One of metaepistemology’s most central debates revolves around the question of what the source of epistemic normativity is. Epistemic instrumentalism claims that epistemic normativity is a species of means-ends normativity. One of the most prominent objections against epistemic instrumentalism features cases of epistemic indifference: Cases where there’s evidence that p yet believing that p wouldn’t promote any of the agent’s aims, wants, or needs. Still, there’s an epistemic reason for the agent to believe that p and thus epistemic instrumentalism is (...) false. In response, instrumentalists have modified their views in various ways, with new contributions still forthcoming. Here, we investigate a neglected aspect of this debate: Laypeople’s judgments on cases of epistemic indifference. In two studies, we investigated whether laypeople agree with the verdict in cases of epistemic indifference as well as the key ideas behind the more recent instrumentalist replies. Our findings indicate that a significant amount of participants found it hard to “buy into” the cases of epistemic indifference as Kelly has constructed them. Participants did generally share Kelly’s judgment in cases of epistemic indifference. Lastly, some instrumentalist replies are well suited to explain participants’ judgments that agents ought to believe in cases of epistemic indifference. (shrink)

A shared narrative in the literature on the evolution of cooperation maintains that social _learning_ evolves early to allow for the transmission of cumulative culture. Social _norms_, whilst present at the outset, only rise to prominence later on, mainly to stabilise cooperation against the threat of defection. In contrast, I argue that once we consider insights from social epistemology, an expansion of this narrative presents itself: An interesting kind of social norm — an epistemic coordination norm — was operative in (...) early and important instances of specialised social learning. I show how there’s a need for such norms in two key social learning strategies and explain how this need is constituted. In assessor-teaching (e.g. Castro et al., 2019b, 2021), epistemic coordination norms allow agents to coordinate around the _content_ of social learning, i.e., what is to be known and how this is to be done. These norms also allow agents to coordinate around the form of cultural learning in what’s sometimes called strategic social learning (Laland, 2004; Hoppitt & Laland, 2013; Heyes, 2018, Chap. 5) and elsewhere. Broadly speaking, this concerns how cultural learning is organised within the social group. The upshot is that the evolution of social learning and social norms are intertwined in important and underappreciated ways from early on. The above matters as it informs our views about the evolution of social norms more generally. Truly _social_ norms emerged to coordinate a plurality of complex behaviours and interactions, amongst them specialised social learning. I substantiate this view by contrasting it with Jonathan Birch’s views on the evolution of norms. What results is a general but cohesive narrative on the early evolution of social norms. (shrink)

In this paper, the aim is to explore how there can be a role for expression of affect in illocution, drawing upon some ideas about expression put forward by Karl Bühler. In a first part of the paper, I map some active discussions and open questions surrounding phenomena that seem to involve “expression of affect”. Second, I home in on a smaller piece of that larger puzzle; namely, a consideration of how there may be non-conventional expression of affect. I provide (...) some examples of what I take that to involve and set out some premises for approaching it. In a third section, I motivate such an interest by pointing to a question in speech act theory concerning ‘force conventionalism’. This is whether and how illocution can be performed non-conventionally—that is, whether (at least some) utterances can be communicated with illocutionary force without need of convention. I propose that where expression of affect may occur non-conventionally, it may in turn constitute one important route through which at least some kinds of illocution are achieved. In the fourth part of the paper, I sketch an account of such non-conventional expression of affect for the purposes of illocution, by exploring a broadly Bühlerian account of some affects; namely, that some affects are teleological in character, that coordinations may be involved in their satisfactional states, and that uptake of the expressed affect constitutes one subset of such satisfactional states. That exposition points to the contemporary relevance of the “action theory of expression” proposed by Bühler. (shrink)

