Algumas soluções medievais para o sofisma ´omnis homo de necessitate est animal´ postulam um tipo especial de ser, o ser da essência (esse essentiae), que explica como uma predicação necessária pode ser verdadeira sobre seres cuja existência é contingente. O ser da essência, distinto do ser efetivo (esse actuale), admite apenas propriedades necessárias. Deste traço se seguem duas diferenças em relação a teorias meinonguianas acerca do não ser. Inicialmente, segundo Meinong, o tipo de propriedade de um objeto é independente de (...) ele existir – o chamado ´Princípio da Independência´. Além disto, o ser da essência não é parte da explicação da intencionalidade. Teorias medievais que julgam dever explicar a intencionalidade pela postulação de um tipo especial de ser não o fazem pela postulação do esse essentiae. Objetos meinoinguianos, por seu vez, servem para explicar tanto a intencionalidade quanto a distribuição intuitiva de valores de verdade para sentenças sobre inexistentes. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the thesis suggested by Cappelen and Lepore, according to which if contextualism were true, communication would require many items, and therefore would be fragile; communication is not fragile, and therefore, communication does not demand a large number of conditions, and contextualism is false. While we should grant the robustness of communication, it is not guaranteed by some unchanging conditions, but by different flexible mechanisms that enhance the chances of mutual understanding at a relatively low (...) cost –– this is true, in particular, of different feedback mechanisms and of alternative ways to make the same information mutually available. Communication is not a series of successive, individual and independent actions; dialogues are a kind of joint activity in which misunderstandings are jointly repaired by participants as part of the very activity they are engaged in. Moreover, as we consider the roles of hearers in a conversation, we see that no construal makes Cappelen and Lepore’’s argument both plausible and relevant. The hearer can either be overhearer or a certified participant. If the hearer is an overhearer, it may be the case that he easily misunderstands what is said, but it has no consequence to the understanding of what takes place in a dialogue, since, ex hypothesi, he is not a party to it. If the hearer is a participant, many of the conditions of mutual understanding will be assured in the dialogical activity itself, and both he and the speaker will make efforts to assure that mutual understanding do take place, as part of their responsibilities as parties to a dialogue –– and their argument is not plausible. (shrink)

One of the main motivations for having a compositional semantics is the account of the productivity of natural languages. Formal languages are often part of the account of productivity, i.e., of how beings with finite capaci- ties are able to produce and understand a potentially infinite number of sen- tences, by offering a model of this process. This account of productivity con- sists in the generation of proofs in a formal system, that is taken to represent the way speakers grasp (...) the meaning of an indefinite number of sentences. The informational basis is restricted to what is represented in the lexicon. This constraint is considered as a requirement for the account of productivity, or at least of an important feature of productivity, namely, that we can grasp auto- matically the meaning of a huge number of complex expressions, far beyond what can be memorized. However, empirical results in psycholinguistics, and especially particular patterns of ERP, show that the brain integrates informa- tion of different sources very fast, without any felt effort on the part of the speaker. This shows that formal procedures do not explain productivity. How- ever, formal models are still useful in the account of how we get at the seman- tic value of a complex expression, once we have the meanings of its parts, even if there is no formal explanation of how we get at those meanings. A practice-oriented view of modeling gives an adequate interpretation of this re- sult: formal compositional semantics may be a useful model for some ex- planatory purposes concerning natural languages, without being a good model for dealing with other explananda. (shrink)

