Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist (...) tradition and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

PRINCÍPIOS DA DIGESTÃO DOS ALIMENTOS NOS BEZERROS -/- -/- E. I. C. da Silva -/- Departamento de Agropecuária – IFPE Campus Belo Jardim -/- Departamento de Zootecnia – UFRPE sede -/- -/- PRINCÍPIOS DA DIGESTÃO DOS ALIMENTOS NOS BEZERROS -/- -/- INTRODUÇÃO -/- Se todos os bezerros pudessem ser criados por suas mães, haveria pouca necessidade de inúmeros livros, artigos e trabalhos, como esse, sobre a criação e o manejo básico desses animais. A maioria das vacas desempenha um ótimo papel (...) na criação dos seus descendentes, desde que sejam tomados os devidos cuidados com relação a alimentação, saúde e a outros aspectos relativos à criação desses neonatos. A essência da pecuária bovina relativa à criação de bezerros é manter esses animais vivos e aptos o suficiente para desempenhar atividades produtivas de grande importância na propriedade. Para tanto, os criadores necessitam entender o desenvolvimento do trato digestivo do bezerro e os conceitos básicos da digestão dos alimentos por ele, e é isso que pretendo aclarar de forma clara e concisa com esse trabalho. -/- -/- 1.1 O TRATO DIGESTIVO DO BEZERRO -/- Um animal adulto necessita de quatro estômagos funcionais para dar-lhe a capacidade de utilizar a ampla gama de alimentos disponíveis. -/- O retículo e o rúmen abrigam milhões de micróbios que fermentam e digerem o material vegetal, em especial às presentes nas forragens. O omaso permite a absorção de água do conteúdo do intestino. O abomaso, ou quarto estômago, é o verdadeiro estômago, comparável ao dos humanos, e permite a digestão ácida dos alimentos. -/- O bezerro muito jovem não desenvolve a capacidade de digerir o pasto, sendo assim o abomaso é o único estômago funcional ao nascer. Tanto os animais recém-nascidos como os adultos têm um intestino delgado funcional que permite a digestão alcalina dos alimentos. -/- A figura 1 ilustra a anatomia dos estômagos e intestino delgado de um bezerro recém-nascido. Esse diagrama esquemático mostra as dimensões relativas dos quatro estômagos, o sulco esofágico, que vai do esôfago até o abomaso, e o esfíncter pilórico ou válvula no fundo do abomaso, que controla a velocidade de movimento do conteúdo do intestino no duodeno. -/- O omaso e o abomaso representam cerca de 70% da capacidade total do estômago no bezerro recém-nascido. Por outro lado, nas vacas adultas, eles compõem apenas 30% da capacidade total do estômago (figura 2). -/- A digestão dos alimentos é auxiliada pela secreção de certos produtos químicos denominados enzimas, que estão presentes nas várias partes do intestino. Por exemplo, os bezerros produzem a enzima renina na parede do abomasal para auxiliar na digestão das proteínas do leite, enquanto a lactase é produzida na parede do duodeno para a digestão do açúcar do leite (lactose). Estas enzimas operam mais eficazmente em diferentes níveis de acidez no conteúdo do intestino, ácido no abomaso e alcalino no duodeno. Para conseguir isso, o bezerro segrega eletrólitos, ou sais minerais, com as enzimas, para mudar o conteúdo do intestino de um tipo para outro. -/- Os produtos finais da digestão dos diferentes componentes dos alimentos são absorvidos através da parede do intestino, mediante as vilosidades intestinais, para a corrente sanguínea, onde são levados para as diferentes partes do corpo para o crescimento e desenvolvimento do animal. -/- -/- 1.2 O BEZERRO ALIMENTADO COM LEITE -/- O Leite ou substituto do leite, quer seja apreendido através de uma teta ou bebido de um balde, é canalizado do esôfago através do sulco esofágico para o abomaso. Este sulco é um pequeno canal na parede do rúmen que é controlado por músculos que permitem que os líquidos sejam diretamente enviados para o abomaso e que não entrem no rúmen. O sulco é ativado em resposta a diferentes estímulos. Funciona bem quando os bezerros amamentam-se através das tetas das mães, mas às vezes não funciona quando bebem de um balde. Essa parece ser uma condição psicológica em resposta aos bezerros separados de suas mães. A maioria dos bezerros podem ser treinados pelo tratador para beber o leite do balde rapidamente e bem, a metodologia empregada é a da persuasão do animal, ao qual o mesmo possa responder positivamente à nova rotina diária e à mãe substituta na forma do criador do bezerro. Quando o leite ou o substituto do leite entra no abomaso, forma um coágulo firme dentro de alguns minutos sob a influência das enzimas renina e pepsina. Este é o mesmo processo envolvido na fabricação de queijo ou junket, usando renina para coagular a proteína do leite. A coagulação do leite retarda a taxa em que flui para fora do abomaso, permitindo assim uma liberação constante de nutrientes alimentares em todo o intestino e, eventualmente, para a corrente sanguínea. Pode levar de 12 a 18 horas para que a coalhada de leite seja totalmente digerida. -/- As enzimas que atuam nas proteínas do leite requerem um ambiente ácido e esse é fornecido pela secreção do ácido clorídrico no abomaso. No entanto, até que a digestão ácida esteja operando de forma eficiente, e isso pode levar até sete dias, a única forma de proteína que pode ser digerida é a caseína. Não há substituto para a caseína no bezerro muito jovem. Os substitutos do leite que contêm outras formas de proteína não podem ser devidamente digeridos até que os bezerros sejam mais velhos. Logo, é necessário muito cuidado para não fornecer substitutos ou sucedâneos que contenham fontes proteicas que não possam ser digeridas pelo estômago do animal, para que não ocasione complicações gastrintestinais. -/- A digestão do leite pode ser melhorada com a inclusão de coalho, que pode ser obtido a partir de fábricas de queijo ou aditivos comerciais de leite de bezerro para a primeira semana ou mais. Esses produtos comerciais podem fornecer ácidos adicionais para reduzir o pH abomasal e incrementar a quantidade de enzimas e bactérias específicas para aumentar a taxa de degradação da coalhada de leite. Tais aditivos são chamados probióticos, na medida em que ajudam nos processos digestivos normais. A pesquisa nem sempre os encontrou para melhorar o desempenho e a saúde dos bezerros, e eles são mais propensos a ser benéficos quando os bezerros estão sofrendo de problemas de saúde. Além disso, a sua eficácia, em termos de custo-benefício é, por vezes, questionada. -/- Qualquer leite de uma alimentação anterior está envolvido neste coágulo recém-formado. As proteínas líquidas de soro de leite e a lactose são rapidamente separadas da coalhada de leite e passam para o abomaso. A gordura do leite contida na coalhada de leite é decomposta por outra enzima, a lipase. Esta é secretado na boca pela saliva e incorporada quando o leite é engolido. A alimentação pelas tetas em vez da alimentação através do balde parece produzir mais saliva e, portanto, mais lipase. A digestão adicional da proteína do leite e da gordura ocorre no duodeno com a ajuda das enzimas produzidas no pâncreas. -/- A lactose, que é rapidamente liberada da coalhada de leite no abomaso, é dividida em glicose e galactose e estas são absorvidas na corrente