Considerando el contexto bélico y el surgimiento de las vanguardias a inicios del siglo XX, fundamento en este trabajo las razones por las cuales la presencia del concepto de nivola, atribuida por Miguel de Unamuno para hacer referencia a la técnica literaria que emplea en su novela Niebla (1914), suscita una confrontación posible entre universos compuestos por elementos de la realidad y lo virtual. En ese sentido, será propicio explicar el procedimiento que origina esa colisión de planos establecidos. Para (...) ello, recurriré a categorías literarias que sustentan las teorías de la ficción, según la percepción de Thomas Pavel y Marie-Laure Ryan. (shrink)

This book is an anthology with the following themes. Non-European Tradition: Bussanich interprets main themes of Hindu ethics, including its roots in ritual sacrifice, its relationship to religious duty, society, individual human well-being, and psychic liberation. To best assess the truth of Hindu ethics, he argues for dialogue with premodern Western thought. Pfister takes up the question of human nature as a case study in Chinese ethics. Is our nature inherently good (as Mengzi argued) or bad (Xunzi’s view)? Pfister ob- (...) serves their underlying agreement, that human beings are capable of becoming good, and makes precise the disagreement: whether we achieve goodness by cultivating autonomous feelings or by accepting external precepts. There are political consequences: whether government should aim to respect and em- power individual choices or to be a controlling authority. Early Greek Thinking: Collobert examines the bases of Homeric ethics in fame, prudence, and shame, and how these guide the deliberations of heroes. She observes how, by depending upon the poet’s words, the hero gains a quasi- immortality, although in truth there is no consolation for each person’s inevi- table death. Plato: Santas examines Socratic Method and ethics in Republic 1. There Socrates examines definitions of justice and tests them by comparison to the arts and sciences. Santas shows the similarities of Socrates’ method to John Rawls’ method of considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. McPherran interprets Plato’s religious dimension as like that of his teacher Socrates. McPherran shows how Plato appropriates, reshapes, and extends the religious conventions of his own time in the service of establishing the new enterprise of philosophy. Ac- cording to Taylor, Socrates believes that humans in general have the task of helping the gods by making their own souls as good as possible, and Socrates’ unique ability to cross-examine imposes on him the special task of helping others to become as good as possible. This conception of Socrates’ mission is Plato’s own, consisting in an extension of the traditional conception of piety as helping the gods. Brickhouse and Smith propose a new understanding of Socratic moral psychology—one that retains the standard view of Socrates as an intellectualist, but also recognizes roles in human agency for appetites and passions. They compare and contrast the Socratic view to the picture of moral psychology we get in other dialogues of Plato. Hardy also proposes a new, non-reductive understanding of Socratic eudaimonism—he argues that Socrates invokes a very rich and complex notion of the “Knowledge of the Good and Bad”, which is associated with the motivating forces of the virtues. Rudebusch defends Socrates’ argument that knowledge can never be impotent in the face of psychic passions. He considers the standard objections: that knowledge cannot weigh incom- mensurable human values, and that brute desire, all by itself, is capable of moving the soul to action. Aristotle: Anagnostopoulos interprets Aristotle on the nature and acquisition of virtue. Though virtue of character, aiming at human happiness, requires a complex awareness of multiple dimensions of one’s experience, it is not properly a cognitive capacity. Thus it requires habituation, not education, according to Aristotle, in order to align the unruly elements of the soul with reason’s knowledge of what promotes happiness. Shields explains Aristotle’s doctrine that goodness is meant in many ways as the doctrine that there are different analyses of goodness for different types of circumstance, just as for being. He finds Aristotle to argue for this conclusion, against Plato’s doctrine of the unity of the Good, by applying the tests for homonymy and as an immediate cons- equence of the doctrine of categories. Shields evaluates the issue as unresolved at present. Russell discusses Aristotle’s account of practical deliberation and its virtue, intelligence (phronesis). He relates the account to contemporary philo- sophical controversies surrounding Aristotle’s view that intelligence is neces- sary for moral virtue, including the objections that in some cases it is unnecessary or even impedes human goodness. Frede examines the advantages and disadvantages of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. She explains the general Greek con- ceptions of happiness and virtue, Aristotle’s conception of phronesis and compares the Aristotle’s ethics with modern accounts. Liske discusses the question of whether the Aristotelian account of virtue entails an ethical-psy- chological determinism. He argues that Aristotle’s understanding of hexis allows for free action and ethical responsibility : By making decisions for good actions we are able to stabilize our character (hexis). Hellenistic and Roman: Annas defends an account of stoic ethics, according to which the three parts of Stoicism—logic, physics, and ethics—are integrated as the parts of an egg, not as the parts of a building. Since by this analogy no one part is a foundation for the rest, pedagogical decisions may govern the choice of numerous, equally valid, presentations of Stoic ethics. Piering interprets the Cynic way of life as a distinctive philosophy. In their ethics, Cynics value neither pleasure nor tradition but personal liberty, which they achieve by self-suffi- ciency and display in speech that is frank to the point of insult. Plotinus and Neoplatonism: Gerson outlines the place of ordinary civic virtue as well as philosophically contemplative excellence in Neoplatonism. In doing so he attempts to show how one and the same good can be both action-guiding in human life and be the absolute simple One that grounds the explanation of everything in the universe. Delcomminette follows Plotinus’s path to the Good as the foundation of free will, first in the freedom of Intellect and then in the “more than freedom” of the One. Plotinus postulates these divinities as not outside but within each self, saving him from the contradiction of an external foundation for a truly free will. General Topics: Halbig discusses the thesis on the unity of virtues. He dis- tinguishes the thesis of the identity of virtues and the thesis of a reciprocity of virtues and argues that the various virtues form a unity (in terms of reciprocity) since virtues cannot bring about any bad action. Detel examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of normativity : Plato and Aristotle (i) entertained hybrid theories of normativity by distinguishing functional, semantic and ethical normativity, (ii) located the ultimate source of normativity in standards of a good life, and thus (iii) took semantic normativity to be a derived form of normativity. Detel argues that hybrid theories of normativity are—from a mo- dern point of view—still promising. Ho ̈ffe defends the Ancient conception of an art of living against Modern objections. Whereas many Modern philosophers think that we have to replace Ancient eudaimonism by the idea of moral obligation (Pflicht), Ho ̈ffe argues that Eudaimonism and autonomy-based ethics can be reconciled and integrated into a comprehensive and promising theory of a good life, if we enrich the idea of autonomy by the central elements of Ancient eudaimonism. Some common themes: The topics in Chinese and Hindu ethics are perhaps more familiar to modern western sensibilities than Homeric and even Socratic. Anagnostopoulos, Brickhouse and Smith, Frede, Liske, Rudebusch, and Russell all consider in contrasting ways the role of moral character, apart from intellect, in ethics. Brickhouse / Smith, Hardy, and Rudebusch discuss the Socratic con- ception of moral knowledge. Brickhouse / Smith and Hardy retain the standard view of the so called Socratic Intellectualism. Shields and Gerson both consider the question whether there is a single genus of goodness, or if the term is a homonym. Bussanich, McPherran, Taylor, and Delcomminette all consider the relation between religion and ethics. Pfister, Piering, Delcomminette, and Liske all consider what sort of freedom is appropriate to human well-being. Halbig, Detel, and Ho ̈ffe propose interpretations of main themes of Ancient ethics. (shrink)

