Christian apologists, like Willian Lane Craig and Stephen T. Davis, argue that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is reasonable because it provides the best explanation of the available evidence. In this article, I refute that thesis. To do so, I lay out how the logic of inference to the best explanation (IBE) operates, including what good explanations must be and do by definition, and then apply IBE to the issue at hand. Multiple explanations—including (what I will call) The Resurrection Hypothesis, The (...) Lie Hypothesis, The Coma Hypothesis, The Imposter Hypothesis, and The Legend Hypothesis—will be considered. While I will not attempt to rank them all from worst to best, what I will reveal is how and why The Legend Hypothesis is unquestionably the best explanation, and The Resurrection Hypothesis is undeniably the worst. Consequently, not only is Craig and Davis’ conclusion mistaken, but belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus is irrational. In presenting this argument, I do not take myself to be breaking new ground; Robert Cavin and Carlos Colombetti have already presented a Bayesian refutation of Craig and Davis’ arguments. But I do take myself to be presenting an argument that the average person (and philosopher) can follow. It is my goal for the average person (and philosopher) to be able to clearly understand how and why the hypothesis “God supernaturally raised Jesus from the dead” fails utterly as an explanation of the evidence that Christian apologist cite for Jesus’ resurrection. (shrink)

This essay aims to clarify the debate over same-sex unions by comparing it to the fourth-century conflict concerning the nature of Jesus Christ. Although some suppose that the council of Nicaea reiterated what Christians had always believed, the Nicene theology championed by Athanasius was a dramatic innovation that only won out through protracted struggle. Similarly, despite the widespread assumption that Christian tradition univocally condemns homosexuality, the concept of sexuality is a nineteenth-century invention with no exact analogue in the ancient world. (...) Neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality is addressed directly in Christian tradition; for this reason, the significance of older authorities for the modern debate is necessarily indirect. The dichotomy between progressive and conservative positions is therefore misguided: it is necessary neither to abandon tradition for the sake of progress nor to oppose innovation for the sake of fidelity. (shrink)

The “theses of Alcalá” were two controversial statements defended by certain Jesuits at the University of Alcalá de Henares in 1601. One of them was perceived by the Pope as particularly offensive: “It does not belong to Faith that this concrete man, for example, Clement VIII, is the Roman Pontiff”. When Pope Clement learned of this theological act, the Spanish Inquisition intervened, since it attempted to prevent the Supreme Pontiff from reserving the cause for himself. In this article, we delve (...) into these events thanks to several hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Among these documents we highlight several by F. Peña, a Spaniard who interpreted this statement as a subterfuge by the Society of Jesus to avoid the supposedly imminent condemnation of Luis de Molina, a Jesuit whose book on divine predestination and human freedom was being examined in Rome at the time. The documents transcribed here provide us with new details, such as the precise text of the conclusions defended in Alcalá. In addition, it is noteworthy that Peña was the first to understand correctly the position of the Dominican Domingo Báñez, because according to him it does belong to faith that Clement VIII is Pope, even though not in a primary way. (shrink)

This article deals with the action of the Divine Word in the history of salvation by studying the Lectura super Ioannem. The Divine Word expresses perfectly the essence of God by way of intellect. When the Father intends to manifest Himself ad extra, He speaks through His Word. Creatures represent a very imperfect likeness of God. In the prophetic word the Son speaks with human words; however, the only voice entirely united to the Divine Word is the humanity of Jesus. (...) Christ, especially in His paschal mystery, constitutes the culmination of God’s revelation. Even in the beatific vision, the Word will be the mediator of our knowledge of the Father. (shrink)

The influence of St. Teresa of Jesus in St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer is well known, but it was especially stressed in his writings. This paper concentrates on the most famous book of St. Josemaría, The Way. The presence of Teresian thought in this work is researched, considering the way Escrivá integrates it in his personal doctrine, and particularly how he adopts it in order to establish the cornerstone of his message: contemplation in daily life.