sanguínea para formar a principal fonte de energia para os bezerros jovens. -/- As gorduras são divididas em ácidos graxos e glicerol para absorção e uso como energia, enquanto as proteínas são divididas em aminoácidos e peptídeos para absorção e uso como fontes de proteína corporal. -/- O amido de cereais, por exemplo, é uma importante fonte de energia em bezerros mais velhos, mas esses animais, nas suas primeiras semanas de vida, não conseguem digerir o amido. -/- O abomaso não é ácido até que o bezerro tenha 1-2 dias de idade e isso apresenta vantagens e desvantagens. A principal vantagem é que as proteínas imunes no colostro não podem ser digeridas nesse compartimento estomacal, por isso são absorvidas na corrente sanguínea na mesma forma quando produzidas pela vaca. Isso garante o seu papel como anticorpos para proteger contra as doenças e infecções. A baixa acidez do conteúdo abomasal no bezerro recém-nascido constitui um risco potencial das bactérias (e provavelmente vírus) tomadas através da boca. Estes não serão mortos pela digestão ácida, sendo assim podem passar para os intestinos, onde podem fazer mal ao bezerro recém-nascido. -/- Todos os bezerros pegam bactérias nos primeiros dias de vida e isso é essencial para o desenvolvimento normal do rúmen (flora microbiana). No entanto, a primeira bactéria a colonizar o intestino também pode causar danos. Desde que o bezerro tenha bebido colostro, os anticorpos maternos podem controlar a propagação dessas bactérias mais nocivas. -/- O bezerro alimentado com leite deve, então, produzir uma digestão ácida no abomaso e uma digestão alcalina no duodeno. Isto é conseguido pela produção de eletrólitos na parede do intestino. -/- Bezerros que sofrem de escoriações devido a distúrbios nutricionais ou infecções bacterianas podem perder grandes quantidades de água e eletrólitos em suas fezes. Estes devem ser reabastecidos como parte do tratamento para as escoriações. -/- O colostro é o primeiro leite produzido por vacas recém-paridas. Além de fornecer nutrientes essenciais para a alimentação animal, fornece anticorpos maternos que permitem a transferência passiva de imunidade contra doenças. As recomendações para a alimentação com colostro serão abordadas brevemente em outro trabalho. -/- -/- 1.3 DESENVOLVIMENTO DO RÚMEN E O PROCESSO DE DESMAME -/- Quando os bezerros são desmamados, o custo da criação diminui acentuadamente. Os custos de alimentação são mais baixos, os insumos de trabalho são reduzidos e a incidência de problemas de saúde é menor. No sentido econômico, faz sentido desmamar os bezerros assim que for razoável. No entanto, o bezerro é forçado a sofrer várias mudanças dramáticas, a saber: -/-  A fonte primária de nutrientes muda de líquido para sólido. -/-  A quantidade de matéria seca que o bezerro recebe é reduzida. -/-  O bezerro deve adaptar-se de um tipo monogástrico a um ruminante de digestão, que inclui a fermentação de alimentos. -/-  Mudanças na habitação e no manejo muitas vezes ocorrem em torno do desmame, o que pode aumentar o estresse. -/- Ao nascer, o rúmen é uma parte pequena e estéril do intestino que, ao desmame deve se tornar o compartimento mais importante dos quatro estômagos. Deve aumentar em tamanho, atividade metabólica interna e fluxo sanguíneo externo. Os cinco requisitos para o desenvolvimento ruminal são: -/-  Estabelecimento de bactérias. -/-  Líquido. -/-  Saída de material (ação muscular). -/-  Capacidade absortiva do tecido. -/-  Substrato para permitir o crescimento bacteriano, tais como minerais reciclados, bem como nutrientes para alimentação. -/- Antes do consumo de alimentos sólidos, as bactérias existentes fermentam o cabelo ingerido, o estrato e o leite que flui do abomaso para o rúmen. A maior parte da água que entra no rúmen provém da água livre (água real não contida no leite ou na solução substituta do leite). O leite contornará o rúmen através do sulco esofágico, enquanto a água livre não. -/- O rúmen se desenvolve a partir de um órgão muito pequeno em bezerros recém-nascidos (1-2 L) para a parte mais importante do intestino (25-30 L) por 3 meses de idade. Ele pode aumentar muito rapidamente durante as primeiras semanas de vida, dado o manejo da alimentação direita. -/- O crescimento do rúmen ocorre apenas sob a influência dos produtos finais da digestão no mesmo, que resultam da fermentação de alimentos sólidos pelos micróbios presentes nesse compartimento. O desenvolvimento ocorre em grande parte através do crescimento das papilas ruminais (figura 5 e 6) na parede ruminal (estruturas semelhantes a folhas na superfície interna), que aumentam a área superficial do rúmen e, portanto, a sua capacidade de absorver estes produtos finais de digestão. Portanto, os concentrados favorecem melhor o desenvolvimento dessas papilas ruminais. Para tanto, é necessário, com um tempo, ir incrementando a dieta sólida gradativamente para que esses animais deixem de consumir o leite das vacas produtoras e possam alimentar-se de ração e pastagens, que é a finalidade da criação de bovinos, ou seja, criar animais com menor custo possível e engordá-los através de ração, mas principalmente de pastagens. -/- A capacidade do rúmen e a ingestão de alimentos sólidos estão intimamente relacionadas. O desenvolvimento do rúmen é muito lento em bezerros alimentados com grandes quantidades de leite. O leite satisfaz seus apetites para que eles não tenham fome suficiente para comer qualquer alimento sólido. Logo, é necessário diminuir paulatinamente o fornecedor do leite para esses animais, favorecendo a ingestão de alimentos sólidos e desenvolvendo o rúmen, estômago que digere as fibras das forragens e que os tona animais peculiares. -/- A ruminação pode ocorrer com cerca de 2 semanas de idade e é uma boa indicação de que o rúmen está se desenvolvendo. Alimentos sólidos, bem como a ruminação, estimulam a produção de saliva e isso fornece nutrientes como ureia e bicarbonato de sódio para produzir os substratos para o crescimento e desenvolvimento da flora bacteriana. -/- No desmame precoce, é importante limitar a quantidade de leite oferecida e a sua disponibilidade durante todo o dia. Também é essencial fornecer alimentos sólidos. Os grosseiros (de baixa ou alta qualidade) devem ser oferecidos em combinação com concentrados de alta qualidade. -/- O criador deve tomar cuidado com o fornecimento de alimentos como a ração farelada, uma vez que essa ração pode entrar pelas vias nasais e ocasionar complicações respiratórias; há alguns relatos de bezerros mortos após a ingestão de ração farelada, na autópsia de um dos casos foi diagnosticada uma morte por esses grãos farelados presentes no pulmão. Portanto, para evitar complicações o ideal é que se forneça uma ração denominada peletizada. -/- Os alimentos grosseiros (volumosos) estimulam o desenvolvimento do rúmen, enquanto os concentrados fornecem nutrientes para a alimentação animal que não são fornecidos pelas quantidades limitadas de leite oferecidas. Sem os concentrados, o crescimento dos bezerros é lento, mas o rúmen ainda se desenvolve, resultando em animais barrigudos. -/- A ureia fornece nitrogênio para os micróbios, enquanto o bicarbonato de sódio atua como um tampão