En urbanisme, l’approche phénoménologique permet de se pencher sur l’expérience de l’individu et, plus précisément, sur le rapport que celui-ci entretient avec son milieu de vie. Cette approche permet de concevoir des milieux de vie mieux adaptés aux besoins et aux expectatives des individus et suppose des démarches d’aménagement qui accordent un rôle important au citoyen. Toutefois, si l’approche phénoménologique est couramment utilisée dans le cadre de travaux théoriques, elle est difficilement adoptée sur le terrain, en dépit de son utilité (...) et des justifications que l’on peut donner à son utilisation au plan éthique. Dans le présent article, nous explorons les raisons d’une telle disparité en levant le voile sur une double difficulté : difficulté professionnelle, d’une part, à dépasser le modèle déterministe du rapport personne–environnement ; diffi- culté scientifique, d’autre part, à ancrer la production de connaissances dans les processus de transformation du milieu de vie. (shrink)

Does inner sense, like outer sense, provide inner sensations or, in other words, a sensory manifold of its own? Advocates of the disparity thesis on inner and outer sense claim that it does not. This interpretation, which is dominant in the preexisting literature, leads to several inconsistencies when applied to Kant’s doctrine of inner experience. Yet, while so, the parity thesis, which is the contrasting view, is also unable to provide a convincing interpretation of inner sensations. In this paper, I (...) argue that this deadlock can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of inner sense shared by both sides. Drawing upon an analysis of the notion of obscure representations, I offer an alternative interpretation of inner sense with a special regard to self-affection, apprehension, and attention. From this basis, I will infer that outer sense delivers sensory content that is initially and intrinsically unaccompanied by phenomenal consciousness; inner sense contributes by endowing such content with phenomenal consciousness. Therefore, phenomenal qualities can be regarded as the sensory manifold of inner sense. This alternative interpretation solves the long-standing dispute concerning inner sensations and would further illuminate Kant’s notion of inner experience. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on (...) general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant distinguishes between two kinds of self-consciousness: transcendental apperception and empirical apperception (or, approximately, inner sense). However, Kant sometimes claims that “I think,” the general expression of transcendental apperception, expresses an indeterminate empirical inner intuition (IEI), which differs in crucial ways from the empirical inner intuition produced by inner sense. Such claims undermine Kant’s conceptual framework and constitute a recalcitrant obstacle to understanding his theory of self-consciousness. This paper analyzes the relevant passages, evaluates the major (...) interpretations of IEI, revisits the notion of pure apperception, and proposes an alternative reading: IEI is a ubiquitous, nonfocal, “obscure,” and empirical inner intuition that is built into all nonintrospective conscious states. This reading can successfully account for the peculiarities of IEI, resolving a major mystery in Kant’s theory of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

The two main theories of perceptual reasons in contemporary epistemology can be called Phenomenalism and Factualism. According to Phenomenalism, perceptual reasons are facts about experiences conceived of as phenomenal states, i.e., states individuated by phenomenal character, by what it’s like to be in them. According to Factualism, perceptual reasons are instead facts about the external objects perceived. The main problem with Factualism is that it struggles with bad cases: cases where perceived objects are not what they appear or where there (...) is no perceived object at all. The main problem with Phenomenalism is that it struggles with good cases: cases where everything is perfectly normal and the external object is correctly perceived, so that one’s perceptual beliefs are knowledge. In this paper we show that there is a theory of perceptual reasons that avoids the problems for Factualism and Phenomenalism. We call this view Propositionalism. We use ‘proposition’ broadly to mean the entities that are contents of beliefs and other doxastic attitudes. The key to finding a middle ground between Phenomenalism and Factualism, we claim, is to allow our reasons to be false in bad cases. Despite being false, they are about the external world, not our phenomenal states. (shrink)

In this work, we discuss the failure of the principle of truth functionality in the quantum formalism. By exploiting this failure, we import the formalism of N-matrix theory and non-deterministic semantics to the foundations of quantum mechanics. This is done by describing quantum states as particular valuations associated with infinite non-deterministic truth tables. This allows us to introduce a natural interpretation of quantum states in terms of a non-deterministic semantics. We also provide a similar construction for arbitrary probabilistic theories based (...) in orthomodular lattices, allowing to study post-quantum models using logical techniques. (shrink)

