O estudo de casos múltiplos procurou analisar comparativamente as relações entre criatividade, inovação e características do trabalho (CT) em quatro empresas juniores (EJs) de áreas de formação distintas, de uma mesma instituição de ensino superior. Participaram do estudo somente os membros de cada diretoria. Foram utilizados a Prova de Imaginação Criativa para Adultos (PIC-A), uma medida de Inovação de Empresas Juniores (INOVEj) e uma medida de Características de trabalho. O grupo focal foi utilizado somente para apresentação e discussão dos resultados (...) coletivos com os membros da diretoria. Os resultados apontaram haver diferenças entre as EJs somente nos indicadores de criatividade e inovação. Conclui-se que as relações entre criatividade, inovação e CT parecem depender das características de cada EJ, como tempo de existência da empresa, características dos membros da diretoria e suporte de docentes-supervisores. (shrink)

Readers are awaiting a new encounter with stories united under the common title Why We Are in Need of Tales. Let me remind you that these deep philosophical books were written by Maria daVenza Tillmanns, a professional philosopher dedicated to the study of philosophizing with children, who has gained valuable experience in this field. Maria’s books are inspired by her work with her students at El Toyon Elementary School in National City (California), with whom Maria held philosophy (...) with children classes for three years before COVID-19. With parental permission, the children provided their drawings, which are used as illustrations for the books. I read Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part III with great pleasure. The focus of this book is on making decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. In Part II, the focus is on dreams — hopes and wishes we have for life. This book looks at how we may best decide how to make those hopes and wishes come true. And the answer Huk and Tuk suggest is deceptively easy: by making decisions “with your eyes wide open.” (5, p. ix). The author of this excellent book managed to describe how to make decisions with your eyes wide open through the playful dialogue between Huk and Tuk. The books are written in dialogue so the reader immediately plunges into the context of a lively conversation. Dialogue not only sharpens attention, but also invites the reader to participate in the conversation. In this way, the reader becomes a listener at the same time. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.

Interview with the author of "why We are in Need of Tails." Iguana Books, Toronto, Canada.

In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility' in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities' ('a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise'). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, undercuts many of those debates. Such cases (...) all require a counterfactual mechanism that could cause an agent to perform an action that he cannot avoid performing. I argue that, given our concept of what it is for someone to act, this requirement is inconsistent. Frankfurt-style alleged counterexamples are cases where an agent is morally responsible for an action he performs even though, the claim goes, he could not have avoided performing that action. However, it has recently been argued, e.g. by John Fischer, that a counterexample to the Principle could be a 'Fischer-style case', i.e. a case where the agent can either perform the action or do nothing else. I argue that, although Fischer-style cases do not share the conceptual flaw common to all Frankfurt-style cases, they also fail as counterexamples to the Principle. The paper finishes with a brief discussion of the significance of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

Data involving epistemic modals suggest that some classically valid argument forms, such as _reductio_, are invalid in natural language reasoning as they lead to modal collapses. We adduce further data showing that the classical argument forms governing the existential quantifier are similarly defective, as they lead to a _de re–de dicto_ collapse. We observe a similar problem for disjunction. But if the classical argument forms for negation, disjunction and existential quantification are invalid, what are the correct forms that govern the (...) use of these items? Our diagnosis is that epistemic modals interfere with hypothetical reasoning. We present a modal first-order logic and model theory that characterizes hypothetical reasoning with epistemic modals in a principled manner. One upshot is a sound and complete natural deduction system for reasoning with epistemic modals in first-order logic. (shrink)

Escribir hoy en día un libro sobre hermenéutica, que tal hermenéutica se refiera a la desarrollada por G. Gadamer en su conocido Verdad y método y que se pretenda añadir algo nuevo a lo mucho escrito sobre el tema parecería, a primera vista, empresa irrealizable. Que ambas pretensiones inspiren la sólida monografía de María G. Navarro —titulada Interpretar y argumentar— constituye empresa audaz y arriesgada, plena de coraje innovador, que provoca admiración, curiosidad e interés. Contra lo que pudiera parecer a (...) primera vista, el libro contiene un alto componente de originalidad y creatividad, debido a la estratagema metodoló-gica de que se sirve la autora. A saber, una hermenéutica in obliquo, estrategia consistente en interpretar a la hermenéutica gadameriana a través del prisma de la lógica de la argumentación. (shrink)

