Esta entrevista se realizó de forma virtual y audiovisual el 3 de julio de 2021.

Esta entrevista se realizó de forma virtual y audiovisual el 3 de julio de 2021.

Study of Batman´s villain Scarecrow through the lens of ancient Stoicism, particularly according to the Stoic theory of passions.

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

Este artículo examina La ciudad y los perros (1963) de Mario Vargas Llosa para fundamentar cómo se logra la estratificación teórica de estilos y técnicas que se emplean para abordar la violencia en el texto. Sobre la epistemología, recurre principalmente a Todorov, Hamburger, Lotman y Genette. Y, para argumentar la manifestación de la violencia, considera las eventualidades que padecen los personajes del Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado; en especial, el Jaguar, el Poeta y el Esclavo. Esas acciones serán justificadas por la (...) instrucción castrense, la evolución humana, la necesidad de una conducta hegemónica idónea y la búsqueda del efecto perlocutivo en el lector. Para sistematizar esas peculiaridades, se opta por una metodología adscrita al cotejo de información teórica para que sea confrontada con el discurso literario. El análisis que se desarrolla es complementado con fragmentos representativos para que las formulaciones sean más directas y convincentes. Como resultado, se confirma esa correspondencia entre las teorías heterogéneas, la novela y la interpretación, por lo que el concepto de violencia adoptaría una multidimensionalidad que evidencia su existencia y su requerimiento esencial en los personajes. Con ello, se sustenta como conclusión que la violencia en ese contexto debería ser permanente e imprescindible para subsistir. (shrink)

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

Este trabajo retoma las categorías que trabaja Kant en función de la emisión de juicios con respecto al gusto y la estética. Para ello, es necesario que se considere el método que se configura a partir de la sistematización de las cosas y los fenómenos que intervienen para obtener su constitución. Asimismo, todo ello está orientado a precisar el concepto de estética, para que después se comprendan los tipos de juicios que se derivan de las facultades cognitivas, como los juicios (...) analíticos y sintéticos, los juicios a priori y a posteriori, los juicios determinantes y reflexionantes, los juicios estéticos en el Arte y los juicios teleológicos. (shrink)

En este artículo, reviso el concepto y la tipología de violencia condensados por autores como Galtung, Bourdieu, Lacan, entre otros, para fundamentar su existencia en los personajes de La ciudad y los perros y el contexto donde se desenvuelven. La apropiación de ese paradigma de agresión será factible para evidenciar su evolución y su desarrollo humano, porque transitan por un estado de la adolescencia a la madurez. Sin embargo, en ese proceso ontológico, se revela la predominancia de rasgos concomitantes de (...) la ironía que sirven para apaciguar el entorno caótico que les produce permanecer de forma obligatoria en el Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado. Entre las investigaciones de Tenorio, Sobrevilla, Sommers u Oviedo, ya se han corroborado que efectivamente se incluyen patrones de la sátira y la comicidad. Por esa razón, será de utilidad adecuar ejemplos de la novela para demostrar la interacción pertinente de los cadetes en ese microcosmos castrense. (shrink)

Defeasible argumentation has been applied successfully in several real-world domains in which it is necessary to handle incomplete and contradictory information. In recent years, there have been interesting attempts to carry out argumentation processes supported by massive repositories developing argumentative reasoning applications. One of such efforts builds arguments by retrieving information from relational databases using the DBI-DeLP framework; this article presents eDBI-DeLP, which extends the original DBI-DeLP framework by providing two novel aspects which refine the interaction between DeLP programs and (...) relational databases. First, we expand the expressiveness of dbi-delp programs by providing ways of controlling how the information in databases is recovered; this is done by introducing filters that enable an improved fine-grained control on the argumentation processes which become useful in applications, providing the semantics and the implementation of such filters. Second, we introduce an argument comparison criterion which can be adjusted at the level of literals to model particular features such as credibility and topic expertise, among others. These new tools can be particularly useful in environments such as medical diagnosis expert systems, decision support systems, or recommender systems based on argumentation, where datasets are often provided in the form of relational databases. (shrink)