This paper explores how Wundt’s and Bühler’s respective conceptions of gestural expression have implications for how each conceives of what, in broad terms, may be understood as a ‘grammar of gestures’: that is, the rules for the formation and performance of gestures with and without speech. Unlike previous scholarship that has looked at the relationship of Wundt and Bühler, the aim here will be to give particular attention to the relevance of their respective accounts for current philosophical and linguistic research (...) on gesture. Building off of Bühler, we can offer an alternative to the psychologistic and solipsistic model of gestural expression that can be found in Wundt and that seems to be resurgent today in work by McNeil and others. Via Bühler’s notions of diacrisis and of the underlying functions that guide human communication, we propose an understanding of the relationship between gestures and speech that aims to render accurately both the highly contextualised and the highly structured conditions of their mutual employment. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why physical processes give rise to consciousness (Chalmers 1995). Regardless of many attempts to solve the problem, there is still no commonly agreed solution. It is thus very likely that some radically new ideas are required if we are to make any progress. In this paper we turn to quantum theory to find out whether it has anything to offer in our attempts to understand the place of mind (...) and conscious experience in nature. In particular we will be focusing on the ontological interpretation of quantum theory proposed by Bohm and Hiley (1987, 1993), its further development by Hiley (Hiley and Callaghan 2012; Hiley, Dennis and de Gosson 2021), and its philosophical interpretation by Pylkkänen (2007, 2020). The ontological interpretation makes the radical proposal that quantum reality includes a new type of potential energy which contains active information. This proposal, if correct, constitutes a major change in our notion of matter. We are used to having in physics only mechanical concepts, such as position, momentum and force. Our intuition that it is not possible to understand how and why physical processes can give rise to consciousness is partly the result of our assuming that physical processes (including neurophysiological processes) are always mechanical. If, however, we are willing to change our view of physical reality by allowing non-mechanical, organic and holistic concepts such as active information to play a fundamental role, this, we argue, makes it possible to understand the relationship between physical and mental processes in a new way. It might even be a step toward solving the hard problem. (shrink)

Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway relies on mutually incompatible grounding gestures, one of which describes the relationality of an always already material-discursive reality, while the other seeks to ground this relation one-sidedly in matter. These two materialisms derive from the gesture she borrows from the New Materialist (and other related) fields, which posits her work as an advance over the history of “representationalism” and “social constructivism.” In turn, this one-sided materialism produces a skewed reading of the quantum mechanical phenomena (...) with which she engages. Her attempt to create an ontological (not epistemological) interpretation of quantum mechanics proves deconstructible. Instead, a science of undecidability or science of quant à helps us to understand debates among scientists and philosophers over the completeness or incompleteness of quantum mechanics and its epistemological or ontological status – by demonstrating that these questions will necessarily remain unresolved. (shrink)

The ability to express negation in language may have been the result of an adaptive process. However, there are different accounts of adaptation in linguistics, and more than one of them may describe the case of negation. In this paper, I distinguish different versions of the claim that negation is adaptive and defend a proposal, based on recent work by Steinert-Threlkeld (2016) and Incurvati and Sbardolini (2021), on which negation is an indirect adaptation.

The present work outlines a logical and philosophical conception of propositions in relation to a group of puzzles that arise by quantifying over them: the Russell-Myhill paradox, the Prior-Kaplan paradox, and Prior's Theorem. I begin by motivating an interpretation of Russell-Myhill as depending on aboutness, which constrains the notion of propositional identity. I discuss two formalizations of of the paradox, showing that it does not depend on the syntax of propositional variables. I then extend to propositions a modal predicative response (...) to the paradoxes articulated by an abstraction principle for propositions. On this conception, propositions are “shadows” of the sentences that express them. Modal operators are used to uncover the implicit relation of dependence that characterizes propositions that are about propositions. The benefits of this approach are shown by application to other intensional puzzles. The resulting view is an alternative to the plenitudinous metaphysics of impredicative comprehension principles. (shrink)

Mereological universalists, according to whom every plurality of entities has a fusion, usually claim that most quantifications are restricted to ordinary entities. However, there is no evidence that our usual quantifications over ordinary objects are restricted. In this article I explore an alternative way of reconciling Mereological Universalism with our usual quantifications. I resort to a modest form of ontological expansionism and to the so-called interpretational modalities. Quantifications over ordinary objects are the initial stages of the expansion. From these initial (...) stages, expansions can proceed upwards (fusions of entities in the domain of quantification are added), downwards (parts of entities in the domain are added), and sidewards (entities which are mereologically disjoint from the entities in the domain are added). These expansions are driven by a variety of epistemic and pragmatic reasons and raise different kinds of problems. At each stage, a modalized version of Mereological Universalism is true. By contrast, only at some especially rich stages, standard, non-modalized Mereological Universalism is true as well. Among these especially rich stages, there is a final, metaphysically pre-eminent stage of mereological plenitude. In the last part of the article I discuss some problems and limitations of expansionism. (shrink)

In this paper, Lévinas’s criticisms and reformulations of Sartre’s phenomenology of imagination, in the early text “Reality and its Shadow,” are explored in detail. Levinas's own views on imagination and art are shown to be intimately linked to his critique of Sartrean temporality, insofar as they rely on a renewed phenomenological examination of sensation. As a result, understanding Lévinas’s discussion of the image provides benefits for grasping his notion of the instant and its importance for some of his own positions (...) vis-à-vis temporality, e.g. on the future and death. The manner in which Lévinas takes issue with Sartre through a phenomenology of the image and and its composition in sensation is first investigated by looking at Lévinas’s novel choice to situate his descriptions of the image with respect to the function and power of art. Nevertheless, despite this crucial decision on Lévinas’s part, departing from earlier phenomenological accounts, there are clear parallels can be drawn between Lévinas’s and Sartre’s descriptions of the image. The similarites and differences between their treatments of the image and the role played therein by the materiality of sensation are then elucidated in terms of the ‘amphiboly’ of the image, distinguishing the image in both its representational and anti-representational characteristics. From there, we proceed to examine the amphiboly of the image according to its temporality attributes, seeing how for Lévinas and Sartre the temporality of the image, as that of an instant, relates to the temporality of consciousness in general. (shrink)