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to (...) social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a (...) wide range of phenomena involving all sorts of animate and inanimate substances. This diversity has encouraged the thought that the term 'reason' is ambiguous or has different senses in different contexts. Moreover, this view often goes hand in hand with the claim that reasons of these different kinds belong to different ontological categories: to facts (or something similar) in the case of normative/justifying reasons, and to mental states in the case of motivating/explanatory reasons. In this paper I shall explore some of the main roles that reasons play and, on that basis, I shall offer a classification of kinds of reasons. As will become clear, my classification of reasons is at odds with much of the literature in several respects: first, because of my views about how we should understand the claim that reasons are classified into different kinds; second, because of the kinds into which I think reasons should be classified; and, finally, because of the consequences I think this view has for the ontology of reasons. (shrink)

In this Chapter, Maria Kronfeldner discusses whether psychological essentialism is a necessary part of dehumanization. This involves different elements of essentialism, and a narrow and a broad way of conceptualizing psychological essentialism, the first akin to natural kind thinking, the second based on entitativity. She first presents authors that have connected essentialism with dehumanization. She then introduces the error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the category of the human, and distinguishes different elements of psychological essentialism. On that basis, Kronfeldner (...) connects historical, socio-psychological, and philosophical insights in order to show that although essentialism can act as a catalyst for dehumanization, it is not necessary for it. Examples relate to dehumanization in the context of colonialism and evolutionary thinking, to the history of dehumanizing women from Aristotle to 19th-century craniology, and to contemporary self-dehumanization and ‘lesser mind’ attribution. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that for blame to be appropriate the wrongdoer must be blameworthy. However, blameworthiness is not sufficient for appropriate blame. It has been argued that for blame to be appropriate the blamer must have standing to blame. Philosophers writing on the topic have distinguished several considerations that might defeat someone’s standing to blame. This paper examines the underexplored consideration of how personal relationships can influence who has the standing to express blame. We seem to assume that if (...) we do not stand in the right relation to the wrongdoer, it is not our business to blame them. I identify three challenges to this view. First, we do not know what is wrong with meddling (whether it is morally or prudentially wrong). Second, there are cases where we have no close relation to the wrongdoer, but where we seem to have standing nonetheless – murder and other serious moral offences are examples of this. Third, we don’t seem to have a clear conception of what ‘standing’ means, and this makes it hard to see how discussion on standing can help us determine the propriety of blame. This paper defends the notion of standing as a propriety condition on blame in cases of meddling. I argue that personal relationships influence who has the standing to blame through constitution of relationship-specific norms; and that the role these norms play in developing and regulating our relationships can explain why meddlesome blame is morally wrong. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, in Leibniz’s mature metaphysics, primary matter is not a positive constituent which must be added to the form in order to have a substance. Primary matter is merely a way to express the negation of some further perfection. It does not have a positive ontological status and merely indicates the limitation or imperfection of a substance. To be sure, Leibniz is less than explicit on this point, and in many texts he writes as if (...) primary matter were a positive constituent of a substance. It seems to me, however, that the view most in keeping with the thrust of his mature philosophical system is that captured by a striking remark of 1695: “Materia rerum est nihilum: id est limitatio [The matter of things is nothing: that is, limitation].” This becomes especially apparent in texts showing that Leibniz’s conception of primary matter corresponds to his conception of creaturely limitation. I start by discussing the notion of primary matter in the scholastic tradition. I then show that although Leibniz places the scholastic terminology of primary matter at a crucial juncture of his metaphysics, he thinks of primary matter in a way which significantly deviates from earlier scholastic views. I conclude that despite his adoption of distinctive terminology of Aristotelian scholasticism, instead of holding a broadly Aristotelian concept of primary matter as the ultimate subject of inherence, Leibniz thinks of primary matter according to a Neoplatonic blue-print in which matter is non-being, privation, mere absence of perfection. (shrink)