El propósito de este estudio es redireccionar y actualizar la interpretación del discurso que se deriva de la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación (CVR) en torno al atentado originado en la residencia del embajador de Japón durante el Gobierno de Fujimori y la intervención respectiva con la operación Chavín de Huántar. Para ello, se utilizarán distintas estrategias de análisis del discurso histórico y archivístico del Informe final (2003) de la CVR y la inclusión de la categoría antropológica de (...) memoria de Elizabeth Jelin, que será trascendental para constatar el almacenamiento y la influencia de este hecho en los ciudadanos. Un resultado relevante de ese contexto es la insatisfacción ciudadana hacia el Estado, puesto que para aminorar ese atentado los militares y el Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), autorizados por el Gobierno, transgredieron los derechos humanos, así como la prensa no se desempeñó con ética —reacción que no es ajena a la actualidad—. Con todo ello, se concluirá que no existen maneras coetáneas de establecer convenios con los opositores al Gobierno. A la vez, no se busca la concientización. Más bien, se recurren a mecanismos violentos. Ese problema debería solucionarse, más que preocuparse por una reconstrucción escrita e idónea de la historia. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge noted, proper names can have predicative (...) uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge’s cases. In this paper I argue that the Predicate View of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist’s methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names—albeit fundamentally singular referential terms—express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and show how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

The increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare raises both hope and ethical concerns. Some advanced machine learning methods provide accurate clinical predictions at the expense of a significant lack of explainability. Alex John London has defended that accuracy is a more important value than explainability in AI medicine. In this article, we locate the trade-off between accurate performance and explainable algorithms in the context of distributive justice. We acknowledge that accuracy is cardinal from outcome-oriented justice because it helps (...) to maximize patients’ benefits and optimizes limited resources. However, we claim that the opaqueness of the algorithmic black box and its absence of explainability threatens core commitments of procedural fairness such as accountability, avoidance of bias, and transparency. To illustrate this, we discuss liver transplantation as a case of critical medical resources in which the lack of explainability in AI-based allocation algorithms is procedurally unfair. Finally, we provide a number of ethical recommendations for when considering the use of unexplainable algorithms in the distribution of health-related resources. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the collected volume. In the first section, we aim to provide background on important themes in social egalitarianism and to set the context for understanding which significant questions the chapters in this book pose and attempt to answer. In this section we focus especially on what could be said to characterize socially egalitarian relationships, on which relationships are of concern, and on what might make social egalitarianism distinct. In the second section, we provide (...) a brief explanation of the structure of the book and each of its chapters. (shrink)

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

Thick concepts, namely those concepts that describe and evaluate simultaneously, present a challenge to science. Since science does not have a monopoly on value judgments, what is responsible research involving such concepts? Using measurement of wellbeing as an example, we first present the options open to researchers wishing to study phenomena denoted by such concepts. We argue that while it is possible to treat these concepts as technical terms, or to make the relevant value judgment in-house, the responsible thing to (...) do, especially in the context of public policy, is to make this value judgment through a legitimate political process that includes all the stakeholders of this research. We then develop a participatory model of measurement based on the ideal of co-production. To show that this model is feasible and realistic, we illustrate it with a case study of co-production of a concept of thriving conducted by the authors in collaboration with a UK anti-poverty charity Turn2us. (shrink)

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

The present article studies the epictetean philosophical use of some passages of the Greek and Roman history. The concepts of love-friendship (philía) and personal con- venience (sumphéron) second the philosopher to explain why happiness (eudaimonía) has not been reached by the human being in all history. All historical war or strife (pólemos), such as the Trojan, the Medics and the Peloponnesian wars, is provoked by epistemological-moral mistakes derived from the ignorance of which is the correct place to put the sumphéron; (...) such correct place is only the personal “rational capacity” ( proháiresis). This causal explanation of the incorrect and vicious human actions, of which history is full and which destroy the existent philía between nations and provoke pólemos, constitutes an authentic epictetean philosophy of history. Nevertheless, those vicious actions have a justification in a superior Cosmological level because they are pre-determined and ordered by the God-Providence. This leads us to the possibility of observing that the stoic philosophy of history, particularly the epictetean, is analogous to some modern speculative systems of history like the ones developed by Vico or Hegel. (shrink)

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

Este trabajo parte de las nociones que desarrolla el filósofo Alain Badiou con respecto a la idea del ser y todo lo que conlleva su desenvolvimiento. En el poema de Octavio Paz “Más allá del amor”, son consuetudinarias las alusiones a la conformación y la exposición de las circunstancias y las entidades que se articulan en el discurso. En ese sentido, conceptos que permitirán la detección de la unicidad, el vacío o el tratamiento de un conjunto, junto con operadores como (...) el “cuenta por uno” (extraído del texto El ser y el acontecimiento), facilitarán la constitución y la sistematización de elementos líricos que incorpora el escritor mexicano. (shrink)