ruminal, ajudando a manter um pH estável no conteúdo do rúmen. Isso é, particularmente, importante quando os bezerros comem grandes quantidades de grãos de cereais na vida adulta, pois os micróbios do rúmen podem produzir muito ácido lático durante a fermentação desse material. -/- Envenenamento por grãos ou acidose ocorre quando os níveis de ácido lático são excessivamente elevados e tornam-se tóxicos para os micróbios do rúmen e, eventualmente, para o animal. Assim como os produtos finais que são absorvidos através da parede do rúmen, a fermentação microbiana produz os gases dióxido de carbono e metano e estes são normalmente exalados. Quando algo impede a fuga destes gases do rúmen, o inchaço pode se manifestar em qualquer fase da vida, diz-se do animal estufado. -/- -/- 1.4 O PAPEL DA FORRAGEM NO PROCESSO DE DESMAME -/- Existem inúmeras controvérsias acerca do papel da forragem no processo de desmame. Pesquisas realizadas na década de 1980 indicaram claramente que a forragem era benéfica, enquanto pesquisas da década de 1990 descobriram que nem sempre era necessário o fornecimento da forragem para que os bezerros fossem desmamados e que não sofresse estresse e nem apresentasse baixa eficiência produtiva e reprodutiva no futuro. Na maioria das pesquisas anteriores, os bezerros eram desmamados com a oferta de concentrados moídos como pellets com ou sem a presença de feno longo ou palha. Porém, a inclusão de forragens na dieta melhorou a ingestão e o desempenho, além de permitir o desmame precoce. -/- Na pesquisa posterior, os bezerros geralmente alimentavam-se de concentrados grosseiramente moídos, além de alguns volumosos, enquanto alguns até incluíam volumosos picados finos na mistura (às vezes chamados de mistura muesli por apresentar o capim e a ração). Nesses estudos, verificou-se que a inclusão de feno ou palha adicional teve pouco efeito no desempenho pré-desmame. -/- Os sistemas de criação de bezerros australianos frequentemente diferem dos demais, especialmente em áreas de parto sazonais. Um número excessivo elevado de bezerros precisam ser criados de uma só vez para lhes fornecer, a todos, currais individuais durante todo o seu período de amamentação. Consequentemente, os bezerros são criados em grupos. Além disso, os ingredientes da maioria dos concentrados para esses animais são finamente moídos. Nessas situações, descobriu-se que a palha limpa é um alimento útil e que deve ser incluso no período pré-desmame. Alguns agricultores preferem feno de boa qualidade, porém estes agricultores geralmente têm bezerros em grupos muito pequenos, muitas vezes um ou dois, por isso possuem maior controle sobre a ingestão de forragem. -/- Figura 7: A alimentação volumosa de bezerros alimentados com leite é uma questão controversa. Imagem cedida pelo IPA -/- É difícil e, portanto, mais caro que os produtores de rações incorporem feno picado nas refeições dos bezerros. Os pellets são muito mais fáceis, pois eles vão fluir para silos. Por fim, os produtores de leite devem incluir o componente volumoso no regime alimentar pré-desmame. A pastagem não é a fonte ideal de forragem volumosa para os bezerros alimentados com leite, uma vez que possui muito pouca fibra e uma baixa densidade de energia alimentar. O seu elevado teor de água limita a sua capacidade de fornecer energia alimentar adequada aos animais em crescimento. Para ingerir a pastagem a capacidade ruminal deveria ser maior, bezerros jovens simplesmente não conseguem comer pasto suficiente, a menos que seja de alta em qualidade. -/- Os bezerros criados com leite e fornecimento gradual de concentrados apresentam uma boa função ruminal às 3 semanas de vida, além de possuírem uma suficiente capacidade ruminal para o desmame entre às 4-6 semanas de idade. No entanto, se a dieta for baseada em leite restrito e pastagem de alta qualidade, a capacidade do rúmen pode não ser suficiente para o desmame até às 8-10 semanas de vida. Mesmo assim, as taxas de crescimento seriam menores em bezerros desmamados com base alimentar somente à pasto, uma vez que a ingestão de energia é insuficiente devido às limitações físicas da capacidade ruminal. -/- Se a qualidade for muito boa e produza apetite, os bezerros preferem volumosos ao invés do concentrado, o que leva a uma ingestão reduzida de nutrientes durante alimentação, tendo como efeito um crescimento mais lento. Quando volumosos e concentrados fornecem apetite no animal, juntamente com o leite limitado, os bezerros podem comer cerca de 10% de palha e 90% de concentrados. Sem o volumoso e a ruminação resultante, o desenvolvimento do rúmen será mais lento devido à falta de saliva e produtos finais da digestão de fibras presentes na parede celular das forragens. -/- -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS -/- -/- BEN ASHER, Aharon. Manual de cría de becerras. Zaragoza: Acribia, 1999. -/- BITTAR, Carla Maris Machado; PORTAL, Rafaela Nunes Sanchez; PEREIRA, Anna Carolina Fett da Cunha. Criação de bezerras leiteiras. Piracicaba: EDUSP, 2018. -/- BLUM, J. W. Nutritional physiology of neonatal calves. Journal of animal physiology and animal nutrition, v. 90, n. 1‐2, p. 1-11, 2006. -/- CAMPOS, OF de. Criação de bezerros até a desmama. Coronel Pacheco: EMBRAPA/CNPGL, 1985. -/- COELHO, S. G. Criação de bezerros. II Simpósio Mineiro de Buiatria, Anais., Belo Horizonte, 2005. -/- DAVIS, Carl L. et al. The development, nutrition, and management of the young calf. Iowa State University Press, 1998. -/- DE OLIVEIRA, Juliana Silva; DE MOURA ZANINE, Anderson; SANTOS, Edson Mauro. Fisiologia, manejo e alimentação de bezerros de corte. Arquivos de Ciências Veterinárias e Zoologia da UNIPAR, v. 10, n. 1, 2007. -/- DRACKLEY, James K. Calf nutrition from birth to breeding. Veterinary Clinics of North America: Food Animal Practice, v. 24, n. 1, p. 55-86, 2008. -/- FERREIRA, Lucas Silveira et al. Desempenho animal e desenvolvimento do rúmen de bezerros leiteiros aleitados com leite integral ou sucedâneo. Boletim de Indústria Animal, v. 65, n. 4, p. 337-345, 2008. -/- GUILLOTEAU, P.; ZABIELSKI, R.; BLUM, J. W. Gastrointestinal tract and digestion in the young ruminant: ontogenesis, adaptations, consequences and manipulations. J Physiol Pharmacol, v. 60, n. Suppl 1, p. 37-46, 2009. -/- HUBER, J. T. Development of the digestive and metabolic apparatus of the calf. Journal of Dairy Science, v. 52, n. 8, p. 1303-1315, 1969. -/- LONGENBACH, J. I.; HEINRICHS, Arlyn Judson. A review of the importance and physiological role of curd formation in the abomasum of young calves. Animal feed science and technology, v. 73, n. 1-2, p. 85-97, 1998. -/- LOPES, Marcos Aurélio; VIEIRA, P. de F. Criação de bezerros leiteiros. Jaboticabal: Funep, 1998. -/- LUCCI, Carlos de Sousa. Bovinos leiteiros jovens: nutrição, manejo, doenças. São Paulo: Nobel, 1989. -/- ROY, James Henry Barstow et al. The calf. Boston: Butterworths., 1980. -/- SAVAGE, E. S.; MCCAY, C. M. The nutrition of calves; A review. Journal of Dairy Science, v. 25, n. 7, p. 595-650, 1942. -/- THIVEND, P.; TOULLEC, R.; GUILLOTEAU, P. Digestive adaptation in the preruminant. In: Digestive physiology and metabolism in ruminants. Springer, Dordrecht, 1980. p. 561-585. (shrink)

