In connecting embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition with affectivity and emotions, the framework of “situated affectivity” has recently emerged. This framework emphasizes the interactions between the emoter and the environment in the unfolding of our affective lives (Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Griffiths and Scarantino 2009; Piredda 2022; Stephan and Walter 2020). In the last decades, there has also been a growing interest in the philosophical analysis of technology and artifacts (Houkes and Vermaas 2010; Margolis and Laurence 2007; Preston (...) 2022). The aim of this special issue is to foster the interaction between philosophical reflections on affectivity and those on technology, further developing this fruitful borderland (Clowes et al. 2021; Colombetti 2020; Fasoli 2018; Krueger and Osler 2019; Heersmink 2018; Piredda and Candiotto 2019; Piredda 2020; Viola 2021). -/- . (shrink)

Propositional attitude sentences, such as "John believes that snow is white," are traditionally taken to express the holding of a relation between a subject and what ‘that’-clauses like ‘that snow is white’ denote, i.e. propositions. On the traditional account, propositions are abstract, mind- and language-independent entities. Recently, some have raised some serious worries for the traditional account and thought that we were mistaken about the kind of entities propositions are. Over the last ten years there has then been a boom (...) of accounts of propositions in terms of mental acts. But Friederike Moltmann has recently suggested that in accounting for attitudes we should forget about mindand language-independent entities and acts and follow Twardowski in focusing instead on attitudinal objects, which are the products of our mental life. In this paper, I will focus on some semantic problems that any product-based account seems to face. Moreover, I will show that product-based accounts may be also criticised on ontological grounds. My conclusion will be that we lack a reason to think that in accounting for propositional attitudes we should focus on the alleged products of our mental lives. (shrink)

According to Smell Objectivism, the smells we perceive in olfactory experience are objective and independent of perceivers, their experiences, and their perceptual systems. Variations in how things smell to different perceivers or in different contexts raise a challenge to this view. In this paper, I offer an objectivist account of non-illusory contextual variation: cases where the same thing smells different in different contexts of perception and there is no good reason to appeal to misperception. My central example is that of (...) dihydromyrcenol, a substance that can smell both woody and citrusy depending on what other odourants one has recently been exposed to. I first argue that the subjects’ apparently conflicting reports about the way dihydromyrcenol smells are best understood as comparative characterisations of a smell. Given this understanding, different reports can be correctly made in response to perceiving the very same smell. I then argue that the phenomenal difference between the experiences subjects have across contexts can be explained compatibly with Smell Objectivism. On the account proposed, subjects perceive the very same smell but different qualities, notes, or aspects of it are salient to them, depending on the context of perception. I then consider how the proposed defence of Smell Objectivism can be adapted to other cases where the same thing is reported as smelling different in different contexts. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the relationship between ordinary moral thought and ethical theory in Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics. I suggest that different contents of ordinary moral thought play different roles and are lent different philosophical weight in Sidgwick’s arguments. I start by showing how Sidgwick appeals to certain features of ordinary moral thought, deduced from moral language and experience, both in criticising rival metaethical positions and in establishing his own claims. I then turn to the notion of common-sense (...) morality. After clarifying what Sidgwick means by this expression, I argue that common-sense morality has neither probative value in Sidgwick’s argument for the utilitarian principle nor independent validity, and that its authority is ultimately motivated on utilitarian grounds. Pointing out how different contents of ordinary moral thought play different argumentative roles in the foundation and defence of Sidgwick’s utilitarianism enables to ac- count more comprehensively for Sidgwick’s arguments and moral methodology and provides with a more articulated account of the dialectic between his utilitarian theory and ordinary moral thought. (shrink)

The thesis that smells are objective and independent of perceivers may seem to be in tension with the phenomenon of perceptual variation. In this paper, I argue that there are principled reasons to think that perceptual variation is not a threat to objectivism about smells and is indeed integral to our perceptual relation to the objective world. I first distinguish various kinds of perceptual variation, and argue that the most challenging cases for the objectivist are those where an odourant smells (...) different in different conditions or to different perceivers but the odourant does not change, and there is neither misperception nor a simple failure to perceive a smell. I then argue that there is an independently plausible conception of olfactory experience on which even these challenging cases do not pose a threat to objectivism about smells. Following Kalderon’s work in the domain of colour perception, I argue that olfactory perception provides us with a partial perspective on the smells around us, where this perspective is constrained by the conditions of perception as well as by features of the perceiver. Within this framework, we can allow that perceivers with different sensitivities, or the same perceiver in different conditions, genuinely perceive the same objective smell even though this smell appears different to them. In turn, smells are best understood as qualitatively complex entities, different aspects of which can become perceptually available in different conditions and to different perceivers. (shrink)