A principal crítica do internismo a teorias externistas é que elas parecem fazer o conhecimento o resultado de processos que permanecem inacessíveis ao sujeito. Epistemologias externistas buscaram acomodar esta exigência, como é o caso da epistemologia de Sosa. A incorporação das exigências internistas não se faz sem tensões – no caso de Sosa, os mecanismos reflexivos podem ser inacessíveis ao sujeito. Na medida em que buscamos compreender como podemos conhecer e refletir sobre nossas próprias crenças, encontramos mecanismos externos ao sujeito (...) que não podem ser internalizados: a dinâmica conversacional e o conhecimento científico dos mecanismos de funcionamento da cognição. A externalização do saber se estende para o conhecimento cientifico de maneira muito ampla. Uma pessoa que só tomasse como verdadeiro aquilo que pode provar (ou mesmo que pode compreender) seria alguém que recusaria boa parte do saber humano. Para todo leigo – isto é, para todo mundo, num ou noutro domínio –, assumir o que é produzido pela cultura é tomar como verdadeiras crenças cujo conteúdo resta opaco. Como exige um internista, o funcionamento interacional da razão não envolve mecanismos cegos à perspectiva do sujeito e não conceitualizados, mas, ao contrário, leva precisamente à articulação e à tomada de consciência das teses apresentadas. Este conhecimento não pode, contudo, ser internalizado. A externalização do conhecimento é um traço profundo do conhecimento e, mais geralmente, da cultura humana. No contexto de uma teoria evolutiva da cultura, muitos autores defendem, de diferentes modos, que a cultura humana é essencialmente social. O que talvez não seja tão usual seja conectar teorias mais gerais da evolução da cultura com preocupações tradicionais da epistemologia. Espero mostrar que este é um caminho frutífero. (shrink)

A linguagem mental explica o caráter significativo das linguagens falada e escrita: seus elementos e estrutura são identificados através de critérios teóricos que servem a este fim. Estes critérios parecem manter uma certa indeterminação em relação aos elementos e estruturas da linguagem mental, se se espera que eles decidam entre diferentes formas de apresentação possíveis. Esta expectativa, contudo, não é razoável dentro da filosofia ockhamiana. A teoria da linguagem mental pode desempenhar os papéis teóricos a ela destinados sem determinar a (...) forma que deveria ter uma linguagem canônica que a apresentasse. Há no entanto uma outra indeterminação na forma da proposição mental, relativa a ocorrências de proposições, que efetivamente ocorre nos textos ockhamianos : proposições mentais podem ser atos mentais simples e ter uma semântica composicional. Esta tese surpreendente nos lembra que embora a análise semântica que identifica estruturas da linguagem mental descreva algo que tem uma realidade psicológica, a descrição psicológica ela mesma deve recorrer a outros elementos da filosofia ockhamiana, e em particular, sua teoria dos atos mentais. (shrink)

The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is often seen as a discussion about where to place pragmatic inferences: while minimalists think that they only come into play after the proposition is grasped, for contextualists, there are already pragmatic processes in the very determination of what is said, leading to ad hoc conceptual adjustments. There is, however, another way to look at this matter: we may keep a sensitive truth-distribution across contexts without ad hoc conceptual manoeuvres. An intuitive distribution of truth-values (...) may be explained as a variation in (kaplanian) circumstances, without any tampering with sentence constituents. This way of understanding the debate connects, maybe surprisingly, a first reaction to the semantics-pragmatics divide, in Cavell, and Predelli’s original stance on this debate. (shrink)

Na semântica ockhamiana, o predicado ‘verdadeiro’ deriva de uma outra relação semântica mais fundamental, a relação de suposição. O autor mostra como esta relação de dependência entre dois predicados semânticos figura na análise das condições de verdade de proposições passadas, um modelo que pode ser estendido a proposições futuras e possíveis. O texto procura indicar como a explicação das condições de verdade de proposições possíveis situa a semântica das modalidades aléticas em continuidade com a semântica de proposições não presentes. Este (...) último ponto ganha em interesse se o colocarmos ao lado de um outro aspecto da teoria modal ockhamiana, a saber, o fato de modalidades serem definidas como todo termo que pode ser predicado de proposições inteiras. Como conclusão, o autor expõe os diferentes níveis de análise de modalidades aléticas, dentro do quadro teórico ockhamiano. (shrink)

When and why do we need the indexical ‘I’? Perry (1979) thinks that ‘I’ is an essential ingredient to the explanation and prediction of action. We need ‘I’ to classify the kind of belief that causes an agent to produce a new action. In his view, classifying the agent’s belief in terms of ‘I’ makes sense because, when asked to explain her behavior, the agent will be disposed to say ‘I’. Here, we argue that this dispositional assumption is problematic. The (...) disposition to act according to an essential indexical and the disposition to make a speech act that contains ‘I’ are two very different things that are not always related. The most common circumstances in which we need to say ‘I’ to explain ourselves involve other agents: when we coordinate in joint actions or when we engage in self-talk to save face before the eyes of potential witnesses. Finally, we revisit Perry’s famous messy shopper anecdote to offer a better story about why its main character is disposed to say ‘I’. (shrink)

