Following neo-Aristotelians Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum, we claim that humans are story-telling animals who learn from the stories of diverse others. Moral agents use rational emotions, such as compassion which is our focus here, to imaginatively reconstruct others’ thoughts, feelings and goals. In turn, this imaginative reconstruction plays a crucial role in deliberating and discerning how to act. A body of literature has developed in support of the role narrative artworks (i.e. novels and films) can play in allowing us (...) the opportunity to engage imaginatively and sympathetically with diverse characters and scenarios in a safe protected space that is created by the fictional world. By practising what Nussbaum calls a ‘loving attitude’, her version of ethical attention, we can form virtuous habits that lead to phronesis (practical wisdom). In this paper, and taking compassion as an illustrative focus, we examine the ways that students’ moral education might usefully develop from engaging with narrative artworks through Philosophy for Children (P4C), where philosophy is a praxis, conducted in a classroom setting using a Community of Inquiry (CoI). We argue that narrative artworks provide useful stimulus material to engage students, generate student questions, and motivate philosophical dialogue and the formation of good habits which, in turn, supports the argument for philosophy to be taught in schools. (shrink)

As a senior physicist colleague and our friend, Robert N. Boyd, wrote in a journal (JCFA, Vol. 1,. 2, 2022), Our universe is but one page in a large book [4]. For example, things and Beings can travel between Universes, intentionally or unintentionally. In this short remark, we revisit and offer short remark to Neil’s ideas and trying to connect them with geometrization of musical chords as presented by D. Tymoczko and others, then to Escher staircase and then to Jacob’s (...) ladder which seems to point to possibility to interpret Jacob’s vision as described in the ancient book of Genesis as inter dimensional or heavenly staircase, e.g. an inter dimensional bridge between heaven and earth (see also classic book: Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach). Jacob’s vision of angels going down to earth from that staircase has been depicted for instance in William Blake art etc. In our communication with others via physics literature and discussions etc, we came to several conclusions as follows: Firstly, possibility of quantum wormhole effect to mirror particle universe, which sometimes it is termed non-orientable wormhole. While such mirror particles effect have been more than 50 years predicted with the so-called parity violation (cf. Lee & Yang, 1950s), and that is called symmetry breaking. Secondly, a series of extended experiments on laser irradiated cold water may suggest possible transition from a phase of water to be at least partially fourth phase of water, which may be composed of crystalline water (see e.g. Gerald Pollack, and also Harold Aspden on liquid crystalline). If we can imagine laser cooling effect can be done in protracted time, then we can achieve a physical representation of Aspden’s liquid crystalline. Therefore, in subsequent article (Part II) we outlined simple model of such an effect of tunneling via quantum liquid crystalline Universe, which may likely be modeled with iced-water. It is interesting to remark here that certain experiments by Stockholm University scientists have shown that X-ray triggered water can exhibit properties just like liquid crystal (cf. PRL, 2020). That is why we consider it possible that there can be quantum phase transition where liquid water (comprised of iced cubes and water) can exhibit effects such as tunneling in quantum liquid crystalline Universe. Last but not least, we admit that what we outlined here is just an initial phase; and if you wish, perhaps we can call such experiments as “wormhole-at-lab” experiments (abbreviated: WHALE). (shrink)

To emphasize what we have outlined in a preceding paper, we consider the following: that human consciousness model should take into consideration “spirit” role, i.e. the mind-body-spirit as integral aspect, which view is neglected in the so-called Freudian mental model. In this paper, we consider two approaches to cancer treatment derived from such an integral triune view of human consciousness, including (a) healing frequency approach as advised by Royal Rife and David Hawkins, and also (b) relational therapy, based on recent (...) research on the healing role of love and compassion. (shrink)

In a recent paper, we describe how a model of quantum communication based on combining consciousness experiment and entanglement can serve as impetus to stop 5G-caused diseases. Therefore, in this paper we will discuss how entanglement can be explained in terms of quantum theory. This short review may be considered as an effort to bring QM into real problem solving, i.e. telecommunication.