In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed endpoint, we nonetheless go on to argue (...) that the metaethical apparatus Kitcher constructs around this creative metaethical proposal simply cannot do the work that he demands of it. The prospect of fundamental conflict between different functions of the ethical project requires Kitcher to appeal to a particular normative stance in order to judge specific changes in the ethical project to be genuinely progressive, and we argue that the virtues of continuity and coherence to which he appeals can only specify rather than justify the normative stance he favors. We conclude by suggesting an alternative approach for ethical naturalists that seems to us ultimately more promising than Kitcher’s own. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION THE PROBLEM OF THE BEING OF THE EGO AND THE FUNDAMENTAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF ONTOLOGY "Mit dem cogito sum beansprucht Descartes, der Philosophic ...

The papers in this volume originated in a workshop on externalism and conceptual change held at the University of St. Andrews in June 2018. The discussion of conceptual change was driven largely by...

In the Foundations of Mathematics, Ramsey attempted to amend Principia Mathematica’s logicism to meet serious objections raised against it. While Ramsey’s paper is well known, some questions concerning Ramsey’s motivations to write it and its reception still remain. This paper considers these questions afresh. First, an account is provided for why Ramsey decided to work on his paper instead of simply accepting Wittgenstein’s account of mathematics as presented in the Tractatus. Secondly, evidence is given supporting that Wittgenstein was not moved (...) by Ramsey’s objection against the Tractarian account of arithmetic, and a suggestion is made to explain why Wittgenstein reconsidered Ramsey’s account in the early thirties on several occasions. Finally, a reading is formulated to understand the basis on which Wittgenstein argues against Ramsey’s definition of identity in his 1927 letter to Ramsey. (shrink)

There have been many attempts to retire dualism from active philosophic life, replacing it with something less removed from science, but we are no closer to that goal now than fifty years ago. I propose breaking the stalemate by considering marginal perspectives that may help identify unrecognized assumptions that limit the mainstream debate. Comparison with Whitehead highlights ways that opponents of dualism continue to uphold the Cartesian “real distinction” between mind and body. Whitehead, by contrast, insists on a conceptual distinction: (...) there can no more be body without mind than mind without body (at least at the level of ultimate constituents). Key to this integration is Whitehead’s understanding that mind, at its most rudimentary, is simply the intrinsic temporality of a physical event. Thus, the resulting form of “panpsychism” is more naturalistic than commonly supposed, and it solves both the composition problem (traditionally fatal to panpsychism) and the “hard problem.”. (shrink)

Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space and real space. In the course of his exploration, (...) Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures. (shrink)

Since the publication of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein’s interpreters have endeavored to reconcile his general constructivist/anti-realist attitude towards mathematics with his confessed anti-revisionary philosophy. In this article, the author revisits the issue and presents a solution. The basic idea consists in exploring the fact that the so-called “non-constructive results” could be interpreted so that they do not appear non-constructive at all. The author substantiates this solution by showing how the translation of mathematical results, given by the (...) possibility of translation between logics, can be seen as a tool for partially implementing the solution Wittgenstein had in mind. (shrink)

Discussions of sexual ethics often focus on the wrong of treating another as a mere object instead of as a person worthy of respect. On this view, the task of sexual ethics becomes putting the other’s subjectivity above their status as erotic object so as to avoid the harms of objectification. Ward and Anderson argue that such a view disregards the crucial, moral role that erotic objecthood plays in sexual encounters. Important moral features of intimacy are disclosed through the (...) experience of being an erotic object for another, as well as in perceiving another as an erotic object. Drawing on phenomenology, especially the insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Ward and Anderson argue that erotic encounters are shaped by the human condition of ambiguity, where being an object for others is intertwined with bodily agency. Because sexual agency is complex in this way, theories of sexual ethics and responsibility must widen their focus beyond transparent communication and authoritative expressions of will. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that the naturalist who accepts evolutionary theory has a defeater for all of her beliefs, including her belief in naturalism and evolution. Hence, he says, naturalism, when conjoined with evolution, is self defeating and cannot be rationally accepted. This is known as the evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN). However, Tyler Wunder (Religious Studies 51:391– 399, 2015) has recently shown that if the EAAN is framed in terms of objective probability and theism is assumed to be (...) non-contingent, then either theism is necessarily false or the EAAN is unsound. Neither option is attractive to the proponent of the EAAN. Perry Hendricks (Religious Studies 1–5, 2018) has responded to Wunder’s criticism, showing that the EAAN can be salvaged and, indeed, strengthened, by framing it in terms not of naturalism (N), but of a proposition that is entailed by N that is also consistent with theism. We will show that once Hendricks’ solution to Wunder’s objection is accepted, a puzzle ensues: if the EAAN provides the naturalist with a defeater for all of her beliefs, then an extension of it appears to provide God with a defeater for all of his beliefs. After bringing out this puzzle, we suggest several ways in which the proponent of the EAAN might solve it, but also show some potential weaknesses in these purported solutions. Whether the solutions to the puzzle that we consider ultimately succeed is unclear to us. (Translation: the authors disagree. One author thinks that the solutions (or,at least, some of them) that we consider do solve the puzzle while the other author does not.) However, it is clear to us that this is an issue that proponents of the EAAN need to address. (shrink)