À primeira vista, pode-se pensar que toda restrição à dúvida é contrária à progressão do conhecimento e antidemocrática. Este argumento é utilizado por diferentes sabores de negacionismo. No entanto, um exame do modo como funcionam dúvidas nos mostra que existem exigências epistêmicas para a legitimidade da dúvida que não são satisfeitas pelos negacionismos. Uma consequência deste argumento é que a normatividade epistêmica não é absorvida pela normatividade política. A especificidade da normatividade epistêmica, que explica porque a dúvida de negacionistas não (...) é legítima, desaparece em teorias construtivistas. Teses construtivistas resultam de uma confusão entre o fato de teorias serem construtos sociais e a tese que elas constroem os fatos sobre os quais portam a teoria ela mesma. A legitimidade da dúvida depende de processos sociais de filtragem epistêmica. Os filtros epistêmicos socialmente construídos refletem um fato profundo da evolução da cultura humana: a produção cumulativa, social e assimétrica do conhecimento. (shrink)

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the authors put it: "...we (...) propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...) explanation. In C. G. Hempel (Ed.), Aspects of scientific explanation (pp. 331–496). New York: Free Press; Kitcher (1989); Machamer, P., Darden, L., & Craver, C. F. (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25). My concern is with the minimal suggestion that an adequate philosophical theory of scientific explanation can limit its attention to the format or structure with which theories are represented. The representational subsumption view is a plausible hypothesis about the psychology of understanding. It is also a plausible claim about how scientists present their knowledge to the world. However, one cannot address the central questions for a philosophical theory of scientific explanation without turning one’s attention from the structure of representations to the basic commitments about the worldly structures that plausibly count as explanatory. A philosophical theory of scientific explanation should achieve two goals. The first is explanatory demarcation. It should show how explanation relates with other scientific achievements, such as control, description, measurement, prediction, and taxonomy. The second is explanatory normativity. It should say when putative explanations succeed and fail. One cannot achieve these goals without undertaking commitments about the kinds of ontic structures that plausibly count as explanatory. Representations convey explanatory information about a phenomenon when and only when they describe the ontic explanations for those phenomena. (shrink)

Aqui se conta uma história de alguns segredos, tão antigos quanto algo entre 240 e 350 mil anos, revelados por uma misteriosa caverna. É uma história que ganha vida como um palimpsesto, sobrepondo-se à outra, narrada no documentário Caverna de Ossos, da série Explorando o Desconhecido. Impossível não ficar impactado por esse relato, pois levanta várias questões intrigantes sobre a evolução humana e sobre a própria definição de humano. Essa narrativa, mais do que pela razão formal e analítica, é conduzida (...) pela poética do tempo arcaico, ou seja, é levada pela emoção de vislumbrar raízes da natureza humana, tão distantes – pré-históricas – e pelo fascínio de muitas das indagações interdisciplinares postas aqui em evidência. É, em última análise, uma breve história de devaneio acerca do significado de ser humano. (shrink)

A long series of studies in social psychology have shown that the explanations people give for their own behaviors are fundamentally different from the explanations they give for the behaviors of others. Still, a great deal of uncertainty remains about precisely what sorts of differences one finds here. We offer a new approach to addressing the problem. Specifically, we distinguish between two levels of representation ─ the level of linguistic structure (which consists of the actual series of words used in (...) the explanation) and the level of conceptual structure (which consists of the concepts these words are used to express). We then formulate and test hypotheses both about self-other differences in conceptual structure and about self-other differences in the mapping from conceptual structure to linguistic structure. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the idea that divine nature is prior to being. This idea was first articulated in John of Scythopolis’s commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius. It was adopted by Maximus Confessor and re-used in Meister Eckhart’s first Quaestio Parisiensis. The main tenet of this idea is that, if God is the origin of being, he must be more fundamental than being. Thus, being cannot be identical to divine nature. The conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion of this (...) idea is that the importance that has been traditionally attached to the "Exodusmetaphysik" must be reconsidered, and that the pro-ontological conception of divine nature constitutes an autonomous tradition in Christian thought. (shrink)