While it is known that Euclid’s five axioms include a proposition that a line consists at least of two points, modern geometry avoid consistently any discussion on the precise definition of point, line, etc. It is our aim to clarify one of notorious question in Euclidean geometry: how many points are there in a line segment? – from discrete-cellular space (DCS) viewpoint. In retrospect, it may offer an alternative of quantum gravity, i.e. by exploring discrete gravitational theories. To elucidate our (...) propositions, in the last section we will discuss some implications of discrete cellular-space model in several areas of interest: (a) cell biology, (b) cellular computing, (c) Maxwell equations, (d) low energy fusion, and (e) cosmology modelling. (shrink)

In RG forum, one senior professor of physics posted a project called: “Future science and technology.” As a response, one of us (VC) wrote in reply: “I think one of future science's tasks is to discover the link between entanglement and classical electromagnetic theory. This is to fulfill Einstein's position that present QM theory is incomplete, a new one must be found. We are on a way to that goal.” Therefore, in this paper we will discuss how entanglement can be (...) explained in terms of Maxwell-Dirac isomorphism. This short review may be considered as Einstein’s dream of completing QM in a classical picture. (shrink)

It is known that the Big Bang theory was based on the concept of creation ex nihilo, after ancient Greek philosophers. In this paper, we will make few remark on the concept of creatio ex nihilo (as a commentary to a recent paper by Kalachanis, Athanasios Anastasiou, Ioannis Kostikas, Efstratios Theodossious and Мilan S. Dimitrijevi), as well as two other approaches, i.e. Intelligent Design and Emergence Theory by Clayton/Yong. As continuation of our recent paper to appear in forthcoming issue of (...) J. Asia Mathematika, we argue that beside the above three approaches, a new concept called creatio ex-rotatione offers a resolution to the long standing disputes between beginning and eternity of the Universe. In other words, in this respect we agree with Vaas, i.e. it can be shown: “how a conceptual and perhaps physical solution of the temporal aspect of Immanuel Kant’s „first antinomy of pure reason“ is possible, i.e. how our universe in some respect could have both a beginning and an eternal existence. Therefore, paradoxically, there might have been a time before time or a beginning of time in time.” By the help of computational simulation, we also show how a model of early Universe with rotation can fit this new picture. (shrink)

I argue that people are sometimes justified in participating in unjust wars. I consider a range of reasons why war might be unjust, including the cause which it is fought for, whether it is proportionate, and whether it wrongly uses resources that could help others in dire need. These considerations sometimes make fighting in the war unjust, but sometimes not. In developing these claims, I focus especially on the 2003 Iraq war.

Sensorimotor Theory is the claim that it is our practical know-how of the relations between our environments and us that gives our environmental interactions their experiential qualities. Yet why should such interactions involve or be accompanied by experience? This is the ‘absolute’ gap question. Some proponents of SMT answer this question by arguing that our interactions with an environment involve experience when we cognitively access those interactions. In this paper, I aim to persuade proponents of SMT to accept the following (...) three claims. First, that appeals to cognitive access fail to answer the absolute gap question. Second, that SMT can be read in a way that rejects the gap question. Third, that if proponents of SMT are prepared to read SMT in a way that rejects the absolute gap question, then they can also reject the claim that cognitive access is needed to explain experience. (shrink)