Some partitions of Natural Number set are built through recursive processesgenerating in this manner countable examples of countable and disjoint sets whose unionis a set also countable. This process is constructive, so the Axiom of choice is not used.We provide a PC program that generates one of these special partitions and shows howto generate infinite of them. This line of reasoning can have multiple applications in Settheory and Model theory. We proved that the number of ways to make these partitionsof (...) natural numbers is not countable, there are more of these partitions (named doublycountable) than natural numbers. For each natural number greater than 1, we show aneffective procedure that generates these partitions -/- . (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

I argue that normative requirements should be interpreted as the conditional obligations of dyadic deontic logic. Semantically, normative requirements are conditionals understood as restrictors, the prevailing view of conditionals in linguistics. This means that Modus Ponens is invalid, even when the premises are known.

This book addresses key conceptual issues relating to the modern scientific and engineering use of computer simulations. It analyses a broad set of questions, from the nature of computer simulations to their epistemological power, including the many scientific, social and ethics implications of using computer simulations. The book is written in an easily accessible narrative, one that weaves together philosophical questions and scientific technicalities. It will thus appeal equally to all academic scientists, engineers, and researchers in industry interested in questions (...) related to the general practice of computer simulations. (shrink)

Much of our know-how is acquired through practice: we learn how to cook by cooking, how to write by writing, and how to dance by dancing. As Aristotle argues, however, this kind of learning is puzzling, since engaging in it seems to require possession of the very knowledge one seeks to obtain. After showing how a version of the puzzle arises from a set of attractive principles, I argue that the best solution is to hold that knowledge-how comes in degrees, (...) and through practice a person gradually learns how to do something. However, the two standard accounts of know-how in the literature, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, cannot properly account for the distinctive way in which know-how is gradually acquired by practice, a process in which conceptual representations and practical abilities are intimately interwoven. Drawing on Gareth Evans's work, I outline an account that may do so, and use this account to distinguish between two forms of learning to explain why skill generally cannot be learnt through testimony, and requires practice. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Recent psychological research shown that the places where we live are linked to our personality traits. Geographical aggregation of personalities has been observed in many individualistic nations; notably, the mountainousness is an essential component in understanding regional variances in personality. Could mountainousness therefore also explain the clustering of personality-types in collectivist countries like China? Using a nationwide survey (29,838 participants) in Mainland China, we investigated the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and mountainousness indicators at the provincial level. Multilevel (...) modelling showed significant negative associations between the elevation coefficient of variation (Elevation CV) and the Big Five personality traits, whereas mean elevation (Elevation Mean) and the standard deviation in elevation (Elevation STD) were positively associated with human personalities. Subsequent machine learning analyses showed that, for example, Elevation Mean outperformed other mountainousness indicators regarding correlations with neuroticism, while Elevation CV performed best relative to openness models. Our results mirror some previous findings, such as the positive association between openness and Elevation STD, while also revealing cultural differences, such as the social desirability of people living in China’s mountainous areas. (shrink)

Richard Feldman has proposed and defended different versions of a principle about evidence. In slogan form, the principle holds that ‘evidence of evidence is evidence’. Recently, Branden Fitelson has argued that Feldman’s preferred rendition of the principle falls pray to a counterexample related to the non-transitivity of the evidence-for relation. Feldman replies arguing that Fitelson’s case does not really represent a counterexample to the principle. In this note, we argue that Feldman’s principle is trivially true.

In the last decades there has been a great controversy about the scientific status of emotion categories. This controversy stems from the idea that emotions are heterogeneous phenomena, which precludes classifying them under a common kind. In this article, I analyze this claim—which I call the Variability Thesis—and argue that as it stands, it is problematically underdefined. To show this, I examine a recent formulation of the thesis as offered by Scarantino (2015). On one hand, I raise some issues regarding (...) the logical structure of the claim. On the other hand, and most importantly, I show that the Variability Thesis requires a consensus about what counts as a relevant pattern of response in different domains, a consensus that is lacking in the current literature. This makes it difficult to assess what counts as evidence for or against this thesis. As a result, arguments based on the Variability Thesis are unwarranted. This raises serious concerns about some current empirical theories of emotions, but also sheds light on the issue of the scientific status of emotion categories. (shrink)