For the greater part of the last 50 years, it has been common for philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists to invoke the notion of realization in discussing the relationship between the mind and the brain. In traditional philosophy of mind, mental states are said to be realized, instantiated, or implemented in brain states. Artificial intelligence is sometimes described as the attempt either to model or to actually construct systems that realize some of the same psychological abilities that we and (...) other living creatures possess. The claim that specific psychological. (shrink)

Politická reflexia uskutočňovaná v akademických kruhoch predstavuje rad vlastných charakteristík v porovnaní s inými druhmi intelektuálnej činnosti. Nejde len o j e j viac-menej prirodzené preniknutie do domácich mocenských vzťahov, ale o mimoriadnu citlivosť j e j obsahu a rozvoja na spoločenské a politické podmienky inštitucionálneho kontextu. O politickej kultúre krajiny sa môžeme naučiť veľa práve na základe analýzy toho, o čom j e j intelektuáli diskutujú - a o čom nediskutujú, ako aj o teoretických nástrojoch, ktoré pritom využívajú.

This article considers some different views of fairness and whether they conflict with the use of a version of Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) that calls for maximizing health benefits per dollar spent. Among the concerns addressed are whether this version of CEA ignores the concerns of the worst off and inappropriately aggregates small benefits to many people. I critically examine the views of Daniel Hausman and Peter Singer who defend this version of CEA and Eric Nord among others who criticize (...) it. I come to focus in particular on the use of CEA in allocating scarce resources to the disabled. (shrink)

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

According to buck-passers about art, such as Dominic Lopes, every work of art belongs to some art. I distinguish two versions of the buck-passing theory of art—what I call the double-buck-passers’ (DBP) view and the single-buck-passers’ (SBP) view—and point out that Lopes’s view is an instance of the latter. Then I argue the SBP view faces a dilemma, each horn of which leads to trouble. In doing so, I explore uncharted territory: the implications of vagueness for theories of art. I (...) conclude that buck-passers should not be single-buck-passers. (shrink)

I present a possible worlds semantics for a hyperintensional belief revision operator, which reduces the logical idealization of cognitive agents affecting similar operators in doxastic and epistemic logics, as well as in standard AGM belief revision theory. (Revised) belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; revising by inconsistent information does not perforce lead to trivialization; and revision can be subject to ‘framing effects’: logically or necessarily equivalent contents can lead to different revisions. Such results are obtained without resorting (...) to non-classical logics, or to non-normal or impossible worlds semantics. The framework combines, instead, a standard semantics for propositional S5 with a simple mereology of contents. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do ensaio "Social Morality and Individual Ideal”. Publicado originalmente em Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, vol. XXXVI, n. 136, p. 1-17, Jan. 1961. Republicado em: STRAWSON, P. F. Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. Londres: Methuen, 1974. [Routledge, 2008, p. 26-44]. ]. Publicado na coletânea: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Strawson: com a tradução de Liberdade e ressentimento & Moralidade social e ideal individual. Organizadores: Jaimir Conte & Itamar Luís Gelain. Editora da (...) UFSC, 2015. ISBN: 9788532807250. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do livro "Ceticismo e naturalismo: algumas variedades", Strawson, P. F. . São Leopoldo, RS: Editora da Unisinos, 2008, 114 p. Coleção: Ideias. ISBN: 9788574313214. Capítulo 1 - Ceticismo, naturalismo e argumentos transcendentais 1. Notas introdutórias; 2. Ceticismo tradicional; 3. Hume: Razão e Natureza; 4. Hume e Wittgenstein; 5. “Apenas relacionar”: O papel dos argumentos transcendentais; 6. Três citações; 7. Historicismo: e o passado.