A startling amount of intelligent activity can be controlled without reasoning or thought. By tuning the perceptual system to task relevant properties a creature can cope with relatively sophisticated environments without concepts. There is a limit, however, to how far a creature without concepts can go. Rod Brooks, like many ecologically oriented scientists, argues that the vast majority of intelligent behaviour is concept-free. To evaluate this position I consider what special benefits accrue to concept-using creatures. Concepts are either necessary for (...) certain types of perception, learning, and control, or they make those processes computationally simpler. Once a creature has concepts its capacities are vastly multiplied. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the philosophical underpinnings of current experimental investigation into animal affect-related decision-making. Animals’ affective states are standardly operationalised by linking positively valenced states with “approach” behaviours and negatively valenced states with “avoidance” behaviours. While this operationalisation has provided a helpful starting point to investigate the ecological role of animals’ internal states, there is extensive evidence that valenced and motivational states do not always neatly align, namely, instances where “liking” does not entail “wanting” (and vice versa). To address (...) this limitation, this paper proposes the (re-)integration of dominance as a dimension of affect. In particular, I argue that dominance, construed as a measure of organisms’ self-assessed behavioural control, can provide the necessary nuance to understand animal affect-related decision-making. Thus, after addressing the theoretical and methodological challenges related to incorporating dominance into a definition of “core affect”, this paper introduces the “Valence-Arousal-Dominance” model of animal affect. This model is explored for its potential applications in two domains. Firstly, in the study of animal affect-related decision-making under predation risk, and secondly, in the study of animal wellbeing. Through these applications, this model aims to bring experimental paradigms of animal affect-related behaviour closer to ecologically relevant scenarios. (shrink)

This article analyzes the view of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces. The analogy with Newtonian mechanics has been challenged due to the alleged mismatch between drift and the other evolutionary forces. Since genetic drift has no direction several authors tried to protect its status as a force: denying its lack of directionality, extending the notion of force and looking for a force in physics which also lacks of direction. I analyse these approaches, and although this strategy finally succeeds, (...) this discussion overlooks the crucial point on the debate between causalists and statisticalists: the causal status of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also (...) renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection. (shrink)

Extended mind remains a provocative approach to cognition and mentality. However, both those for and against this approach have tacitly accepted that cognition or mentality can be understood in terms of those sub personal processes ongoing during some task. I label this a process view of cognition (PV). Using Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach, I argue that proponents of extended mind should reject PV and instead endorse a ‘wide view’ of mentality. This wide view clarifies why the hypothesis of extended mind (HEM) (...) is incoherent. However, this view also indicates why the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) could be true. (shrink)

Sensorimotor theory claims that what you do and what you know how to do constitutes your visual experience. Central to the theory is the claim that such experience depends on a special kind of knowledge or understanding. I assess this commitment to knowledge in the light of three objections to the theory: the empirical implausibility objection, the learning/post-learning objection and the causal-constitutive objection. I argue that although the theory can respond to the first two objections, its commitment to know-how ultimately (...) renders it vulnerable to the third and arguably most serious objection. I then suggest that sensorimotor theory has two options: concede the causal-constitutive objection or challenge it. I shall argue for the latter. I will claim that a radical sensorimotor theory offers the best means of responding to this objection. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to grapple with the idea of philosophy as rigorous science from the point of view of Husserl‟s phenomenology in order to show that this idea may have an important contribution to the way in which the scientific character of sciences in general, and of human and social sciences in particular, is being conceived. As rigorous science, phenomenology emphasizes and investigates the a priori context of other sciences. In this way, it plays a vital role in (...) the development of every particular eidetic upon which any sciences rely. This eidetic (or the eidetic layer of any mature science) embraces the goal and strives to reach the objective of determining the valid sense of the fundamental notions used by the scientist in his research, without, nevertheless, stirring a radical questioning of this sense and of the ultimate validity of these notions. To define them requires passing from the usual level of inquiring of that particular science (the processes of dealing with facts and experiments) to the level (or meta-level) of a radical reflection on the sense or the meaning of the basic notions of the science in question (its own foundations). Philosophy as rigorous science connects the researcher´s assertions not only to the empirical state of affairs envisaged by his work, but, moreover and in a fundamental way, to their noematic content, to their intrinsic intentional meaning. Therefore, the idea of rigorous science elaborated in Husserl‟s phenomenology is heavy with the potential of clarifying the foundations and stakes of the research undertaken by the other sciences. (shrink)

Violence is somehow equivalent to Be Right? How can I be fair and non-violent? It depends on the receptor, in terms of social comunication.

