This summary is not exactly the way I would have done it myself but I must admit that my writing is sometimes a challenge to read. So I asked an AI to do this summary expecting that it will give an easily understandable although not totally accurate view on Ontology of Knowledge and from this general understanding help the reader to read the original papers. Jean-Louis Boucon’s works, "Introduction to the Ontology of Knowledge" and "Time, Space, and World as (...) Knowledge," delve into the intricate nature of reality, meaning, and the process of knowing. Boucon challenges traditional dichotomies in philosophy and science, presenting a cohesive framework where the knowing subject and the world are intertwined aspects of a single dynamic reality. His ideas provide a robust foundation for exploring ontological and epistemological questions, including the interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

A prominent version of emotional cognitivism is the view that emotions are preceded by awareness of value. In a recent paper, Jonathan Mitchell (2019) has attacked this view (which he calls the content-priority view). According to him, extant suggestions for the relevant type of pre-emotional evaluative awareness are all problematic. Unless these problems can be overcome, he argues, the view does not represent a plausible competitor to rivaling cognitivist views. As Mitchell supposes, the view is not mandatory since its core (...) motivations can be accommodated by competing views, too. I argue that Mitchell's case against the content-priority view is unconvincing as it misconceives the principal motivation for the view. As I show, properly reconstructed, this motivation provides a strong case for the indispensability of the view to any adequate cognitivist treatment of emotion. Moreover, Mitchell's survey of candidates for pre-emotional value awareness can be seen to rest on problematic phenomenological assumptions. (shrink)

It is popular to hold that emotions are evaluative. On the standard account, the evaluative character of emotion is understood in epistemic terms: emotions apprehend or make us aware of value properties. As this account is commonly elaborated, emotions are experiences with evaluative intentional content. In this paper, I am concerned with a recent alternative proposal on how emotions afford awareness of value. This proposal does not ascribe evaluative content to emotions, but instead conceives of them as evaluative at the (...) level of intentional mode or attitude. I first argue that this proposal fails to make emotions intelligible as value apprehensions. There are reasons to suppose that emotions do not apprehend value to begin with, but are related to values in a different, non-epistemic sense. I then go on to show that the notion of an evaluative intentional mode can still help elucidate the evaluative character of emotion. I argue that there is a plausible non-epistemic understanding of the view that emotions are evaluative modes. On this account, emotions are not ways of apprehending values, but ways of acknowledging values. (shrink)

It is a popular thought that emotions play an important epistemic role. Thus, a considerable number of philosophers find it compelling to suppose that emotions apprehend the value of objects and events in our surroundings. I refer to this view as the Epistemic View of emotion. In this paper, my concern is with a rivaling picture of emotion, which has so far received much less attention. On this account, emotions do not constitute a form of epistemic access to specific axiological (...) aspects of their objects. Instead it proposes that they are ways of taking a stand or position on the world. I refer to this as the Position-Taking View of emotion. Whilst some authors seem sympathetic to this view, this it has so far not been systematically motivated and elaborated. In this paper, I fill this gap and propose a more adequate account of our emotional engagement with the world than the predominant epistemic paradigm. I start by highlighting the specific way in which emotions are directed at something, which I contrast with the intentionality of perception and other forms of apprehension. I then go on to offer a specific account of the valence of emotion and show how this account and the directedness of emotions makes them intelligible as a way of taking a position on something. (shrink)

In todays educational landscape, adapting teaching methods to the digital age is important. While traditional approaches remain essential, they may not fully engage students in multimedia-rich environments. This study evaluates multimedia tools effectiveness in teaching Filipino subjects to Grade 10 learners at Tikalaan National High School for School Year 2023-2024. It examines the impact of such tools on academic performance and student attitudes by comparing pretest and posttest results between control and experimental groups and its implications in teaching Filipino to (...) Grade 10 learners. The study involves Grade 10 students divided into two groups of thirty-five (35) both the Control Group and the Experimental Group. Data collection involved the Division-Based Quarterly Assessment for both pretest and posttest evaluations to measure academic progress. Additionally, a researcher-created survey is made to assess students attitudes towards multimedia tools. Respondents were selected through purposive sampling, focusing on characteristics relevant to the studys objectives. A quasi-experimental design was used, comparing the pretest and posttest results of both groups to determine multimedia tools effectiveness. Statistical analyses, including T-test, ANOVA, and F-test, were used to evaluate the significance of observed differences. The study reveals significant improvement in academic performance and a positive shift in attitudes towards multimedia tools among the experimental group. These findings suggest that multimedia tools can enhance learners academic performance and foster greater student engagement. It underscores the importance of integrating multimedia tools into educational practices to improve teaching and learning outcomes. Recommendations include incorporating multimedia into the curriculum and providing professional development for educators to maximize these tools effectiveness. (shrink)