Recent experimental studies indicate that epistemically irrelevant factors can skew our intuitions, and that some degree of scepticism about appealing to intuition in philosophy is warranted. In response, some have claimed that philosophers are experts in such a way as to vindicate their reliance on intuitions—this has become known as the ‘expertise defence’. This paper explores the viability of the expertise defence, and suggests that it can be partially vindicated. Arguing that extant discussion is problematically imprecise, we will finesse the (...) notion of ‘philosophical expertise’ in order to better reflect the complex reality of the different practices involved in philosophical inquiry. On this basis, we offer a new version of the expertise defence that allows for distinct types of philosophical expertise. The upshot of our approach is that wholesale vindications or rejections of the expertise defence are shown to be unwarranted; we must instead turn to local, piecemeal investigations of philosophical expertise. Lastly, in the spirit of taking our own advice, we exemplify how recent developments from experimental philosophy lend themselves to this approach, and can empirically support one instance of a successful expertise defence. (shrink)

Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the existence of structural representations or S-representations. Specifically, it is (...) argued that there are problems both with accounting for the content of S-representations and with understanding how neurally-based structural similarities can work as representations in guiding intelligent behavior. Finally, with these clarifications in place, it is revealed how radical enactivism can commit to an account of similarity-based cognition in its understanding of neurodynamics. (shrink)