This article aims to develop a new account of scientific explanation for computer simulations. To this end, two questions are answered: what is the explanatory relation for computer simulations? And what kind of epistemic gain should be expected? For several reasons tailored to the benefits and needs of computer simulations, these questions are better answered within the unificationist model of scientific explanation. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, I submit that the explanatory relation is between the simulation model and the (...) results of the simulation. I also argue that our epistemic gain goes beyond the unificationist account, encompassing a practical dimension as well. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker, developing an idea of Wittgenstein’s, argues that we are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. Although we might be liable to error when “I” (or its cognates) is used as an object, we are immune to error when “I” is used as a subject (as when one says, “I have a toothache”). Shoemaker claims that the relationship between “I” as-subject and the mental states of which it is introspectively aware is tautological: when, say, we (...) judge that “I feel pain,” we are tautologically aware that feels pain is instantiated and that it is instantiated in oneself. Moreover, he contends that this relationship holds not just for bodily sensations, but also for the sense of agency and for visual perception. But we deny that this relationship is tautological; instead, we treat Shoemaker’s principle (IEM) as a hypothesis. We then proceed to show that certain pathological states and experimentally-induced illusions can be adduced to show that IEM describes not a necessary relationship but a contingent relationship, one that sometimes fails to obtain. That we are not immune to error in the way Shoemaker describes has grave consequences for many aspects of his ideas concerning the first-person perspective. In the course of arguing that these empirical phenomena count against IEM, we also show that not only can the content of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the subject: that is, not only can the what of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the who. (shrink)

Gibson defined affordances as action possibilities directly offered to an animal by the environment. Ambitiously, affordances are meant to show the inadequacy of the subjective-objective dichotomy in the study of cognition. Armed with similar concerns, some neo-Gibsonians recently thought of affordances as latent dispositions existing independently of individual organisms or whole species. It is no coincidence that critics had, on several occasions, objected that this theoretical stance dramatically neglects the role of the perceiver in the emergence of affordances. In this (...) paper, we provide a phenomenological characterization of the perceiver’s role in affordance perception. Specifically, we borrow from Husserlian phenomenology to characterize two features of affordance perception that can enrich our understanding of the individual’s engagement with the environment, namely, its affective and temporal aspects. Taking an everyday activity such as rock climbing as a case example, we show that phenomenological investigations, if not misinterpreted as mere introspection, can represent an ally for ecological psychologists. (shrink)

Sophists and rhetoricians like Gorgias are often accused of disregarding truth and rationality: their speeches seem to aim only at effective persuasion, and be constrained by nothing but persuasiveness itself. In his extant texts Gorgias claims that language does not represent external objects or communicate internal states, but merely generates behavioural responses in people. It has been argued that this perspective erodes the possibility of rationally assessing speeches by making persuasiveness the only norm, and persuasive power the only virtue, of (...) speech. Against this view, I show how Gorgias’ texts support a robust normativity of language that goes well beyond persuasion while remaining non-representational. Gorgias’ claims that a speech can be persuasive and false, or true and unpersuasive, reveal pragmatic, epistemic, and agonistic constraints on the validity of speech that are neither representational nor reducible to sheer persuasiveness. (shrink)

By “epistemic pragmatism” in general I will understand the claim that whether propositions instantiate certain key epistemic properties (such as being known or being justifiably believed) depends not just on factors traditionally recognized as epistemic, but also on pragmatic factors, such as how costly it would be to the subject if the proposition were false. In what follows I consider two varieties of epistemic pragmatism. According to what I shall call moderate epistemic pragmatism, how much evidence we need in favor (...) of a proposition in order to know that the proposition is true depends on our preferences. According to what I shall call extreme epistemic pragmatism, on the other hand, our preferences influence our epistemic position at a more basic level, because they help determine how much justification we actually have in favor of the proposition in question. Simplifying brutally, moderate epistemic pragmatism has it that the more worried we are about a proposition’s being false, the more justification we need in order to know it, whereas extreme epistemic pragmatism has it that the more worried we are about a proposition’s being false, the less justification we have for it. Recently, Fantl and McGrath have presented an interesting argument for moderate epistemic pragmatism, an argument which relies on the principle that (roughly) knowledge is sufficient for action (KA). In this paper I argue that KA, together with a plausible principle about second-order evidence, entails extreme epistemic pragmatism. (shrink)