The Common Anatomy Reference Ontology (CARO) is being developed to facilitate interoperability between existing anatomy ontologies for different species, and will provide a template for building new anatomy ontologies. CARO has a structural axis of classification based on the top-level nodes of the Foundational Model of Anatomy. CARO will complement the developmental process sub-ontology of the GO Biological Process ontology, using it to ensure the coherent treatment of developmental stages, and to provide a common framework for the model organism communities (...) to classify developmental structures. Definitions for the types and relationships are being generated by a consortium of investigators from diverse backgrounds to ensure applicability to all organisms. CARO will support the coordination of cross-species ontologies at all levels of anatomical granularity by cross-referencing types within the cell type ontology (CL) and the Gene Ontology (GO) Cellular Component ontology. A complete cross-species CARO could be utilized in other ontologies for cross-product generation. (shrink)

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

The writings and speeches of the Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) have been characterized by a constant reference to a teleological history. Using Karl Löwith’s proposals, I analyse the president’s liberal-progressive idea of history and I propose that in this respect he has followed a certain speculative philosophy of history, which I call philosophy of Trans-Historic-History.

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

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

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

Der These des erweiterten Geistes zufolge befinden sich manche mentalen Repräsentationen außerhalb der körperlichen Grenzen der Wesen, zu denen sie gehören. Einer der stärksten Einwände gegen diese These stellt das Argument der Nichtabgeleitetheit von Frederick Adams, Ken Aizawa und Jerry Fodor dar. Dieses Argument setzt voraus, dass genuine mentale Repräsentationen nichtabgeleitete Gehalte haben – ihre semantischen Eigenschaften sind also nicht durch Absichten, Wünsche oder Konventionen konstituiert. Repräsentationen mit nichtabgeleitetem Gehalt finden sich jedoch, so das Argument weiter, nur innerhalb der körperlichen (...) Grenzen mentaler Wesen. Ich werde dafür argumentieren, dass das Argument der Nichtabgeleitetheit scheitert, da es insbesondere bei Tieren externe Repräsentationen gibt, deren Gehalt nichtabgeleitet ist. Dies folgt jedenfalls aus der aussichtsreichsten Theorie nichtabgeleiteter Repräsentationen, der Teleosemantik, und es gibt gute Gründe anzunehmen, dass auch andere naturalistische Gehaltstheorien dieselbe Implikation haben. (shrink)

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

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

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

En el presente artículo analizamos la novela gráfica Pax Romana (Jonathan Hickman 2007) como una representación de las posturas de la filosofía de la historia de la Ilustración. El discurso prevaleciente en la mayoría de los personajes y en la trama, argumentamos, es equiparable con la concepción de la Historia del positivismo y el marxismo. Establecemos que, en esta visionaria muestra del noveno arte, la filosofía de la historia ilustrada prevalece sobre la filosofía de la historia cristiana, pese a que (...) gran parte del hilo argumental haya recaído en personajes que representan la dirigencia de la Iglesia Católica. El desenlace de la miniserie evidencia el triunfo, a través de los viajes en el tiempo, de las metas de la Ilustración, como lo son la difusión de la Razón, la ciencia, el Progreso y el bienestar en todo el orbe. Sorpresivamente, en tanto que los viajes en el tiempo son planificados por el Vaticano, se dejan a un lado los presupuestos básicos de la filosofía de la historia cristiana, principalmente la idea de que el Reino de Dios no se dará en la Tierra sino en un lugar metafísico, en el Final de los Tiempos. (shrink)

En el presente art´ıculo exploramos la carencia de valor que tiene la muerte, el cese de la vida de una persona, para la filosof ´ıa estoica, que con-sidera a aquella como uno de los factores indiferentes o adi´aphora (“no prefe-ribles”) para la felicidad humana. La idea del “temor hacia la muerte”, comoun sentimiento incorrecto, repercuti´o en la pol´ıtica cotidiana de la Roma im-perial; seg´un concluimos, esta circunstancia demuestra el car´acter pragm´aticoy terap´eutico de la Stoa, escuela que siempre busc´o eliminar tal (...) temor. (shrink)

