This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations (...) instead of committing us to additional elements of the ontology. The alternative theory strategy seeks to combine the relationalist ontology with a relationalist physical theory that reproduces the predictions of the standard theory in the domain where these are empirically tested. We show that, as things stand, this strategy cannot be accomplished without compromising a minimalist relationalist ontology. (shrink)

Plato's Tim. 90b1-c6 describes a pathway to the soul's salvation via the study of the heavens. This paper poses three questions about this theme in Platonism: 1. The epistemological question: How is the paradigmatic function of the visible heavenly bodies to be reconciled with various Platonic misgivings about the faculty of perception? 2. The metaphysical question: How can »assimilation« to the motions of bodies in the realm of Becoming provide for the salvation of souls when souls are »higher«- a mid-point (...) between Being and Becoming? 3. The psychological question: What can it mean for an incorporeal soul to utilise the motions of a body for an ethical and cognitive paradigm? And provides an account of how Proclus and some of his fellow Neoplatonists answered these questions. (shrink)

‘Know-that’, like so many natural language expressions, exhibits patterns of use that provide evidence for its context-sensitivity. A popular family of views – call it prag- matic invariantism – attempts to explain the shifty patterns by appeal to a pragmatic thesis: while the semantic meaning of ‘know-that’ is stable across all contexts of use, sentences of the form ‘S knows [doesn’t know] that p’ can be used to communicate a pragmatic content that depends on the context of use. In this (...) paper, the author argues that pragmatic invariantism makes inaccurate predictions for a wide range of well- known use data and is committed to attributing systematic pragmatic error to ordinary speakers. But pragmatic error is unprecedented, and it is doubtful that speakers are systematically wrong about what they intend to communicate. (shrink)

How should we account for the contextual variability of knowledge claims? Many philosophers favour an invariantist account on which such contextual variability is due entirely to pragmatic factors, leaving no interesting context-sensitivity in the semantic meaning of ‘know that.’ I reject this invariantist division of labor by arguing that pragmatic invariantists have no principled account of embedded occurrences of ‘S knows/doesn’t know that p’: Occurrences embedded within larger linguistic constructions such as conditional sentences, attitude verbs, expressions of probability, comparatives, and (...) many others, I argue, give rise to a threefold problem of embedded implicatures. (shrink)

This has been available under Teaching Materials, but items in that category are not easily located, so I have added it here. This short dialogue can be used to introduce students to the core claims of Stoic moral philosophy and to position Stoic moral philosophy in relation to its ancient alternatives: Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Peripatetic thought. The dialogue form is meant to make this fun and easy. -/- This little dialogue may also be of interest to readers who have encountered (...) various popular books on "How to Stoic". Such readers should know that Stoicism is a school of _philosophy_. The Stoics themselves would not recommend that you try to Stoic Yourself unless and until you were convinced of the _truth_ of the central claims of the school -- a truth that the ancient Stoics sought to establish by _arguments_. To treat Stoicism simply as self-help, without due regard to whether its central claims can be shown to be true, would be to treat those ancient philosophers with contempt. (shrink)

Surveys the ideals of friendship in ancient Greco-Roman philosophy. The notion of the best friendship inevitably reflects the various conceptions of a good life.

The Platonic dialogues contain passages that seem to point in quite opposite directions on the question of the moral equality of women with men. Rep. V defends the view that sexual difference need not be relevant to a person’s capacity for philosophy and thus for virtue. Tim. 42a-c, however, makes incarnation in a female body a punishment for failure to master the challenges of embodiment. This paper examines the different ways in which two subsequent Platonists, Proclus (d. 485 CE) and (...) Theodore of Asine (d. c. 360 CE), dealt with this tension. (shrink)

Later versions of Platonic ethics fit the frame of eudaimonism and specify a telos based on Theaetetus 176B and Timaeus 90A-D: 'likeness to god in so far as possible'. This paper examines the development of this idea from the middle Platonist Alcinous to the Neoplatonist Proclus. It examines the way in which Proclus makes this specification of human happiness a bit less "other worldy".