This paper explains how to use a new software tool for argument diagramming available free on the Internet, showing especially how it can be used in the classroom to enhance critical thinking in philosophy. The user loads a text file containing an argument into a box on the computer interface, and then creates an argument diagram by dragging lines from one node to another. A key feature is the support for argumentation schemes, common patterns of defeasible reasoning historically know as (...) topics . Several examples are presented, as well as the results of an experiment in using the system with students in a university classroom. (shrink)

A description of consciousness leads to a contradiction with the postulation from special relativity that there can be no connections between simultaneous event. This contradiction points to consciousness involving quantum level mechanisms. The Quantum level description of the universe is re- evaluated in the light of what is observed in consciousness namely 4 Dimensional objects. A new improved interpretation of Quantum level observations is introduced. From this vantage point the following axioms of consciousness is presented. Consciousness consists of two distinct (...) components, the observed U and the observer I. The observed U consist of all the events I is aware of. A vast majority of these occur simultaneously. Now if I were to be an entity within the space-time continuum, all of these events of U together with I would have to occur at one point in space-time. However, U is distributed over a definite region of space-time (region in brain). Thus, I is aware of a multitude of space-like separated events. It is seen that this awareness necessitates I to be an entity outside the space-time continuum. With I taken as such, a new concept called concept A is introduced. With the help of concept A a very important axiom of consciousness, namely Free Will is explained. (shrink)

Robert Kimball, in “What’s Wrong with Argumentum Ad Baculum?” (Argumentation, 2006) argues that dialogue-based models of rational argumentation do not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats encountered in some ad baculum arguments. We review the dialogue-based approach to argumentum ad baculum, and show how it can offer more than Kimball thinks for analyzing such threat arguments and ad baculum fallacies.

Some commentators argue that conception constitutes the onset of human personhood in a metaphysical sense. This threshold is usually invoked as the basis both for protecting zygotes and embryos from exposure to risks of death in clinical research and fertility medicine and for objecting to abortion, but it also has consequences for certain religious perspectives, including Catholicism whose doctrines directly engage questions of personhood and its meanings. Since more human zygotes and embryos are lost than survive to birth, conferral of (...) personhood on them would mean – for those believing in personal immortality – that these persons constitute the majority of people living immortally despite having had only the shortest of earthly lives. For those believing in resurrection, zygotes and embryos would also be restored to physical lives. These outcomes do not mean that conception cannot function as a metaphysical threshold of personhood, but this interpretation carries costs that others do not. For example, treating conception as a moral threshold of respect for human life in general, rather than as a metaphysical threshold of personhood, would obviate the prospect of the afterlife being populated in the main by persons who have never lived more than a few hours or days. (shrink)

Causal finitism claims nothing can have an infinite causal history. An influential defense of this position uses infinity paradoxes to argue that, if causal finitism is false, several impossible scenarios would be possible. In this paper, I defend that theists should not be persuaded by this argument. If true, this is an important development, since causal finitism is often argued for by theists as a core premise in Kalam-style cosmological arguments for theism. I extend the same analysis to an argument (...) in favor of temporal finitism and conclude that my point may generalize to any reasoning of a similar structure. (shrink)