Smells are often said to be ineffable, and linguistic research shows that languages like English lack a dedicated olfactory lexicon. Starting from this evidence, I propose an account of how we talk about smells in English. Our reports about the way things smell are comparative: When we say that something smells burnt or like roses, we characterise the thing's smell by noting its similarity to the characteristic smells of certain odorous things (burnt things, roses). The account explains both the strengths (...) and limitations of our smell discourse, and has implications for philosophical discussions of the relation between language and appearances. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer two counterexamples to the so-called ‘Uniqueness Thesis.’ As one of these examples rely on the thesis that it is possible for a justified belief to be based on an inconsistent body of evidence, I also offer reasons for this further thesis. On the assumption that doxastic justification entails propositional justification, the counterexamples seem to work.

Propositional attitude sentences, such as (1) Pierre believes that snow is white, have proved to be formidably difficult to account for in a semantic theory. It is generally agreed that the that-clause ‘that snow is white’ purports to refer to the proposition that snow is white, but no agreement has been reached on what this proposition is. Sententialism is a semantic theory which tries to undermine the very enterprise of understanding what proposition is referred to in (1): according to sententialists, (...) in (1) reference is made to the sentence “Snow is white”. Sententialism is generally considered doomed. The two main reasons why are the famous translation argument, firstly suggested by Alonzo Church, and a problem raised by Stephen Schiffer. The purpose of this paper is to provide a unified solution to both criticisms. What I take to be the key ingredient sententialists may exploit is an observation that concerns the nature of languages and quotations: since quotation marks display the quoted material, if you are a speaker of the language the quoted material belongs to, you usually cannot but understand what is quoted. Moreover, I show that sententialists may appeal to that very observation also in order to answer another problem, pointed out by Kent Bach. I conclude that there are good reasons for resisting the temptation of introducing propositions in order to account for propositional attitude sentences. (shrink)

Eugenics is often referred to in debates on the ethics of reproductive technologies and practices, in relation to the creation of moral boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable technologies, and acceptable and unacceptable uses of these technologies. Historians have argued that twentieth century eugenics cannot be reduced to a uniform set of practices, and that no simple lessons can be drawn from this complex history. Some authors stress the similarities between past eugenics and present reproductive technologies and practices (what I define (...) throughout the paper as ‘the continuity view’) in order to condemn the latter. Others focus on the differences between past and present practices (what I define throughout the paper as ‘the discontinuity view’) in order to defend contemporary reproductive technologies. In this paper, I explore the meanings of the word ‘eugenics’ and the relationship between its past and present uses in terms of contemporary debates on reproductive technologies and practices. I argue that moral disagreement about present technologies originate in divergent views of condemnable and justifiable features of the past. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the philosophical debate on visual blur from a relationalist perspective. At the same time, it offers a methodological reflection on the adequacy of explanations of phenomenal similarities and differences among perceptual experiences. The debate on seeing blurrily has been shaped by two implicit assumptions concerning our explanations of differences and similarities between experiences of seeing blurrily and other experiences. I call those assumptions into question, and argue that we do not need to provide a (...) unified explanation of the character of blurry experiences for our account to be adequate. The diversity of blurry experiences supports a different, pluralist approach to explanations of how things appear to subjects. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

1. Historically, our sense of smell has been deemed informationally impoverished, not very discerning, subjective, ineffable, and generally of little value (for an overview, see e.g., Barwich, 2020...