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

This book chapter shows how the early Heidegger’s philosophy around the period of Being and Time can address some central questions of contemporary social ontology. After sketching “non-summative constructionism”, which is arguably the generic framework that underlies all forms of contemporary analytic social ontology, I lay out early Heidegger’s conception of human social reality in terms of an extended argument. The Heidegger that shows up in light of this treatment is an acute phenomenologist of human social existence who emphasizes our (...) engagement in norm-governed practices as the basis of social reality. I then defuse a common and understandable set of objections against invoking the early Heidegger as someone who can make any positive contribution to our understanding of social reality. Lastly, I explore the extent to which the early Heidegger’s philosophy provides insights regarding phenomena of collective intentionality by showing how the intelligibility of such phenomena traces back to individual agents’ common understanding of possible ways of understanding things and acting with one another. With the early Heidegger, I argue that this common understanding is the fundamental source and basis of collective intentionality, not the non-summativist constructionism on which contemporary analytic social ontology has sought to focus with much effort. The lesson about social ontology that we should learn from the early Heidegger is that there is a tight connection between the social constitution of the human individual and his or her capacity to perform actions or activities that instantiate collective intentionality. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Higher-order thought theories of consciousness attempt to explain what it takes for a mental state to be conscious, rather than unconscious, by means of a HOT that represents oneself as being in the state in question. Rosenthal Consciousness and the self: new essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) stresses that the way we are aware of our own conscious states requires essentially indexical self-reference. The challenge for defenders of HOT theories is to show that there is a way to explain (...) the required reference-fixing mechanisms that is compatible with the theory. According to Rosenthal, the reference to oneself as such is grounded in the disposition to identify the individual the HOT refers to as the individual who has that HOT. I argue that this leads to a vicious infinite regress on the more than plausible assumption that our cognitive capacities are limited. This leaves such theories without a foundation, since self-reference is thought essential to consciousness. (shrink)

The historically-influential perceptual analogy states that intuitions and perceptual experiences are alike in many important respects. Phenomenalists defend a particular reading of this analogy according to which intuitions and perceptual experiences share a common phenomenal character. The phenomenalist thesis has proven highly influential in recent years. However, insufficient attention has been given to the challenges that the phenomenalist thesis raises for theories of intuitions. In this paper, I first develop one such challenge. I argue that if we take seriously the (...) idea that intuitions and perceptual experiences have a common phenomenal character, then an analogous version of the familiar problem of perceptual presence arises for intuitions. I call this the 'problem of intuitive presence'. In the second part of the paper I sketch a novel enactivist solution to this problem. (shrink)

Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top-down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it. Recent findings on emotion regulation support a role for the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region also important for driving top-down pain inhibitory circuits. (...) Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in practicing Catholics and avowed atheists and agnostics during painful stimulation, here we show the existence of a context-dependent form of analgesia that was triggered by the presentation of an image with a religious content but not by the presentation of a non-religious image. As confirmed by behavioral data, contemplation of the religious image eneabled the religious group to detach themselves from the experience of pain. Critically, this context-dependent modulation of pain specifically engaged the right VLPFC, whereas group-specific preferential liking of one of the pictures was associated with activation in the ventral midbrain. We suggest that religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain-regulatory brain processes. (shrink)

A central question along which phenomenological approaches to sociality or intersubjectivity have diverged concerns whether concrete interpersonal encounters or sharing a common world is more fundamental in working out an adequate phenomenology of human sociality. On one side we have philosophers such as the early Sartre, Martin Buber, Michael Theunissen, and Emmanuel Levinas, all of whom emphasize, each in his own way, the priority of some mode of interpersonal encounters (broadly construed) in determining the basic character of human coexistence. On (...) the other side, we have philosophers such as the early Heidegger and the early Merleau-Ponty (and here I would also include Gadamer and the later Wittgenstein), who argue that an adequate account of human sociality must begin, in the proper order of understanding and hence explanation, with how we always already exist in a shared or common world. Which side is right in this debate? I argue that once we correctly understand the precise sense (or way) in which the common world is more fundamental than concrete interpersonal encounters, this enables us to understand how there is no real opposition between the phenomenological conception of the common world and the experience of the other, even in its radical otherness. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

El libro de María González Navarro se presenta a sí mismo como una “nueva hermenéutica” (23). La novedad involucra dos aspectos: uno que llamaremos metateórico y otro hermenéutico en propiedad. Hablando metateóricamente, el libro presenta una hermenéutica gadameriana vigorizada y robustecida por las teorías pragma-dialécticas de la argumentación. Desde el punto de vista hermenéutico propiamente dicho, la novedad reposa en que se considera que la interpretación correcta está indesligablemente vinculada a la argumentación abductiva.