I introduce game-theoretic models for threats to the discussion of threats in speech act theory. I first distinguish three categories of verbal threats: conditional threats, categorical threats, and covert threats. I establish that all categories of threats can be characterized in terms of an underlying conditional structure. I argue that the aim—or illocutionary point—of a threat is to change the conditions under which an agent makes decisions in a game. Threats are moves in a game that instantiate a subgame in (...) which the addressee is ‘under threat’. (shrink)

The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews, concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus. “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth”. “Nature as measure” is the ethical (...) principle of biomimicry, for it tells us that Nature places ethical limits or standards on what it is possible for us to accomplish. And “Nature as mentor” is the epistemological principle of biomimicry, for it affirms that Nature is the ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and freedom from error. Within this overall framework, I argue that seeing Nature as physis—understood as “self-production” or “self-placing-into-the-open”—constitutes the requisite ground for the poetic, ethical, and epistemological principles of biomimicry, and that biomimicry thus conceived involves a new philosophical paradigm, which I call “enlightened naturalism”. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the risks and benefits of Social AI, understood as conversational AI systems that cater to human social needs like romance, companionship, or entertainment. Section 1 of the paper provides a brief history of conversational AI systems and introduces conceptual distinctions to help distinguish varieties of Social AI and pathways to their deployment. Section 2 of the paper adds further context via a brief discussion of anthropomorphism and its relevance to assessment of human-chatbot relationships. Section (...) 3 of the paper provides a survey of potential and in some cases demonstrated harms associated with user interactions with Social AI systems. Finally, Section 4 discusses how the benefits and harms of Social AI can best be addressed, with a primary focus on how frameworks from AI ethics can inform their development. (shrink)

This paper looks at the history of the problem of individuation from Plato to Whitehead. Part I takes as its point of departure Reiner Wiehl’s interpretation of the different meanings of “abstract” in the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and arrives at a corresponding taxonomy of different ways things can be called concrete. Part II compares the way philosophers in different periods understand the relation between thought and intuition. The view mostly associated with ancient philosophy is that thought and sense-perception (...) target different kinds of objects. The view mostly associated with modern philosophy (although it was introduced by the Stoics) is that thought and sense-perception are different ways of targeting the same objects. These differences have specific consequences for theories of individuation, which are assessed historically in Part III and then applied to Whitehead’s difficult texts in part IV. (shrink)

No capítulo 1 da dissertação “A Colônia de Formigas está Consciente?”, intitulado “O Monismo Nageliano e a Composição Material” examinamos a premissa da Composição Material, a qual estabelece que a consciência depende do modo de disposição material das entidades físicas básicas (átomos, elétrons, etc.), na composição do organismo. Ou seja, a experiência consciente de um sistema vivo se encontra estreitamente conectada com a forma em que seus componentes físicos estão relacionados. Isso significa que cada organismo terá um processo diferente de (...) interação desses componentes formando, então, uma mente subjetiva. As diferenças entre um e outro são em grau. Assim, é possível que haja estruturas com níveis alto, baixo, ausente, e até mesmo intermediários de consciência. E cada nível, por sua vez, corresponde a uma relação específica entre parte e todo, se é um sistema orgânico, ou se está entre o orgânico e o não orgânico. Durante o desenvolvimento embrionário, por exemplo, pode existir um momento fronteiriço entre a individualidade e a não-individualidade (ou ser um agregado celular), um momento em que somos incapazes de determinar quando há um organismo. Nesta linha, a consciência também seria indeterminada. Como desconhecemos a relação exata dos componentes físicos para constituir o todo, temos que considerar a consciência como uma propriedade imprecisa do sistema biológico. O Problema da Composição envolve, portanto, a inconsistência do conceito de organismo. Em linhas gerais, se a noção de indivíduo é vaga, por sua vez, a de consciência também será. Por conseguinte, a correlação entre consciência fenomenológica e organização material torna o próprio conceito de mente em uma propriedade imprecisa da composição. Assim, no presente capítulo, esmiuçamos cada uma das quatro premissas que fundamentam o Pampsiquismo: composição material, antirreducionismo, antiemergentismo e realismo. E, em seguida analisamos cada uma dessa premissas como parâmetros para verificar se uma colônia de formigas pode ser um sujeito experiencial. Supomos que, se a colônia estiver estruturada como um indivíduo genuíno, ela terá alguma fenomenalidade. No entanto, não sabemos de que tipo. Por fim, elucidamos como o chamado Problema da Combinação se aplica à colônia de insetos sociais e quais implicações disso. (shrink)

The problem causation poses is: how can we ever know more than a Humean regularity. The problem consciousness poses is: how can subjective phenomenal experience arise from something lacking experience. A recent turn in the consciousness debates suggest that the hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than the Humean problem of explaining any causal nexus in an intelligible way. This involution of the problems invites comparison with the theories of Alfred North Whitehead, who also saw them related in this (...) way. According to Whitehead, a tempting but false phenomenology of consciousness obscures temporality and leads to the causation problem, which then makes consciousness itself seem causally inexplicable. Bringing the processual nature of consciousness back into view discloses causation at work in the moment-to-moment emergence of consciousness, and it reveals that causation operates in a logically fuzzy domain where the skeptical critique of causality finds no foothold. (shrink)

A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of the main targets of Henry Laycock's book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for "stuff" like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask "how many?," but with stuff the question has to be "how much?" Laycock's fascinating exploration also addresses key logical and linguistic questions about (...) the way we categorize the many and the much. (shrink)

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.