There is a wide range of things we do out of emotion. For example, we smile with pleasure, our voices drop when we are sad, we recoil in shock or jump for joy, we apologize to others out of remorse. It is uncontroversial that some of these behaviors are actions. Clearly, apologizing is an action if anything is. Things seem less clear in the case of other emotional behaviors. Intuitively, the drop in a sad person’s voice is something that happens (...) to her, rather than something she actively performs. Perhaps more interestingly, even jumping for joy can seem a problematic case: although its execution involves the active performance of certain movements, it has been argued to contrast, e.g., with an act of apology, in that it is not performed in order to achieve some end, such as repairing a relationship. This can make this behavior seem considerably different from paradigm actions. Our central concern in this paper is with which emotional behaviors should be classed as actions and why... (shrink)

Original title : 「ドガの『舞姫』」『深田康算全集』[Œuvres complètes de Fukada Yasukazu]. Machida, Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1972–1973, 3 : 9–15.

It is popular to hold that our primary epistemic access to specific response-dependent properties like the fearsome or admirable (or so-called ‘affective properties’) is constituted by the corresponding emotion. I argue that this view is incompatible with a widely held meta-ethical view, according to which affective properties have deontic force. More specifically, I argue that this view cannot accommodate for the requirement that deontic entities provide guidance. If affective properties are to guide the formation of the corresponding emotion, our primary (...) access to them cannot be provided by that same emotion. (shrink)

The paper challenges the assumption, common amongst philosophers, that the reality described in the fundamental theories of microphysics is all the reality we have. It will be argued that this assumption is in fact incompatible with the nature of such theories. It will be shown further that the macro-world of three-dimensional bodies and of such qualitative structures as colour and sound can be treated scientifically on its own terms, which is to say not only from the perspective of psychology but (...) also ontologically. A new sort of emergentist position will be defended, one which yields the basis of a method for describing the perceptually salient macroscopic world in mathematical terms. Broadly, it will be argued that the macroscopic world exists in virtue of certain specific sorts of boundary-patterns in the field of what is captured by the theories of microphysics. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that emotions are evaluative. Moreover, many authors suppose that emotions are important or valuable as evaluations. According to the currently dominant version of cognitivism, emotions are evaluative insofar as they make us aware of value properties of their intentional objects. In attributing to emotions an epistemic role, this view conceives of them as epistemically valuable. In this paper, I argue that proponents of this account mischaracterize the evaluative character of emotions and, a fortiori, their value. Moreover, (...) I propose an alternative view of emotional evaluation, according to which emotions are practically rather than epistemically important. As I argue, emotions are ways of acknowledging their intentional objects as (dis)valuable. As such, they do not apprehend values but make them count. I elaborate this idea by drawing an analogy with legal and political sanctions. The resulting view has it that emotions are practically important in that they affirm the cares and concerns which serve as standards of emotional evaluation. (shrink)

According to a well-known view in the philosophy of mind, intentional attitudes by their very nature satisfy requirements of rationality (e.g. Davidson 1980; Dennett 1987; Millar 2004). This view (which I shall call Constitutivism) features prominently as the ‘principle of minimal rationality’ in de Sousa’s monograph The Rationality of Emotion (1987). By explicating this principle in terms of the notion of the formal object of an attitude, de Sousa articulates an interesting and original version of Constitutivism, which differs in important (...) respects from other extant versions. In this paper, I explore this version of Constitutivism against the background of recent developments in the theory of rationality and make explicit its ramifications for the long-standing dispute over whether the mind is essentially normative. My focus will be on how to conceive of the form of the rationality requirements that attitudes as such must satisfy according to this principle. I argue that, although de Sousa seems officially to endorse a structuralist conception of rationality, according to which these requirements are requirements of coherence, his considerations on formal objects suggest that they are more aptly conceived in terms of a reasons-responsive conception of rationality. I further argue that which of these two readings we choose makes a significant difference to the prospect of vindicating the essential normativity of mind by invoking the principle of minimal rationality. (shrink)