Ignorance is often a perfectly good excuse. There are interesting debates about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake subvert obligation, but little disagreement about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake exculpate. What about agents who have all the relevant facts in view but fail to meet their obligations because they do not have the right moral beliefs? If their ignorance of their obligations derives from mistaken moral beliefs or from ignorance of the moral significance of the facts they have in (...) view, should they be excused for failing to meet their moral obligations? It is not obvious that they should. In this paper we argue that the best non-skeptical accounts of moral responsibility acknowledge that factual ignorance and mistake will diminish moral responsibility in a way that moral ignorance and mistake will not. That is because factual ignorance is often non-culpable so long as it meets certain merely procedural epistemic standards but the same is not true of moral ignorance. Our argument is that the assumption that it is gets the standards of culpability for moral ignorance wrong, and that the mistake is encouraged by the thought that culpability in general requires an instance of known wrongdoing: that acting wrongly requires de dicto unresponsiveness to one’s obligations at some stage. We deny this and conclude that, therefore, ignorance and mistaken belief are indeed often perfectly good excuses – but far less often than some philosophers claim. (shrink)

Аннотация Понятие «парресия» впервые появляется в греческой литературе в V в. до н. э. Парресия — это возможность говорить свободно и открыто, не считаясь с авторитетами, говорить то, что без этого права может привести к наказанию или смерти. Парресия позволяла говорить правду властям, принося пользу тому, кто властвует, кому зачастую не хватает понимания сути реального положения дел. 1 Перевод статьи выполнен С. В. Борисовым по изданию: Tillmanns, Maria daVenza (2022). “How Parrhesia in Doing Philosophy With Children: Develops Their Touchstones (...) of Reality”. International Journal of Philosophical Practice, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1-11. В своей книге «Занятия философией с детьми в начальной школе: сложная деятельность» Берри Хисен утверждает, что занятие философией с детьми является формой парресии, поскольку побуждает детей говорить свободно и открыто. Парресия изменяет отношения между взрослым и ребенком. Серьезное отношение взрослых к детям как полноправным гражданам дает детям возможность серьезно относиться к себе, а также нести ответственность за свои мысли и чувства. Обосновывая свои мысли и чувства и прислушиваясь к мнению своих сверстников, дети становятся критическими слушателями не только других, но и самих себя. Они узнают, что то, что они думают и чувствуют, имеет вес, имеет значение в глазах других, что повышает самооценку. В процессе философствования дети также вырабатывают свои собственные критерии («пробные камни») реальности. Более того, для ощущения целостности и обоснованности того, кто мы есть, необходимо самопознание, что дает нам осознание цели и направления развития. (shrink)

Philosophers of medicine have formulated different accounts of the concept of disease. Which concept of disease one assumes has implications for what conditions count as diseases and, by extension, who may be regarded as having a disease and for who may be accorded the social privileges and personal responsibilities associated with being sick. In this article, we consider an ideal diagnostic test for coronavirus disease 2019 infection with respect to four groups of people—positive and asymptomatic; positive and symptomatic; negative; and (...) untested—and show how different concepts of disease impact on the disease and sickness judgements for these groups. The suggestion is that sickness judgements and social measures akin to those experienced during the current COVID-19 outbreak presuppose a concept of disease containing social harm as a component. We indicate the problems that arise when adopting this kind of disease concept beyond a state of emergency. (shrink)

Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant 'psychological conception', which says that motivating reasons are an agent's believing something; and (2) the 'non-psychological' conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties - in particular, difficulties concerning (...) 'error cases' (cases where what the agent believes is false); and difficulties concerning the explanation of action. Concerning error cases, I argue that if we are motivated by something believed that is true, what motivates us to act is a motivating reason. By contrast, if we are motivated by something believed that is false, then what motivates us to act is merely an apparent motivating reason. Either way, what motivates us is, as the non-psychological conception says, what we believe and not our believing it. I offer an account of the relation between motivating reasons and the explanation of action, and argue that this account helps bring out two important points. One is that the fact that we often do, and indeed sometimes must, use explanations such as 'He did it because he believed that p' does not vindicate the psychological conception of motivating reasons. The other is that endorsing the non-psychological conception of motivating reasons does not commit one to a non-factive view of explanations of action. (shrink)

In this paper I consider whether it is possible to cause an event by letting it happen.

