En el presente texto se evalúan las posibilidades conceptuales de una interpretación fisicalista de la conciencia. Con dicho fin se toman en cuenta posiciones representativas en el ámbito de la filosofía, así como investigaciones neurocientíficas recientes. Ambas líneas de investigación suponen el cuestionamiento de los acercamientos de sentido común al tema de la conciencia. No obstante, no suponen una completa eliminación de lo que dicho acercamiento puede representar. En este sentido, se propone una interpretación epistemológica de la perspectiva intuitiva de (...) primera persona en relación con la perspectiva científica de tercera persona. (shrink)

Basic Emotion theory has had a tremendous influence on the affective sciences, including music psychology, where most researchers have assumed that music expressivity is constrained to a limited set of basic emotions. Several scholars suggested that these constrains to musical expressivity are explained by the existence of a shared acoustic code to the expression of emotions in music and speech prosody. In this article we advocate for a shift from this focus on basic emotions to a constructionist account. This approach (...) proposes that the phenomenon of perception of emotions in music arises from the interaction of music’s ability to express core affects and the influence of top-down and contextual information in the listener’s mind. We start by reviewing the problems with the concept of Basic Emotions, and the inconsistent evidence that supports it. We also demonstrate how decades of developmental and cross-cultural research on music and emotional speech have failed to produce convincing findings to conclude that music expressivity is built upon a set of biologically pre-determined basic emotions. We then examine the cue-emotion consistencies between music and speech, and show how they support a parsimonious explanation, where musical expressivity is grounded on two dimensions of core affect (arousal and valence). Next, we explain how the fact that listeners reliably identify basic emotions in music does not arise from the existence of categorical boundaries in the stimuli, but from processes that facilitate categorical perception, such as using stereotyped stimuli and close-ended response formats, psychological processes of construction of mental prototypes, and contextual information. Finally, we outline our proposal of a constructionist account of perception of emotions in music, and spell out the ways in which this approach is able to make solve past conflicting findings. We conclude by providing explicit pointers about the methodological choices that will be vital to move beyond the popular Basic Emotion paradigm and start untangling the emergence of emotional experiences with music in the actual contexts in which they occur. -/- . (shrink)

The present paper proposes three desiderata that methodologies for collaboration between philosophy and ethnobiology should satisfy. The account considers that a focus on a sentimentalist virtue epistemology is necessary to effectively address problems and challenges in such collaborations. Our focus on sentimentalism is further elaborated through three desiderata: (D1) The context of the collaboration should encourage receptivity among practitioners; (D2) collaborations should aim to produce knowledge that addresses the problems faced by stakeholders; and (D3) relevant communities and collaborators for each (...) case should be included by attuning to the conditions of the collaboration. To support our argument, we present the methodology of Field Environmental Philosophy as a case study in which attention to these desiderata is thoroughly present, resulting in a successful collaboration. We argue that these desiderata are crucial for understanding collaborations between philosophy and ethnobiology. (shrink)

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

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

En su libro Mind and nature Gregory Bateson elabora un argumento que él llama ‘convencional’ para concluir que “nunca podremos ser capaces de reclamar conocimiento definitivo en asunto alguno [final knowledge of anything whatsoever]”. La conclusión es correcta, pero el argumento es engañoso y desorienta más de lo que ayuda. Además, Bateson, disimuladamente, introduce algunas afirmaciones falsas en medio de premisas verdaderas. Revisarlo nos permitirá aclarar algunos malentendidos comunes en filosofía de la ciencia, además de ser la excusa perfecta para (...) esbozar una introducción a la interpolación polinomial de Lagrange y una pequeña reflexión sobre los límites del conocimiento. (shrink)

Pressupõe que boa parte dos estudantes universitários na atualidade demonstra dificuldade ou resistência no modo de entender o debate conceitual documento e arquivo e a sua relação com a práxis científica. O pressuposto está baseado na observação e no diálogo em sala nas disciplinas sobre pesquisa, ciência e filosofia ofertadas nos Cursos de Graduação em Biblioteconomia e de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. Este artigo tem como objetivo propor um debate conceitual sobre arquivos a partir (...) de Michel Foucault e com algumas referências das áreas supracitadas. O procedimento metodológico foi exploratório e bibliográfico. Conclui que o senso comum estudantil não concebe o fazer científico com o debate conceitual. Colabora com a produção de bibliografia didático-teórica para uso dos estudantes. Põe em prática certa versão de confrontamento de conceitos que possam ser esboçadas, compartilhadas e debatidas, pois disso trata o arquivo, propriamente dito. (shrink)