The Sure-Thing Principle famously appears in Savage’s axiomatization of Subjective Expected Utility. Yet Savage introduces it only as an informal, overarching dominance condition motivating his separability postulate P2 and his state-independence postulate P3. Once these axioms are introduced, by and large, he does not discuss the principle any more. In this note, we pick up the analysis of the Sure-Thing Principle where Savage left it. In particular, we show that each of P2 and P3 is equivalent to a dominance condition; (...) that they strengthen in different directions a common, basic dominance axiom; and that they can be explicitly combined in a unified dominance condition that is a candidate formal statement for the Sure-Thing Principle. Based on elementary proofs, our results shed light on some of the most fundamental properties of rational choice under uncertainty. In particular they imply, as corollaries, potential simplifications for Savage’s and the Anscombe- Aumann axiomatizations of Subjective Expected Utility. Most surprisingly perhaps, they reveal that in Savage’s axiomatization, P3 can be weakened to a natural strengthening of so-called Obvious Dominance. (shrink)

Physical reality is all the reality we have, and so physical theory in the standard sense is all the ontology we need. This, at least, was an assumption taken almost universally for granted by the advocates of exact philosophy for much of the present century. Every event, it was held, is a physical event, and all structure in reality is physical structure. The grip of this assumption has perhaps been gradually weakened in recent years as far as the sciences of (...) mind are concerned. When it comes to the sciences of external reality, however, it continues to hold sway, so that contemporary philosophers B even while devoting vast amounts of attention to the language we use in describing the world of everyday experience B still refuse to see this world as being itself a proper object of theoretical concern. Here, however, we shall argue that the usual conception of physical reality as constituting a unique bedrock of objectivity reflects a rather archaic view as to the nature of physics itself and is in fact incompatible with the development of the discipline since Newton. More specifically, we shall seek to show that the world of qualitative structures, for example of colour and sound, or the commonsense world of coloured and sounding things, can be treated scientifically (ontologically) on its own terms, and that such a treatment can help us better to understand the structures both of physical reality and of cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the problem of Bayle's skepticism. I show that he is not a wholesale skeptic. Rather, he thinks that reason is plagued by internal conflicts. But its principles, which clash with each other, can be adopted separately from each other. It is often what we have to do when dealing with metaphysical problems. This also entails that reason is not to be rejected as a whole when it happens to be contradicted by faith; only some of (...) its principles have to be denied, and solely in that case. Further, Bayle believes that we possess absolute certainly in our knowledge of ethical principles. I show how this is compatible with his relativism in other domains by putting back his contention in the context of Reformed thought. (shrink)

Est-il possible de parler de ce qui n’est pas ou d’y penser sans présupposer une forme d’être pour cela même que nous pensons ne pas exister? La vieille énigme parménidienne, qui hante toujours la philosophie contemporaine, est au cœur non seulement de la philosophie médiévale mais aussi des études médiévales, comme en témoigne le récent ouvrage d’Alain de Libera sur la référence vide. L’objet de cette étude est en comparaison beaucoup plus...