No presente artigo argumentamos que os fatos morais dependem da realidade da consciência. Por esse viés, abordamos, então, que apenas seres sencientes dotados de razão estão aptos a conhecer os valores objetivamente. Considerando a teoria do Pampsiquismo, que afirma ser a consciência uma propriedade essencial da matéria, analisamos a possibilidade de que se organismos subjetivos evoluírem em outros sistemas solares alcançando a racionalidade, poderiam ter a mesma percepção das leis naturais que o homem tem. Nesse contexto, a existência de um (...) direito natural cosmológico é viável. Analisamos, portanto, o realismo moral sob a ótica do Pampsiquismo, segundo Thomas Nagel. Em contraste, examinamos também o Biopsiquismo. Concluímos que o conhecimento do valor terá interpretações distintas para cada uma das teorias da mente. (shrink)

This study of Ralph Pred’s Onflow (MIT Press, 2005) expands on Pred’s arguments and raises doubts about the viability of phenomenology. Showing that Pred’s method is indeed phenomenological, I validate his interpretations of William James as phenomenologist and his critique of John Searle in light of James, which documents the extent to which the role of habit in the constitution of experience is neglected by philosophers. In explaining habit, however, Pred himself reverts to non-phenomenological models drawn from James’ postulate of (...) psycho-physical parallelism. Habit, like causation, poses an unmet challenge to phenomenological methods. In his critique of Gerald Edelman, Pred notes that Edelman falls prey to a metaphysical bias inherent in modern Indo-European languages. But Pred’s acuity in exposing a latent linguistic bias in phenomenological data is a two-edged sword. Revealing an invisible dependence of appearance on language, it casts doubt on the project of getting beyond language to "appearances-in-themselves.". (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our ascriptions of content to past utterances assign to them a level of conceptual continuity and determinacy that extends beyond what could be grounded in the usage up to their time of utterance. If one accepts such ascriptions, one can argue either that future use must be added to the grounding base, or that such cases show that meaning is not, ultimately, grounded in use. The following will defend the first option as the more promising of the two, though (...) this ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as ‘normative’ in two important ways. The first way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between actual and correct use. The second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the grounding base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can see our commitment to the ‘determinacy’ of meaning as a practical commitment that structures our linguistic practices rather than a theoretical commitment that merely describes them. (shrink)

In light of recent breakneck pace in machine learning, questions about whether near-future artificial systems might be conscious and possess moral status are increasingly pressing. This paper argues that as matters stand these debates lack any clear criteria for resolution via the science of consciousness. Instead, insofar as they are settled at all, it is likely to be via shifts in public attitudes brought about by the increasingly close relationships between humans and AI users. Section 1 of the paper I (...) briefly lays out the current state of the science of consciousness and its limitations insofar as these pertain to machine consciousness, and claims that there are no obvious consensus frameworks to inform public opinion on AI consciousness. Section 2 examines the rise of conversational chatbots or Social AI, and argues that in many cases, these elicit strong and sincere attributions of consciousness, mentality, and moral status from users, a trend likely to become more widespread. Section 3 presents an inconsistent triad for theories that attempt to link consciousness, behaviour, and moral status, noting that the trends in Social AI systems will likely make the inconsistency of these three premises more pressing. Finally, Section 4 presents some limited suggestions for how consciousness and AI research communities should respond to the gap between expert opinion and folk judgment. (shrink)

Do psychological traits predict philosophical views? We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which consists of 30 views on central philosophical topics (e.g., epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language) to a sample of professional philosophers (N = 314). We extended the PhilPapers survey to measure a number of psychological traits, such as personality, numeracy, well-being, lifestyle, and life experiences. We also included non-technical ‘translations’ of these views for eventual use in other (...) populations. We found limited to no support for the notion that personality or demographics predict philosophical views. We did, however, find that some psychological traits were predictive of philosophical views, even after strict correction for multiple comparisons. Findings include: higher interest in numeracy predicted physicalism, naturalism, and consequentialism; lower levels of well-being and higher levels of mental illness predicted hard determinism; using substances such as psychedelics and marijuana predicted non-realist and subjectivist views of morality and aesthetics; having had a transformative or self-transcendent experience predicted theism and idealism. We discuss whether or not these empirical results have philosophical implications, while noting that 68% of our sample of professional philosophers indicated that such findings would indeed have philosophical value. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Act-based theories of content hold that propositions are identical to acts of predication that we perform in thought and talk. To undergo an occurrent thought with a particular content is just to perform the act of predication that individuates that content. But identifying the content of a thought with the performance of an act of predication makes it difficult to explain the intentionality of bouletic mental activity, like wanting and desiring. In this paper, I argue that this difficulty is (...) insurmountable: the contents of occurrent desires cannot be determined by acts of predication. (shrink)

Triviality arguments against the computational theory of mind claim that computational implementation is trivial and thus does not serve as an adequate metaphysical basis for mental states. It is common to take computational implementation to consist in a mapping from physical states to abstract computational states. In this paper, I propose a novel constraint on the kinds of physical states that can implement computational states, which helps to specify what it is for two physical states to non-trivially implement the same (...) computational state. (shrink)

This article identifies a novel challenge to standard understandings of responsibility practices, animated by experimental studies of biases and heuristics. It goes on to argue that this challenge illustrates a general methodological challenge for theorizing about responsibility. That is, it is difficult for a theory to give us both guidance in real world contexts and an account of the metaphysical and normative foundations of responsibility without treating wide swaths of ordinary practice as defective. The general upshot is that theories must (...) either hew more closely to actual practice than they appear to, or they must provide some normative foundation for responsibility that does not go through actual practice. (shrink)

James’s “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” sheds light not only on his views on ethics but also on his general approach to objectivity. Indeed, the paper is most interesting not for the ethical theory it defends but for its general openness to the possibility of our ethical claims lacking objective truth conditions at all. James will turn out to have a very demanding account of what it would take to construct something like objective ethical norms out of more (...) naturalistically respectable material such as our evaluative practices, but in doing so, he also faces up to the possibility that this objectivity is something we may fail to achieve. This comparatively pessimistic prospect in turn explains his surprising pivot toward the divine at the end of the “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (MPML) James’s appeal to the divine is characteristically idiosyncratic, however, and this paper will attempt to explain how it fits in with the more generally naturalistic framework that dominates the rest of the paper. (shrink)

Reformed catholicity suffers from a fragility that causes it to easily fragment over comparatively small differences. This study wagers that an important resource that can be useful for addressing this problem is the Chinese philosophy of tianxia. The article introduces the idea of a ‘Reformed catholicity under Heaven’ by placing a more liberal interpretation of tianxia in conversation with the problems in Reformed approaches to the church’s catholicity. In doing so, the article demonstrates tianxia’s ecclesiological usefulness while articulating two dimensions (...) of ‘Reformed catholicity under Heaven’ that can deepen how Reformed churches inhabit catholicity in ways that promote unity. (shrink)