Philosophical work on the concept of consent in the past few decades has got to grips with it as a rich notion. We are increasingly sensitive to consent not as a momentary, atomic, transactional thing, but as a complex idea admitting of various qualities and dimensions. In this paper we note that the recognition of this complexity demands a theoretical framework quite different to those presently extant, and we suggest that the enactive approach is one which offers significant value in (...) this regard. In consonance with arguments made by Laurie Penny about how consent is a continuous and dynamic process, we outline how an enactive approach identifies consent as temporally extended (rather than momentarily transactional), and as affected by the skilfulness of the agents involved, the fitness of community provided resources to negotiate the consensual relationship over time, and the unfolding of circumstances in the situation in which the joint action is taking place. We argue that the value of an enactive perspective on consent is in highlighting these complexities, and providing resources to articulate and theorise them in ways that are not open to other current approaches. (shrink)

For Michel Henry, the Cartesian notion of “videre videor” (“I seem to see”) provides the clearest schema of the type of self-affection in which life is experienced, and through which one can provide a properly phenomenological conception of life. It is above all in Henry’s exemplification of the ‘videor’ in terms of affective experience (in undergoing a passion, feeling pain) that one is able to pin down his two principle arguments concerning the nature of this self-affection. The one, regarding the (...) videor as a form of self-awareness, ultimately fails to convince, whereas the same cannot be said for Henry’s analyses of those types of affective experience whose primary characteristic is precisely a form of resistance internal to life itself. This leads to a demonstration of how Henry’s phenomenology of the videor founds an understanding of life that presupposes a form of impotence and limitation, and even finitude, as the very implication of its appearance. (shrink)

Some arguments against the assumption that ordinary people may share common knowledge are sound. The apparent cost of such arguments is the rejection of scientific theories that appeal to common knowledge. My proposal is to accept the arguments without rejecting the theories. On my proposal, common knowledge is shared by ideally rational people, who are not just mathematically simple versions of ordinary people. They are qualitatively different from us, and theorizing about them does not lead to predictions about our behavior. (...) Nevertheless, models of action that assume common knowledge have a role to play in our understanding of collective rationality. (shrink)

In this paper, the goal is to investigate the nature of freedom enjoyed by participants in collective agency. Specifically, we aim to address the following questions: in what respects are participants in collective agency able to exercise freedom in some weaker or stronger sense? In what ways is such collective or common freedom distinct from the freedom ascribed to individuals? Might there be different sorts of freedoms involved in and tolerated by collective agency, each of which has its own role (...) in determining the nature and efficacy of the bond uniting its participants? Clarification of just what such freedom may involve and how it subsists within collective agency is not only important for being able to demonstrate the instrumental value of social ontology to contemporary political debates. It may likewise contribute an important dimension to the descriptive psychology of collective agency and shared intentionality, which is an approach deserving of more attention. Here, such clarification is undertaken via a comparison to the notions of freedom at stake in the respective accounts of sociality and collective agency provided by Raimo Tuomela and Jean-Paul Sartre. (shrink)

In this paper, I show where Adolf Reinach comes down on the question of conflicts of obligation. The aim is to look at whether Reinach’s phenomenological realism of obligation holds its own against positions developed by Bernard Williams concerning the nature and import of obligations, and their capacity or incapacity to impinge upon each other and other moral and non-moral concerns. It is shown that even if Reinach turns out to succumb to pitfalls Williams identifies, he nonetheless verges upon agreement (...) with Williams in more ways than one might expect. This result is significant because it shows that Reinach’s phenomenological realism, in contrast to certain forms of moral realism, lays the foundations for what can be considered a heterontology of obligation and ethical concerns, which is presupposed by the experience of (moral) conflict in the first place. (shrink)

In this paper, the Sartrean perspective on freedom is situated with respect to the fact that the price of freedom is at issue nowadays like never before. Of particular note is the way recourse is taken to what one might call a ‘commodification’ of freedom. We are not only asked to consider the value of freedom, but to do so in relative terms. In the process, therefore, the questions concerning freedom take on a different guise. On the one hand, what (...) must one give up or trade for freedom? On the other, wouldn’t one rather wish to exchange freedom in favor of a life apparently more stable, less risky, and less uncertain? Within this framework of understanding freedom, a critical question can be raised from Sartre’s perspective. Can freedom really be now less costly, now more? As if at least certain aspects of human freedom did not involve certain costs that are incurred no matter what one values, and no matter the circumstances? (shrink)