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present HOT (...) theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

This article analyzes emerging artificial intelligence -enhanced lie detection systems from ethical and human resource management perspectives. I show how these AI enhancements transform lie detection, followed with analyses as to how the changes can lead to moral problems. Specifically, I examine how these applications of AI introduce human rights issues of fairness, mental privacy, and bias and outline the implications of these changes for HR management. The changes that AI is making to lie detection are altering the roles of (...) human test administrators and human subjects, adding machine learning-based AI agents to the situation and establishing invasive data collection processes as well as introducing certain biases in results. I project that the potentials for pervasive and continuous lie detection initiatives are substantial, displacing human-centered efforts to establish trust and foster integrity in organizations. I argue that if it is possible for HR managers to do so, they should cease using technologically-based lie detection systems entirely and work to foster trust and accountability on a human scale. However, if these AI-enhanced technologies are put into place by organizations by law, agency mandate, or other compulsory measures, care should be taken that the impacts of the technologies on human rights and wellbeing are considered. The article explores how AI can displace the human agent in some aspects of lie detection and credibility assessment scenarios, expanding the prospects for inscrutable, “black box” processes and novel physiological constructs that may increase the potential for such human rights concerns as fairness, mental privacy, and bias. Employee interactions with autonomous lie detection systems rather with than human beings who administer specific tests can reframe organizational processes and rules concerning the assessment of personal honesty and integrity. The dystopian projection of organizational life in which analyses and judgments of the honesty of one’s utterances are made automatically and in conjunction with one’s personal profile provides unsettling prospects for the autonomy of self-representation. (shrink)

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

In this essay we discuss recent attempts to analyse the notion of representation, as it is employed in cognitive science, in purely informational terms. In particular, we argue that recent informational theories cannot accommodate the existence of metarepresentations. Since metarepresentations play a central role in the explanation of many cognitive abilities, this is a serious shortcoming of these proposals.

The embedding and promotion of social change is faced with aparadoxical challenge. In order to mainstream an approach to socialchange such as responsible research and innovation and makeit into a practical reality rather than an abstract ideal, we need tohave conceptual clarity and empirical evidence. But, in order to beable to gather empirical evidence, we have to presuppose that theapproach already exists in practice. This paper proposes a social labmethodology that is suited to deal with this circularity. Themethodology combines the (...) defining features of social labs emergingfrom the literature such as agility and real-world focus withestablished theories and approaches such as action research andexperiential learning. Thereby it enables the parallel investigationand propagation of RRI. The framework thus constructed provides atheoretical embedding of sociallabs and overcomes some of theknown limitations of the constitutive approaches. (shrink)

The Challenge from Cognitive Diversity (CCD) states that demography-specific intuitions are unsuited to play evidential roles in philosophy. The CCD attracted much attention in recent years, in great part due to the launch of an international research effort to test for demographic variation in philosophical intuitions. In the wake of these international studies, the CCD may prove revolutionary. For, if these studies uncover demographic differences in intuitions, then, in line with the CCD, there would be good reason to challenge philosophical (...) views that rely on those intuitions for evidential support. I argue that philosophical views that rely on demography-specific intuitions for evidential support need not be threatened by such findings. I first provide a detailed analysis of the epistemological principles driving the CCD and distinguish three formulations of this challenge. I then show that there are good reasons to reject all such formulations of the CCD. (shrink)

Contrastivism about interrogative understanding is the view that ‘S understands why p’ posits a three-place epistemic relation between a subject S, a fact p, and an alternative to p, q. This thesis stands in stark opposition to the natural idea that a subject S can be said to understand why psimpliciter. I argue that contrastivism offers the best explanation for the fact that evaluations of the form ‘S understands why p’ vary depending on the alternatives to p under consideration. I (...) also show that contrastivism offers valuable resources with which to explain the gradability of interrogative understanding attributions, as well as the sensitivity of these attributions to the perceived degree of epistemic demandingness of different contexts. (shrink)