In what is quite possibly the most famous passage of the De revolutionibus, Copernicus implies that nobody could ever place this supreme flaming torch that is the Sun in another or better place than that from which it can illuminate everything simultaneously, namely the centre of this extremely beautiful temple that is our world. Considering the fact that he leaves an interrogatory twist to this argument of convenience, and since he makes this statement without any justification as it seems entirely (...) evident to him, certain Copernicans choose to illustrate this by means of an analogy: if indeed the Sun must be positioned thus, it is because the most appropriate place for the torch intended to illuminate the room is at its centre, and not in one of its corners. Despite the heliosophy of the Renaissance having been shared by both geocentrists and Copernicans alike, this "torch" argument does not appear to have achieved much success: rarely adopted by the Copernican camp, it was even contested by some of them; as for the geocentrists, it held no appeal for them whatsoever. Did this argument of convenience therefore not benefit from the self-evidence attributed to it by Copernicus, and from, in his wake, it's continued support by a good many commentators? As is often the case when it comes to the history of thought, the pseudo-obviousness of this argument is merely the fruit of a blatant anachronism: presenting heliocentrism as the cosmological system that finally grants the Sun its worthy centrality by placing it in the centre of the room and not in a corner, is to ignore the fact that this star of the day already enjoyed, in geocentrism, a centrality esteemed to be perfectly in keeping with both its dignity and its inherent illuminative function. Having lost their grasp on this worldview that no longer belonged to them, the Copernicans thus put forward an argument which, for the geocentrists, is worthless. Yet they could have argued the objective superiority of their centrality over that accorded to the Sun by geocentrism: while the latter is only numerical, on a purely planetary scale, and frankly fictitious, the former is thoroughly spatial, of cosmic proportions and, at least on first approximation, very real. In order to produce arguments of convenience that could carry their own weight, the protagonists of the new cosmology would have benefited from getting to know the world vision of their adversaries a little better instead of addressing them from their own point of view; similarly, instead of treating as an obvious fact that which is only evident to one of the two parties present, historians of scientific thought would also be well advised to have a better understanding of the world vision of those who history now considers as the losers! (shrink)

Le réalisme scientifique occupe une place centrale dans le système philosophique de Mario Bunge. Au cœur de cette thèse, on trouve l’affirmation selon laquelle nous pouvons connaître le monde partiellement. Il s’ensuit que les théories scientifiques ne sont pas totalement vraies ou totalement fausses, mais plutôt partiellement vraies et partiellement fausses. Ces énoncés sur la connaissance scientifique, à première vue plausible pour quiconque est familier avec la pratique scientifique, demandent néanmoins à être clarifiés, précisés et, ultimement, à être inclus dans (...) un cadre théorique plus large et rigoureux. Depuis ses toutes premières publications sur ces questions et jusqu’à récemment, Mario Bunge n’a cessé d’interpeller les philosophes afin qu’ils développent une théorie, au sens propre du terme, de la vérité partielle afin de clarifier les enjeux épistémologiques liés au réalisme scientifique. Bunge a lui-même proposé plusieurs parties de cette théorie au fil des années, mais aucune de ces propositions ne l’a satisfait pleinement et la construction de cette théorie demeure un problème entier. Dans ce texte, nous passerons rapidement en revue certaines des approches proposées par Bunge dans ses publications et nous esquisserons certaines pistes qui devraient servir à tout le moins de desiderata pour la construction d’une théorie de la vérité partielle. (shrink)

We reexamine some of the classic problems connected with the use of cardinal utility functions in decision theory, and discuss Patrick Suppes's contributions to this field in light of a reinterpretation we propose for these problems. We analytically decompose the doctrine of ordinalism, which only accepts ordinal utility functions, and distinguish between several doctrines of cardinalism, depending on what components of ordinalism they specifically reject. We identify Suppes's doctrine with the major deviation from ordinalism that conceives of utility functions as (...) representing preference differences, while being non- etheless empirically related to choices. We highlight the originality, promises and limits of this choice-based cardinalism. (shrink)

Structuralism has recently moved center stage in philosophy of mathematics. One of the issues discussed is the underlying logic of mathematical structuralism. In this paper, I want to look at the dual question, namely the underlying structures of logic. Indeed, from a mathematical structuralist standpoint, it makes perfect sense to try to identify the abstract structures underlying logic. We claim that one answer to this question is provided by categorical logic. In fact, we claim that the latter can be seen—and (...) probably should be seen—as being a structuralist approach to logic and it is from this angle that categorical logic is best understood. (shrink)