The possibility of employing human enhancement interventions to aid in future space missions has been gaining attention lately. These possibilities have included one of the more controversial kinds of enhancements: biomedical moral enhancement. However, the discussion has thus far remained on a rather abstract level. In this paper we further this conversation by looking more closely at what type of interventions with what sort of effects we should expect when we are talking about biomedical moral enhancements. We suggest that a (...) more grounded way to picture moral enhancement, at least in the near term, is to envision a form of cognitive enhancement that also provides some moral benefits by heightening the enhanced person's capability for acting according to their own subjective moral code. While this concept of moral adherence enhancement also has relevance for the moral enhancement discussion more widely, in this paper we apply it specifically in the context of space missions. We argue that there are weighty reasons to consider making biomedical enhancements of the proposed kind a mandatory feature of early-phase long-distance space travel because these missions are high-stakes in nature and take place in an environment where the enhancement could be seen as conferring important advantages while negating many of the traditional arguments weighed against it. (shrink)

This paper discusses an "expressive constraint" on accounts of thought and language which requires that when a speaker expresses a belief by sincerely uttering a sentence, the utterance and the belief have the same content. It will be argued that this constraint should be viewed as expressing a conceptual connection between thought and language rather than a mere empirical generalization about the two. However, the most obvious accounts of the relation between thought and language compatible with the constraint (giving an (...) independent account of one of either linguistic meaning or thought content and understanding the other in terms of it) both face serious difficulties. Because of this, the following will suggest an alternative picture of the relation between thought and language that remains compatible with the constraint. (shrink)

Ascriptions of content are sensitive not only to our physical and social environment, but also to unforeseeable developments in the subsequent usage of our terms. This paper argues that the problems that may seem to come from endorsing such 'temporally sensitive' ascriptions either already follow from accepting the socially and historically sensitive ascriptions Burge and Kripke appeal to, or disappear when the view is developed in detail. If one accepts that one's society's past and current usage contributes to what one's (...) terms mean, there is little reason not to let its future usage to do so as well. (shrink)

Conventional approaches to consciousness assume that our current science tells us within tolerable limits what physical nature is. Because nature so understood cannot explain consciousness as we seem to experience it ourselves, explaining consciousness becomes a problem. One solution is to rethink what consciousness is so that it becomes the sort of thing our current natural science could in principle explain. Whitehead takes the opposite approach, using the existence of consciousness as a clue to what nature must be if it (...) can generate something like consciousness. The justification for this approach can be found in Whitehead’s implicit indictment of descriptive phenomenology. According to Whitehead, the seemingly insoluble problem of explaining consciousness naturalistically is an artifact created by the assumption that consciousness faithfully samples the world, when in fact it obscures the very aspects of nature that are indispensable to understanding how anything, including consciousness itself, could emerge through a physical process. (shrink)

My objective is a better comprehension of two theoretically fundamental concepts. One, the concept of a substance in an ordinary (non-Aristotelian) sense, ranging over such things as salt, carbon, copper, iron, water, and methane – kinds of stuff that now count as (chemical) elements and compounds. The other I’ll call the object-concept in the abstract sense of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Frege in their logico-semantical enquiries. The material object-concept constitutes the heart of our received logico / ontic system, still massively influenced (...) by Aristotle after almost 2.5 millennia. On such an account, the fundamentality of material objects and their attributes are the metaphysical basis of the cosmos, as reflected in our received logic, Quine’s ‘canonical notation’ – derived via the empiricism of Russell from Frege’s function-based Begriffschrifft, and consisting of concrete singular terms and variables, quantifiers and predicate-expressions. The inadequacy of Frege’s approach to understanding concepts is reflected in his initial question. Frege enquires of ‘what it is that we are calling an object’, remarking that he regards a regular definition as impossible: “we have here something too simple to admit of logical analysis”. The imagined ultimacy or simplicity of the idea of a single object (arithmetically, just a unit – one as against two, three, four, etc.) as foundational to the calculus is just that – imagined. It is also guaranteed to block the comprehension of the substance-concept. (shrink)

Terms for consciousness, used with a cognitive meaning, emerged as count nouns in the 17th century. This transformation repeats an evolution that had taken place in late antiquity, when related vocabulary, used in the sense of conscience, went from being mass nouns designating states to count nouns designating faculties possessed by every individual. The reified concept of consciousness resulted from the rejection of the Scholastic-Aristotelian theory of mind according to which the mind is not a countable thing, but a pure (...) potentiality. This rejection was motivated by an acute sense of the mind’s fallible subjectivity. While conditioned by recent historical events, the 17th century’s pervasive sense of subjectivity also reveals a heavy debt to Hellenistic philosophy, which had been recently rediscovered. But whereas Hellenistic thought, mistrustful of theoria, only reifies conscience, early modern thinking, more mistrustful of praxis and seeking its grounding in theoria, goes a step further and reifies consciousness. Partly modeled on theological ideas, the resulting concept of consciousness is plagued by paradoxes that have becomes notorious for their intractability. But essentially the same model of consciousness underwrites contemporary theory, embroiling contemporary debates in the same controversies that dominated the 17th century. Sidestepping these difficulties by returning to the Scholastic-Aristotelian theory of mind would be a tall order, but it is not impossible. Alfred North Whitehead's theory of consciousness offers an example. His novel theory of time enables Whitehead to rehabilitate the Aristotelian concept of passive mind in a wholly naturalistic way. (shrink)

Although Whitehead’s particular style of philosophizing--looking at traditional philosophical problems in light of recent scientific advances--was part of a trend that began with the scientific revolutions in the early 20th century and continues today, he was marginalized in 20th century philosophy because of his outspoken defense of what he was doing as “metaphysics.” Metaphysics, for Whitehead, is a cross-disciplinary hermeneutic responsible for coherently integrating the perspectives of the special sciences with one another and with everyday experience. The program of such (...) a meta-discipline is challenging to philosophical orthodoxy because it enlarges, rather than narrows, the range of empirical evidence that philosophy must acknowledge. This places Whitehead’s philosophy in a perennial tradition that seeks to resolve fundamental antinomies through synthesis and reconciliation rather than reduction or elimination. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have become interested in the ways that individuals are subject to harm as the performers of illocutionary acts. This paper offers an account of the underlying structure of such harms: I argue that speakers are the subjects of illocutionary harm when there is interference in the entitlement structure of their linguistic activities. This interference comes in two forms: denial and incapacitation. In cases of denial, a speaker is prevented from achieving the outcomes to which they are (...) entitled by their speech. In cases of incapacitation, a speaker’s standing to expect certain outcomes is itself undermined. I also discuss how individual speakers are subject to interference along two dimensions: as exercisers of certain non-linguistic capacities, and as producers of meaningful speech. (shrink)