The significance of critical phenomenology for psychiatric praxis has yet to be expounded. In this paper, I argue that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance can remedy localised instances of hermeneutical injustice, which may arise in the encounter between clinicians and patients with psychosis. In this context, what is communicated is often deemed to lack meaning or to be difficult to understand. While a degree of un-shareability is inherent to subjective life, I argue that issues of unintelligibility can be (...) addressed by shifting from individualistic conceptions of understanding to an interactionist view. This takes into account the contextual, historical and relational background within which meaning is co-constituted. I conclude by providing a corrective for hermeneutical injustice, which entails a specific attentiveness towards the person’s subjectivity, a careful sensitivity to contingent meaning-generating structures, and a degree of hermeneutical flexibility as an attitude of openness towards alternative horizons of possibility. (shrink)

According to neo-Russellianism, in a sentence such as John believes that Mont Blanc is 4000 m high, any other proper name co-referring with Mont Blanc can be substituted for it without any change in the proposition expressed. Prima facie, our practice of translation shows that this cannot be correct. We will then show that neo-Russellians have a way out of this problem, which consists in holding that actual translations are not a matter of semantics, but also make an attempt at (...) preserving some pragmatic features of the sentences to be translated. We then turn to translations that only preserve the semantic characteristics of the sentences and we argue that, although these translations are unable to show that neo-Russellianism is incorrect, they still show that it relies on some theses that seem to have no justification, apart from saving neo-Russellianism itself. (shrink)

Traditionally, ‘that’-clauses occurring in attitude attributions are taken to denote the objects of the attitudes. Prior raised a famous problem: even if Frege fears that the Begriffsschrift leads to a paradox, it is unlikely that he fears a proposition, a sentence or what have you as the alleged object denoted by the ‘that’-clause. The usual way out is to say that ‘that’-clauses do not contribute the objects of the attitudes but their contents. I will show that, if we accept this (...) answer, either we’d better stop working on attitude attributions or we’d better work harder on them. (shrink)

For sentences such as (1), "Columbus knows that the sea is unpredictable", there is a face-value theory, according to which ‘that’-clauses are singular terms denoting propositions. Famously, Prior raised an objection to the theory, but defenders of the face-value theory such as Forbes, King, Künne, Pietroski and Stanley urged that the objection could be met by maintaining that in (1) ‘to know’ designates a complex relation along the lines of being in a state of knowledge having as content. Is the (...) theory safe, then? The aim of this paper is to show that a new problem for the theory arises if we consider attributions of skills, knacks, propensities and abilities. (shrink)

Susanne Langer is mainly known as the American philosopher who, starting from her famous Philosophy in a New Key, worked in aesthetics and famously saw art as the product of the human mind’s most important, distinctive and remarkable ability, i.e., the ability to symbolise. But Langer’s later consideration of the connection between art and symbol is propagated by an early interest in the logic of symbols themselves. This rather neglected early part of Langer’s thought and her early interests and lines (...) of reasoning, which she somehow abandoned later on to dedicate herself exclusively to the study of art, are the topic of this paper. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is well known for its constant questioning of numerous theoretical preconceptions. In accordance with this perspective, this essay presents Merleau-Ponty’s observations on the oneiric experience and discusses their challenges of the mind-body dualism. Despite the critique of the Sartrian conception of dream as a result of conscience’s selffascination, the philosopher sheds light on the only valuable intuition provided by the sartrian analysis, namely a kind of passivity within the oneiric subject. However, according to Merleau-Ponty, this passivity can be (...) properly seized only by refusing the preconception of “conscience”, thus leading to the discovery of the concept of “field of existence” as the true oneiric “subject”. After having described the structure of this field through “existentials”, this paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s retrieval of the Freudian notion of symbolism enables him to root the passivity discovered within the dreaming experience. The concept of “symbolism”, typically associated with the oneiric environment, will thus be acknowledged as the true “subject” of the dream and, more generally, of the whole existence – dream being for Merleau-Ponty a modelling of life itself. However, in his latest works, the body is equally identified as the true subject of the dream. An analysis of the oneiric corporeality in its intimate relation with symbolism will therefore disclose meaningful insights to conceive our belonging and to furtherly challenge the mind-body dualism. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the rational requirements for suspended judgment, or what suspending judgment about a question rationally commits one to. It shows that two purported rational requirements for suspended judgment cannot both be true at the same time, at least when the entailment relation between questions is understood a certain way. The first one says that one is rationally required to suspend judgment about those questions that are entailed by the questions that one already suspends judgment about. The (...) second one says that one is rationally required to believe the presuppositions of the questions one suspends judgment about. Two plausible solutions to the problem are discussed. One of them explicates the relation of entailment between questions in an alternative manner, and the other one rejects the presupposition requirement. Either way, a closure requirement for suspended judgment can be maintained which is analogous to the closure requirement for belief. Whereas belief is ideally closed under entailment between propositions, suspended judgment is ideally closed under entailment between questions. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a disjunctivist proposal for understanding the intentionality of perceptions and hallucinations within a naïve realist framework. For the case of genuine perceptual experience, naïve realists can endorse a version of the view that their intentionality is phenomenally-grounded: perceptual experiences have intentionality in virtue of being relations of conscious acquaintance to aspects of the mind-independent environment. By contrast, hallucinations have intentionality dependently or derivatively, in virtue of their indiscriminability from, or similarity with respect to, perceptual experiences. (...) Within this proposal, naïve realists can allow that perceptions and hallucinations have a property in common – that of being intentionally directed at apparently mind-independent entities – whilst having wholly different metaphysical natures. (shrink)