The question of how we should engage with a philosopher’s racial thought is of particular importance when considering Kant, who can be viewed as particularly representative of Enlightenment philosophy. In this article I argue that we should take a stance of deep acknowledgment when considering Kant’s work both inside and outside the classroom. Taking a stance of deep acknowledgment should be understood as 1) taking Kant’s racial thought to be reflective of his moral character, 2) Kant being accountable for his (...) racial thought and 3) being willing to consider the possibility that Kant’s racial thought is consistent with and inextricable from his moral philosophy. Alternative forms of engaging with Kant’s racial work have either moral or pedagogical failings, which range from simply teaching the history of philosophy uncritically to outright deception. A stance of deep acknowledgement will allow philosophers to understand how Kant’s racial thought interacts with his moral philosophy and allow instructors to teach philosophy in a historically contextualized approach so as to not alienate students whose demographic was disparaged by Kant. (shrink)

REC or Radical Enactive (or Embodied) Cognition (Hutto and Myin, 2013) involves the claim that certain forms of mentality do not involve informational content and are instead to be equated with temporally and spatially extended physical interactions between an agent and the environment. REC also claims however that other forms of mentality do involve informational content and are scaffolded by socially and linguistically enabled practices. This seems to raise what can be called a cognitive gap question, namely, how do non-contentful (...) behaviours give rise to contentful behaviours? In this paper, I show how REC can tackle a certain understanding of this question. I argue that if REC were to endorse claims made by the later Wittgenstein, then REC could deny that there is any (synchronous) gap in our intelligent behaviour. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to show that the philosophy of Mihai Şora can both be seen as a phenomenological treatment of being and as a general theory of being in its most rigorous sense. At least, this philosophy could be designated as a phenomenological ontology which opens up itself towards an originally metaphysical perspective based on a specific type of knowledge of the sort of “global disclosure”. I will argue too that within Şora's philosophy one can have a twofold (...) approach: one starts from what we could call the phenomenology of the “common givenness” (“ordinary/ quotidian givenness”) and then proceeds (in a phenomenological manner) to a general theory of being, which is represented in Şora's philosophy by the constitution of the model of the “sphere with the null ray”; the second commences with the treatment of the ontological model as such (the model, which is already formed, represents in the end the symbolic structure of reality), that is, from this “general theory of being” (or of the constitution of being) and then advances step by step towards various (phenomenological) applications of this ontological model to the multifaceted spheres of the domain of being (the sphere of language, of temporality, of ethics, of the social, of politics, etc.). (shrink)

Drawing on a close reading of Pierre Bourdieu’s works, I offer five lessons for a science of crime and punishment: always historicize; dissect symbolic categories; produce embodied accounts; avoid state thought; and embrace commitment. I offer illustrative examples and demonstrate the practical implications of Bourdieu’s ideas, and I apply the lessons to a critique of orthodox criminology.

In this paper I aim to show that the issue of the constitution of time in Husserl’s thought can not be fully exhausted by a descriptive analysis of the immanent level of consciousness and it rather asks for a deeper search at a pre-immanent (and pre-subjective) level. The way Husserl developes his interpretation regarding the constitution of time leads the descriptive (phenomenological) method to an impasse. Because of this, the Husserlian analysis proceeds to some techniques which bear on what some (...) commentators called a constructive phenomenology. The central point that I argue for in this study is that the premise from which Husserl starts his examination of the constitution of time is ab initio problematic or debatable: that is, consciousness forms the origin of time and one could reach this source by following the path oppened by descriptive analysis. I will hold that time rather originates in the encounter between consciousness and objects or between consciousness and other consciousness (i.e. founded/originated in a relation). (shrink)

El Naturalismo Trascendental del Ultimo Wittgenstein The present article considers an internal tension in Wittgenstein's late philosophy. In what I call his 'naturalism', Wittgenstein circumscribes philosophical reflection to natural objects, to «making natural history». In his 'transcendentalism' he focuses on the «possibility of phenomena» and distinguishes philosophical method from the method of the natural sciences. I show that his 'transcendentalism' is present in his discussion of rules and prívate language, arguing for an interpretation in terms of a kantian type of (...) transcendental synthesis. But far from contradicting his 'naturalism', both tendencies are inseparable and essential to the main purpose of his Philosophical Investigations. (shrink)

to be, being and belonging, some point of departure categories to arrive to the conclusion that happyness is connecte to a feeling of possession, the Havinng. I revisit some ideaas of my PhD Text.