I propose a reading of Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of Vision in which Molyneux-type questions are interpreted as thought experiments instead of arguments. First, I present the general argumentative strategy in the NTV, and provide grounds for the traditional reading. Second, I consider some roles of thought experiments, and classify Molyneux-type questions in the NTV as constructive conjectural thought experiments. Third, I argue that (i) there is no distinction between Weak and Strong Heterogeneity theses in the NTV; (ii) (...) that Strong Heterogeneity is the basis of Berkeley's theory; and (iii) that Molyneux-type questions act as illustrations of Strong Heterogeneity. (shrink)

La migración internacional nos enfrenta con problemas irresolubles desde la figura moderna del Estado nacional, su concepto de ciudadanía y su noción de justicia. Juan Carlos Velasco critica las limitaciones y la orientación de las políticas contemporáneas que nos hacen percibir a la migración como una “invasión”, y propone un modo radicalmente diferente de entender e intervenir el fenómeno desde lo trasnacional. Nacer de uno u otro lado de una línea divisoria es un evento azaroso, no obstante delimitar la (...) frontera es una construcción histórico-política: la desigualdad en las oportunidades que ofrecen las naciones es una situación estructural de injusticia que se perpetúa con las políticas de exclusión de los migrantes y la deslegitimación de su derecho a buscar una vida mejor. Esa circunstancia genera fracturas sociales, injustificables pero normalizadas, que imposibilitan alcanzar la justicia global. Velasco presenta un análisis completo que abarca las dimensiones política, jurídica y moral del tema, en el que lleva a la filosofía política a un terreno práctico del que se desprenden las claves para entender y actuar en esta nueva era en la que, debido a los conflictos sociales y políticos, la migración vuelve a ser argumento de discusión relevante. (Texto de la CONTRAPORTADA del libro). (shrink)

I discuss Turri's puzzle about withholding. I argue that attention to the way in which evidence can justify withholding dissolves the puzzle.

In this paper I will critically assess a very popular interpretation of Heidegger’s early thought, according to which meaning (Bedeutung) is conceived as ontologically dependent on human existence (Dasein). In order to criticize this subjectivist understanding of meaning, I will offer an interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of signs in Being and Time (§17). This will reveal two main things: first, that the ubiquity of sign-phenomena is founded on the universality of the structure known as reference (Verweisung); second, that Heidegger’s idea (...) of reference offers a non-substantialist understanding of meaning and its relation to the world. (shrink)

Mental ownership concerns who experiences a mental state. According to David Rosenthal (2005: 342), the proper way to characterize mental ownership is: ‘being conscious of a state as present is being conscious of it as belonging to somebody. And being conscious of a state as belonging to somebody other than oneself would plainly not make it a conscious state’. In other words, if a mental state is consciously present to a subject in virtue of a higher-order thought (HOT), then the (...) HOT necessarily representsthe subject as the owner of the state. But, we contend, one of the lessons to be learned from pathological states like somatoparaphrenia is that conscious awareness of a mental state does not guarantee first-person ownership. That is to say, conscious presence does not imply mental ownership. (shrink)

Effort and the feeling of effort play important roles in many theoretical discussions, from perception to self-control and free will, from the nature of ownership to the nature of desert and achievement. A crucial, overlooked distinction within the philosophical and scientific literatures is the distinction between theories that seek to explain effort and theories that seek to explain the feeling of effort. Lacking a clear distinction between these two phenomena makes the literature hard to navigate. To advance in the unification (...) and development of this area, this article provides an overview of the main theories of the nature of effort and the nature of the feeling of effort, and then discusses how efforts and their feelings are related. Two key takeaways emerge. First, there is widespread agreement that efforts are goal-directed actions. Second, one of the main philosophical issues to be decided is whether feelings of effort should be defined by reference to efforts (effort-first approach), or whether efforts are defined by reference to the feeling of effort (feeling-first approach). (shrink)