Proclus' commentary on Plato's dialogue Timaeus is arguably the most important commentary on a text of Plato, offering unparalleled insights into eight centuries of Platonic interpretation. It has had an enormous influence on subsequent Plato scholarship. This edition offers the first new English translation of the work for nearly two centuries, building on significant recent advances in scholarship on Neoplatonic commentators. It provides an invaluable record of early interpretations of Plato's dialogue, while also presenting Proclus' own views on the meaning (...) and significance of Platonic philosophy. The present volume, the fifth in the edition, presents Proclus' commentary on the Timaeus, dealing with Proclus' account of static and flowing time; we see Proclus situating Plato's account of the motions of the stars and planets in relation to the astronomical theories of his day. The volume includes a substantial introduction, as well as notes that will shed new light on the text. (shrink)

According to Molinism, logically prior to his creative decree, God knows via middle knowledge the truth value of the counterfactuals or conditionals of creaturely freedom (CFs) and thus what any possible person would do in any given circumstance. Critics of Molinism have pointed out that the Molinist God gets lucky that the CFs allow him to actualize either a world of his liking or even a good-enough world at all. In this paper, I advance and strengthen the popular critique in (...) two ways. First, I specify the kind of luck to which God is subject, which is circumstantial moral luck. Second, and more importantly, I argue that exposure to this luck is problematic because something external to God and beyond his control determines the degree of praiseworthiness he deserves in relevant possible worlds. My main contention is that divine subjection to circumstantial moral luck raises the theoretical costs of Molinism. (shrink)

These thirteen paragraphs portray epistemology as the study, not directly of knowing as a human action (which could be considered the object also of anthropology) but as the study of the mode of being of the object in the subject and, in this sense, of intentional being. Moreover, intentional being is not understood as the being of the cognitional species or representation, which is real and subjective, but as the being of the known, as the presence of the known to (...) the knower (obviously, through the species but a being not reduced to the subjective being of the species): this kind of being is the proper object of epistemology. Other considerations regarding the distinction between metaphysics and epistemology take place as well. As regards the method, this essay attempts to apply Aquinas’ four steps of scientific reasoning to epistemology, in the following fashion and order: 1- Solution of the problem of the universals by recourse to the theory of the agent intellect (resolutio secundum rem); 2- Definition of knowledge as intentional possession of being (res. sec. rationem); 3- Judgment of value regarding the different instances of human knowledge or critique of knowledge (compositio secundum rem) and 4- Reinterpretation (in the light of the previous path) of common notions of epistemology, such as truth, certainty, evidence, and error (comp. sec. rationem). (shrink)

Bioethicists appearing in the media have been accused of "shooting from the hip" (Rachels, 1991). The criticism is sometimes justified. We identify some reasons our interactions with the press can have bad results and suggest remedies. In particular we describe a target (fostering better public dialogue), obstacles to hitting the target (such as intrinsic and accidental defects in our knowledge) and suggest some practical ways to surmont those obstacles (including seeking out ways to write or speak at length, rather than (...) in sound bites). We make use of our own research into the way journalists quote bioethicists. We end by suggesting that the profession as a whole look into this question more fully. (shrink)

The author puts forward and defends a new argument for indirect realism called the argument from pain. The argument is akin to a well-known traditional argument to the same end, the argument from hallucination. Like the latter, it contains one premise stating an analogy between veridical perceptions and certain other states and one premise stating that those states are states of acquaintance with sense-data. The crucial difference is that the states that are said to be analogous to veridical perceptions are (...) pain-states instead of hallucinations. This difference makes the argument from pain immune to the standard objections against the argument from hallucination. (shrink)

It is an axiom of late neoplatonic metaphysics that all things are in all, but in each in an appropriate manner (ὀικείως, ET 103). These manners or modes of being are indicated by adverbial forms such as παραδειματικῶς or εἰκονικῶς. Thus, for example, the Forms are in the World Soul in the mode of images, while the objects in the sensible realm below Soul are in it in the manner of paradigms (in Tim. II 150.27). Among the many modes of (...) being distinguished by Proclus we find existence ὁλικῶς and μερικῶς – in the manner of a whole and in the manner of a part. This paper investigates the nature and significance of these mereological modes of being. (shrink)

Why I thought it useful to offer an explanation of Hegel’s doctrine on the Incarnation was so that the reader may be empowered to identify Hegel’s influence in modern accounts of this mystery. Even if, in my view, Hegel’s interpretation of revealed religion differs greatly from Catholic Doctrine, it is not surprising to find the presence of some of his concepts in modern theology. In truth, what matters is not the theologian’s self-identification as Hegelian or as non-Hegelian, but whether or (...) not the theologian adopts Hegel’s concepts. This paper offers an explanation of the internal dynamism of Hegelian concepts and their relation to Christian doctrine in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This research may help to show in what way it is possible to explain Christian religious doctrine with a philosophy other than the Thomistic one and how, at least in Hegel’s case, religious doctrine is changed and reduced to an erroneous philosophical content. Also, an attempt is made to show the internal “coherence” of this Hegelian re-reading of Christianity so that theologians may become more cautious about accepting an explanation of Christian doctrine simply because the Christian language is preserved in that explanation. (shrink)