This paper seeks a better understanding of the elements of practical reasoning: premises and conclusion. It argues that the premises of practical reasoning do not normally include statements such as ‘I want to ϕ’; that the reasoning in practical reasoning is the same as in theoretical reasoning and that what makes it practical is, first, that the point of the relevant reasoning is given by the goal that the reasoner seeks to realize by means of that reasoning and the subsequent (...) action; second, that the premises of such reasoning show the goodness of the action to be undertaken; third, that the conclusions of such reasoning may be actions or decisions, that can be accompanied by expressions of intention, either in action, or for the future; and that these are justified, and might be contradicted, in ways that are not only peculiar to them (i.e. in ways that diverge from those found in theoretical reasoning), but are distinctively practical, in that they involve reference to reasons for acting and to expressions of intention, respectively.1. (shrink)

Creativity has often been declared, especially by philosophers, as the last frontier of science. The assumption is that it will defy explanation forever. I will defend two claims in order to oppose this assumption and to demystify creativity: (1) the perspective that creativity cannot be explained wrongly identifies creativity with what I shall call metaphysical freedom; (2) the Darwinian approach to creativity, a prominent naturalistic account of creativity, fails to give an explanation of creativity, because it confuses conceptual issues with (...) explanation. I will close with some remarks on the status and differences in some explanations available in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far from imprisoning its students in (...) outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history. (shrink)

Maria Kronfeldner’s Preface and Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization maps the landscape of dehumanization studies. She starts with a brief portrayal of the history of the field. The systematically minded sections that follow guide the reader through the resulting rugged landscape represented in the Handbook’s contributions. Different realizations, levels, forms, and ontological contrasts of dehumanization are distinguished, followed by remarks on the variety of targets of dehumanization. A discussion on valence and emotional aspects is added. Causes, functions, (...) and consequences of dehumanization, and the prospects for reducing or undoing it, are introduced. The systematic overview closes with a discussion of some important theoretical complexities that arise in studying dehumanization. After these systematic sections, the scholarly work on dehumanization gets situated in the broader intellectual landscape of debates about the ‘human’ in the humanities and social sciences. The Introduction ends with some notes on scope, limitations, and intended readership of the Handbook. (shrink)

Important empirically informed proposals of virtue cultivation invoke techniques of goal pursuit. This paper argues that these techniques are effective in changing behavior due to the attention narrowing they bring about, and further show that such attention narrowing can threaten the appropriate exercise of phronetic-related capacities. When these phronetic-related capacities are threatened, two derivative problems arise: (1) One can end up acting in morally inappropriate ways, and (2) Even in cases where one performs the morally appropriate action, one nonetheless can (...) fail to notice and appreciate features of moral value. In light of these concerns, such techniques of goal pursuit – at least, by themselves – serve the most good for those who are merely trying to avoid vice, rather than cultivate virtue. And so, I suggest that such accounts of virtue cultivation are incomplete. I then go on to argue that these undesirable effects of attention narrowing brought about by these goal pursuit techniques may be ameliorated by also engaging in certain indirect modifications of cognition, particularly those which broaden attention. The suggestion, then, is that attention narrowing techniques of goal pursuit, along with attention broadening modifications, might best facilitate virtue cultivation when employed together. While the particulars of how we might best go about this are currently unclear, this paper ends by looking at empirical research on Open Monitoring Meditation as providing a hopeful option that might be further investigated. (shrink)

My paper examines the popular idea, defended by Kripke, that meaning is an essentially normative notion. I consider four common versions of this idea and suggest that none of them can be supported, either because the alleged normativity has nothing to do with normativity or because it cannot plausibly be said that meaning is normative in the sense suggested. I argue that contrary to received opinion, we don’t need normativity to secure the possibility of meaning. I conclude by considering the (...) repercussions of rejecting semantic normativity on three central issues: justification, communication, and naturalism. (shrink)

The paper discusses the aesthetic aspects of place‑making practices in the urban environment of Western metropoles that are struggling with the progressive undifferentiation of their space and the weakening of communal and personal bonds. The paper starts by describing the general characteristics of an urban environment as distinct from the traditional vision of a city as a well‑structured entity, and in relation to formal and informal aesthetics and participatory design ideas. The author then focuses on two contrary but complementary tactics (...) for translating a space into a positively evaluated p l a ce: by dome ticating it through introducing nature into an urbanscape; and by accentuating its alienness with the example of the urban exploration movement. The growing popularity of the latter is presented in relation to the discourses related to the decline of cities and the romantic endeavours for reaching into the realm of the unknown or the uncanny in order to rediscover and enrich the unique identity of a place. The paper ends with conclusions that present the necessity for the cultivation of a multidimensional aesthetic awareness and an aesthetic engagement as a crucial issue in the complex task of endowing places with a density of meaning. (shrink)

In English, discourse reference to time involves grammatical tenses interpreted as temporal anaphors. Recently, it has been argued that conditionals involve modal discourse anaphora expressed by a parallel grammatical system of anaphoric modals. Based on evidence from Kalaallisut, this paper argues that temporal and modal anaphora can be just as precise in a language that does not have either grammatical category. Instead, temporal anaphora directly targets eventualities of verbs, without mediating tenses, while modal anaphora involves anaphoric moods and/or attitudinal verbs.

Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or (...) two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive, explanatory, definitional, or explanatory and definitional. These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts. (shrink)

The current “exemplarist turn” within virtue ethics is increasingly shedding light on the importance of exemplars both as enabling one to identify the virtues and for the importance they bear for orienting one’s conduct, as well as for educating the novice. However, even if categorizations of exemplars have already been proposed, there seems to be a lack of discussion on the kind of imitation different exemplars are supposed to elicit. In order to offer a preliminary answer to this question, in (...) this paper I present three paths to flourishing via imitation of exemplary individuals: The Platonic, the Stoic, and the Aristotelian. Then, I sketch an attempt to reconcile these models. In conclusion, I suggest that, when it comes to education, this reconciliation becomes necessary. Along these lines, I recommend that a multi-step educational program is elaborated. (shrink)

Once upon a time, Aesop says, there was a donkey who wanted to be a pet dog. The pet dog was given many treats by the master and the household servants, and the donkey was envious of him. Hence, the donkey began emulating the pet dog. What happened next? The story ends up with the donkey beaten senseless, chased off to the stables, exhausted and barely alive. Who is to blame for the poor donkey’s unfortunate fate? Well, there could be (...) disagreement upon this, but we think emulation is to blame. And it’s on the kinds of envy-related emulation that we focus in this chapter. More analytically, we aim at vindicating the role of envy for moral exemplars within an exemplarist character educational framework. In the first section, we recall the central tenets of an exemplarist account of moral progress, and highlight how negative emotions, in general, have suffered a bad press within character education, with exemplarism being no exception. Then we provide a brief outline of standard strategies of defending envy by appealing to useful taxonomies of envy (e.g., Taylor 1988; Protasi 2016; Fussi 2018). After that, we put forward our 'Donkey Objection' by recalling Aesop’s fable on "foolish imitation", so as to show that when envy triggers mere emulation, it can bear devastating effects such as conformism and a lack of self-worth and personal integrity. In response to this objection, we bring into play a distinction between two rival forms of imitation—emulation and inspiration—and we coin the label of "inspired envy" for those forms of imitation by inspiration triggered by envy that lead to self-improvement avoiding morally detrimental consequences. (shrink)

This paper investigates civility from an Aristotelian perspective and has two objectives. The first is to offer a novel account of this virtue based on Aristotle’s remarks about civic friendship. The proposed account distinguishes two main components of civility—civic benevolence and civil deliberation—and shows how Aristotle’s insights can speak to the needs of our communities today. The notion of civil deliberation is then unpacked into three main dimensions: motivational, inquiry-related, and ethical. The second objective is to illustrate how the post-truth (...) condition—in particular, the spread of misinformation typical of the digital environments we inhabit—obstructs our capacity to cultivate the virtue of civility by impairing every component of civil deliberation. The paper hopes to direct virtue theorists’ attention to the need to foster civic virtues as a means of counteracting the negative aspects of the post-truth age. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the topics of trust and expertise from the perspective of political epistemology. In particular, it addresses four main questions: (§1) How should we characterise experts and their expertise? (§2) How can non-experts recognize a reliable expert? (§3) What does it take for non-experts to trust experts? (§4) What problems impede trust in experts?

Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...) rather than blind, integrating developments from contemporary research on creativity. On that basis, I discuss three compatibility arguments that have been used to answer the critique. These arguments do not deny guided variation but insist that an important analogy exists nonetheless. These compatibility arguments all fail, even though they do so for different reasons: trivialisation, conceptual confusion, and lack of evidence respectively. Revisiting the debate in this manner not only allows us to see where exactly a ‘Darwinian’ account of creative hypothesis formation goes wrong, but also to see that the debate is not about factual issues, but about the interpretation of these factual issues in Darwinian terms. (shrink)