From religion to philosophy to science, all human systems of definition are formed by human brains. The nature and limits of the human brain are the nature and limits of those systems. This essay shows how the human brain works normally then unusually, and what this reveals about the limits of human knowledge. There are many conditions and instances where the brain processes information unusually, including mental disorders, physical events, and drug use. This essay focuses on the neurological events called (...) mystical experiences. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca establecer el origen y desarrollo del concepto de ley natural en Tomás de Aquino, especialmente la relación que se establece entre razón y voluntad. Recordemos que esta relación ha sido objeto de numerosos estudios, especialmente en referencia al mismo concepto en Francisco Suárez. El artículo trata el tema de manera objetiva y como testigo de lo que nuestro teólogo pensó y estableció en sus escritos. Al calificarlo como teólogo, entendemos desde dónde está hablando, es decir, desde (...) su condición de creyente y teniendo como fuente la misma Revelación. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the design, implementation, and evaluation of concepts. Conceptual engineering includes or should include de novo conceptual engineering (designing a new concept) as well as conceptual re-engineering (fixing an old concept). It should also include heteronymous (different-word) as well as homonymous (same-word) conceptual engineering. I discuss the importance and the difficulty of these sorts of conceptual engineering in philosophy and elsewhere.

This paper is a critical review of the most relevant studies about the Levinasian concept of passivity. The purpose is to follow the way in which Levinas’s scholars have dealt with the following aspects: the relation between ethical passivity and the possibility of effective ethical agency, the origin of passivity, and the validity of ethical passivity in the public sphere. As a starting point for future research, I finally argue that the best way to read Levinas’s passive ethics is through (...) the dynamism between maximums and minimums present within it. This means that without sacrificing the omni comprehensive view of divine revelation and Jewish tradition, Levinas presents ethics as rationally understandable by everyone and philosophically defensible. Despite being biblically based, Levinas does not appeal to authority in supporting his view, he is confident in arguing rationally. This account could place Levinas in the way of public ethics, which consists in an ethos shared by all members of democratic societies. These minimums of justice could be the way to universalize Levinas’s ethics. (shrink)

Recent objections to epistemic permissivism have a metaepistemic flavor. Impermissivists argue that their view best accounts for connections between rationality, planning and deference. Impermissivism is also taken to best explain the value of rational belief and normative assessment. These objections pose a series of metaepistemic explanatory challenges for permissivism. In this paper, I illustrate how permissivists might meet their explanatory burdens by developing two permissivist metaepistemic views which fare well against the explanatory challenges.

How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that is (...) consistent with (and even entails) both of these general metaphysical principles. By endorsing such a view, one can have the explanatory benefits of Non-Humeanism while at the same time avoiding two of the major metaphysical objections towards Non-Humeanism. (shrink)

This paper responds to comments and criticisms by Stefan Brandt and Eva-Maria Jung, directed at the book "Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account".

The model of human intelligence that is most widely adopted derives from psychometrics and behavioral genetics. This standard approach conceives intelligence as a general cognitive ability that is genetically highly heritable and describable using quantitative traits analysis. The paper analyzes intelligence within the debate on natural kinds and contends that the general intelligence conceptualization does not carve psychological nature at its joints. Moreover, I argue that this model assumes an essentialist perspective. As an alternative, I consider an HPC theory of (...) intelligence and evaluate how it deals with essentialism and with intuitions coming from cognitive science. Finally, I highlight some concerns about the HPC model as well, and conclude by suggesting that it is unnecessary to treat intelligence as a kind in any sense. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Knowledge, like other things of value, can be faked. According to Hawley (2011), know-how is harder to fake than knowledge-that, given that merely apparent propositional knowledge is in general more resilient to our attempts at successful detection than are corresponding attempts to fake know-how. While Hawley’s reasoning for a kind of detection resilience asymmetry between know-how and know-that looks initially plausible, it should ultimately be resisted. In showing why, we outline different ways in which know-how can be faked even when (...) a given performance is successful; and in doing so, we distinguish how know-how can be faked (no less than know-that) via upstream and downstream indicators of its presence, and within each of these categories, we’ll distinguish (in connection with detection resilience) both faking symptoms and (various kinds of) criteria. The unappreciated resilience of faked knowledge-how to successful detection highlights a largely overlooked dimension of social-epistemic risk – risk we face not just in our capacity as recipients of testimony, but in our capacity as both (would-be) apprentices and clients of knowledge-how. (shrink)