The idea that there is a coherent and morally relevant concept of sexual perversions has been increasingly called into question. In what follows, I will be concerned with two recent attacks on the notion of sexual perversion: those of Graham Priest and Igor Primoratz. Priest’s paper is the deeper of the two. Primoratz goes methodically through various accounts of sexual perversion and finds difficulties in them. This is no small task, of course, but unlike Priest he does not attempt to (...) provide any diagnosis of why any attempt to analyse the concept of sexual perversion must fail. Priest argues that sexual perversion is an “inapplicable concept”: the presuppositions that would allow us to make sense of the notion have been rightly rejected. Without the theoretical backdrop of an Aristotelian moral teleology, we cannot provide a satisfactory account of sexual perversion, for only such a teleological world-view allows us to give some sense to the idea that a sexual practice might be morally wrong because it is unnatural. Priest surveys accounts of perversion that don’t appeal to any idea of unnaturalness and rejects them—rightly I believe. But, Priest argues, Aristotle’s own moral teleology is part and parcel of his wider views about purpose in nature. This natural teleology has been shown to be explanatorily superfluous. Though some sciences still talk of functions, this can be understood in terms of contributions to evolutionary survival. Though there is considerable disagreement about the details of the right account of function, all versions of this scientifically respectable teleology are morally neutral: it would not follow from the fact that homosexual intercourse does nothing to propagate the agents’ genetic material to future generations that it is therefore morally wrong. Here too I think Priest is right. He also considers what he calls “Aristotelian revivalism” in Roger Scruton’s account of sexual perversion. I think Priest sells Aristotelianism short. I have no interest in defending Scruton’s own understanding of the Aristotelian moral framework nor his particular account of sexual perversion. I shall, however, argue that Aristotelian moral philosophy provides a more useful framework for thinking about these issues than Priest implies, and attempt to defend an account of sexual perversion within the context of this framework. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

In this paper we look at two kinds of relations that give rise to reasons for action of a distinctive sort: friendship and erotic love. We argue that what is common to these different relations of affection is that the people in them exhibit dispositions toward mutual direction by one another and interpretation of one another (in a sense that we describe in detail below). This mutual responsiveness is, in part, a matter of responding to reasons that arise from the (...) relation of love or friendship. These reasons are frequently distinct from – and may be opposed to – normative reasons arising from prudence or even morality. Yet reasons of love are normative: they too may obligate us. They may make demands on us that conflict with our present desires and require considerable sacrifice. (shrink)

Translation and commentary on the only surviving sustained work on Plato's Phaedrus from antiquity.

Plato’s Phaedrus is a dialogue of journeys, a tale of transitions. It begins with Socrates’ question, ‘Where to and from whence, my dear Phaedrus?’ and concludes with the Socrates’ decision, ‘Let’s go’ (sc. back into the city from whence they’ve come). In the speech that forms its centre-piece Socrates narrates another famous journey—the descent of the soul into the body and its reascent to the realm of Forms through erotic madness. It is not too implausible to suppose that Plato himself (...) saw fit to relate his powerful images of the human soul’s fall and re-ascent by dramatic means that highlight the movement from one place to another. This explains how Hermias of Alexandria -- author of the longest sustained work on the Phaedrus to survive from antiquity related the physical journey to the Ilissus to the soul's descent and ascent. This seemingly implausible allegorising gains a certain kind of sense when we consider that the Neoplatonic commentary tradition formed part of a philosophic way of life with an ethical telos. (shrink)

Trata-se de capítulo de um livro sobre a noção de "substância" na história da filosofia e contém uma discussão sobre a noção ordinária de "corpo" do ponto de vista da filosofia analítica.