This chapter provides an interpretation of the early Heidegger’s underdeveloped conception of the undistinguishedness of everyday human existence in Being and Time. After explaining why certain translation choices of some key terms in this text are interpretively and philosophically important, I first provide a concise argument for why the social constitution interpretation of the relation between ownedness and unownedness makes better overall sense of Heidegger’s ambivalent attitude toward the social constitution of the human being than the standard existentialist interpretation of (...) this relation. I then proceed to the heart of this chapter, which develops his inchoate conception of the undistinguishedness of everydayness by arguing that it specifies the third distinctive mode of concrete human existence in addition to ownedness and unownedness. Accordingly, I show how unownedness is actually a generic phenomenon with two distinct species, namely, undistinguishedness and disownedness, which are at once closely related to, but also differ in significant respects from, each other. Consequently, instead of taking for granted a one-dimensional and mutually exclusive opposition between ‘authenticity’ and ‘inauthenticity’, I argue that we should adopt a two-dimensional and more nuanced understanding of the relations among undistinguishedness, disownedness, and ownedness that intersects with Heidegger’s underappreciated distinction between genuineness and ungenuineness. After raising and replying to some objections to this interpretation of undistinguishedness, I conclude this chapter by briefly sketching three of its philosophical consequences and pointing out its potential as an important resource for contemporary social theories. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta nota es mostrar que no hay ningún motivo para llamar irracionalista a Miguel de Unamuno. Unamuno puso límites a la razón y rechazó lo que, a su juicio, constituía una violación de dichos límites (el cientificismo y el intelectualismo), pero en ningún momento despreció el uso de la razón.

Is a conception of human nature still possible or even desirable in light of the “postmetaphysical sensibilities” of our time? Furthermore, can philosophy make any contribution towards the articulation of a tenable conception of human nature given this current intellectual climate? I will argue in this paper that affirmative answers can be given to both of these questions. Section I rehearses briefly some of the difficulties and even dangers involved in working out any conception of human nature at all, let (...) alone one that is philosophically informed. Section II sketches what I argue to be three necessary aspects of a tenable philosophical anthropology. Finally, section III argues that such a philosophical anthropology is only justifiable, given our postmetaphysical sensibilities, by its use of “transcendental arguments” in justifying its claims, ones that nonetheless must repudiate a common but damaging assumption that arguing for the conclusions of such arguments commits one necessarily to a hyper-strong conception of subjectivity. In general, my primary aim in this paper is only to make plausible, not so much to justify, let alone defend, adequately the aspects of a conception of a tenable philosophical anthropology as sketched below. (shrink)

Autism Spectrum Condition presents a challenge to social and relational accounts of the self, precisely because it is broadly seen as a disorder impacting social relationships. Many influential theories argue that social deficits and impairments of the self are the core problems in ASC. Predictive processing approaches address these based on general purpose neurocognitive mechanisms that are expressed atypically. Here we use the High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism approach in the context of cultural niche construction to explain (...) atypicalities of the relational self, specifically its minimal, extended, and intersubjective aspects. We contend that the social self in ASC should not be seen as impaired, but rather as an outcome of atypical niche construction. We unpack the scientific, ethical, and practical consequences of this view, and discuss implications for how the challenges that autistic persons face should be approached. (shrink)

The non-transitivity of the relation looks the same as has been used to argue that the relation has the same phenomenal character as is non-transitive—a result that jeopardizes certain theories of consciousness. In this paper, I argue against this conclusion while granting the premise by dissociating lookings and phenomenology; an idea that some might find counter-intuitive. However, such an intuition is left unsupported once phenomenology and cognitive access are distinguished from each other; a distinction that is conceptually and empirically grounded.

In recent years a growing number of philosophers in the analytic tradition have focused their attention on the significance of human sociality. An older point of departure of analysis, which actually precedes this current tide of accounts of sociality, has revolved around the debate between “holism” and “individualism” in the philosophy of the human or social sciences and social theory. The more recent point of departure for various accounts of sociality has centered on the nature of conventions, social groups, shared (...) intentions, or collective intentionality. Putting aside the disagreements among these accounts, they all take for granted an antecedently intelligible notion of individual agency as explanatorily primitive and seek to explain the possibility of plural or collective agency in terms of the former. By contrast, other philosophers who have worked at the intersection of analytic and "continental" philosophy have emphasized the primacy of practice as the proper starting point for philosophical reflections on the nature of human sociality. In the analytic tradition this emphasis is typically framed in terms of the possibility of rule-following, a topic put on the philosophical agenda by the later Wittgenstein. Peter Winch’s and Saul Kripke’s influential but controversial readings of Wittgenstein explicitly thematize the issue of rule-following, readings which have in turn generated critical reflection in various disciplines for which this issue is relevant. -/- I begin by briefly explicating the positions of Pettit and Brandom on the issue of rule-following (putting aside any specific differences between them for the moment). Next I connect Pettit’s and Brandom’s views on rule-following, and more generally on normativity and its necessarily social basis, with the views of Theodore Schatzki and Joseph Rouse, whose conceptions of the significance of practice and its inherent sociality are indebted as much to the early Heidegger as well as the later Wittgenstein. I suggest that Pettit’s and Brandom’s views of the necessarily social nature of rule-following (i.e., practice) ought to acknowledge and integrate the shared insight of Schatzki and Rouse that practices are not only modes of activity, but constitute more basically the concrete setting or world within which practices qua modes of activity are intelligible (verständlich) at all. I conclude the paper by suggesting how an integrated account of the significance of the necessarily social nature of practice undermines the assumptions of those philosophers who seek to analyze human sociality solely on the basis of modes of interactions among individual agents. (shrink)