La présentation qui suit traite de la Colombeia - legs extrêmement riche que nous devons à Francisco de Miranda - et de l’impact qu’a pu avoir à son époque la diffusion des quatre versions connues du “Plan de gouvernance pour une Amérique colombienne” élaboré par Francisco de Miranda (Caracas, 1750- Cadix, 1816) et publié tout au long de son engagement politique pour l’indépendance de l’Amérique Hispanique. Malgré les deux occasions manquées de 1801 et 1806, quand il fit la tentative de (...) mettre en partie en place son “Plan de Gouvernance”, l’on sait que celui-ci n’a jamais réellement été adopté en tant que modèle et pour une organisation politique du nouvel ordre de l’Amérique latine postcoloniale (que ce soit dans les anciennes colonies espagnoles ou au Brésil). Pourtant, il serait pertinent de se demander si le dit “Plan de gouvernance” a été pris en compte par ceux qui à l’époque prirent les décisions politiques des nouveaux états américains tout au long du processus d’émancipation et de formation constitutionnelle des pays hispano-américains. La proposition politique de Miranda prévoyait en même temps le démantèlement de l’État monarchique hispano américain et l’appropriation de quelques notions appartenant à l’empire des Incas. Il apparaît donc essentiel de savoir si dans le reste du continent hispano américain d’autres projets pré-constitutionnels comme celui proposé par le “Précurseur ”avaient été élaborés. Dans l’affirmative, il faudrait alors se demander s’il a existé un lien ou une parenté idéologique entre Miranda et ceux qui, à l’époque ou plus tard, ont élaboré de tels projets Constitutionnels pour un nouveau modèle de gouvernement en l’Amérique Latine . (shrink)

We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes irreducibly de se observations can be powerful evidence for or against believing in metaphysical theories.

This paper examines the philosophical significance of the consequence relation defined in the $\Omega$-logic for set-theoretic languages. I argue that, as with second-order logic, the hyperintensional profile of validity in $\Omega$-Logic enables the property to be epistemically tractable. Because of the duality between coalgebras and algebras, Boolean-valued models of set theory can be interpreted as coalgebras. In Section \textbf{2}, I demonstrate how the hyperintensional profile of $\Omega$-logical validity can be countenanced within a coalgebraic logic. Finally, in Section \textbf{3}, the philosophical (...) significance of the characterization of the hyperintensional profile of $\Omega$-logical validity for the philosophy of mathematics is examined. I argue (i) that $\Omega$-logical validity is genuinely logical, and (ii) that it provides a hyperintensional account of formal grasp of the concept of `set'. Section \textbf{4} provides concluding remarks. (shrink)

Reductive representationalism is the view that the qualitative properties associated with conscious experience are properties of the objects of the experience, and not of the experience itself. A prima facie problem for this view arises from dreams and hallucinations, in which qualitative properties are experienced but not instantiated in external objects of perception. I argue that representationalist attempts to solve it by appeal to actually uninstantiated properties are guilty of an absurdity akin to that which Ryle accused Descartes of in (...) the latter’s doctrine of immaterial substance. (shrink)

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

Le verdict du tribunal de la raison, institué par la critique kantienne, commande la fin de la métaphysique qui se muerait en croyance rationnelle, absolument nécessaire dans le cadre de la raison pratique et de ses exigences d’intelligibilité. Cependant, l’assimilation existentielle de l’impossibilité de la métaphysique par Kleist déclenche non seulement le sentiment de finitude et d’humilité de la raison, mais aussi le refus tragique, désespéré, d’une science strictement phénoménale et d’une solution croyante pour apaiser son besoin de vérité absolue. (...) Ainsi, une catastrophe, comme le tremblement de terre de Lisbonne ou du Chili, convoque des significations contrastées : Kant s’attache à la mécanique naturelle et à la possibilité d’un dessein inscrutable, tandis que Kleist éprouve la vie sous le signe du hasard, « voyage sans but », dont le mouvement offre le dynamisme diasporique du salut impossible. (shrink)

A diagnostic process is an investigative process that takes a clinical picture as input and outputs a diagnosis. We propose a method for distinguishing diagnoses that are warranted from those that are not, based on the cognitive processes of which they are the outputs. Processes designed and vetted to reliably produce correct diagnoses will output what we shall call ‘warranted diagnoses’. The latter are diagnoses that should be trusted even if they later turn out to have been wrong. Our work (...) is based on the recently developed Cognitive Process Ontology and further develops the Ontology of General Medical Science. It also has applications in fields such as intelligence, forensics, and predictive maintenance, all of which rely on vetted processes designed to secure the reliability of their outputs. (shrink)