Proponents of the duty to vote (DTV) argue that in normal circumstances, citizens have the moral duty to vote in political elections. Discussions about DTV analyze _what_ the duty is, _who_ has this duty, _when_ they have it, and _why_ they have it. Missing are answers to the Specification Question: to _which_ elections does DTV apply? A dilemma arises for some supporters of DTV—in this paper, I focus on Julia Maskivker’s work—because either answer is problematic. First, I argue that it (...) is implausible that DTV applies to _all_ elections because this makes the duty too costly for the voter. Second, I argue that there are no good reasons why under normal circumstances DTV applies only to _some_ elections. I consider objections but conclude that the dilemma is successful and therefore the case for DTV is incomplete. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander of Aphrodisias quotes from Aristotle's now-lost work On the Ideas -- his account of the arguments offered by Plato for the theory of Forms and his criticisms of those arguments. This paper considers one of these arguments, the Argument from Relatives (ta pros ti). It considers how Plato argued for Forms or Ideas such as the Large Itself, the Just Itself and so on and whether Plato supposed that there were Forms corresponding to (...) sortal terms like Man. (shrink)

In the present volume Proclus comments on the creation of the body of the universe in Plato's Timaeus.

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...) argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

Lengthy review of the 2020 Brill Companion to Hellenistic Astronomy with special reference to Neoplatonism.

It is widely supposed that Epicurus' identification of aponia (painlessness) and the absence of anxiety (ataraxia) yields as a consequence the claim that the most pleasant life is one that requires little in the way of resources or power. This paper argues that the remarks in Cicero which attempt to reconstruct Epicurus' reasons for thinking that aponia and ataraxia are the limit of pleasure are best interpreted if we suppose that the inference runs the other direction. Epicurus supposed that it (...) was a pre-theoretical constraint on any account of human happiness that it should be natural. Moreover, its naturalness means its in-principle availability to most humans. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do livro "Le Scepticisme Philosophique", Paris: Bordas, 1972, de André Verdan. Título da edição brasileira: O Ceticismo Filosófico. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 1998, 135 páginas. ISBN: 8532801390 / ISBN-13: 9788532801395.

The purpose of this paper is to give the main lines of a theological accounting for the fullness of knowledge in Christ from the time of his conception. We follow the doctrine of St. Thomas and take into account some objections which are relatively modern. The paper is intended as a systematic articulation that is faithful to the Tradition and the doctrine of the Church and also concerned with faithfully interpreting the whole biblical narrative in our preaching. In particular, we (...) have in mind Gilles Mongeau’s question: “If from the beginning [Jesus] has all knowledge, how could he learn, which is such a fundamental part of a genuinely human existence?” We try to connect the issue of the knowledge of Christ with the reasons for the Incarnation. First, we show that our theological accounting finds support in the Magisterium and in the Bible. Secondly, we try to articulate systematically the reasons for affirming the fullness of human knowledge in Christ and the progression in his acquired knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct Frege’s argument against the relativity of truth contained in his posthumous writing Logic from 1897. Two points are made. The first is that the argument is a performative version of the common objection that truth relativism is incoherent: it is designed to show that the assertion of the relativity of truth involves a performative incoherence, because the absoluteness of truth is a success condition for making assertions. From a modern point of view, (...) the central premise of the argument, that the successful making of assertions depends on the absoluteness of truth, is highly doubtful. The second point is that this premise can be made plausible within the framework of Frege’s conception of truth and assertion: it can be derived from his thesis that, in order to put something forward as true, we do not need the word ‘true’, but only the assertoric force. (shrink)

In previous chapters, it has become clear that Proclus’ metaphysics is often relevant to human life. In this chapter, that relation is elaborated on in detail, starting from the notion of a ‘textual community’. In the first section, the author presents the Neoplatonic goal of human life, assimilation to the divine. In the second section, he elaborates the scale of virtues through which, according to Proclus, one may reach that assimilation. The third section is devoted to establishing the interesting hypothesis (...) that the philosophical curriculum was in fact considered a mystagogy, aimed at internalizing semantic associations and thereby acquiring the different virtues. In the last section the author turns to Proclus’ political philosophy, and specifically the analogical relation between the philosopher-ruler and the demiurge. (shrink)

The present study aims at understanding how Ethica Nicomachea V.6 relates to its preceding chapters, V.1-5. On the one hand, the interpreter wonders for what purpose Aristotle introduces a topic named ‘the civic just’ (to politikon dikaion) in V.6, since V.1-5 treats extensively of matters of justice in the city. On the other hand, the same text posits that there is a certain ‘just without qualification’ (to haplōs dikaion), which may or may not be the civic just itself; compared to (...) the just without qualification, other forms of just are so by similitude (kath’homoiteta). In attempting to clear the confusion around those two points, the present study proposes the following: (1) the civic just is the just without qualification insofar as it is the primordial form of the just, in which only humans who are cumulatively free, equals and self-sufficient have a share; (2) the description of the civic just recapitulates several aspects of the discussions of justice in V.1-5 – the laws, the kinds of equality, rule, the legal suit - because the civic just encompasses all the forms of just (dikaion) related to the virtues of universal justice (V.1) and partial justice (V.2-5); (3) the expression to politikon dikaion is introduced in V.6 in order to contrast everything treated in V.1-5 with the domestic just, to oikonomikon dikaion, mentioned for the first time in V.6; (4) the forms of the domestic just are just only by similitude with the civic just because justice loses density outside the civic sphere, a situation which can be explained by the shortcomings Aristotle ascribes to women, children and slaves in EN V.6 (lack either of freedom or equality or yet self-sufficiency) as well as in Politica I (varying degrees of defective deliberation and virtue). (shrink)