A logic path between moral principles of social organization of religious rules and the economiy of belief in industrial societies. I argue that some lifes may be like currency, a Good and a Bad Side, due to the dilema betwee profit and spiritual reasons.

Collective apologies on behalf of governments to historically mistreated minorities have become more common. It is unclear, however, how we should respond to these apologies and other practices that invoke collective responsibility for oppression (chapter 1). I review the current literature on collective responsibility to better understand the obstacles facing an account of collective responsibility for oppression (chapter 2). I then argue that we can make sense of these practices by holding powerful organized collectives (chapter 3) and privileged disorganized collectives (...) (chapter 4) responsible for oppression. These practices then can be what I call “morally legitimate” if they are confessions of self-blame, and this self-blame contains an element of collective-self protest (chapter 5). (shrink)

In my thesis, I examined the theories of Extended Mind, Extended Conscious Mind and Enactivism. Briefly, Extended Mind (Clark and Chalmers, 1998) is the claim that objects in the environment can, on occasion, form part of your mental processing. Extended Conscious Mind (Clark, 2009; Ward, 2012) is the claim that environmental objects can, on occasion, also form part of your conscious experience. Enactivism (Varela, Thompson and Rosch, 1991) is the claim that mind and experience are constituted by bodily actions. I (...) argued that although all three theories challenge the idea that the mind is solely located inside the head, they nonetheless disagree as to what this entails for our views about human mentality. For example, Extended Mind and Enactivism have differing views on how to understand the role the body plays in realising mind and experience. I concluded that only a certain variety of Enactivism (e.g. Hutto and Myin, 2013) offers a fresh approach to issues current in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

you can conspire. So do I. Reality, social or natural, supernatural, can conspire against you or in favour, it depends on the quality of your seeds...

Two challenges have faced policymakers during the Covid-19 pandemic: First, they must determine the reliability of expert testimony in the face of uncertainty; second, they must determine the relevance of different kinds of expertise with regard to particular decisions. I argue that both these problems can be fruitfully analyzed through the lens of trust by introducing an in-depth case study of Iceland’s handling of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. I contend that the problem of relevance highlights the limited (...) appeal of a thoroughly technocratic society. Value judgments, best realized through democratic processes, are always lurking in the background. (shrink)

I've tried to make an asset from social sciences to recognize somo philosophycal porpuses in teh relation betwee theory and practice in ethnographic context of southern Europe.

When the anthropologist has more solution to mentall ilness, i.e., medication and therapy, in vue to the richness of reality and social world.

is the subject of philosophy as it is from anthropology, i.e., the other? is alterlogy another science plus?

Slurs’ meaning is highly unstable. A slurring utterance like ‘Hey, F, where have you been?’ (where F is a slur) may receive a wide array of interpretations depending on various contextual factors such as the speaker’s social identity, their relationship to the target group, tone of voice, and more. Standard semantic, pragmatic, and non-content theories of slurs have proposed different mechanisms to account for some or all types of variability observed, but without providing a unified framework that allows us to (...) understand how different contextual factors simultaneously influence slurs’ interpretation. To address this issue, I argue that slurs convey dimensional qualities such as, e.g., ‘negative valence, neutral arousal, high dominance’ instead of discrete emotional categories such as ‘contempt’. Then, I translate this hypothesis into a game-theoretic model of slurs’ interpretation inspired by Heather Burnett’s pioneering work on identity construction. This new model, called ‘Affective Meaning Games’ (AMG), captures the variability of slurs and integrates pragmatic reasoning within an independently motivated psychological understanding of emotional states. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a version of the so-called conversational hypothesis of the ontogenetic connection between language and mindreading (Harris 1996, 2005; Van Cleave and Gauker 2010; Hughes et al. 2006). After arguing against a particular way of understanding the hypothesis (the communicative view), I will start from the justificatory view in philosophy of social cognition (Andrews 2012; Hutto 2004; Zawidzki 2013) to make the case for the idea that the primary function of belief and desire (...) attributions is to justify and normalize deviant patterns of behaviour. Following this framework, I elaborate upon the idea that development of folk psychological skills requires the subjects to engage in conversationally mediated joint and cooperative activities in order to acquire the conceptual capacity of ascribing propositional attitudes. After presenting the general version of the hypothesis, I present several testable sub-hypotheses and some psychological studies that give empirical plausibility to the hypothesis. (shrink)