What are conspiracy theories? And what, if anything, is epistemically wrong with them? I offer an account on which conspiracy theories are a unique way of holding a belief in a conspiracy. Specifically, I take conspiracy theories to be self-insulating beliefs in conspiracies. On this view, conspiracy theorists have their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is immune to revision by counter-evidence. I argue that conspiracy theories are always irrational. Although conspiracy theories involve an expectation to encounter some seemingly disconfirming (...) evidence (allegedly planted by the conspirators), resistance to all counter- evidence cannot be justified on these grounds. (shrink)

In this paper I present reasons for us to accept the hypothesis that suspended judgment has correctness conditions, just like beliefs do. Roughly put, the idea is that suspended judgment about p is correct when both p and ¬p might be true in view of certain facts that characterize the subject’s situation. The reasons to accept that hypothesis are broadly theoretical ones: it adds unifying power to our epistemological theories, it delivers good and conservative consequences, and it allows us to (...) assess processes of reasoning involving attitudes of suspended judgment. (shrink)

Epistemologists often describe subjects as being capable of adopting a third kind of categorical doxastic stance regarding whether something is the case, besides belief and disbelief. They deploy a variety of idioms in order to ascribe that stance. In this paper, I flesh out the properties that the third kind of categorical stance is supposed to have and start searching for the best ways to ascribe it. The idioms ‘suspends judgment about whether’ and ‘is agnostic about whether’, among others, are (...) found to be unfit to play the desired role. In the end, I suggest that ‘is in doubt as to whether’ is our best choice among the alternatives surveyed here. (shrink)

There are many ways in which a speaker can confuse their audience. In this paper, I will focus on one such way, namely, a way of talking that seems to manifest a cross-level kind of cognitive dissonance on the part of the speaker. The goal of the paper is to explain why such ways of talking sound so twisted. The explanation is two-pronged, since their twisted nature may come either from the very mental states that the speaker thereby makes manifest, (...) or from how the speaker chooses to express themselves (even if there is nothing wrong with their mental states). So-called ‘Moore-paradoxical’ utterances are but one example of the phenomenon, and the explanation of what is wrong about them is subsumed under a more general explanation here—one that captures also the twisted-ness of utterances whereby questions are raised or intentions expressed. (shrink)

In 1893, three young men in their early twenties, Xavier Léon, Élie Halévy and Léon Brunschvicg, founded the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. This article explores the motives of this endeavour, and how they made the journal the centre of three great scientific enterprises: in 1894 they promoted the edition of Descartes’s Œuvres completes; in 1900, they organized the first international congress of philosophy in Paris; in 1901, they founded the Societé française de philosophie.

In English, in order to speak about Arthur’s attitudes, we use sentences like “Arthur believes that natural language is messy”. For sentences of this kind we have a standard theory, according to which the ‘that’-clause ‘that natural language is messy’ denotes a proposition. As Prior showed for the first time, the standard theory appears to be at odds with some linguistic data. Geach and Prior both assumed that linguistic data are to be taken as reliable guides to a correct semantic (...) account and I will start by raising some worries concerning their methodology. Because of these data, Prior and Geach suggested some non-standard accounts. I will then show that if we take linguistic data seriously, their non-standard accounts do not fare any better than the standard theory. My general conclusion will thus not only be that Prior’s and Geach’s methodology is disputable, but also that their conclusions do not seem to follow even if we grant the reliability of their methodology. (shrink)