L'Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Pierre Duhem est contesté et rejeté à la fois par ceux qui y voient une interpré­­tation apologétique de l'affaire Galilée et par ceux qui refusent d'y perce­voir un plaidoyer historique en faveur du phénoména­­lisme duhé­mien. Les uns et les autres négligent donc cette mo­­nographie au sein de l'œuvre duhémienne. Sans nier la portée apologétique de cet ouvrage, cet article entend démontrer qu'avec cet Essai, Duhem a surtout voulu établir, au niveau histo­rique, la (...) validité de sa position phénoménaliste dont la justesse philosophique avait déjà été démon­trée, selon lui, dans La théorie physique et ce avant même que toute l'argumen­tation historique de cette thèse ne soit ultérieurement déve­lop­­pée dans Le système du monde. Il apparaît alors que cet Essai s'intègre parfaitement, en amont comme en aval, dans l'inté­­gralité de l'œuvre duhémienne. ––– The Essai sur la notion de théorie physique by Pierre Duhem has been contested and rejected both by those who see it as an apologetic for the Galileo affair, but also by those who refuse to see in this essay an historical argument in favour of Duhem's phenomenology. However it would appear that both groups of critics have not taken sufficient notice of this monograph in Duhem's works. Without wanting to underestimate the apolo­getic intention of Duhem's assay, this article argues that the author desired to establish historically the validity of a pheno­menalist position. This is a position which the author considered to have been already philosophically established in La Théorie physique. These are the same historical arguments which were later to be developed in Le système du monde. It would appear that the Essai can be integrated seamlessly into the entire corpus of Duhem's work, developing previous arguments and establishing themes which were developed in later works. (shrink)

_Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism_ is a classic critique of France's policies in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and inspired much subsequent writing on colonialism, post-colonialism, politics, and literature. It includes Sartre's celebrated preface to Fanon's classic _Wretched_ _of the Earth. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism _ had a profound impact on French intellectual life, inspiring many other influential French thinkers and critics of colonialism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida.

It is widely held that under ordinal utility, utility differences are ill-defined. Allegedly, for these to be well-defined (without turning to choice under risk or the like), one should adopt as a new kind of primitive quaternary relations, instead of the traditional binary relations underlying ordinal utility functions. Correlatively, it is also widely held that the key structural properties of quaternary relations are entirely arbitrary from an ordinal point of view. These properties would be, in a nutshell, the hallmark of (...) cardinal utility. While much is obviously true in these two tenets, this note explains why, as stated, they should be abandoned. Any ordinal utility function induces a rich quaternary relation. There is such a thing as ordinal utility differences. Furthermore, this induced quaternary relation respects, apart from completeness, the most standard structural properties of quaternary relations. These properties are, from an ordinal point of view, anything but arbitrary; from a quaternary perspective only completeness should be considered the hallmark—if any—of cardinal utility. These facts are explained to be especially relevant to the critical appreciation of the ordinalist methodology. (shrink)

Consider a subjective expected utility preference relation. It is usually held that the representations which this relation admits differ only in one respect, namely, the possible scales for the measurement of utility. In this paper, I discuss the fact that there are, metaphorically speaking, two additional dimensions along which infinitely many more admissible representations can be found. The first additional dimension is that of state-dependence. The second—and, in this context, much lesser-known—additional dimension is that of act-dependence. The simplest implication of (...) their usually neglected existence is that the standard axiomatizations of subjective expected utility fail to provide the measurement of subjective probability with satisfactory behavioral foundations. (shrink)

Supra-Bayesianism is the Bayesian response to learning the opinions of others. Probability pooling constitutes an alternative response. One natural question is whether there are cases where probability pooling gives the supra-Bayesian result. This has been called the problem of Bayes-compatibility for pooling functions. It is known that in a common prior setting, under standard assumptions, linear pooling cannot be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. We show by contrast that geometric pooling can be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. Indeed, we show that, under certain assumptions, geometric and (...) Bayes-compatible pooling are equivalent. Granting supra-Bayesianism its usual normative status, one upshot of our study is thus that, in a certain class of epistemic contexts, geometric pooling enjoys a normative advantage over linear pooling as a social learning mechanism. We discuss the philosophical ramifications of this advantage, which we show to be robust to variations in our statement of the Bayes-compatibility problem. (shrink)

Cette note épistémologique porte sur le statut, en théorie de la décision, des concepts d’attitude par rapport au risque. A première vue, l’analyse axiomatique ne les exploite pas, ce qui reflète une certaine neutralité des modèles de décision au sujet de l’attitude par rapport au risque. Mais un examen plus poussé met en valeur la variation conditionnelle et le renforcement de l’attitude par rapport au risque, qui rattachent les concepts d’attitude par rapport au risque à l’analyse axiomatique.