In the present paper we analyze the approach that sustains that history´s study is useful for the political activities improvement. Nowadays it is considered that the historian must not elaborate his works thinking to achieve an influence on the politics. Nevertheless, during the XIX century and previously, has been a different approach. Our reflection focus on two conspicuous works of the nineteenth century about the historical discipline: Historik by Johann G. Droysen and On the use and abuse of history for (...) life by Friedrich Nietzsche. This article dives on the moral role given to the study of history, as well as dives on the causes, postulated by both thinkers, that explain why history leads to a personal overcoming. Overcoming that subsequently rebound on the political issue. (shrink)

The question of how we should engage with a philosopher’s racial thought is of particular importance when considering Kant, who can be viewed as particularly representative of Enlightenment philosophy. In this article I argue that we should take a stance of deep acknowledgment when considering Kant’s work both inside and outside the classroom. Taking a stance of deep acknowledgment should be understood as 1) taking Kant’s racial thought to be reflective of his moral character, 2) Kant being accountable for his (...) racial thought and 3) being willing to consider the possibility that Kant’s racial thought is consistent with and inextricable from his moral philosophy. Alternative forms of engaging with Kant’s racial work have either moral or pedagogical failings, which range from simply teaching the history of philosophy uncritically to outright deception. A stance of deep acknowledgement will allow philosophers to understand how Kant’s racial thought interacts with his moral philosophy and allow instructors to teach philosophy in a historically contextualized approach so as to not alienate students whose demographic was disparaged by Kant. (shrink)

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

Morally worthy actions are morally exemplary actions. They are the result of an agent manifesting his virtue. However, the details are controversial. What should the morally exemplary agent care about and what does it mean to be morally aware? In this paper, I examine these questions and present a novel account of morally worthy action.

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

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

This paper explores the physical and metaphysical implications of time travel, focusing on the possibility of changing the past, through a comparative analysis of David Lewis' modal realism and Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) in certain solutions to Einstein's field equations provides a theoretical basis for the possibility of backwards time travel, but this leads to a range of paradoxes, most notably the grandfather paradox. David Lewis argues that time travel must maintain (...) consistency and that the past cannot be changed, even if time travel were possible. His view is supported by his modal realism, which posits the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. In contrast, Everett's many-worlds interpretation, which holds that quantum mechanics describes a multiverse of branching realities, might seem to allow for the possibility of multiple, inconsistent histories. By examining these two ontological frameworks, this paper aims to shed light on the paradoxes of time travel and to explore whether the many-worlds interpretation provides a more satisfactory resolution to these paradoxes than Lewis' modal realism. It is argued that while Lewis' view provides a coherent model for maintaining consistency in time travel, Everett's interpretation may offer a more physically grounded and philosophically compelling account of the metaphysics of time travel. The paper concludes by suggesting that the many-worlds interpretation, by locating the branching of timelines within the structure of quantum mechanics itself, may provide a more promising framework for understanding the possibility and implications of time travel than Lewis' modal realism. However, significant questions remain about the nature of personal identity and free will in a branching multiverse. This comparative analysis aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about the metaphysical possibility of time travel and to highlight the value of engaging with interpretations of quantum mechanics in this context. Keywords: time travel, closed timelike curves, modal realism, many-worlds interpretation, grandfather paradox, metaphysics of time. (shrink)

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

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

El presente trabajo de tesis se centra en el estoicismo, en la obra titulada Disertaciones que recoge las enseñanzas de Epicteto pero que fue recopilada por Arriano. Es en tal texto en el que principalmente basamos la presente tesis. Analizamos las enseñanzas de Epicteto, filósofo nacido en Hierópolis (Frigia) hacia el 55 d.C., que fue un liberto que se adentró en el estoicismo tras asistir a las clases del filósofo Musonio Rufo; gracias al permiso de su amo Epafrodito pudo asistir (...) a las pláticas de tal erudito. Los dos temas a tratar, el poder y el amor, que forman parte de la ética y de la filosofía política –estoicas-, así como de la epistemología, la física y la metafísica, por ser el sistema estoico uno que está estrecha y racionalmente interconectado, han sido abordados por investigadores recientes desde distintos ámbitos y perspectivas. El poder y el amor son conceptos que deben de ser explicados y analizados a partir de los conceptos mencionados de “sentimiento”, “inclinación”, “pasión”, “bueno”, “malo”, además de los de “virtud”, “vicio”, “indiferente”, “oikéiosis”, “deber”, “sabio”, “libertad”, etc. Por lo que ambas categorías han sido abordadas desde su vinculación con, o a partir de su explicación a través de, uno o varios de los conceptos mencionados. (shrink)