What are contents? The answer provided by the possible worlds approach is that contents are sets of possible worlds. This approach incurs serious problems and to solve them Jago suggests, in The Impossible, to get rid of the ‘possible’ bit and allowing some impossible worlds to be part of the game. In this note, I briefly consider the metaphysics behind Jago’s account and then focus on whether Jago is right in thinking that his worlds and his worlds only can do (...) the explanatory work he posits them for. (shrink)

In his book, "Prejudice", Endre Begby offers a novel and engaging account of the epistemology of prejudice which challenges some of the standard assumptions that have so far guided the recent discussion on the topic. One of Begby's central arguments against the standard view of prejudice, according to which a prejudiced person necessarily displays an epistemically culpable resistance to counterevidence, is that, qua stereotype judgments, prejudices can be flexible and rationally maintained upon encountering many disconfirming instances. By expanding on Begby's (...) analysis, I argue that, given the variety of truth conditions for true generic statements, the generic form of stereotype judgements can sometimes make prejudice extremely resistant to encounters with statistical facts about the distribution of the property among members of a certain group. At the same time, I argue that a more careful consideration of the generic form of stereotypes also allows us to recognize that evidence about how many members of the kind instantiate a property is not the only type of evidence which could disconfirm a prejudice. Evidence of no explanatory relation between a kind and a property should also have a direct effect on a prejudicial belief. For this reason, things may not look as dim for the standard view of prejudice in assessing paradigmatic instances of prejudicial beliefs as irrationally resistant to evidence. (shrink)

Sobrepondo uma concepção crítica envolvendo os fundamentos do saber às ontologias dogmáticas que se impõem ao trabalho que implica a apreensão das questões filosóficas, o projeto kantiano propõe o fim da filosofia como construção metafísica e a necessidade de se lhe atribuir uma tarefa teórica de caráter essencialmente genealógico e crítico, no sentido que encerra a legitimação do conhecimento racional através da análise das faculdades que se lhe estão atreladas, conforme assinala o artigo, que se detém nos direitos da razão (...) cuja legitimidade a lógica da verdade reconhece e cuja ilegitimidade a lógica da aparência denuncia, convergindo para as fronteiras que encerram a possibilidade da construção do conhecimento científico, à medida que, tornando o entendimento o legislador universal da natureza e circunscrevendo a utilização das categorias aos limites da experiência possível, propõe as condições necessárias para fundá-lo sobre os juízos sintéticos a priori. (shrink)

Logic arguably plays a role in the normativity of reasoning. In particular, there are plausible norms of belief/disbelief whose antecedents are constituted by claims about what follows from what. But is logic also relevant to the normativity of agnostic attitudes? The question here is whether logical entailment also puts constraints on what kinds of things one can suspend judgment about. In this paper I address that question and I give a positive answer to it. In particular, I advance two logical (...) norms of agnosticism, where the first one allows us to assess situations in which the subject is agnostic about the conclusion of a valid argument and the second one allows us to assess situations in which the subject is agnostic about one of the premises of a valid argument. (shrink)

Why should we avoid incoherence? An influential view tells us that incoherent combinations of attitudes are such that it is impossible for all of those attitudes to be simultaneously vindicated by the evidence. But it is not clear whether this view successfully explains what is wrong with certain akratic doxastic states. In this paper I flesh out an alternative response to that question, one according to which the problem with incoherent combinations of attitudes is that it is impossible for all (...) of those attitudes to be simultaneously knowledgeable. This alternative response explains what is wrong with akratic combinations of attitudes using commonly accepted epistemological theses. The paper still shows how this proposal is able to explain the badness of incoherent combinations involving the absence of attitudes, suspended judgment and credence. These explanations deploy the notions of knowledge and being in a position to know, instead of the notion of responding properly to the evidence. Finally, I suggest that this picture can be generalized to the realm of practical rationality as well. (shrink)

Relativists make room for the possibility of “faultless disagreement” by positing the existence of subjective propositions, i.e. propositions true from some points of view and not others. We discuss whether the adoption of this position with respect to a certain domain of discourse is compatible with a realist attitude towards the matters arising in that domain. At first glance, the combination of relativism and realism leads to an unattractive metaphysical picture on which reality comprises incoherent facts. We will sketch the (...) contours of a realist-relativist position called “subjectivism”, which avoids this result by giving up the assumption that the points of view of different subjects are all metaphysically “on a par”. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in risks of societal collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, there exists no consensus about how collapse should be understood. In this article, we critically examine existing definitions and argue that none adequately address the challenges for conceptualizing collapse that climate change presents. We therefore propose an alternative conception, which regards collapse as a reduction of collective capacity resulting in a pervasive and difficult-to-reverse loss of basic functionality. Our conception is dynamic in that it focuses on the (...) interrelations of constituent subsystems. It also distinguishes collapse from transformations needed to address climate change and provides insight into the relationship between collapse and sustainability. [Open access]. (shrink)