Involuntary memories raise worries for any notion of constitution of memorial experiences and of the relationship between subjectivity, the past, and intentionality. However, this does not mean they are wholly intractable for an intentional analysis of consciousness. To the contrary, if one avoids conflating the will with thetic or express intentional acts, the Sartrean notion of intentionality is well-placed to account for the most salient features of involuntary memories, without resorting to appeals to non-subjective memorial processes in which any sense (...) of implication or investment in the content of involuntary memory seems difficult to locate. To make this case, two steps are taken. The first is to map out a Sartrean phenomenology of memory, by taking into consideration how his notions of intentional consciousness, absence, and lack play out at the level of memory. The second is to examine how the Sartrean model of intentional consciousness appears to be well-adapted to the phenomenal traits most salient to involuntary memories. The upshot of such an examination is a provocative phenomenological position on the nature of the resistance of the past and on doing justice to the past, that is, in regard to how memorial intentionality ought be conceived when involuntary memories contribute to the rule rather than merely being an exception in the experience of the past. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to ‘group-centred views’ of non-agentive shame, by linking them to an ‘anepistemic’ model of the experience and impact of human failing. One of the most vexing aspects of those group-centred views remains how susceptivity to such shame ought to be understood. This contribution focuses on how a basic familiarity with adversity, in everyday life, may open individuals up to these forms of shame. If, per group-centred views, non-agentive shame is importantly driven by participation in social (...) practices with others, a better understanding of the impact of adversity on individuals’ lives may offer a way of explaining how embodied experience instils in individuals a need for such participation. The upshot is an understanding of the individual’s susceptivity to non-agentive shame, which affords it the same legitimacy as more conventional notions of shame. (shrink)

According to the Maxim of Quality, rational agents tend to speak honestly. Due to the influence of Grice, a connection between linguistic rationality and honesty is often taken for granted. However, the connection is not obvious: structural rationality in language use does not require honesty, any more than it requires dishonesty. In particular, Quality does not follow from the Cooperative Principle and structural rationality. But then what is honest rational speech? I propose to move the discussion in the context of (...) Stalnaker's theory of assertion. From this perspective, although there is no most rational way to behave, Quality follows from the structure of Stalnakerian conversations if interlocutors are sensitive to credibility. In this case, honesty is built on the expectation of reciprocity, and cooperativity is an outcome and not a precondition of rational communication. A benefit of my discussion is that the account of linguistic rationality falls under the more general view of interactive rationality familiar from theoretical economics. (shrink)

In epoca medievale si è molto discusso su alcuni concetti chiave come prova o giustificazione. La teoria della prova contenuta nei trattati di logica medievale prende il nome tecnico di consequentia, che è un tipo di ragionamento fondato sul passaggio dalla concessione (o negazione) di uno o più enunciati denominati antecedenti alla concessione (o negazione) di uno o più enunciati denominati conseguenti. Questo tipo di teoria ha avuto un correlato a livello dei singoli termini che compongono l’enunciato all'interno della teoria (...) nota come suppositio terminorum. Prende, infatti, il nome di descensus, la regola che permette la verifica del passaggio da un termine maggiore (un termine comune) ad un termine minore (che denota individui). La stessa definizione di alcune ramificazioni della teoria della suppositio è col-legata alla possibilità di ammettere o meno il descensus cioè questa "discesa" da un termine comune ad una congiunzione o disgiunzione di termini singolari. Il presente lavoro intende descrivere la teoria del descensus come un tipo particolare di consequentia mostrandone le connessioni con le moderne tecniche logiche. I trattati che si affronteranno appartengono al XIV e al XV secolo, cioè ad un periodo caratterizzato da una sistemazione della materia che li rende confrontabili con un quadro teorico unitario. (shrink)

Cumulative cultural knowledge [CCK], the knowledge we acquire via social learning and has been refined by previous generations, is of central importance to our species’ flourishing. Considering its importance, we should expect that our best epistemological theories can account for how this happens. Perhaps surprisingly, CCK and how we acquire it via cultural learning has only received little attention from social epistemologists. Here, I focus on how we should epistemically evaluate how agents acquire CCK. After sampling some reasons why extant (...) theories cannot account for CCK, I suggest that things aren’t as bleak as they might look. I explain how agents deserve epistemic credit for how CCK is transmitted in cultural learning by promoting a central need of their social group: The efficient and safe transmission of CCK. A good initial fit exists between this observation and Greco’s knowledge-economy framework. Ultimately, however, Greco’s account doesn’t straightforwardly account for CCK because of its strict focus on testimony. I point out two issues in the framework due to this focus. The resulting view advocates giving epistemic credit to agents when they act to promote their communities’ epistemic needs in the right way and highlights the various ways in which agents come to do this. (shrink)