It is sometimes alleged that the study of emotion and the study of value are currently pursued as relatively autonomous disciplines. As Kevin Mulligan notes, “the philosophy and psychology of emotions pays little attention to the philosophy of value and the latter pays only a little more attention to the former.” (2010b, 475). Arguably, the last decade has seen more of a rapprochement between these two domains than used to be the norm (cf. e.g. Roeser & Todd 2014). But there (...) still seems to be considerable potential for exchange and dialogue if the situation is compared with their intimate relationship in central strands of early realist phenomenology. The philosopher perhaps most representative of this ecumenical approach is Husserl’s early student Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977). From the very early stages of his philosophical career, Hildebrand has developed one of the most original, comprehensive and nuanced accounts of emotions at whose core is a detailed examination of their connection to value. While his central concern with the ethical significance of our affective life is in many ways continuous with Scheler’s work and draws crucially on Reinach’s philosophy of mind, Hildebrand’s own reflections considerably expand on and substantially modify the picture of the ontology and normative role of emotions defended by these authors. In this article, I reconstruct Hildebrand’s view of emotions with a particular focus on those aspects which represent his most distinctive contribution to this subject. (shrink)

In this paper, we look at Bourbaki’s work as a case study for the notion of mathematical style. We argue that indeed Bourbaki exemplifies a mathematical style, namely the structuralist style.

In this paper, following the claims made by various mathematicians, I try to construct a theory of levels of abstraction. I first try to clarify the basic components of the abstract method as it developed in the first quarter of the 20th century. I then submit an explication of the notion of levels of abstraction. In the final section, I briefly explore some of main philosophical consequences of the theory.

This paper explores a currently popular view in the philosophy of emotion, according to which emotions constitute a specific form of evaluative aspect-perception (cf. esp. Roberts 2003, Döring 2004, Slaby 2008). On this view, adequate or fitting emotions play an important epistemic roe vis à vis evaluative knowledge. The paper specifically asks how to conceive of the adequacy or fittingness conditions of emotion. Considering the specific, relational nature of the evaluative properties disclosed by emotions, it is argued that a suitable (...) standard of fittingness has both a world-involving and person-involving aspect: Fitting emotions require both a fundamentum in re as well as a fundamentum in persona. (shrink)

A study is reported testing two hypotheses about a close parallel relation between indicative conditionals, if A then B , and conditional bets, I bet you that if A then B . The first is that both the indicative conditional and the conditional bet are related to the conditional probability, P(B|A). The second is that de Finetti's three-valued truth table has psychological reality for both types of conditional— true , false , or void for indicative conditionals and win , lose (...) , or void for conditional bets. The participants were presented with an array of chips in two different colours and two different shapes, and an indicative conditional or a conditional bet about a random chip. They had to make judgements in two conditions: either about the chances of making the indicative conditional true or false or about the chances of winning or losing the conditional bet. The observed distributions of responses in the two conditions were generally related to the conditional probability, supporting the first hypothesis. In addition, a majority of participants in further conditions chose the third option, “void”, when the antecedent of the conditional was false, supporting the second hypothesis. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, contrary to the view held by most philosophers of mathematics, Bourbaki’s technical conception of mathematical structuralism is relevant to philosophy of mathematics. In fact, we believe that Bourbaki has captured the core of any mathematical structuralism.

Fefermans argument is indeed convincing in a certain context, it can be dissolved entirely by modifying the context appropriately.

One of the key features of modern mathematics is the adoption of the abstract method. Our goal in this paper is to propose an explication of that method that is rooted in the history of the subject.