This essay examines the philosophical significance of $\Omega$-logic in Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with choice (ZFC). The categorical duality between coalgebra and algebra permits Boolean-valued algebraic models of ZFC to be interpreted as coalgebras. The hyperintensional profile of $\Omega$-logical validity can then be countenanced within a coalgebraic logic. I argue that the philosophical significance of the foregoing is two-fold. First, because the epistemic and modal and hyperintensional profiles of $\Omega$-logical validity correspond to those of second-order logical consequence, $\Omega$-logical validity is genuinely (...) logical. Second, the foregoing provides a hyperintensional account of the interpretation of mathematical and metamathematical vocabulary. (shrink)

Failure of substitutivity of coreferential terms, one of the hallmarks of referential opacity, is standardly explained in terms of the presence of an expression (such as a verb of propositional attitude, a modal adverb or quotation marks) with opacity-inducing properties. It is thus assumed that any term in a complex expression for which substitutivity fails will be within the scope of an expression of one of these types, and that where there is an expression of one of these types there (...) will be failure of substitutivity for terms within its scope. I shall discuss a series of examples that have been thought to challenge this explanation by exhibiting failure of substitutivity of coreferential terms for positions not within the scope of any of the standard opacity-inducing expressions. If these examples are genuine, then the usual explanations of opacity are either incomplete – because there are sources of opacity other than those standardly identified, or completely mistaken – because the standardly identified expressions are not causes of opacity. I will argue, however, that the examples only exhibit failure of substitutivity of non-coreferential terms, and, hence, do not present a challenge to standard explanations of opacity. (shrink)

There is a difference between merely thinking that P and really grasping that P. For example, Jackson's (1982) black-and-white Mary cannot (before leaving her black-and-white room) fully grasp what it means to say that fire engines are red, but she can perfectly well entertain the thought that fire engines are red. The contrast between merely thinking and grasping is especially salient in the context of certain moral decisions. For example, an individual who grasps the plight of starving children thanks to (...) evocative images seems much more likely to donate for the children's benefit than someone who is merely told about their plight. This paper offers a phenomenal account of grasping according to which grasping a content (whether a proposition or concept) consists in one's thoughts about the content being constituted by phenomenal experiences of constituents of the content. This account improves on earlier phenomenal accounts of grasping (Bourget 2017a, 2018) by allowing for partial grasping and generalizing to concepts. The paper also addresses objections to phenomenal accounts of grasping, including the objection that recent developments in AI technology show that consciousness is irrelevant to grasping and understanding. (shrink)

David Heyd's study will stimulate philosophers to recognise the importance of the rather neglected topic of the distinctiveness of supererogation and the ...

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

Le pari de cet ouvrage est d'explorer les facettes multiples à travers lesquelles se donne le soi. Parler de soi plutôt que de moi implique une rupture franche avec les philosophies qui placent le sujet humain en position fondatrice. Le soi est encore moins une « chose » mais un mode d'être ; le soi n'est pas une donnée mais une conquête dont le devenir est en partie indéterminé. C'est donc sous le signe des épreuves qu'il faut penser les variations (...) phénoménologiques et herméneutiques sur le soi. Si la philosophie reste la discipline dominante des réflexions qui parcourent les contributions du volume, l'originalité de cet ouvrage est d'offrir en même temps au lecteur d'autres variations par lesquelles se décline le soi. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose une réinterprétation originale du rôle cognitif du Je pense kantien qui se veut pertinente pour la phénoménologie et pour la philosophie actuelle de l’esprit. L’étude du rapport entre temporalité phénoménale et cognition catégoriale constitue le fil conducteur de cette recherche. Elle mène à la question capitale du statut ultime du Moi, du sens du Je du Je pense. Que désigne-t-il : un épiphénomène contingent, une représentation sui generis, une métareprésentation, un acte indéconstructible, un événement fonctionnel, une forme (...) logique ? Recèle-t-il une véritable unité ou plutôt une multiplicité productrice d’unité ? Représente-t-il une identité réelle ou un changement identifiable, un référent vide ou ‘saturé’ ? La réponse à toutes ces questions dépend notamment de la façon de concevoir l’efficacité du Je, c’est-à-dire de l’articulation entre inconscient cognitif, conscience de soi et conscience de quelque chose en général. En pensant Kant avec la philosophie moderne et contemporaine, l’auteur tente d’élucider l’instabilité inévitable du passage critique à un Cogito postmétaphysique. (shrink)

What constitutes numerically one and the same tradition diachronically, at different times? This question is the focus of often violent dispute in societies. Is it capable of a rational resolution? Many accounts attempt that resolution with a diagnosis of ambiguity of the disputed concept-Islam, Marxism, or democracy for example. The diagnosis offered is in terms of vagueness, namely the vague criteria for sameness or similarity of central beliefs and practices.