Natural language contains simple lexical items for some but not all Boolean operators. English, for example, contains conjunction and, disjunction or, negated disjunction nor, but no word to express negated conjunction *nand nor any other Boolean connective. Natural language grammar can be described by a logic that expresses what the lexicon can express by its primitives, and the rest compositionally. Such logic for propositional connectives is described here as a bilateral extension of update semantics. The basic intuition is that a (...) context can be updated by assertion or by rejection, and by one or multiple propositions at once. These distinctions suffice to characterize the logic of the lexicon. (shrink)

The foundational gesture of New Materialism and Speculative Realism dismisses vast swaths of past philosophy and theory in order to signify their own avant-garde status. The violence of this gesture, which tries to corral difference within past texts in order to feign its own purity, can be considered as a theoretical quarantine. Examples of medical and spiritual quarantine, the 2014 ebola epidemic and Jesus’ temptation, are analyzed to show that the figure is inherently compromised – the harder one fights to (...) keep the other away, the more one becomes inseparable from it. Derrida's reflections on the reactions against deconstruction show that this desire for progress is always inherently conservative; Meillassoux and Jane Bennett are considered as contemporary examples. A deconstruction of corralation and the academico-capitalist forces driving these ‘innovations’ might open us to reading the never-simply-past text, and to the possibility of the event. (shrink)

This volume’s aim is to stimulate philosophical interest in the experience of noise. There are at least three important open questions about noise. First, how should the relationship between noise as a scientific phenomenon and as a type of experience be understood? Is the one to be understood in terms of the other, and what implications may be drawn from this? Second, are experiences of noise strictly limited to perceptual states or to one type of perceptual state – for instance, (...) to acoustic experiences? E.g. is there noise that is visual or tactile? Is there noise that is cognitive, affective, or evaluative? Third, how can philosophy make sense of noise in the first place? Should noise simply be relegated to the hither side of the explananda of philosophy, as the mere leftover of whatever philosophy sets out to account for; meaning, being, totality, etc.? Or may noise be understood as a positive phenomenon in its own right, which has its own distinctive features and content, difficult though they might be to pin down? This volume will contribute to the burgeoning philosophy of noise by highlighting how contemporary philosophical perspectives with a phenomenological or experiential bent – the latter under both broad and narrow construals – can make inroads to these questions about a fascinating yet little understood quarter of human experience. (shrink)

David Kaplan famously argued that mainstream semantics for modal logic, which identifies propositions with sets of possible worlds, is affected by a cardinality paradox. Takashi Yagisawa showed that a variant of the same paradox arises when standard possible worlds semantics is extended with impossible worlds to deliver a hyperintensional account of propositions. After introducing the problem, we discuss two general approaches to a possible solution: giving up on sets and giving up on worlds, either in the background semantic framework or (...) in the corresponding conception of propositions. As a result, we conclude that abandoning worlds by embracing a truthmaker-based approach offers a promising way to account for hyperintensional propositions without facing the paradoxical outcome. (shrink)

I argue that it is not acceptable to restrict the claim that linguistic types are concrete entities (type-concretism) to some categories of linguistic types (such as words or proper names), while at the same time conceding that other categories of linguistic types (such as sentence types) are abstract entities. Moreover, I suggest a way in which type-concretism can be extended to every linguistic type, thereby responding to the so-called productivity objection to type-concretism, according to which, whenever tokens of a type (...) t are produced in different, causally isolated circumstances, then t needs to be identified by a certain form or structure. This extension of type-concretism detaches type-concretism from so-called originalism and gives rules a prominent role in type-concretism. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive theoretical framework that explains both human consciousness and meanings through the working of attention. By arguing for a first-person approach to consciousness, this book offers a critical overview of the major theories and empirical findings on consciousness and attention, and exemplifies how one of the most difficult and fundamental conscious experiences to account for, that is, time, can be analyzed by adopting the kind of semantics developed within the presented theoretical framework: Attentional Semantics.