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

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

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

In this paper, we will motivate the application of specific rules of inference from the propositional calculus to natural language sentences. Specifically, we will analyse De Morgan’s laws, which pertain to the interaction of two central topics in syntactic research: negation and coordination. We will argue that the applicability of De Morgan’s laws to natural language structures can be derived from independently motivated operations of grammar and principles restricting the application of these operations. This has direct empirical consequences for the (...) hypothesised relations between natural language and logic. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic models of grammar are based on the view that an explicit characterization of a language comes in the form of the recursive enumeration of strings in that language. That recur-sive enumeration is carried out by a procedure which strongly generates a set of structural de-scriptions Σ and weakly generates a set of strings S; a grammar is thus a function that pairs an element of Σ with elements of S. Structural descriptions are obtained by means of Context-Free phrase structure (...) rules or via recursive combinatorics and structure is assumed to be uniform: binary branching trees all the way down. In this work we will analyse natural language constructions for which such a rigid conception of phrase structure is descriptively inadequate, and pro-pose a solution for the problem of phrase structure grammars assigning too much or too little structure to natural language strings: we propose that the grammar can oscillate between levels of computational complexity in local domains, which correspond to elementary trees in a lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar. (shrink)

La Tijāniyya es la ṭarīqa sufí más influyente en África Subsahariana, con casi cien millones de seguidores, y una de las principales del mundo. En estos dos últimos siglos se ha convertido en uno de los movimientos sociales y espirituales islámicos más importantes a nivel mundial. Su presencia desde el Magreb y el Sahel hasta Indonesia o Estados Unidos así lo atestigua. -/- Su conjunción entre un conocimiento gnóstico (ḥaqīqa), otorgado según la tradición por el mismísimo Profeta Muḥammad a Ahmad (...) Tijāni, y un estricto celo al plano legal (sharī‘a) les ha dotado de un gran prestigio social y espiritual en el mundo islámico con enseñanzas que se gradúan desde la aparente simpleza de los primeros pasos del neófito hasta la complejidad de los tratados místicos de los maestros que se recogen en este libro que el lector tiene en sus manos. Un camino, el de revitalizar la tradición del profeta Muḥammad, que marcó de forma muy especial la historia intelectual y política del mundo islámico contemporáneo. -/- Ley y Gnosis explora, por primera vez, la historia de la ṭarīqa Tijāniyya de forma diacrónica. Un estudio que abarca desde su surgimiento en el Magreb hasta su completa globalización en la actualidad haciéndose eco de todas las tendencias e intentando mostrar sus principales doctrinas y autores desde una perspectiva interdisciplinar que combina la Islamología con la Filosofía, la Historia y la Antropología. (shrink)

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

In this article I consider some recent objections raised against the syntactic treatment of negation in English multiclausal structures, in particular what has been called NEGraising. I argue that the objections based on pronominalisation and ellipsis presented in the recent literature do pose a problem for syntactic accounts of the mechanisms of so-called NOT-transportation that rely on a rule of leftwards movement, as is customary in generative grammar. However, there is an alternative syntactic treatment that assumes that negation originates as (...) a higher predicate and is subject to a rule of lowering. I show that a syntactic theory of NOT-transportation is tenable and accounts for the problematic data if NEGraising is replaced, in the analysis of the cases considered here, by a rule of NEG-lowering. (shrink)

Justice is about political ideals on how to accommodate differences that are natural among basically heterogeneous human beings. In many ways, justice is remarkably complicated because of the alleged conflict between the demands of equality and the concern that people should have as much liberty available. The author argues in this essay that the ideal of equality and liberty can be reconciled into the liberal ideal of fairness. This compromise view accounts as a justification for coercive institutions and obligations and (...) a tenable basis for a practical definition of rights and justice in general. The author does this by going through the philosophical presuppositions of the different theories of justice. His examination focuses on rendering analytic clarity to the ideal of equality, liberty, and the value of community. (shrink)