In the face of causal complexity, scientists reconstitute phenomena in order to arrive at a more simplified and partial picture that ignores most of the 'bigger picture.' This paper will distinguish between two modes of reconstituting phenomena: one moving down to a level of greater decomposition (toward organizational parts of the original phenomenon), and one moving up to a level of greater abstraction (toward different differences regarding the phenomenon). The first aim of the paper is to illustrate that phenomena are (...) moving targets, i.e., they are not fixed once and for all, but are adapted, if necessary, on the basis of the preferred perspective adopted for pragmatic reasons. The second aim is to analyze in detail the second mode of reconstituting phenomena. This includes an exposition of the kind of pragmatic-pluralistic picture resulting from the fact that phenomena are reconstituted by a move up to a level of greater abstraction. (shrink)

Translation into Russian by Dr. Sergey Borisov -/- Аннотация Понятие «парресия» впервые появляется в греческой литературе в V в. до н. э. Парресия — это возможность говорить свободно и открыто, не считаясь с авторитетами, говорить то, что без этого права может привести к наказанию или смерти. Парресия позволяла говорить правду властям, принося пользу тому, кто властвует, кому зачастую не хватает понимания сути реального положения дел. -/- Перевод статьи выполнен С. В. Борисовым по изданию: Tillmanns, Maria daVenza (2022). “How Parrhesia (...) in Doing Philosophy With Children: Develops Their Touchstones of Reality”. International Journal of Philosophical Practice, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1-11. В своей книге «Занятия философией с детьми в начальной школе: сложная деятельность» Берри Хисен утверждает, что занятие философией с детьми является формой парресии, поскольку побуждает детей говорить свободно и открыто. Парресия изменяет отношения между взрослым и ребенком. Серьезное отношение взрослых к детям как полноправным гражданам дает детям возможность серьезно относиться к себе, а также нести ответственность за свои мысли и чувства. Обосновывая свои мысли и чувства и прислушиваясь к мнению своих сверстников, дети становятся критическими слушателями не только других, но и самих себя. Они узнают, что то, что они думают и чувствуют, имеет вес, имеет значение в глазах других, что повышает самооценку. В процессе философствования дети также вырабатывают свои собственные критерии («пробные камни») реальности. Более того, для ощущения целостности и обоснованности того, кто мы есть, необходимо самопознание, что дает нам осознание цели и направления развития. (shrink)

Human nature is a concept that transgresses the boundary between science and society and between fact and value. It is as much a political concept as it is a scientific one. This chapter will cover the politics of human nature by using evidence from history, anthropology and social psychology. The aim is to show that an important political function of the vernacular concept of human nature is social demarcation (inclusion/exclusion): it is involved in regulating who is ‘us’ and who is (...) ‘them.’ It is a folk concept that is used for dehumanization, for denying (a) membership in humankind or (b) full humanness to certain people in order to include or exclude them from various forms of politically relevant aspects of human life, such as rights, power, etc. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of Leibniz’s contribution to the rise of modern ‘science’. To be sure, it is now generally agreed that the modern category of ‘science’ did not exist in the early modern period. At the same time, this period witnessed a very important stage in the process from which modern science eventually emerged. My discussion will be aimed at uncovering the new enterprise, and the new distinctions which were taking shape in the early modern period under the (...) banner of the old Aristotelian terminology. I will argue that Leibniz begins to theorize a distinction between physics and metaphysics that tracks our distinction between the autonomous enterprise of science in its modern meaning, and the enterprise of philosophy. I will try to show that, for Leibniz, physics proper is the study of natural phenomena in mathematical and mechanical terms without recourse for its explanations to metaphysical notions. This autonomy, however, does not imply for Leibniz that physics can say on its own all that there is to be said about the natural world. Quite the opposite. Leibniz inherits from the Aristotelian tradition the view that physics needs metaphysical roots or a metaphysical grounding. For Leibniz, what is ultimately real is reached by metaphysics, not by physics. This is, in my view, Leibniz’s chief insight: the new mathematical physics is an autonomous enterprise which offers its own kind of explanations but does not exhaust what can (and should) be said about the natural world. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that a proper understanding of what Leibniz meant by “hypercategorematic infinite” sheds light on some fundamental aspects of his conceptions of God and of the relationship between God and created simple substances or monads. After revisiting Leibniz’s distinction between (i) syncategorematic infinite, (ii) categorematic infinite, and (iii) actual infinite, I examine his claim that the hypercategorematic infinite is “God himself” in conjunction with other key statements about God. I then discuss the issue of whether the (...) hypercategorematic infinite is a “whole”, comparing the four kinds of infinite outlined by Leibniz in 1706 with the three degrees of infinity outlined in 1676. In the last section, I discuss the relationship between the hypercategorematic infinite and created simple substances. I conclude that, for Leibniz, only a being beyond all determinations but eminently embracing all determinations can enjoy the pure positivity of what is truly infinite while constituting the ontological grounding of all things. (shrink)