What is to be learned from the chaotic downfall of the Weimar Republic and the erosion of European liberal statehood in the interwar period vis-a-vis the ongoing European crisis? This book analyses and explains the recurrent emergence of crises in European societies. It asks how previous crises can inform our understanding of the present crisis. The particular perspective advanced is that these crises not only are economic and social crises, but must also be understood as crises of public power, order (...) and authority. In other words, it argues that substantial challenges to the functional and normative setup of democracy and the rule of law were central to the emergence and the unfolding of these crises. The book draws on and adds to the rich ’crises literature’ developed within the critical theory tradition to outline a conceptual framework for understanding what societal crises are. The central idea is that societal crises represent a discrepancy between the unfolding of social processes and the institutional frameworks that have been established to normatively stabilize such processes. The crises at issue emerged in periods characterized by strong social, economic and technological transformations as well as situations of political upheaval. As such, the crises represented moments where the existing functional and normative grid of society, as embodied in notions of public order and authority, were severely challenged and in many instances undermined. Seen in this perspective, the book reconstructs how crises unfolded, how they were experienced, and what kind of responses the specific crises in question provoked. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: European Crises of Public Power: From Weimar until Today, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen / Part I: Semantics, Notions and Narratives of Societal Crisis / 1. What Time Frame Makes Sense for Thinking About Crises?, David Runciman / 2. The Stakes of Crises, Janet Roitman / Part II: Weimar and the Interwar Period: Ideologies of Anti-Modernism and Liberalism / 3. The Crisis of Modernity – Modernity as Crisis: Towards a Typology of Crisis Discourses in Interwar East Central Europe and Beyond, Balázs Trencsényi / 4. European Legitimacy Crisis – Weimar and Today: Rational and Theocratic Authority in the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange, John P. McCormick / 5. Crisis and the Consumer: Reconstructions of Liberalism in Twentieth Century Political Thought , Niklas Olsen / Part III: The Causes of Crises: From Corporatism to Governance / 6. The Constitutionalization of Labour Law and the Crisis of National Democracy , Chris Thornhill / 7. The Crisis in Labour Law: From Weimar to Austerity Ruth Dukes / 8. From the Crisis of Corporatism to the Crisis of Governance, Poul F. Kjaer / Part IV: The Euro and the Crisis of Law and Democracy / 9. What is left of the European Economic Constitution II? From Pyrrhic Victory to Cannae Defeat Christian Joerges / 10. Reflections on Europe’s “Rule of Law Crisis”, Jan-Werner Müller. 11. Democracy under Siege: The Decay of Constitutionalisation and the Crisis of Public Law and Public Opinion, Hauke Brunkhorst/ Part V: The Consequences of Crises and the Future of Europe / 12. Crises and Extra-Legality: From Above and From Below, William E. Scheuermann / 13. “We could all go Down the Road of Lebanon” – Crisis Thinking on the Anti-Muslim Far Right, Mikkel Thorup / 14. Conclusions and Perspectives: The Re-Constitution of Europe, Poul F. Kjaer & Niklas Olsen Index . (shrink)

What is the relation between first person authority and knowledge of one’s own actions? On one view, it is because we know the reasons for which we act that we know what we do and, analogously, it is because we know the reasons for which we avow a belief that we know what we believe. Carlos Moya (2006) attributes some such theory to Richard Moran (2001) and criticises it on the grounds of circularity. In this paper, I examine the view (...) attributed to Moran. I rebut the charge of circularity, but also reject the theory as an adequate interpretation of Moran. (shrink)

En el artículo se critica la tesis de Javier Mosterín (defendida en su libro Vivan los Animales, Debate, 1998) de que los animales no humanos deben ser incluidos en la comunidad moral como resultado de un progreso moral en la sensibilidad de los humanos que llevará progresivamente a una mayor compasión por el sufrimiento ajeno. Tras señalar ciertas deficiencias metaéticas de esta propuesta y la no deseada implicación normativa de tener que incluir finalmente en la comunidad moral a cualquier ser (...) vivo, se esbozan en el artículo algunas razones para permitir una mejor consideración de los animales sin acabar por ello en ese radicalismo ecológico. (shrink)

This document is an edited transcript of an impromptu talk by Mark F. Sharlow. In this talk, Dr. Sharlow examines one of the common arguments for God’s existence. He suggests that this argument is wrong, but not for the reason that skeptics usually cite. Instead, he points out a deeper error — and shows that by understanding this mistake, we can gain new insights into evolution and design.

How did I raise my arm? The simple answer is that I raised it as a consequence of intending to raise it. A slightly more complicated response would mention the absence of any factors which would inhibit the execution of the intention- and a more complicated one still would specify the intention in terms of a goal (say, drinking a beer) which requires arm-raising as a means towards that end. Whatever the complications, the simple answer appears to be on the (...) right track. (shrink)

La psicología contemporánea parece caracterizarse desde sus propios orígenes por la multiplicidad de sus contenidos, además de por su casi infinita fragmentación en corrientes encontradas. Esto crea importantes dificultades, no sólo a quienes quieran tener una primera aproximación, sino también a los especialistas, que muchas veces no llegan a una opinión suficientemente clara sobre la naturaleza epistemológica de la psicología, ni sobre su unidad disciplinar. Esta obra, sin descuidar el problema global, se centra en un aspecto particular: el que presenta (...) la praxis de la psicología, en particular la psicoterapia y sus fundamentos teóricos. Se pone especial interés en una visión crítica del psicoanálisis, punto de referencia inevitable (positivo o negativo) para la mayoría de las corrientes de psicoterapia. Pero este intento de esclarecimiento epistemológico y práctico se lleva a cabo desde un punto de vista original: a la luz del pensamiento de Santo Tomás de Aquino (1225-1274), conocido como uno de los más grandes teólogos y filósofos de la Iglesia Católica. Las calidades del Aquinate como epistemológico son sobradamente conocidas. Menos conocida es su faceta de psicólogo, que esta obra quiere poner de manifiesto con gran detalle para evidenciar la actualidad de las líneas maestras de la psicología de Santo Tomás, como también la posibilidad de practicar hoy la psicología bajo la guía fundamental del Doctor Humanitatis.\n. (shrink)