Este artigo consiste em abordagem de cunho introdutório sobre a crítica à metafísica. Destacam-se elementos isolados do conteúdo de crítica à metafísica na modernidade e que tende a vir a ser desenvolvido na contemporaneidade. Com isso quer-se dizer que na passagem da modernidade para a contemporaneidade a filosofia acaba por incorporar o conteúdo de crítica à metafísica e evolui na direção de vir a reconhecer sua condição de ser metafísica e de empreender crítica a essa condição. Para estabelecer a abordagem (...) do assunto procura-se aqui manter subjacente a ideia de crítica à metafísica no contexto da história da filosofia; mas é priorizado nisso o aspecto temático em vez de seu aspecto histórico. Busca-se mostrar que no processo de compreender a crítica à metafísica tem ocorrido de se tentar apartar do caráter de metafísico o caráter de teórico da ciência. Requer então indagar se é possível estabelecer marco de separação entre uma coisa e a outra. Em vez de separação opta-se aqui por investir no conhecimento da identidade da própria metafísica como saber filosófico; busca-se esclarecer que a pergunta pelo que é filosofia e a dificuldade de compreender o seu conteúdo é o que traz à tona a crítica à metafísica e a torna necessária, mas como modo de se compreender melhor o que é filosofia. (shrink)

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) is rightly regarded as a thinker who extended the development of the so-called expressivist conception of language and world that Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) and especially Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) initially articulated. Being immersed as Humboldt was in the intellectual climate of German Romanticism, he aimed not only to provide a systematic foundation for how he believed linguistic research as a science should be conducted, but also to attempt to rectify what he saw as the deficiencies (...) of Kant’s philosophical system. My aim in this paper is to show how an expressivist thinker like Humboldt has the conceptual resources from within his own framework and, perhaps surprisingly, with some help from the 20th century philosopher of language and mind, Donald Davidson, to reject a criticism commonly made against expressivist conceptions of language and world. This is the charge that this sort of expressivism threatens the objectivity of the world by emphasizing the role of language in the constitution and disclosure of the world. Cristina Lafont makes just this charge against Humboldt (and other philosophers in the German expressivist-hermeneutic tradition). Specifically, she argues that expressivist philosophers of language are all ultimately committed to some pernicious form of linguistic idealism and relativism. In this paper, I first present Humboldt’s reflections on language and give some textual evidence for why he is often read – mistakenly in my view – as a linguistic idealist and relativist. Second, I briefly sketch Lafont’s charge of linguistic idealism and relativism against Humboldt. Third and finally, I show how she misunderstands Humboldt’s expressivist conception of language and world by connecting my rebuttal to her criticism with Davidson’s argument that successful communication does not require the sharing of explicit rules or conventions that govern in advance the use and understanding of words. (shrink)

Some philosophers, like David Chalmers, have either shown their sympathy for, or explicitly endorsed, the following two principles: Panpsychism—roughly the thesis that the mind is ubiquitous throughout the universe—and Organizational Invariantism—the principle that holds that two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. The purpose of this paper is to show the tension between the arguments that back up both principles. This tension should lead, or so I will argue, defenders of one of the principles (...) to give up on the other. (shrink)

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and (...) international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

This article develops a constructive criticism of methodological conventionalism. Methodological conventionalism asserts that standards of inductive risk ought to be justified in virtue of their ability to facilitate coordination in a research community. On that view, industry bias occurs when conventional methodological standards are violated to foster industry preferences. The underlying account of scientific conventionality, however, is problematically incomplete. Conventions may be justified in virtue of their coordinative functions, but often qualify for posterior empirical criticism as research advances. Accordingly, industry (...) bias does not only threaten existing conventions but may impede their empirically warranted improvement if they align with industry preferences. My empiricist account of standards of inductive risk avoids such a problem by asserting that conventional justification can be pragmatically warranted but has, in principle, only a provisional status. Methodological conventions, therefore, should not only be defended from preference-based infringements on their coordinative function but ought to be subjected to empirical criticism. (shrink)