In Book 3 of Herodotus’Histories, seven Persian noblemen discuss which form of government would best fit the empire. If we accept its dramatic date, 522 BCE, this scene offers the first example of a comparative definition of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. It offers, even more strikingly, the very first description of the government of the many — a novel political order that will eventually be called a democracy. The power of the people, this quintessentially Hellenic thing, was then a Persian (...) invention, an idea that occurred originally not to the masses of a polis, not to an Athenian demagogue, but to a relative of the Great King. In the course of the narrative, democracy will prove to be a unique form of government: the winning one. The Histories take up the challenge of recounting, and accounting for, a most improbable defeat, and for an even less foreseeable victory. The text does so not by preaching a morality of self-knowledge and self-control, but by exposing the realistic effects of different kinds of rule. Against the odds, democracy enhances and strengthens a small polis, Athens, making it grand and successful. Notwithstanding its immeasurable capabilities, the Persian monarchy fails. The turning point is the battle of Salamis, a prowess of the dêmos. A theatrical pause, in the narration of how the Great Kings came to prepare their campaigns against Greece, the debate offers a counterfactual explanation to historical events, in terms of political theory. This is, I will argue, the effect of the scene on the Histories. (shrink)

Beyond medicalization: what’s left of pain With the help of the ethnopsychiatric research led by Tobie Nathan and other fundamental anthropological insights, we want to analyze how the medical and psychological gaze shapes our understanding and narration of pain and death. Specifically, our purpose is to highlight how the medicalization of discourse took away the possibility for the pain to say something crucial for the subject and society, isolating the individuals who suffer, thus preventing the possibility of reflecting and changing (...) the status quo. (shrink)

According to the extended cognition thesis, an agent’s cognitive system can sometimes include extracerebral components amongst its physical constituents. Here, we show that such a view of cognition has an unjustifiably anthropocentric focus, for it tends to depict cognitive extensions as a human-only affair. In contrast, we will argue that if human cognition extends, then the cognition of many non-human animals extends too, for many non-human animals rely on the same cognition-extending strategies humans rely on. To substantiate this claim, we (...) will proceed as follows. First (Sect. 1), we will introduce the extended cognition thesis, exposing its anthropocentric bias. Then, we will show that humans and many non-human animals rely on the same cognition-extending strategies. To do so, we will discuss a variety of case studies, including “intrabodily” cognitive extensions such as the spinal cord (Sect. 2), the widespread reliance on epistemic actions to solve cognitive tasks (Sect. 3) and cases of animal cognitive offloading (Sect. 4). We’ll then allay some worries our claim might raise (Sect. 5) to then conclude the paper (Sect. 6). (shrink)

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

Segundo Kierkegaard, a verdade se sobrepõe ao caráter objetivo que encerra desde uma investigação histórica até um exercício especulativo, guardando correspondência com a subjetividade em um movimento que implica a condição-limite da interioridade. Detendo-se em tal princípio hermenêutico-existencial, o artigo assinala a espiritualidade enquanto experiência epistêmico-existencial envolvendo a verdade como paradoxo em Kierkegaard, que se sobrepõe à mediação lógico-discursiva e implica uma construção dialético-subjetiva que transcende a razão histórico-objetiva (ou finita). Dessa forma, caracterizando a espiritualidade enquanto experiência epistêmico-existencial que encerra (...) como único tipo de evidência a evidência de caráter não racional, o artigo recorre à perspectiva fenomenológica de Rudolf Otto, que sublinha o sagrado e a sua distinção absoluta em relação à realidade natural e ao seu caráter perceptível em uma construção que enfatiza o elemento não racional e a sua natureza suprarracional e implica o numinoso, que escapa aos processos lógico-racionais e, emergindo como a priori, converge para a apreensão do racional e do não racional na noção da Divindade. Assim, se a relação com Deus se sobrepõe às fronteiras que encerram a subjetividade e a objetividade, convergindo para a superação do referido esquema estrutural epistêmico, o artigo, baseado na perspectiva teológico-filosófica de Paul Tillich, detém-se no conceito de Presença Espiritual que, caracterizando a vida sem ambiguidade, implica a união transcendente, correlacionando ágape e gnosis enquanto experiência epistêmico-existencial envolvendo a relação com o sagrado como presença de Deus através de um movimento extático-religioso que converge para a automanifestação, a autorrevelação e a autocomunicação do Absoluto e Transcendente como Deus. (shrink)