Categorical foundations and set-theoretical foundations are sometimes presented as alternative foundational schemes. So far, the literature has mostly focused on the weaknesses of the categorical foundations. We want here to concentrate on what we take to be one of its strengths: the explicit identification of so-called canonical maps and their role in mathematics. Canonical maps play a central role in contemporary mathematics and although some are easily defined by set-theoretical tools, they all appear systematically in a categorical framework. The key (...) element here is the systematic nature of these maps in a categorical framework and I suggest that, from that point of view, one can see an architectonic of mathematics emerging clearly. Moreover, they force us to reconsider the nature of mathematical knowledge itself. Thus, to understand certain fundamental aspects of mathematics, category theory is necessary (at least, in the present state of mathematics). (shrink)

Dieser Forschungsbericht gibt einen Überblick über die aktuelle Debatte über motivierende Gründe in der Handlungs- und Erkenntnistheorie. Folgende drei Fragen werden schwerpunktmäßig behandelt: a) Was für eine Art von Entität sind motivierende Gründe? b) Welche Beziehung besteht zwischen einer Handlung oder Einstellung und ihren motivierenden Gründen? c) Welche kognitiven Bedingungen gelten für die Zuschreibung motivierender Gründe?

Worldwide populations are aging with economic development as a result of public health initiatives and advances in therapeutic discoveries. Since 1850, life expectancy has advanced by 1 year for every four. Accompanying this change is the rapid development of anti‐aging science. There are three schools of thought in the field of aging science. One perspective is the life course approach, which considers that aging is a good and natural process to be embraced as a necessary and positive aspect of life, (...) where the aim is to improve the quality of existing lifespan and “compress” morbidity. Another view is that aging is undesirable, and that rejuvenation and indeed immortality are possible since the biological basis of aging is understood, and therefore, strategies are possible for engineering negligible senescence. Finally, a hybrid approach is that life span can be extended by anti‐aging medicines but with uncertain effects on health. While these advances offer much promise, the ethical perspectives are seldom discussed in cross‐disciplinary settings. This article discusses some of the key ethical issues arising from recent advances in biogerontology. (shrink)

We can only know what determines us as being and by the fact that it determines us as being. Our knowledge is therefore logically limited to what determines us as being. Since representation is defined as the act that makes knowledge dicible, our representation is logically limited to what dynamically determines us as being. Our representation is included in our becoming. Nothing that we represent, no infinite, can exceed the mere necessity of our becoming. The world, my physical being and (...) my consciousness are subsumed by the necessity of my becoming. We know nothing but “we become” To the question "Is there anything else to know?" we can give no logical answer -/- Summary: Reality is pure logical interdependence, immanent, formless, unspeakable. Logos is a principle of order in this interdependence. Individuation is the necessary asymptote of any instance of the Logos. Each knowing subject is Individuation, a mode of order among infinites of infinites of possible modes of order. Everything that appears to the subject as Existing participates in his Individuation. This convergence into Individuation defines a perspective that gives meaning. The subject is representation. It is in this representation that exist the subject, objects and laws of the world. Without subject there are no objects, no laws, no framework. The representation is not isomorphism but morphogenesis. The physical world and the Spirit have the same logical nature: they are categories of representation. The representation is animated because meaning is an Act. Representation is limited by a horizon of meaning. Below this horizon the subject represents the universe and itself. Beyond this horizon there is no prevailing space, time or form. The predicate expresses, below the horizon of meaning, a necessity whose source is beyond this horizon, unfathomable. The OK is neither materialism nor idealism and frees itself from any psychological preconceptions. The OK does not propose an "other reality" than that described by common sense or science, but another mode of representation. The OK is compatible with the current state of science, while offering new interpretive avenues. The OK differs from ontic structural realism (OSR) in various ways: Just like being, the relationship is representation, The knowing subject is present in any representation, the real is non-founded. (shrink)

Tradução do livro: Sociologias da alimentação: os comedores e o espaço social alimentar. Florianópolis, Editora da UFSC, 2004, 311 páginas. Obra traduzida juntamente com Rossana Pacheco da Costa Proença e Carmen Silvia Rial. ISBN 85.328.0290-7. [Título original: Sociologies de l'alimentation: Les mangeurs et l'espace social alimentair. Obra publicada originalmente pela PUF, Paris, 2002. Edição original 288 páginas. ISBN: 213050643. Janeiro 2003, 2e édition. Etnologia-Antropologia].