One of the problems that are often indicated as a criticism of different forms of representationalism is the difficulty to find definitions that are neither semantic nor realist in a simple sense. The present work tackles this class of critiques from a contextualist point of view, assuming those semantic aspects that are necessary for a concept of representation, but showing that semantic relations of representation should neither be static, nor referential in a classical and strictly realist sense. Two distinctions are (...) crucial for our proposal: On the one hand, we have the distinction between closed and open systems; on the other, a tripartite distinction between structural, informational and semantic representations. On this basis, we understand representations in terms of asymmetric variations between contextual models. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Causal decision theory defines a rational action as the one that tends to cause the best outcomes. If we adopt counterfactual or probabilistic theories of causation, then we may face problems in overdetermination cases. Do such problems affect Causal decision theory? The aim of this work is to show that the concept of causation that has been fundamental in all versions of causal decision theory is not the most intuitive one. Since overdetermination poses problems for a counterfactual theory of causation, (...) one can think that a version of causal decision theory based on counterfactual dependence may also be vulnerable to such scenarios. However, only when an intuitive, not analyzed notion of causation is presupposed as a ground for a more plausible version of causal decision theory, overdetermination turns problematic. The first interesting consequence of this is that there are more reasons to dismiss traditional theories of causation (and to accept others). The second is to confirm that traditional causal decision theory is not based on our intuitive concept of the causal relation. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

My purpose in this paper is to examine whether Pyrrhonian skepticism, as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant works, has practical or epistemic value. More precisely, I would like to consider whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment (ἐποχή) and undisturbedness (ἀταραξία) can be deemed to be of practical or epistemic value. By ‘practical’ value I mean both moral value and prudential value. Moral value refers to moral rightness and wrongness; prudential value to the value of well-being, personal or (...) social. Hence, when I ask whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension and undisturbedness have practical value, I mean whether they make us behave in a manner that is morally right or wrong, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possible to live well. As for ‘epistemic’ value, it refers basically to the values of attaining truth and avoiding error. Hence, when I ask whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension has epistemic value, I mean whether it allows us to attain truth and avoid error. My main focus will be the practical value of both suspension and undisturbedness because this is the value on which ancient philosophy scholars critical of Pyrrhonism have laid emphasis. The reason for examining the epistemic value of suspension is that doing so will enable a fuller assessment of the significance of Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy, which is my primary concern. (shrink)

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

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

The present article proposes to study Condillac’s analysis of Spinoza’s Ethics, against the background of the more general criticism that the French abbot makes of the seventeenth-century logique de système. From the Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines to the Traité des systèmes to the later texts, Condillac’s theory and critique of systems are crossed by two components: on the one hand, the search for the sensory origin of ideas, that Condillac radicalizes in his Traité des sensations into a theory (...) of knowledge as a ‘transformed sensation’. On the other hand, an operative logic of signs, which from the Essai to the works subsequent to the Traité des sensations translates sensibility into a knowledge, or a ‘well-made language’, whose logic is calculation. My objective is to clarify how the new ‘systematic spirit’, repeatedly invoked by the abbot, departs from the ‘bad metaphysics’ that he claims to liquidate. The comparison with the Spinozist system will be illuminating: in his treatise on the metaphysical systems of the seventeenth century Condillac proposes a critical analysis of the ‘geometrical spirit’; in his latest work, La langue des calculs, he proposes a new logic to which he assigns the task of bringing together the abstract and the concrete, beyond the ruins of classical metaphysics. The ‘systematic spirit’ and ‘spirit of system’ will be revealed, in spite of Condillac’s efforts, as being much closer to what it appears at first sight. (shrink)

Our reflections on LAWS issues are the result of the work of our research group on AI and ethics at the Informatics Center in partnership with the Information Science Department, both from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. In particular, our propositions and provocations are tied to Bianca Ximenes’s ongoing doctoral thesis, advised by Prof. Geber Ramalho, from the area of computer science, and co-advised by Prof. Diego Salcedo, from the humanities. Our research group is interested in answering two (...) tricky questions: What would an ethical AI be? And how can one guarantee that a given intelligent system will follow intercultural human ethical principles? (shrink)