I argue that same-sex divorce presents a different kind of potential constraint to the agency of persons pursuing the dissolution of their marriage; a constraint upon one’s counterstory and the reconstitution of one’s personal identity. The dialectic within the paper mirrors the movements that I have had to make as I have sought to constitute and reconstitute myself throughout my divorce process. Beginning from a juridical perspective, I examine how the constraints on same-sex divorce present constraints on one’s agency that (...) are antithetical to the spirit of a liberal democratic conception of freedom of movement. I then explore the role of narrative in my self-(re)constitution, as well as the limits of the narrative and counterstories, when the institutional framework of the State fails to acknowledge the change in my State-sanctioned personal relationship. I end by arguing that this view from the law ignores the ways in which we relationally constitute ourselves, and in so doing covers over the harms done to persons that find themselves in a married-yet-not state of limbo. (shrink)

Unless indigenous languages are revitalized in research and instruction, education itself will become the totalizing machine that will shut off spaces of discourse in the regions. This is due to the fact that language is the primary medium through which education and its cosmopolitan aims are carried out in pedagogical institutions. Knowledge, skills and principles are structurally transmitted in schools that employ the mainstream language either of the national, i.e., Filipino, or the international level, i.e., English, in instruction. But the (...) hegemony of the mainstream language, without discounting the cosmopolitan value of the aims of education, threatens to silence diverse voices of discourses that operate within local and regional spaces. This threat becomes real when the agents of the educational enterprise in the regions embrace the promise of cosmopolitanism at the expense of or to the forgetfulness of their own socio-cultural resources especially their language. (shrink)

This essay will explore three main themes. Firstly, I shall explore Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment in order to illustrate how the initial aftermath and destruction of World War Two required the necessity for western philosophy to become critical of Enlightenment’s negative side affects. Secondly, I shall illustrate how in consumerism and global capitalism the human subject becomes reduced to a commodity object that strives for social acceptance through economic activity. Thirdly, by analyzing Derrida’s account of western global domination (...) and its ‘autoimmunity’ as an account of western self destruction, I shall be able to declare the necessity for philosophy to transcend from its ‘ivory tower’ role to that of an international agency capable of rejuvenating the flawed political systems of today into systems that promote world peace, stability and most importantly heightening the awareness of individual subjects. (shrink)

the study of ants and insects com understand human behaviour and discourse, his politics and ways do keep alive some dreams that can come true.

A widespread view in philosophy claims that inner speech is closely tied to human metacognitive capacities. This so-called format view of inner speech considers that talking to oneself allows humans to gain access to their own mental states by forming metarepresentation states through the rehearsal of inner utterances (section 2). The aim of this paper is to present two problems to this view (section 3) and offer an alternative view to the connection between inner speech and metacognition (section 4). According (...) to this alternative, inner speech (meta)cognitive functions derivate from the set of commitments we mobilize in our communicative exchanges. After presenting this commitment-based approach, I address two possible objections (section 5). (shrink)

To illustrate the abounding confidence in which Plato’s Republic can help us understand crime, I shall explore three interrelated avenues. The first avenue will include societal themes such as leadership, the state-of-nation, national-cohesion, good governance, institutional memory, tradition and structural inadequacies. This will illustrate how flawed leadership and a flawed system inevitably expose a society to be plagued by crime.