The arguments of Fodor, Garret, Walker and Parkes [(1980) Against definitions, Cognition, 8, 263-367] are the source of widespread skepticism in cognitive science about lexical semantic structure. Whereas the thesis that lexical items, and the concepts they express, have decompositional structure (i.e. have significant constituents) was at one time "one of those ideas that hardly anybody [in the cognitive sciences] ever considers giving up" (p. 264), most researchers now believe that "[a]ll the evidence suggests that the classical [(decompositional)] view is (...) wrong as a general theory of concepts" [Smith, Medin & Rips (1984) A psychological approach to concepts: comments on Rey, Cognition, 17, 272], and cite Fodor et al. (1980) as "sounding the death knell for decompositional theories" [MacNamara & Miller (1989) Attributes of theories of meaning, Psychological Bulletin, 106, 360]. I argue that the prevailing skepticism is unmotivated by the arguments in Fodor et al. Fodor et al. misrepresent the form, function and scope of the decompositional hypothesis, and the procedures they employ to test for the psychological reality of definitions are flawed. I argue, further, that decompositional explanations of the phenomena they consider are preferable to their primitivist alternatives, and, hence, that there is prima facie reason to accept them as evidence for the existence of decompositional structure. Cognitive scientists would, therefore, do well to revert to their former commitment to the decompositional hypothesis. (shrink)

In this article, I defend an account of linguistic comprehension on which meaning is not cognized, or on which we do not tacitly know our language's semantics. On this view, sentence comprehension is explained instead by our capacity to translate sentences into the language of thought. I explain how this view can explain our capacity to correctly interpret novel utterances, and then I defend it against several standing objections.

Call a thought whose expression involves the utterance of an indexical an indexical thought. Thus, my thoughts that I’m annoyed, that now is not the right time, that this is not acceptable, are all indexical thoughts. Such thoughts present a prima facie problem for the thesis that thought contents are phenomenally individuated -- i.e., that each distinct thought type has a proprietarily cognitive phenomenology such that its having that phenomenology makes it the thought that it is -- given the assumption (...) that phenomenology is intrinsically determined. My concern in this paper is to blunt standard intuitions concerning the external individuation of indexical thought contents, and to defend a conception of indexical thought content that is entirely phenomenal and internalist. (shrink)

Explores five fault lines in the fledgling field of responsibility theory, serious methodological disputes traceable to P.F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment.".

Desde la última década del siglo pasado, tras el declive de los “Annales”, el presente y futuro de la Historia como ciencia ha motivada un intensa polémica académica de orden “global” y en la que están participando no sólo historiadores sino filósofos -de la ciencia y la Historia– como también especialistas de las restantes ciencias sociales e incluso de otras disciplinas afines a la Historia, como son la genética y la biología. Más allá del debate epistemológico clásico al respecto, están (...) ausente del mismo otras áreas del conocimiento las que, como las llamadas TICs –técnicas de la información, comunicación y conocimiento– tanto han aportado a la “maduración” de la casi generalidad de las ciencias y respecto de las cuales la Historia persisten en estar alejada. Este trabajo intenta motivar algunas reflexiones en la aludida polémica de la que podría ser la Historia de siglo XXI; la que, ciertamente, está aún por nacer. (shrink)

De una u otra forma, los diferentes procesos independentistas iberoamericanos de comienzos del siglo XIX suelen ser involucrados dentro de la larga cadena revolucionaria que alternativamente sacudió a ambos meridianos del mundo occidental a lo largo de no menos de cincuenta años (1774-1824), para otros ciento treinta y seis (1668-1824)3, o incluso ciento sesenta años (1645-1824). Consumado el mencionado ciclo revolucionario americano, este significó o bien la transformación —Canadá, Brasil, Cuba y Puerto Rico— o bien el derrocamiento del "Antiguo régimen (...) colonial" en la casi totalidad del continente americanos, y con ello surgimiento de un nuevo y ampliado orden político y económico mundial. (shrink)