Neuroscience has studied deductive reasoning over the last 20 years under the assumption that deductive inferences are not only de jure but also de facto distinct from other forms of inference. The objective of this research is to verify if logically valid deductions leave any cerebral electrical trait that is distinct from the trait left by non-valid deductions. 23 subjects with an average age of 20.35 years were registered with MEG and placed into a two conditions paradigm (100 trials for (...) each condition) which each presented the exact same relational complexity (same variables and content) but had distinct logical complexity. Both conditions show the same electromagnetic components (P3, N4) in the early temporal window (250–525 ms) and P6 in the late temporal window (500–775 ms). The significant activity in both valid and invalid conditions is found in sensors from medial prefrontal regions, probably corresponding to the ACC or to the medial prefrontal cortex. The amplitude and intensity of valid deductions is significantly lower in both temporal windows (p = 0.0003). The reaction time was 54.37% slower in the valid condition. Validity leaves a minimal but measurable hypoactive electrical trait in brain processing. The minor electrical demand is attributable to the recursive and automatable character of valid deductions, suggesting a physical indicator of computational deductive properties. It is hypothesized that all valid deductions are recursive and hypoactive. (shrink)

The context for biological emergence is modular hierarchical structures; their existence is what enables functional complexity to arise. Because of the openness of organisms to their environment, complete initial data (position, momentum) of all particles making up their structure is insufficient to determine future outcomes, because unpredictable new matter, energy, and information impacts each organism from the exterior. Consequently, through Darwinian evolution, life has developed processes to handle this issue functionally on short time scales as well on longer developmental timescales. (...) Symbolism and technology are the transforming factors handling this issue at the social levels, which is where the most sophisticated outcomes of openness occur. Considering the cosmological context, the issue is, should the universe itself be regarded as an open system over time? I make the case that is indeed so, because radically new outcomes occur such as the existence of aircraft, iPads, and the internet, which could not plausibly have been encoded in some form of data on the Last Scattering Surface in the expanding universe. (shrink)

This is a Turing Machine which computes the exponential function f(x,y) = xˆy. Instructions format and operation of this machine are intended to best reflect the basic conditions outlined by Alan Turing in his On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936), using the simplest single-tape and single-symbol version, in essence due to Kleene (1952) and Carnielli & Epstein (2008). This machine is composed by four basic task machines: one which checks if exponent y is zero, a second (...) which checks if base x is zero, a third that is able to copy the base, and a fourth able to multiply multiple factors (in this case, factors will be all equal). They were conveniently separated in order to ease the reader's task to understand each step of its operation. We adopt the convention that a number n is represented by a string of n+1 symbols "1". Thus, an entry (x, y) will be represented by two respective strings of x+1 and y+1 symbols "1", separated by a single "0" (or a blank), and as an output, this machine will generate a string of (xˆy)+1 symbols "1". Some of the instructions are followed by a brief description of what's going on. (shrink)

J. M. E. McTaggart’s anti-passage argument (the argument that time is “unreal) has misled philosophers of time for almost a century. The present paper shows that the clearest formulation of this argument, that of D. H. Mellor in Real Time II, is unsound when its premises are interpreted so that it is valid and invalid when it so interpreted that it is sound). This argument need mislead us no longer. -/- The crucial item in the interpretation of the premises is (...) the copula ‘is’, as in ‘E is past’. The copula may be either tensed or tenseless. While this ambiguity of the copula has been noted before, its implications for McTaggart’s argument had not been adequately exploited. This paper does that job. (shrink)

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains (...) where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)