The papers collected in this volume explore the richness of Adolf Reinach's short but penetrating philosophical work. Basically, three topics are covered; one group of papers deals with ontology broadly construed, covering the ontological status and nature of Reinach's realism, his contribution to the contemporary understanding of states of affairs, and his ontology of legal objects. The second group of papers deals with social acts and their products, focusing on the structure of social acts and their nature as social encounters, (...) promises and normativity, and contracts and exchanges. A final paper in this issue covers the contemporary concerns in the philosophy of feelings, emotions and values from the perspective of Reinach and his interlocutors. In this way, the contributors, with varying types of emphasis, stress the continuing relevance of Reinach's ideas, and with novel contributions to our understanding of him, they establish vistas for further research in dialogue with contemporary accounts of the respective phenomena. (shrink)

The present paper examines the possibility of a smart grid to the nearest destinations in the Milky Way, incorporating research data of astrobiology, biosignatures, habitability criteria, proposals for terraforming terrestrial planets, and innovations in interplanetary robotic exploration, energy production and spacecraft motion. We focus on the dynamics of modelling and experimentation, with projects such as interstellar chemical engineering, bio-manufacturing, space sails, fusion, ion thrusters and antimatter propulsion, into the surrounding environments ranging from Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud to Proxima and (...) Alpha Centauri. The research task is the experimental modelling of current real-world situations in alignment with the past, the present and the future of space exploration. (shrink)

Los conceptos de evolución y cambio evolutivo son a la vez laxos y polisémicos: se aplican a fenómenos muy diferentes y no siempre se definen con precisión. La aplicación extendida del paradigma neo-darwinista clásico, además, suele imponer un esquema adaptacionista al análisis de los hechos evolutivos, en el cual las funciones juegan un papel lógicamente anterior a los rasgos y sus formas. En este artículo proponemos, como etapa previa a la formulación de hipótesis sobre las causas del cambio, un modelo (...) de espacio forma-función que pueda responder a preguntas como cuándo se da un cambio en los rasgos de una arquitectura biológica y de qué tipo son estos cambios. Un modelo de este tipo nos permite ver claramente cuándo se da un cambio en la forma o en la función y qué alcance evolutivo tiene. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyze the relationships between theories of strategic design and participatory design, in multiple commercial alliances between local entrepreneurs from different sectors and their integrated application in the urban context. Various authors have dealt with these strategic issues in isolation and less frequently have addressed them from the entrepreneurial experience. A review of the specific literature allows us to account for the main concepts involved in this approach. The case being analyzed refers to a (...) fitness-related venture in the city of La Plata, which articulated, together with other local actors, a collaborative strategy that led to the application of a superior business model for its sector. In addition, he capitalized on his role as an influencer on the social network Instagram, as a way to enhance the project’s comprehensiveness. The topics that are addressed synthesize the key concepts that allow us to interpret the praxis relieved. And from them, create a model that can be applied in other markets and territories to promote young local development. And in this way, different actors, complementary products and services serve to jointly promote a co-productive and self-managed culture. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the evolution of the Professional Technical Modality in Secondary Education in Argentina since its inception. How has it been traversed by the various productive models, from the foundation of the first technical school with Fordism to local development? What were the main policy milestones throughout this process? In particular, the study incorporates the design and principles of entrepreneurship in the current educational model and the basic tools for entrepreneurial development that contribute to local technological innovation. To conclude, (...) the impact of these new educational policies is evaluated in this dynamic socio-economic context. (shrink)

Communication facilitates coordination, but coordination might fail if there's too much uncertainty. I discuss a scenario in which vagueness-driven uncertainty undermines the possibility of publicly sharing a belief. I then show that asserting an epistemic modal sentence, 'Might p', can reveal the speaker's uncertainty, and that this may improve the chances of coordination despite the lack of a common epistemic ground. This provides a game-theoretic rationale for epistemic modality. The account draws on a standard relational semantics for epistemic modality, Stalnaker's (...) theory of assertion as informative update, and a Bayesian framework for reasoning under uncertainty. (shrink)

Misreadings of Derrida's Of Grammatology were prevalent from the time of its debut, up to the present day. For fifty years, Derrida's generalised textuality has been misread as though he meant there was nothing outside text in the traditional sense. This misreading always serves to re-institute notions of linear temporal progress, either among self-styled avant-garde authors who would like to break with past traditions, or among self-styled conservatives who hope to repeat them. If the binaries that divide these works from (...) past texts are undecidable, the ground for such temporal progress disappears, along with the divisions by which we create linear narratives of history. The misreading of Derrida is an attempt to exorcise this undecidability and regain the intellectual and market value of novelty or repetition. (shrink)

Why do we use epistemic modals like 'might'? According to Factualism, the function of 'might' is to exchange information about state-of-affairs in the modal universe. As an alternative to Factualism, this paper offers a game-theoretic rationale for epistemic possibility operators in a Bayesian setting. The background picture is one whereby communication facilitates coordination, but coordination could fail if there's too much uncertainty, since the players' ability to share a belief is undermined. However, 'might' and related expressions can be used to (...) reveal one's uncertainty, and exploit this to coordinate despite the lack of a common epistemic ground. The final result is a way to articulate a non-Factualist view of epistemic possibility modals that builds on their standard semantics. (shrink)

There is an apparent dilemma for hierarchical accounts of propositions, raised by Bruno Whittle : either such accounts do not offer adequate treatment of connectives and quantifiers, or they eviscerate the logic. I discuss what a plausible hierarchical conception of propositions might amount to, and show that on that conception, Whittle’s dilemma is not compelling. Thus, there are good reasons why proponents of hierarchical accounts of propositions did not see the difficulty Whittle raises.