Dual-process theories of higher order cognition (DPTs) have been enjoying much success, particularly since Kahneman’s 2002 Nobel prize address and recent book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2009). Historically, DPTs have attempted to provide a conceptual framework that helps classify and predict differences in patterns of behavior found under some circumstances and not others in a host of reasoning, judgment, and decision-making tasks. As evidence has changed and techniques for examining behavior have moved on, so too have DPTs. Killing two birds (...) with one stone, Evans and Stanovich (2013, this issue) respond to five main criticisms of DPTs. Along with addressing each criticism in turn, they set out to clarify the essential defining characteristics that distinguish one form of higher order cognition from the other. The aim of this commentary is to consider the defining characteristics of Type 1 and Type 2 processing that have been proposed and to suggest that the evidence can be taken to support quantitative differences rather than qualitatively distinct processes. (shrink)

This chapter explains the rationale behind the book. It provides basic definitions of the concept of the sharing economy as well as the primary meanings related to the subject of the analysis undertaken in the subsequent chapters. This Introduction also includes a description of the main benefits of the analysis of the sharing economy from a European perspective. It highlights that the idea of the book emerged from the collaboration of most co-authors in the COST Action CA16121 ‘From Sharing to (...) Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy.’ Finally, the outline of the book is presented, providing a description of the content of each chapter within this academic collection. (shrink)

This article states that research in skill acquisitionand executionhas underestimated the relevance of some features of attention. We present and theoretically discuss two essential features of attention that have been systematically overlooked in the research of skill acquisitionandexecution. First, attention alters the appearance of the perceived stimuli in an essential way; and second, attention plays a fundamental role in action, being crucial for solving the so called ’many-many problem’, that is to say, the problem of generating a coherent behavior byselecting (...) between many inputs and many potential outputs. We discuss the importance of these features for skill acquisition in sport. We also suggest empirical ways to assess the precise impact of taking them into consideration and at the same time we propose important implications for training derived from the ideas discussed in the paper. (shrink)

In De partibus animalium A1, Aristotle presents —in a darker than usual way— decisive details of the methodology he devised for his science of nature. His indications seem to point the path along which Aristotelian biology should travel. However, numerous textual and systematic difficulties have given rise to a number of conflicting interpretations, in the context of a vigorous stream of philosophical research and debate since the last third of the last century. In this stream of studies, Michael of Ephesus’s (...) commentary on PA and his views on the subject remain relatively ignored. A complex multiplicity of factors seems to support the lack of sufficient consensus among leading contemporary specialists to explicitly consider those contributions. The purpose of this paper is to examine several of these factors and, based on the evidence provided by little explored aspects of Michael’s texts, to offer arguments in favor of that consensus against a number of alternatives. I shall argue that the contributions of this late commentator deserve to be considered —mutatis mutandis— as seriously as it is done with the main ancient Greek commentaries; in particular, in the philosophical studies of those who are currently interested in that methodology or are engaged in Aristotelian biology. (shrink)

Alleged self-evidence aside, conceivability arguments are one of the main reasons in favor of the claim that there is a Hard Problem. These arguments depend on the appealing Kripkean intuition that there is no difference between appearances and reality in the case of consciousness. I will argue that this intuition rests on overlooking a distinction between cognitive access and consciousness, which has received recently important empirical support. I will show that there are good reasons to believe that the intuition is (...) misguided—at least on the reading that the conceivability arguments require—and hence that the arguments are unsupported. This, in turn, alleviates the Hard Problem but leaves us with what I think is a not easy problem. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists have argued that the difference between phenomenally conscious states and other kind of states lies in the implicit self-awareness that conscious states have. Higher-Order Representationalist theories, attempt to explain such a self-awareness by means of a higher-order representation. Consciousness relies on our capacity to represent our own mental states, consciousness depends on our Theory of Mind. Such an ability can, at least conceptually, be decomposed into another two: mindreading and metacognition. In this paper I will argue (...) that consciousness cannot depend on mindreading. The tenability of HOR theories depends, therefore, on the relation between mindreading and metacognition. I analyze several views on such a relation and argue that none of them seem to be a plausible option for HOR theories. (shrink)