Here the point of departure of Being and Time is criticized, i.e. the priority of Dasein in the determination of the meaning of being. An overview of Heidegger’s doctrine is offered, his concern for intentionality is acknowledged, then it takes place a critique of his starting point, and finally a Thomistic alternative account of intentionality is proposed.

The longevity of Aristotelian natural science consists not so much in the fact that Aristotle’s solutions to puzzles were accepted by generations of philosophers, but by the fact that the presuppositions that made these puzzles look puzzling were. In what follows I consider some Neoplatonic responses to two puzzles that Aristotle poses in De Caelo Book 2, Chapter 12. Both Proclus and Simplicius rejected Aristotle’s solutions to the puzzles he posed. In one case, but not in the other, they also (...) reassessed the relative importance of the presuppositions that created the puzzle. (shrink)

Many theists conceive of God as a perfect being, i.e., as that than which none greater is metaphysically possible. On this grand view of God, it seems plausible to think that such a supreme and maximally great being would not be subject to luck of any sort. Given the divine perfections, God is completely insulated from luck. However, I argue that the opposite is true: precisely because God is perfect, he is subject to a kind of luck called constitutive luck. (...) In this paper, first I provide an analysis of luck and then explain the concept of constitutive luck. I proceed to defend constitutive luck from charges of incoherence and examine a different approach to make sense of this luck. Furthermore, I distinguish between two kinds of constitutive luck and argue that even if God isn’t subject to one kind, evading the second kind is unsuccessful. I offer two ways that God is constitutively lucky and reach a surprising conclusion: a perfect being is the luckiest of all possible beings. (shrink)

The use of machine learning algorithms has become ubiquitous in hiring decisions. Recent studies have shown that many of these algorithms generate unlawful discriminatory effects in every step of the process. The training phase of the machine learning models used in these decisions has been identified as the main source of bias. For a long time, discrimination cases have been analyzed under the banner of disparate treatment and disparate impact, but these concepts have been shown to be ineffective in the (...) context of AI. This paper examines the possibility of studying algorithmic discrimination from the perspective of negligence law. Negligent selection and validation of datasets and classifiers is a salient cause of improper training in machine learning. It is a breach of an employer’s duty to protect others, a failure of its exercise of due care in the manner of choosing employees. Adopting negligence to algorithmic discrimination requires a reformulation of what is foreseeable and reasonable within the context of black box algorithms, and a shift in the burden of proof to the employer, who must present evidence of its efforts to avoid bias. (shrink)

This third and final volume concludes Hermias' commentary on Plato's Phaedrus. Here, Plato delivers a celebrated critique of writing, and its relationship to orality. Hermias follows him, and adds a general account of good writing. In addition, this volume offers the first English translation of the brief Introduction to Hermogenes' On Styles, which manuscripts attribute-probably mistakenly-to Hermias' teacher Syrianus. Baltzly and Share discuss the Introduction's authorship and its relation to the genuine commentaries of Syrianus on the rhetorical treatises of Hermogenes. (...) They illuminate the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in the Neoplatonic schools, and provide a novel explanation of Neoplatonic commentaries as performances of Platonic literacy in ancient elite education. This translation offers novel evidence of interest for students of ancient philosophy, rhetorical education, and literature more broadly. It is accompanied by explanatory notes, an introduction, and scholarly apparatus, including indices, glossaries, and bibliography. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates talking at length about poetry. Sometimes he proposes censorship of certain works because what they say is false or harmful. Other times we find him interpreting the poets or rejecting potential interpretations of them. This raises the question of whether there is any consistent account to be given of Socrates’ practice as a literary critic. One might think that Plato himself in the Ion answers the question that I have raised. Rhapsody, at least (...) in the Ion , is portrayed as the activity of interpreting and evaluating the works of the poets. At first glance at least, Plato seems to conclude that this activity cannot meet the standards of a τέχνη. Rhapsodes are divine madmen. Thus, there cannot be a systematic Platonic account of literary criticism because this activity is inherently irrational and, subsequently, not something that one could engage in in a systematic way, guided by a theory of any sort. In the first part of the paper I argue that the Ion does not simply consign the Interpretation of poetry to the irrational and, as a result, does not pose an obstacle to the possibility of a Platonic literary criticism. In the second part of the paper I turn to the task of finding an account of the purpose of reading poetry and strategies for fulfilling this purpose that make systematic sense of Socrates’ multifarious remarks about poetry. (shrink)