Analisa a forma com a qual o selo postal brasileiro contribuiu para a construção de representações da religião católica em relação a outras práticas religiosas. Foi considerado, para isso, a concepção deste artefato enquanto media, texto semiótico e sua estreita relação com o discurso religioso. O corpus é composto por selos postais comemorativos brasileiros emitidos durante o século XX. A sua identificação e análise foi feita a partir do catálogo RHM. Entre o ano de 1900 e 2000, os Correios emitiram (...) 2354 selos postais do tipo comemorativo. A partir da observação e identificação de recorrências religiosas foram compilados 222 selos postais comemorativos. O estudo correlacionou a recorrente temática religiosa com o contexto histórico brasileiro, considerando o declínio do catolicismo como maioria religiosa no país e às representações das práticas religiosas nas mídias. A conclusão indica a influência da Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil, junto ao Ministério das Comunicações e dos Correios do Brasil, consagrando e enaltecendo a visibilidade de personalidades, eventos e a práxis católica, como um discurso único e superior às demais práticas religiosas. (shrink)

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

In this essay, I consider an evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) that purports to undermine the epistemic justification of the belief in the reliability of our belief-forming processes, and an evolutionary vindicating argument (EVA) that seeks to establish that such a belief is epistemically justified. Whereas the EDA in question seems to fall prey to crippling self-defeat, the EVA under consideration seems to fall prey to vicious circularity. My interest in those arguments and the problems they face lies in what they (...) might tell us about the possibly aporetic nature of reason. For, if we take the EDA and the EVA in question to consist of true or plausible premises and valid inferences at which we arrive through a meticulous use of reason, then their falling victim to either crippling self-defeat or vicious circularity might be regarded as a sign that, when we push rational reflection on the reliability, or lack thereof, of our belief-forming capacities to the limit, we end up in a situation of aporia from which there seems to be no escape. (shrink)

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

Sortition, i.e. random appointment for public duty, has been employed by societies throughout the years as a firewall designated to prevent illegitimate interference between parties in a legal case and agents of the legal system. In judicial systems of modern western countries, random procedures are mainly employed to select the jury, the court and/or the judge in charge of judging a legal case. Therefore, these random procedures play an important role in the course of a case, and should comply with (...) some principles, such as transparency and complete auditability. Nevertheless, these principles are neglected by random procedures in some judicial systems, which are performed in secrecy and are not auditable by the involved parties. The assignment of cases in the Brazilian Supreme Court is an example of such a procedure, for it is performed using procedures unknown to the parties involved in the judicial cases. This article presents a review of how sortition has been historically employed by societies and discusses how Mathematical Statistics may be applied to random procedures of the judicial system, as it has been applied for almost a century on clinical trials, for example. A statistical model for assessing randomness in case assignment is proposed and applied to the Brazilian Supreme Court. As final remarks, guidelines for the development of good randomization procedures are outlined. (shrink)

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

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

El nihilismo y el eterno retorno son conceptos centrales en el intento nietzscheano por comprender el surgimiento y la crisis de los valores, desde el advenimiento de la metafísica y la moral cristiana. Sin embargo, la valoración de estos conceptos dista de ser unívoca en la obra del filósofo alemán, ya que su sola enunciación no es suficiente para alcanzar una de las metas máximas de su pensamiento: la transvaloración. El presente artículo tiene por objetivo examinar los sentidos en los (...) que se habla de nihilismo en algunos pasajes de la obra de Nietzsche y la necesidad conceptual de llegar al pensamiento del eterno retorno como condición necesaria para efectuar la transvaloración; en este sentido, se sustentará la tesis de que el eterno retorno implica tanto la perfección como la superación del nihilismo, en la medida en que logra apartar de sí el resentimiento. Para ello, se mostrará el camino recorrido por el autor para superar la ambivalencia de la debilidad y la fuerza que acompaña el desarrollo de estos conceptos, en parte de la Ciencia Jovial y el tercer libro de Así habló Zaratustra. (shrink)

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