A wide variety of concepts are nowadays considered to be hyperintensional, and some of them do not seem to involve our representational attitudes. This led some philosophers to identify and defend a notion of worldly hyperintensionality: the idea that some hyperintensional phenomena derive from features of objective reality, independently of how we represent it. Against this view, Darragh Byrne and Naomi Thompson argue that the correct understanding of such phenomena must be conceptualist in nature, and claim that hyperintensionality always derives (...) from features of representations. In the present work I defend the genuine distinction between worldly and representational hyperintensionality through a new framing of the issue: the comparison with worldly intensionality. I argue that locating the sources of hyperintensionality should not be affected by preferences towards any specific semantic framework, and reject Byrne and Thompson's argument against worldly hyperintensionality. (shrink)

When the necessity of identity (NI) is combined with composition as identity (CAI), the contingency of composition (CC) is at risk. In the extant literature, either NI is seen as the basis for a refutation of CAI or CAI is associated with a theory of modality, such that: either NI is renounced (if counterpart theory is adopted); or CC is renounced (if the theory of modal parts is adopted). In this paper, we investigate the prospects of a new variety of (...) CAI, which aims to preserve both NI and CC. This new variety of CAI (CCAI, contingent composition as identity) is the quite natural product of the attempt to make sense of CAI on the background of a broadly Kripkean view of modality, such that one and the same entity is allowed to exist at more than one possible world. CCAI introduces a world-relative kind of identity, which is different from standard identity, and claims that composition is this kind of world-relative identity. CCAI manages to preserve NI and CC. We compare CCAI with Gibbard’s and Gallois’ doctrines of contingent identity and we show that CCAI can be sensibly interpreted as a form of Weak CAI, that is of the thesis that composition is not standard identity, yet is significantly similar to it. (shrink)

Some tools introduced by Linnebo to show that mathematical entities are thin objects can also be applied to non-mathematical entities, which have been thought to be thin as well for a variety of reasons. In this paper, I discuss some difficulties and opportunities concerning the application of abstraction and interpretational modalities to mereological sums. In particular, I show that on one hand some prima facie attractive candidates for the role of an explanatory plural abstraction principle for mereological sums (in terms (...) of pluralities of summed entities) are not really explanatory; on the other hand, singular abstraction principles (in terms of single summed entities) are materially inadequate. Nonetheless, explanatory criteria of identity and conditions of existence for mereological sums are provided by classical extensional mereology independent of abstraction principles. Thus, given classical extensional mereology, the reasons why, according to Linnebo, mathematical abstracted entities are thin also hold for mereological sums. Finally, I contend that interpretational modalities can be used to characterise the process by which a subject adds sums of previously admitted entities to the domain of quantification. (shrink)

Aim of this paper is to analyse and assess two divergent understandings of metaphysical modality. On one hand, according to the absolutist conception, metaphysical modality is the extreme variety of objective modality and can be characterised in terms of all the varieties of objective modality: for example, p is metaphysically necessary if and only if p is necessary for every variety of objective necessity. The absolutist conception can also be framed in terms of counterfactual inevitability. On the other hand, according (...) to the essentialist conception of metaphysical modality, p is metaphysically necessary if and only if the truth of p is grounded by the essences of some entities. Based on the analysis of these two conceptions, I show that possible worlds are not helpful in characterising metaphysical modality. I finally suggest that in the light of a general principle about philosophical terminology, the essentialist conception has an edge over the absolutist one. (shrink)

We discuss a well-known puzzle about the lexicalization of logical operators in natural language, in particular connectives and quantifiers. Of the many logically possible operators, only few appear in the lexicon of natural languages: the connectives in English, for example, are conjunction _and_, disjunction _or_, and negated disjunction _nor_; the lexical quantifiers are _all, some_ and _no_. The logically possible nand (negated conjunction) and Nall (negated universal) are not expressed by lexical entries in English, nor in any natural language. Moreover, (...) the lexicalized operators are all upward or downward monotone, an observation known as the Monotonicity Universal. We propose a logical explanation of lexical gaps and of the Monotonicity Universal, based on the dynamic behaviour of connectives and quantifiers. We define update potentials for logical operators as procedures to modify the context, under the assumption that an update by \( \phi \) depends on the logical form of \( \phi \) and on the speech act performed: assertion or rejection. We conjecture that the adequacy of update potentials determines the limits of lexicalizability for logical operators in natural language. Finally, we show that on this framework the Monotonicity Universal follows from the logical properties of the updates that correspond to each operator. (shrink)