A primary aim of mind-wandering research has been to understand its influence on task performance. While this research has typically highlighted the costs of mind wandering, a handful of studies have suggested that mind wandering may be beneficial in certain situations. Perhaps the most-touted benefit is that mind wandering during a creative-incubation interval facilitates creative thinking. This finding has played a critical role in the development of accounts of the adaptive value of mind wandering and its functional role, as well (...) as potential mechanisms of mind wandering. Thus, a demonstration of the replicability of this important finding is warranted. Here, we attempted to conceptually replicate results of a highly cited laboratory-based experiment supporting this finding. However, across two studies (N = 443), we found no evidence for the claim that mind wandering during a creative-incubation interval facilitates a form of creativity associated with divergent thinking. We suggest that our failed conceptual replication stems from an inadequate characterization of mind wandering (task-unrelated thought), and that there are good reasons to think that task-unrelated thought is unlikely to be causally related to creativity. Our results cast doubt on the claim that task-unrelated thought during an incubation interval enhances divergent creativity while also offering some prescriptions for how future research might further elucidate the cognitive benefits of mind wandering. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated from an emergentist framework. According (...) to my proposal, a free agent is _a causally powerful substance that emerges in an anomic way from her constitutive mental events_, downwardly constraining, selecting and, in this way, having control on them. As we shall see, this particular concept of agent causation not only makes sense of the deep insight behind agent libertarianism, but it also provides us with the resources to solve some of the main objections that have been raised against it. It is true that here I cannot develop a complete defense of the evidential credentials of emergentism. Still, even if the considerations that follow do not serve to convince detractors of agent causal libertarian accounts of free will, they do suggest that libertarian agent causation is more promising than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

Evidentialism and Reliabilism are two of the main contemporary theories of epistemic justification. Some authors have thought that the theories are not incompatible with each other, and that a hybrid theory which incorporates elements of both should be taken into account. More recently, other authors have argued that the resulting theory is well- placed to deal with fine-grained doxastic attitudes (credences). In this paper I review the reasons for adopting this kind of hybrid theory, paying attention to the case of (...) credences and the notion of probability involved in their treatment. I argue that the notion of probability in question can only be an epistemic (or evidential) kind of probability. I conclude that the resulting theory will be incompatible with Reliabilism in one important respect: it cannot deliver on the reductivist promise of Reliabilism. I also argue that attention to the justification of basic beliefs reveals limitations in the Evidentialist framework as well. The theory that results from the right combination of Evidentialism and Reliabilism, therefore, is neither Evidentialist nor Reliabilist. (shrink)

The Thomistic account of freedom as election and freedom as love of the transcendental good, which in its perfect achievement is indefectible, introduces a new and unexpected approach in relation to contemporary debates concerning compatibilism and incompatibilism between freedom and determinism. This article develops both aspects of freedom and tries to bring new light to the problem of defining and evaluating the concepts of determination and indeterminacy.

A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Sarah Paul hold that it is inferential, others like Lucy O’Brien and Kieran Setiya argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have only alienated knowledge (...) of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected. (shrink)

This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.

Habitual action would still be a tremendously pervasive feature of our agency. And yet, references to habitual action have been marginal at best in contemporary philosophy of action. This neglect is due, at least, to the combination of two ideas. The first is a widespread view of habit as entirely automatic, inflexible, and irresponsive to reasons. The second is philosophy of action’s tendency (dominant at least since Anscombe and Davidson) to focus on explaining action by reference to reasons. Arguably, if (...) habitual behavior is reasons-irresponsive, and if action is explained by reference to reasons, the study of habit would have very little to teach about action. Recently, however, there has been a surge in philosophical interest on habit and habitual action. Novel approaches are challenging the two ideas mentioned above, arguing that (1) habitual behavior is not entirely automatic or inflexible, but instead has a particular kind of flexibility and intentionality; and that (2) acting out of habit can count as a form of acting for reasons, even in the absence of the traditional rationalizing mental states: belief, desire, and intention. -/- The essays contained in this issue move discussions forward in exciting new directions. In what follows we present each paper and situate it within its broader theoretical context, so that this introduction may serve also as an introduction to the topic of habitual action. A crucial lesson that emerges from these essays is a need to move past disputes between philosophical schools or traditions. Rather than combatting between different philosophical factions, an ecumenical approach capable of skillfully bringing together elements from different traditions seems better able to tackle problems that remain unsolved. These problems include (but are not limited to): developing an account of responsibility for habitual action; explaining our ability to perform joint habitual actions; and clarifying the link between habit and self-control. (shrink)

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.

