of Molyneux's problem within contemporary philosophy of mind tend to characterize the problem as primarily concerned with the role innately known principles, amodal spatial concepts, and rational cognitive faculties play in our perceptual lives. Indeed, for broadly similar reasons, rationalists have generally advocated an affirmative answer, while empiricists have generally advocated a negative one, to the question Molyneux posed after presenting his famous thought experiment. This historical characterization of the dialectic, however, somewhat obscures the role Molyneux's problem has (...) played in spawning debates within the empiricist tradition. Fortunately, the differences between various empiricist accounts have been widely recognized and discussed among historians of philosophy working on the topic. The focus of the present essay is to develop an interpretation of John Locke's views on Molyneux's problem that best coheres with his other views on human understanding as well as with the predominant scientific opinion about the nature of perception during the period in which he lived. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit Frege's theory of sense and reference in the constructive setting of the meaning explanations of type theory, extending and sharpening a program–value analysis of sense and reference proposed by Martin-Löf building on previous work of Dummett. I propose a computational identity criterion for senses and argue that it validates what I see as the most plausible interpretation of Frege's equipollence principle for both sentences and singular terms. Before doing so, I examine Frege's implementation of his (...) theory of sense and reference in the logical framework of Grundgesetze, his doctrine of truth values, and views on sameness of sense as equipollence of assertions. (shrink)

This research was done in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil on february 2012, with objective was to determine which species of social wasps visiting mango fruits, their behaviors displayed by them while foraging and verify which the species of wasps visitors offer risk of accidents to farmers. The studied area was monitored during February 2012, from 8:00 to 17:00. in a 144 hour effort, and the data collected included the time of activity, diversity, aggressiveness and the general behavior of (...) social wasps around the fruits. There were registered a total of 175 individuals of 12 different species, healthy fruits were damaged during the day, and we registered the abundance and richness peaks throughout the day. This study indicated the needs for special care during the harvest, as aggressive wasps are indeed present and the abundant, resulting in a possible increase of the risk for the workers. (shrink)

Esta edição contém a única transcrição estudantil sobrevivente das Lições de Metafísica de Kant da década de 1770. A Lição foi ministrada o mais tardar no inverno de 1779/80 e, portanto, antes mesmo da publicação da Crítica da Razão Pura (1781). Um exceção é, contudo, a parte sobre a ontologia que seguramente se remonta a uma Lição que Kant ministrou depois de 1781. Estas transcrições de Lições são de valor inestimável para a história do desenvolvimento da filosofia de Kant e, (...) em especial, para a gênese de sua Crítica da Razão Pura . Elas representam também um complemento importante para suas outras Lições, como por exemplo, as de antropologia, nas quais Kant também se ocupou com as questões da psicologia empírica e racional. É interessante observar que Kant se serve de métodos distintos, nas Lições de Antropologia e de Metafísica, para demonstrar a substancialidade e a imortalidade da alma. Embora Kant ainda leve a doutrina da alma da psicologia racional muito a sério na Metafísica-Pölitz, ele rejeitará de fato suas pretensões de conhecimento pouco tempo depois na Crítica na seção sobre os paralogismos da doutrina pura da alma. Aquele que deseja se aprofundar na filosofia de Kant e conhecer seu contexto histórico-filosófico não pode deixar de ler as Lições de Metafísica-Pölitz. Heiner F. Klemme Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. (shrink)