In Kant's Critique of Judgment, his exploration of how something like life (organized matter) can appear to the faculties of a finite consciousness makes life as possible as it is impossible. A passing reference Kant makes to the idea that every organ of an organism can be seen as a parasite is taken as a lever to deconstruct his notion of organized beings as forming an ultimately coherent nature (an ethicoteleological whole). This reading is placed alongside Paul de Man's deconstruction (...) of the sublime as Augenschein and Darstellung von Ideen to show that the unity of the third critique, sometimes viewed as a fractured work, comes from the similar failures of sublimity and purposive organization. This reading is offered to suggest the importance of biodeconstruction for an engagement with the history and present of thought about the natural sciences. (shrink)

Ladyman and Ross argue that quantum objects are not individuals and use this idea to ground their metaphysical view, ontic structural realism, according to which relational structures are primary to things. LR acknowledge that there is a version of quantum theory, namely the Bohm theory, according to which particles do have denite trajectories at all times. However, LR interpret the research by Brown et al. as implying that "raw stuff" or haecceities are needed for the individuality of particles of BT, (...) and LR dismiss this as idle metaphysics. In this paper we note that Brown et al.'s research does not imply that haecceities are needed. Thus BT remains as a genuine option for those who seek to understand quantum particles as individuals. However, we go on to discuss some problems with BT which led Bohm and Hiley to modify it. This modified version underlines that, due to features such as context-dependence and non-locality, Bohmian particles have a very limited autonomy in situations where quantum effects are non-negligible. So while BT restores the possibility of quantum individuals, it also underlines the primacy of the whole over the autonomy of the parts. The later sections of the paper also examine the Bohm theory in the general mathematical context of symplectic geometry. This provides yet another way of understanding the subtle, holistic and dynamic nature of Bohmian individuals. We finally briefly consider Bohm's other main line of research, the "implicate order", which is in some ways similar to LR's structural realism. (shrink)

Il volume intende presentare in una prospettiva organica la letteratura medievale sugli Insolubilia. Gli insolubili sono stati definiti come proposizioni autoreferenziali che hanno origine direttamente dalla tradizione del paradosso del mentitore. L’impostazione del presente lavoro vuole essere sia filologica che teorica in modo che da un lato si possano inserire le analisi speculative sugli Insolubilia in un contesto critico–storico più ampio che restituisca la peculiarità della trattazione medievale, e dall’altro, possa essere effettuata una analisi precisa dei tentativi di soluzione proposti (...) anche attraverso gli strumenti della logica moderna (quando possibile e non fuorviante). (shrink)

In his version of atomism, Lucretius made explicit reference to the concept of an intrinsic declination of the atom, the atomic swerve (clinamen in Latin), stressing that the time and space of the infinitesimal atomic vibration is uncertain. The topic of this article is the Epicurean and Lucretian arguments in favour of the swerve. Our exposition of the Lucretian model of the atomic clinamen will present and elucidate the respective considerations on the alleged role of the swerve in the generation (...) of free-action. (shrink)

The assumption that natural selection alone is sufficient to explain not only which traits get fixed in a population/species, but also how they develop, has been questioned since Darwin’s times, and increasingly in the last decades. Alternative theories, linked to genetic and phenotypic processes, or to the theory of complex systems, have been proposed to explain the rise of the phenotypic variety upon which natural selection acts. In this article, we illustrate the current state of the issue and we propose (...) a logical space based on phenotypic robustness that allows a classification of evolutionary phenomena and can provide a framework for unifying all these accounts. (shrink)

Abstract Much has been written about the socio-cultural functions of religion. It is equally important to discuss the role and impact of religion and ethics on development and promoting reform in civil society. In today's South Asian context it is necessary to analyse religion both as a tradition and a representation of modernity. Otherwise it is difficult to clearly understand not only the relationship of domination-subordination, together with processes of exclusions and violence prevalent in the sub-continent but also the emerging (...) perspectives, lineages and languages of sociology in general and religion in particular. An attempt is made in this paper to examine the relationship and to evaluate the processes in the evolving discourse of sociology. It also analyses the 'moral' as embedded in religion and as an autonomous category emerging with secularisation. The subtleties of rights and righteousness in the method and metamorphosis of development are also dealt with in this paper. -/- . (shrink)