This paper argues that the so-called ‘paradox’ of dehumanization is a mirage arising from misplaced abstraction. The alleged ‘paradox’ is taken as a challenge that arises from a skeptical stance. After reviewing the history of that skeptical stance, it is reconstructed as an argument with two premises. With the help of an epistemologically structured but pluralistic frame it is then shown how the two premises of the Skeptic’s argument can both be debunked. As part of that it emerges that there (...) are a couple of ways how dehumanization can be realized, and one such realization can be sufficient for affirming the reality of dehumanization for a specific case. (shrink)

There seems to be confusion and disagreement among scholars about the meaning of interpersonal forgiveness. In this essay we shall venture to clarify the meaning of forgiveness by examining various literary works. In particular, we shall discuss instances of forgiveness from Homer’s The Iliad, Euripides’ Hippolytus, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and we shall focus on the changes that the concept of forgiveness has gone through throughout the centuries, in the hope of being able to understand, and therefore, of being able (...) to use more accurately, contemporary notions of forgiveness. We shall also explore the relationship between forgiveness and concepts that are closely associated with it, such as anger/resentment, hurt, clemency, desert/merit, excuse, etc. (shrink)

As it emerged from philosophical analyses and cognitive research, most concepts exhibit typicality effects, and resist to the efforts of defining them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This holds also in the case of many medical concepts. This is a problem for the design of computer science ontologies, since knowledge representation formalisms commonly adopted in this field do not allow for the representation of concepts in terms of typical traits. However, the need of representing concepts in terms of (...) typical traits concerns almost every domain of real world knowledge, including medical domains. In particular, in this article we take into account the domain of mental disorders, starting from the DSM-5 descriptions of some specific mental disorders. On this respect, we favor a hybrid approach to the representation of psychiatric concepts, in which ontology oriented formalisms are combined to a geometric representation of knowledge based on conceptual spaces. (shrink)

The Eskimo language Kalaallisut (alias West Greenlandic) has traditionally been described as having a rich tense system, with three future tenses (Kleinschmidt 1851, Bergsland 1955, Fortescue 1984) and possibly four past tenses (Fortescue 1984). Recently however, Shaer (2003) has challenged these traditional claims, arguing that Kalaallisut is in fact tenseless.

Partee (1973) noted anaphoric parallels between English tenses and pronouns. Since then these parallels have been analyzed in terms of type-neutral principles of discourse anaphora. Recently, Stone (1997) extended the anaphoric parallel to English modals. In this paper I extend the story to languages of other types. This evidence also shows that centering parallels are even more detailed than previously recognized. Based on this evidence, I propose a semantic representation language (Logic of Change with Centered Worlds), in which the observed (...) parallels can be formally analyzed. (shrink)

This contribution discusses Leibniz’s conception of faith and its relation to reason. It shows that, for Leibniz, faith embraces both cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions: although it must be grounded in reason, it is not merely reasonable belief. Moreover, for Leibniz, a truth of faith (like any truth) can never be contrary to reason but can be above the limits of comprehension of human reason. The latter is the epistemic status of the Christian mysteries. This view raises the problem of how (...) it can be determined whether a doctrine above the full grasp of human reason does or does not imply contradiction. The notion of ‘presumption’ and the ‘strategy of defence’ are presented and discussed as Leibniz’s way to tackle this issue. Finally, the article explores the ‘motives of credibility’ which, according to Leibniz, can and should be produced to uphold the credibility of a putative divine revelation, including his account of miracles. (shrink)