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use which the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed by a Greek (...) word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The second volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the tripartite soul and the virtues, female philosopher rulers, and the metaphysics and epistemology of the central books of the Republic. The longest of the essays in Volume II interprets the nature and significance of the 'marriage number' whose miscalculation leads to the degeneration of the ideal city-state. (shrink)

Covers Essays 1 to 6 in Proclus' Commentary and includes a general introduction to the work as a whole.

There is a growing awareness that there are many subtle forms of exclusion and partiality that affect the correct workings of a judicial system. The concept of epistemic injustice, introduced by the philosopher Miranda Fricker, is a useful conceptual tool to understand forms of judicial partiality that often go undetected. In this paper, we present Fricker’s original theory and some of the applications of the concept of epistemic injustice in legal processes. In particular, we want to show that the seed (...) planted by Fricker has flourished into a rich field of study in which the concept is used to analyze many different phenomena in law, not always following the original characterization provided by her. This has led to a distinction between what we will call the narrow version of the concept, which is closer to Fricker’s original account, and the wider version of epistemic injustice, which is a more controversial notion because it is always on the verge of morphing into other well-known concepts like sexism, racial discrimination, oppression, silencing, and gaslighting. We will show that the value of the narrow version is mostly theoretical, and that in order to use the concept of epistemic injustice one must adopt a more liberal understanding of it. (shrink)

In the natural and social sciences, it is common to use toy models—extremely simple and highly idealized representations—to understand complex phenomena. Some of the simple surrogate models used to understand opaque machine learning (ML) models, such as rule lists and sparse decision trees, bear some resemblance to scientific toy models. They allow non-experts to understand how an opaque ML model works globally via a much simpler model that highlights the most relevant features of the input space and their effect on (...) the output. The obvious difference is that the common target of a toy and a full-scale model in the sciences is some phenomenon in the world, while the target of a surrogate model is another model. This essential difference makes toy surrogate models (TSMs) a new object of study for theories of understanding, one that is not easily accommodated under current analyses. This paper provides an account of what it means to understand an opaque ML model globally with the aid of such simple models. (shrink)

: New genetic technologies continue to emerge that allow us to control the genetic endowment of future children. Increasingly the claim is made that it is morally "irresponsible" for parents to fail to use such technologies when they know their possible children are at risk for a serious genetic disorder. We believe such charges are often unwarranted. Our goal in this article is to offer a careful conceptual analysis of the language of irresponsibility in an effort to encourage more care (...) in its use. Two of our more important sub-claims are: A fair judgment of genetic irresponsibility necessarily requires a thick background description of the specific reproductive choice; and there is no necessary connection between an act's being morally wrong and its being irresponsible. These are distinct judgments requiring distinct justifications. (shrink)

Varios teóricos del derecho han propuesto el uso de umbrales o estándares de prueba más flexibles y más finamente discriminados. En la medicina es común utilizar estándares que poseen estas características en los procedimientos diagnósticos y en los exámenes médicos. Esta ponencia ofrece un marco probabilístico para establecer estándares de prueba múltiples en cualquier disciplina. La tesis principal es que la evidencia es un concepto umbral con respecto a la probabilidad. Múltiples umbrales pueden ser establecidos en un marco de intervalos (...) de probabilidad para la hipótesis que está siendo puesta a prueba, los cuales reflejan los diferentes grados de apoyo que la evidencia le provee a la hipótesis. Examinando los mecanismos utilizados para establecer los umbrales en medicina, sugiero una manera para establecer umbrales múltiples de prueba en derecho de una manera no arbitraria. (shrink)

Abstract In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in (...) normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of various alternative formulations for Analysis, the theory of Integral and Differential Calculus, and its diverging conceptions of the topological structure of the continuum. We pay particularly attention to Smooth Analysis, a proposal created by William Lawvere and Anders Kock based on Grothendieck’s work on a categorical algebraic geometry. The role of Heyting’s logic, common to all these alternatives is emphasized.