Using the search engine Google to locate information linked to individuals and organizations has become part of everyday functioning. This article addresses whether the “gaming” of Internet applications in attempts to modify reputations raises substantial ethical concerns. It analyzes emerging approaches for manipulation of how personally-identifiable information is accessed online as well as critically-important international differences in information handling. It investigates privacy issues involving the data mining of personally-identifiable information with search engines and social media platforms. Notions of “gaming” and (...) “manipulation” have negative connotations as well as instrumental functions, which are distinguished in this article. The article also explores ethical matters engendered by the expanding industry of reputation management services that assist in these detailed technical matters. Ethical dimensions of online reputation are changing in the advent of reputation management, raising issues such as fairness and legitimacy of various information-related practices; the article provides scenarios and questions for classroom deliberation. (shrink)

Collaborative filtering is being used within organizations and in community contexts for knowledge management and decision support as well as the facilitation of interactions among individuals. This article analyzes rhetorical and technical efforts to establish trust in the constructions of individual opinions, reputations, and tastes provided by these systems. These initiatives have some important parallels with early efforts to support quantitative opinion polling and construct the notion of “public opinion.” The article explores specific ways to increase trust in these systems, (...) albeit a “guarded trust” in which individuals actively seek information about system foibles and analyze the reputations of participants. (shrink)

Construction of self and group often incorporates the use of objects associated with "expression," including videos, films, and photographs. In this article, I describe four different sites for construction of groups (group portraiture, courtrooms, video-assisted group therapy, and videoconferencing). I discuss potential aspects of shifts in the way we use and talk about media on what it is like to participate in a group. The eras of video, film, and photography as "silent witnesses" to group interaction are gradually passing. For (...) example, technology that enables the digital retouching of photographs has afforded means for enhancing or dramatically altering photographic images. Those who employ these media as epistemological companions, supplementing their vision and memories of various events and interactions, are increasingly doing so from a critical (and somewhat cautious) perspective.. (shrink)

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In (...) this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. (shrink)

Em analogia com outras discriminações, como o racismo ou o sexismo, o especismo é concebido como uma forma de discriminação moral com base na espécie. Em grande medida, a discussão contemporânea sobre a importância moral dos animais surgiu e desenvolveu-se em torno da crítica e da defesa do especismo. Este artigo oferece uma visão da discussão filosófica contemporânea sobre o especismo. Após uma breve introdução, apresenta-se uma definição de especismo e caracterizam-se vários tipos de especismo, sendo o Antropocentrismo o mais (...) relevante. Depois, expõe-se um argumento proeminente contra o Antropocentrismo: o argumento dos casos marginais. Por fim, algumas posições antropocêntricas são criticamente discutidas. (shrink)

¿Cómo objetivar la subjetividad sin caer en subjetivismos inmanentistas ni en objetivismos ajenos a la existencia personal? Desde el realismo filosófico la clave parece encontrarse en la adecuada articulación entre conciencia y subjetividad. Estudiaremos las teorías de la conciencia de Antonio Millán-Puelles y Karol Wojtyła desde la onto-fenomenología para hallar el modo de superar esta aporía. -/- How to objectify subjectivity without falling into either immanent subjectivisms or objectivisms foreign to personal existence? From the perspective of realist philosophy the key (...) seems to be found in an appropriate articulation between consciousness and subjectivity. We are going to study the theories of consciousness in Antonio Millán-Puelles and Karol Wojtyła from onto-phenomenology in order to find the way to overcome this aporia. (shrink)

It is a fact that there is ethical criticism about art. Art critics, the general public and even artists point out moral flaws in artworks while evaluating them. Philosophers, however, have maintained a hot debate on the meaning of such criticism. This debate can be understood as a disagreement about the kind of relation between the artistic value of artworks and their alleged moral value. While some claim that moral value can contribute to artistic value (moralism), others claim that there (...) cannot be such a contribution (autonomism). Since at least some works of architecture are artworks, that debate also concerns architecture. A moderate moralist view claims that some works of architecture have moral flaws/merits that bear on their artistic evaluation. In an apparently promising version, the contention is that some moral flaws/merits are aesthetically relevant. In this paper I argue against such contention and defend an autonomist view. Following some taxonomy remarks I distinguish the views in the debate and present two points in favour of autonomism: its simplicity and not having the burden of proof. Then I discuss Carroll’s merited response argument for moralism and I argue that in its best interpretation either it begs the question against autonomism or it is compatible with it. I conclude with some possible objections that may help further investigations on the subject. (shrink)