I reinforce my defense of permissivism about the rationality of doxastic attitudes on the face of a certain body of evidence against criticism published in this journal by Anantharaman. After making some conceptual clarifications, I manage to show that at least one of my original arguments pro-permissivism is left unscathed by Anantharaman's points.

In The Order of Public Reason, Gerald Gaus defends an innovative and sophisticated convergence version of public reason liberalism. The crucial concept of his argumentative framework is that of “social morality”, intended as the set of rules apt to organize how individuals can make moral demands over each other. I claim that Gaus’s characterization of social morality and its rules is unstable because it rests on a rejection of the distinction between the normative and the descriptive. I argue that such (...) rejection is motivated by certain practical aims Gaus wishes his theory to achieve. His method and his idea that morality needs to be understood both as the dictate of impartial reasoning and as a social and historical fact come from the need for his theory to perform the task of settling the problem of order. I discuss Gaus’s philosophical attitude and, finally, distinguishing between “therapeutic” and “evaluative” approaches, I present some points of discussion for understanding the role and scope of political philosophy in general. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with epistemological issues that stem from the hypothesis that reasoning is not only a means of transmitting knowledge from premise-beliefs to conclusion-beliefs, but also a primary source of knowledge in its own right. The idea is that one can gain new knowledge on the basis of suppositional reasoning. After making some preliminary distinctions, I argue that there are no good reasons to think that purported examples of knowledge grounded on pure reasoning are just examples of (...) premise-based inferences in disguise. Next, I establish what kinds of true propositions can to a first approximation be known on the basis of pure reasoning. Finally, I argue that beliefs that are competently formed on the basis of suppositional reasoning satisfy both externalist and internalist criteria of justification. (shrink)

Atribuindo à ironia a possibilidade de exercício e desenvolvimento da liberdade subjetiva, Kierkegaard sublinha a negatividade absoluta como característica do referido processo em Sócrates, convergindo para assinalar o absoluto e irredutível valor do indivíduo em um movimento que implica o início absoluto da vida pessoal entre criar-se e deixar-se criar. Dessa forma, contrapondo-se à dissolução da existência humana nas fronteiras da pura conceituação intelectual, Kierkegaard assinala a tensão inaplacável entre existência e transcendência em um movimento que implica a interioridade e (...) guarda correspondência com a necessidade de tornar-se subjetivo, tendo em vista a perspectiva que defende que a verdade consiste na transformação do sujeito em si mesmo entre a vertigem da liberdade e o paradoxo da fé em um processo que encerra angústia e desespero e converge para a transição do ético ao religioso. (shrink)

In line with recent efforts to empirically study the folk concept of weakness of will, we examine two issues in this paper: (1) How is weakness of will attribution [WWA] influenced by an agent’s violations of best judgment and/or resolution, and by the moral valence of the agent’s action? (2) Do any of these influences depend on the cognitive dispositions of the judging individual? We implemented a factorial 2x2x2 between–subjects design with judgment violation, resolution violation, and action valence as independent (...) variables, and measured participants’ cognitive dispositions using Frederick’s Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT]. We conclude that intuitive and reflective individuals have two different concepts of weakness of will. The study supports this claim by showing that: a) the WWA of intuitive subjects is influenced by the action’s (and probably also the commitment’s) moral valence, while the WWA of reflective subjects is not; b) judgment violation plays a small role in the WWA of intuitive subjects, while reflective subjects treat resolution violation as the only relevant trait. Data were collected among students at two different universities. All subjects (N=710) answered the CRT. A three-way ANOVA was first conducted on the whole sample and then on the intuitive and reflective groups separately. This study suggests that differences in cognitive dispositions can significantly impact the folk understanding of philosophical concepts, and thus suggests that analysis of folk concepts should take cognitive dispositions into account. (shrink)