The idea that humans might one day form persistent and dynamic relationships in professional, social, and even romantic contexts is a longstanding one. However, developments in machine learning and especially natural language processing over the last five years have led to this possibility becoming actualised at a previously unseen scale. Apps like Replika, Xiaoice, and CharacterAI boast many millions of active long-term users, and give rise to emotionally complex experiences. In this paper, I provide an overview of these developments, beginning (...) in Section 1 with historical and technical context. In Section 2, I lay out a basic theoretical framework for classifying human-AI relationships and their specific dynamics. Section 3 turns to ethical issues, with a focus on the core philosophical question of whether human-AI relationships can have similar intrinsic value to that possessed by human-human relationships. Section 4 extends to the discussion of ethical issues to the more empirical matter of harms and benefits of human-AI relationships. The paper concludes by noting potentially instructive parallels between the nascent field of ‘Social AI’ and the recent history of social media. (shrink)

The authors argue that the consciousness debate inhabits the same problem space today as it did in the 17th century. They attribute the lack of progress to a mindset still polarized by Descartes’ real distinction between mind and body, resulting in a standoff between humanistic and scientistic approaches. They suggest that consciousness can be adequately studied only by a multiplicity of disciplines so that the paramount problem is how to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives into a coherent metatheory. Process philosophy is (...) well qualified to attempt such a synthesis. The rationale for the volume is summed up in the book's unifying thesis: normal, focal-attentive consciousness is not the sui generis phenomenon it is usually taken to be, but part of a wider spectrum of experience (including marginal, deviant, and non-human experience) that can only be studied by approaches as diverse as phenomenology, psycho- and neuropathology, biology, and zoology. (shrink)

While philosophers of language have traditionally relied upon their intuitions about cases when developing theories of reference, this methodology has recently been attacked on the grounds that intuitions about reference, far from being universal, show significant cultural variation, thus undermining their relevance for semantic theory. I’ll attempt to demonstrate that (1) such criticisms do not, in fact, undermine the traditional philosophical methodology, and (2) our underlying intuitions about the nature of reference may be more universal than the authors suppose.

When performing a skilled action—whether something impressive like a double somersault or something mundane like reaching for a glass of water—you exercise control over your bodily movements. Specifically, you guide their course. In what does that control consist? In this dissertation, I argue that it consists in attending to what you are doing. More specifically, in attending, agents harness their perceptual and perceptuomotor states directly and practically in service of their goals and, in doing so, settle the fine-grained manner in (...) which their bodies will move—details an intention alone leaves unsettled. This requires, among other things, that we reject views on which agents’ control is identical with their practical rationality. When all goes well, agents attentionally prioritize what is motivationally relevant to them to the exclusion of what would otherwise distract them from achieving their goals. However, sometimes agents attend distractedly—i.e., without prioritizing. As the aim of attention is to avoid distraction, this entails the possibility of defective attention. Defective attention, in turn, casts light on scenarios in which agents lose control over what they are doing, as when a skilled practitioner ‘chokes under pressure’. A complaint sometimes levelled against accounts, like mine, that claim to reduce agents’ control of their behaviour to that of causally efficacious mental states or events is that these accounts invariably deprive agents themselves of their rightful role in the generation of behaviour. This is the “Disappearing Agent Problem” for “reductive” or “event-causal” theories of action. I argue that, correctly understood, extant reductive theories do face a genuine Disappearing Agent Problem. However, it is a problem we solve by recognizing the role that conscious attention plays in making an action the agent’s own. Accordingly, I develop and defend an attentional account of action ownership. On this view, allocating conscious attention in service of your goals is sufficient for a kind of conscious perspective (“motivational perspective”), which, when active in controlling your behaviour, constitutes the behaviour as your own doing. As I explain, such perspective also contributes to explaining the subjective structure of your perceptual awareness of the world around you. (shrink)

A semelhança entre o padrão de interação dos neurônios do cérebro humano e a colônia de formigas torna esta última objeto da hipótese de ser uma estrutura apta a ter uma consciência. Assim, a definição de Thomas Nagel da consciência como algo que é ser para um organismo se torna basilar para o exame dela como um possível sujeito experiencial. A colônia de formigas, se considerada um organismo, poderia ser um sujeito apto a ter experiências internas. No entanto, a falta (...) de um princípio geral de organização psicofísica afeta a ideia de mente na teoria de Nagel. Por isso, desenvolvemos com base no Pampsiquismo, critérios de análise da colônia, apresentando quais características ela deve atender para ser qualificada como consciente. Dessa maneira, ela se torna um modelo apropriado para o exame do argumento de Nagel. Não defendemos que a colônia de formigas é um organismo genuíno, mas que, caso seja, terá algum tipo de experiência consciente. No tratamento dessa questão, examinamos a abordagem enativa para o sistema vivo, a fim de verificar se a colônia é um indivíduo biológico, e, em seguida, à luz do combinacionismo, se é possível que as mentes das formigas embasem a mente da colônia. Concluímos que, a partir do modo de interação das partes com o todo, pode haver mais de uma resolução para o problema, i.e., a consciência da colônia depende do modo como seus componentes estão física e fenomenalmente integrados. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against a dispositional account of the intentionality of belief states that has been endorsed by proponents of phenomenal intentionality. Specifically, I argue that the best characterization of a dispositional account of intentionality is one that takes beliefs to be dispositions to undergo occurrent judgments. I argue that there are cases where an agent believes that p, but fails to have a disposition to judge that p.

This paper examines whether, and how, Foucauldian genealogy travels to contexts and problematizations beyond the method's European site of articulation. Our particular focus is on the work of Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez, whose work includes both a systematic defense of the usefulness of Foucauldian inquiry for decolonial study and genealogical inquiry in a Foucauldian spirit but in a context beyond Foucault's own horizon of study. We show that taking up Foucault's work in the context of Latin America leads Castro-Gómez to (...) significantly change Foucauldian concepts, categories, and methods. We further survey the potential synergies of decolonial thought and Foucauldian critique, while also highlighting how their joint mobilization requires a revision and problematization of key commitments of both approaches. (shrink)

The Nyāya school of classical Indian epistemology defended (by today’s standards) a radical version of epistemic externalism. They also gave arguments from their epistemological positions to an early version of disjunctivism about perceptual experience. In this paper I assess the value of such an argument, concluding that a modified version of the Nyāya argument may be defensible.

Temporal externalists argue that ascriptions of thought and utterance content can legitimately reflect contingent conceptual developments that are only settled after the time of utterance. While the view has been criticized for failing to accord with our “ordinary linguistic practices”, such criticisms (1) conflate our ordinary ascriptional practices with our more general beliefs about meaning, and (2) fail to distinguish epistemically from pragmatically motivated linguistic changes. Temporal externalism relates only to the former sort of changes, and the future usage relevant (...) to what we mean reflects reason-driven practices that are rational for us to defer to. (shrink)