Una imagen muy generalizada a la hora de entender el software de computador es la que lo representa como una “caja negra”: no importa realmente saber qué partes lo componen internamente, sino qué resultados se obtienen de él según ciertos valores de entrada. Al hacer esto, muchos problemas filosóficos son ocultados, negados o simplemente mal entendidos. Este artículo discute tres unidades de análisis del software de computador, esto es, las especificaciones, los algoritmos y los procesos computacionales. El objetivo central es (...) entender las prácticas cientficas e ingenieriles detrás de cada unidad de software, así como analizar su metodología, ontología y epistemología. (shrink)

Self-control, the capacity to resist temptations and pursue longer-term goals over immediate gratifications, is crucial in determining the overall shape of our lives, and thereby in our ability to shape our identities. As it turns out, this capacity is intimately linked with our ability to control the direction of our attention. This raises the worry that perhaps social media are making us more easily distracted people, and therefore less able to exercise self-control. Is this so? And is it necessarily a (...) bad thing? This paper analyzes the nature of attention, its vices and virtues, and what currently available evidence has to say about the effects of social media on attention and self-control. The pattern that seems to be emerging is that, although there is an association between higher use of social media and lower attentional control, we do not yet know whether it is social media use that makes people more distracted, or whether those who use social media the most do so because they are more easily distracted. Either way, the rise of the ‘Web 2.0’ does raise questions about whether the virtues of attention will change in the future, and whether this will bring with it a transformation in the way we shape our selves. (shrink)

Currently, one of the most influential theories of consciousness is Rosenthal's version of higher-order-thought (HOT). We argue that the HOT theory allows for two distinct interpretations: a one-component and a two-component view. We further argue that the two-component view is more consistent with his effort to promote HOT as an explanatory theory suitable for application to the empirical sciences. Unfortunately, the two-component view seems incapable of handling a group of counterexamples that we refer to as cases of radical confabulation. We (...) begin by introducing the HOT theory and by indicating why we believe it is open to distinct interpretations. We then proceed to show that it is incapable of handling cases of radical confabulation. Finally, in the course of considering various possible responses to our position, we show that adoption of a disjunctive strategy, one that would countenance both one-component and two-component versions, would fail to provide any empirical or explanatory advantage. (shrink)

A new proof style adequate for modal logics is defined from the polynomial ring calculus. The new semantics not only expresses truth conditions of modal formulas by means of polynomials, but also permits to perform deductions through polynomial handling. This paper also investigates relationships among the PRC here defined, the algebraic semantics for modal logics, equational logics, the Dijkstra???Scholten equational-proof style, and rewriting systems. The method proposed is throughly exemplified for S 5, and can be easily extended to other modal (...) logics. (shrink)

Scientifically speaking, quantum mechanics (QM) is the most successful theory ever made. Philosophically speaking, however, it is the most controversial theory. Its basic principles seem to contravene our deepest intuitions about reality, which are reflected in the metaphysical commitments of classical mechanics (CM). The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I argue that QM implies an ontological challenge, and not merely an “ontic” one, as it has been traditionally interpreted in the analytic tradition. Second, I suggest that positions known (...) as “ontological pluralism” exhibit an internal weakness due to its unwarranted compromise to a representational view of scientific theories. (shrink)

Self-control is the ability to inhibit temptations and persist in one’s decisions about what to do. In this article, we review recent evidence that suggests implicit beliefs about the process of self-control influence how the process operates. While earlier work focused on the moderating influence of willpower beliefs on depletion effects, we survey new directions in the field that emphasize how beliefs about the nature of self-control, self-control strategies, and their effectiveness have effects on downstream regulation and judgment. These new (...) directions highlight the need to better understand the role of self-control beliefs in naturalistic decision-making. (shrink)

Sostengo que la controversia entre la teoría de las emociones básicas y el construccionismo psicológico yace en diferencias sobre el rol de los conceptos cotidianos de emoción en el ámbito científico. Para esto, analizo las discusiones en torno a la universalidad de las expresiones faciales y a la existencia de correspondencias neurofisiológicas para cada emoción. Muestro que en ambas discusiones estamos en un espacio de subdeterminación empírica, lo que impide saldar la controversia aludiendo a resultados experimentales. Finalizo con algunas sugerencias (...) sobre cómo podría saldarse la controversia. (shrink)