The category of metaphysical evil introduced by Leibniz appears to cast a sinister shadow over the goodness of creation. It seems to imply that creatures, simply in virtue of not being gods, are to some degree intrinsically and inescapably evil. After briefly unpacking this difficulty and outlining a recent attempt to deal with it, this paper returns to the texts to propose a novel and multilayered understanding of Leibniz’s category of metaphysical evil by reading it against the backdrop of the (...) traditional typologies of evil with which he was unquestionably familiar. It comes to the conclusion that metaphysical evil plays two key roles for Leibniz. First, it captures what Aquinas and especially Suarez meant by ‘natural evil’. Contrary to the common assumption that it is Leibniz’s category of physical evil that holds the place of natural evil, the paper shows that Leibniz’s physical evil corresponds to Augustine’s category of evil of punishment for sin whereas natural evil – intended as a kind of evil which is not related to moral responsibility -- is subsumed under metaphysical evil. Secondly, the category of metaphysical evil covers also the notion of original creaturely imperfection. In classifying creaturely limitation as a kind of evil Leibniz breaks from the Augustinian-Thomist-Scholastic tradition and its distinction between negatio and privatio. On the other hand, notwithstanding this important break, Leibniz’s notion of metaphysical evil is intended to account for something which is firmly within the broadly Augustinian-Scholastic tradition, namely the ascription to all creatures of a limitation that stems from their being created ex nihilo. Finally, the paper returns a verdict of non-guilty to the charge that Leibniz’s metaphysical evil implies that creatures qua creatures are to some extent necessarily intrinsically evil. More generally, in typical Leibnizian fashion, the notion of metaphysical evil will appear to be a complex mix of indebtedness to tradition and bending of received doctrines into something significantly different. (shrink)

A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nietzsche's work—has only rarely been (...) taken seriously by those wishing to defend the conception of obligation under attack. This is regrettable. Anscombe's essay is powerful and direct, and it makes a forthright case for the claim that, in the absence of a divine law conception of ethics, any specifically moral concept of obligation must be redundant, and that the best that can be hoped for in a secular age is some sort of neo-Aristotelianism. Anscombe is right about this, we think. And, among those who disagree, one of the very few to have taken her on at all explicitly is Christine Korsgaard, whose Kantianism of course commits her to the view that the concept of moral obligation is central, with or without God. Here, we try to show that Korsgaard loses the argument. (shrink)

This paper explores the development of Leibniz’s metaphysics of the Incarnation in the context of his philosophy. In particular it asks to what extent Leibniz’s repeated endorsement of the traditional analogy between the union in humankind of soul (mind) and body, and the union in Christ of divine and human natures, could be accommodated by his more general metaphysical doctrines. Such an investigation highlights some of the deepest commitments in Leibniz’s theory of substance as well as detect in it some (...) unresolved tensions. The paper comes to the conclusion that puzzling points of Leibniz’s metaphysics of the Incarnation, rather than being problems specific to his theology, uncover tensions in his theory of substance as such – tensions converging on the vexed question of whether there can or cannot be genuine corporeal substances in Leibniz’s mature philosophy. (shrink)

Section III of part IV of Book I of Hume's Treatise entitled “Of the ancient philosophy” has been virtually ignored by most Hume scholars. Although philosophers seem to concentrate on sections II and VI of part IV and pay little or no attention to section III, the latter section is paramount in showing how serious Hume's skepticism is, and how Hume's philosophy, contrary to his intention, is far removed from "the sentiments of the vulgar". In this paper I shall first (...) explore Hume's view on ancient philosophy as it is presented in section III, and I shall particularly focus on his discussion of identity and simplicity of bodies. Second, I shall argue that Hume's account of identity and simplicity in terms of qualities is at best unsatisfactory. Finally, I shall try to show that Hume's advice to hold a "moderate" skepticism cannot be taken seriously. On the contrary, Hume seems to hold an "extravagant" skepticism, since he claims that there is a contradiction between our most fundamental natural beliefs, as well as between our natural beliefs and philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

This paper introduces a framework for direct surface composition by online update. The surface string is interpreted as is, with each morpheme in turn updating the input state of information and attention. A formal representation language, Logic of Centering, is defined and some crosslinguistic constraints on lexical meanings and compositional operations are formulated.

While most scholars focus on the advantages of forgiveness, the negative effects of hasty forgiveness have been largely neglected in the literature. In this essay I shall argue that in certain contexts granting forgiveness to a wrongdoer could be morally questionable, and sometimes it could even be morally wrong. Following Aristotle’s view of emotion, and, in particular, his notion of virtuous anger, I shall claim that appropriate, righteous anger is instrumental for justice, and, as a result, inappropriate, or imprudent forgiveness (...) could be an impediment to justice, or even a license for the continuation of injustice. (shrink)