I start by defining sentience and giving an analysis of the epistemological problems that plague its scientific study; this consists mainly in justifying that the attribution of sentience is underdetermined by the data. Second I show that as a result of this situation of underdetermination, most of the types of arguments used to infer sentience from the data are inconclusive and lead to a stalemate. Third, I argue that the stalemates arise from a foundationalist epistemology which needlessly leads to skeptical (...) conclusions; as an alternative, I propose to adopt a coherentist framework and defend a process of ‘epistemic iteration’ (Chang 2004) within that framework, which I argue gives us a way out of the underdetermination. (shrink)

This paper argues that all-purpose pejoratives such as ‘jerk’ or ‘bastard’ are just plain vanilla descriptions of personality traits that are generally seen as impairing for the self and for interpersonal relationships across different contexts. Thus, all-purpose pejoratives derogate their referents through generalized conversational implicatures: it is common knowledge that those who use these terms accept certain kind of (negative) evaluations and that uses of those terms express such evaluations. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it (...) can be extended to more ‘thick’ pejoratives such as ‘wimp’ or ‘chicken’, which, as Kaplan (1998) himself suggested, are ‘purely descriptive’ of personality traits that are generally seen as ‘personal failings’. Before defending this theory, I criticize i) the standard assumption that allpurpose pejoratives are expressive and ii) the alternative semantic view that allpurpose pejoratives are conventionally associated with a judge parameter. (shrink)

Autonomy as a desonesty, i.e., exogamic behaviour does not betray family values.

God in me, God of Me, do I need a Lord, cannot be myself a Lord, a God?

Evolution of good will during spring days on a southern country, with lots of good food and rede wine (I lost my walet).

Swear words are highly colloquial expressions that have the capacity to signal the speaker's affective states, i.e., to display the speaker's feelings with respect to a certain stimulus. For this reason, swear words are often called 'expressives'. Which linguistic mechanisms allow swear words display affective states, and, more importantly, how can such 'affective content' be characterized in a theory of meaning? Even though research on expressive meaning has produced models that integrate the affective aspects of swear words in a compositional (...) framework, there is extensive evidence that swear words cannot be assigned a single or stable affective interpretation across contexts. For example, even though expletive adjectives (e.g., 'damn'), particularistic insults (e.g., 'bastard') and slurs (e.g., 'wop') typically express (and elicit) negatively valenced affective states, they can also be interpreted positively in some contexts. Thus, inspired in recent developments in formal sociolinguistics, I propose an 'indexical' approach to affective meaning. Under this approach, an affective expression is associated with a set of affective qualities, anyone of which may emerge at a given context depending on the interpreter's prior assumptions about the speaker's affective states and/or relation with the target of the swear word. To define this set, also called 'indexical field', I will use the dimensions pleasure, arousal and dominance, standardly employed in cognitive psychology to characterize and measure affective episodes. In this dissertation, thus, the affective meaning of an expression is given by the set of affective states it typically conveys within a linguistic community, but its interpretation at a given context is established by taking into account the interpreter's prior assumptions about the speaker's affective states and/or attitudes with respect to the target of the affective expression. (shrink)

What is Happiness? Where my mind lies? Who am I? What am I?

In the following review of Hohwy ‘The Predictive Mind’, I argue that enactive considerations can be used to challenge Hohwy’s claim that the brain is a ‘truth tracker’.

Hands undoubtedly matter. Few, I suspect, would disagree. Yet The Hand, an Organ of the Mind uses this commonplace to dispel what is termed the “intellectualist illusion” , the illusion that the things we do with our hands are always and everywhere guided by an in-the-head centralised planner. Radman’s spirited collection of essays makes the point that we are not the sort of “centralised knowers” that the history of cognitive science might have us believe. Rather the manual is primary: it (...) not only structures our encounters with the world; it is also constitutive of those encounters. We are in fact manual beings .In support of this proposal, Radman has marshaled a wealth of research from a wide range of philosophers, scientists and even artists. In particular, this collection brings to the fore how past and present phenomenological research and 4e paradigms in cognitive science all have important lessons t .. (shrink)