Grappling with the marginalization of the marginal in Western thinking, this paper sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy and Johann Baptist Metz’s political theology in order to learn from their thoughts on the suffering of victims. For both Levinas and Metz, the idea of theodicy as an explanation of suffering is linked to the ontological conception of time and history, and therefore useless and unjustifiable by nature. The essential question of this research is how to give meaning to (...) the concrete suffering of humanity in order to redeem history from the concept of an evolutionary progress which limits the possibility of hearing the cries of the victims of history. This article will show how Levinas’s and Metz´s rejection of traditional theodicy is closely related to the concepts of memory and history and, therefore, the paper will demonstrate how traditional theodicy becomes for both thinkers an ethical theodicy. Consequently, the ethical account of theodicy replaces the attempt to negotiate the goodness and power of God with the pain of human beings. From this perspective, ethics is shaped by a response to the cry of victims which summons the subject to understand freedom as limited and subordinated to ethical responsibility. In responding to suffering, philosophy and theology can meet beyond idealism and dogmatism. (shrink)

Since the 18th century, one of the key features of diagnosed psychopaths has been “moral colorblindness” or an inability to form moral judgments. However, attempts at experimentally verifying this moral incapacity have been largely unsuccessful. After reviewing the centrality of “moral colorblindness” to the study and diagnosis of psychopathy, I argue that the reason that researchers have been unable to verify that diagnosed psychopaths have an inability to make moral judgments is because their research is premised on the assumption that (...) there is a specific moral faculty of the brain, or specific “moral” emotions, and that this faculty or set of emotions can become “impaired”. I review recent research and argue that we have good reason to think that there is no such distinct capacity for moral judgment, and that, as a result, it is impossible for someone’s “moral judgment faculty” to become selectively disabled. I then discuss the implications of such a position on psychopathy research, the coherence of the disorder, and the moral responsibility of psychopaths. (shrink)

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue is supposed to be the best way to solve the conflicts arising from rival religious hermeneutics and different modes to conceive the ideal of a good life in contemporary multicultural and pluralistic societies. In regard to communicative or dialogical reason, respectful coexistence can be reached only by argumentative communication between interested people. In this sense, only rational arguments, strong enough to pass the test of the shared rationality can be valid at a discursive level. However, Jewish (...) philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz challenge the symmetrical and rational-based dialogue in order to postulate an asymmetrical relation by giving voice to the other. For them, the core of interreligious and intercultural engagement does not start from rational agreements as Habermas, for instance, has proposed; but from prophetic and anamnestic reasons. (shrink)

A discussion of three central ideas in action theory; trying to act, doing or acting, one's action causing further consequences.

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

What follows is a first step towards an ontology of conscious mental processes. We provide a theoretical foundation and characterization of conscious mental processes based on a realist theory of intentionality and using BFO as our top-level ontology. We distinguish three components of intentional mental process: character, directedness, and objective referent, and describe several features of the process character and directedness significant to defining and classifying mental processes. We arrive at the definition of representational mental process as a process that (...) is the bringing into being, sustaining, modifying, or terminating of a mental representation. We conclude by outlining some benefits and applications of this approach. (shrink)

El artículo muestra la estrecha conexión existente entre el concepto de ética y el de tiempo mesiánico en la filosofía de Emmanuel Lévinas. Esto significa que la respuesta ética se da en un tiempo discontinuo en el que –además de romper la continuidad del tiempo ininterrumpido del progreso– el sujeto se convierte en el mesías que responde al sufrimiento del otro. Para lograr este propósito, el trabajo muestra la crítica de Lévinas a la historia ontológica como olvido de lo singular; (...) posteriormente presenta la posición intermedia entre la perspectiva ontológica y la mesiánica representada en el punto de vista de Bergson, para mostrar luego cómo –para Lévinas– es en la tradición judía donde es posible encontrar una respuesta ética al sufrimiento del otro en el ahora del tiempo mesiánico. (shrink)

La administración científica de la educación ha llevado a que las instituciones educativas muestren en los últimos años un marcado interés por los rankings, la rendición de cuentas y por una educación de calidad basada en la excelencia individual. Frente a esta dinámica, el presente trabajo muestra que las exigencias de una sociedad que ha venido de experiencias conflictivas o que quiere formar ciudadanos solidarios, requieren un cambio de perspectiva desde la autonomía individual hacia la construcción de escenarios de cooperación (...) y respeto por el otro. Mediante un análisis teórico, este artículo muestra la insuficiencia del modelo taylorista de educación y propone una educación para la incertidumbre como apertura hacia la cooperación y la solidaridad. (shrink)