Thinking the Visual, Visualizing the Thought.A perceptual and Political Model of VisionMerleau-Ponty’s program of perceptivizing thought has depoliticizing effects that, though he does not recognize them, undermine his understanding of politics. These anti-political consequences, moreover, bring out the internal difficulties of his anti-intellectualist starting point. There are three areas in which Merleau-Ponty gave a thorough application, though with unequal success, of his perception-based model: the presentation of his own thought, in which his program of picturalization had a striking success; the (...) explanation of the historical process, in which his visualization model was only partly effective; and access to other people’s thought, in which his perceptivist views encountered an undeniable failure. Merleau-Ponty’s successive approaches to other people’s thought show, by two distinct paths, and beyond his own intentions, an unforeseen political defect. His perceptive model proves incompatible with his political ideas when it is applied in depth, and it thus breaks apart the cohesion of his thought. From a larger perspective, it disrupts reflective approaches to politics since it damages their conceptual bases. This article shows successively that Merleau-Ponty laid out a perceptive model of universal scope; that he applied it to several areas, including politics; that this model proves politically deficient when it serves to remove the autochthonous sources of sense; that these depoliticizing effects become more acute when Merleau-Ponty employs the perceptive model to elucidate other people’s thought; and that its frustration in this area not only devalues his political reflections, but also signals that the perceptive model simply prevents a “thinking of the political.”Pensare il visuale, visualizzare il pensiero.Un modello percettivo e politico della visioneIl programma di percettivizzazione del pensiero intrapreso da Merleau-Ponty comporta effetti spoliticizzanti che sconfessano nascostamente la sua comprensione della politica. Tali conseguenze antipolitiche mettono altresì in rilievo le difficoltà intrinseche alla sua posizione anti-intellettualista. Vi sono tre ambiti nei quali Merleau-Ponty, con diverso successo, ha applicato il suo modello percettivo : la presentazione del suo stesso pensiero, nella quale questo programma di pittoricizzazione incontra un successo trionfale; la chiarificazione del processo storico, dove tale modello “visualeˮ non è efficace che in parte; infine l’accesso al pensiero di altri autori, terreno sul quale questa prospettiva percettivista subisce uno scacco innegabile. Molti tentativi merleaupontiani di approcciare il pensiero di altri autori attestano in vario modo un imprevisto deficit politico. Il modello percettivo di Merleau-Ponty si rivela in altri termini incompatibile con le sue idee politiche, nel momento in cui viene applicato in profondità, e in ultima analisi mette a dura prova la coerenza del suo pensiero. In una prospettiva più ampia, esso ostacola un approccio riflessivo alla politica poiché ne degrada le stesse basi concettuali. Il nostro articolo mostra quindi che Merleau-Ponty ha articolato un modello percettivo di portata universale; che l’ha applicato a svariati ambiti d’indagine, tra cui la politica; che quel modello si rivela deficitario quando viene utilizzato per attingere a specifiche fonti di senso; che tali effetti spoliticizzanti si acuiscono nel momento in cui Merleau-Ponty adotta il modello percettivo per illuminare il pensiero di altri autori; che, per concludere, la sua incongruenza con questo peculiare ambito di riflessione non solo impoverisce le sue riflessioni politiche, ma attesta che in linea generale il modello percettivo sbarra la strada a un qualsiasi «pensiero del politico». (shrink)

La filosofía fue entre nosotros, durante largo tiempo, un “juego social”, en las últimas décadas se ha venido transformando en (pseudo)campo, y en la actualidad está expuesta a sucumbir a la heteronomía, decayendo a la degradada situación de “espacio de servicios”. Así la doctrina de Bourdieu esclarece el surgimiento, la situación actual, y en cierto modo también la peripecia futura de la filosofía en España. Y al mismo tiempo consigue explicar porque, en este preciso momento, es plausible el pesimista diagnóstico (...) de que el peligro de regresión a la heteronomía compromete la existencia del incipiente campo filosófico español. Simplemente ocurre que en las situaciones de crisis las percepciones de los agentes adquieren una relevancia de la que suelen carecer en etapas más apacibles. En los períodos de desilusión los agentes se vuelven lúcidos, en una palabra, porque entonces resulta más difícil “seguir el juego” que el campo les exige. Ya que tomar parte en dicho juego no es más, según Bourdieu, que una forma de ilusión. (shrink)

In the last third of the 20th century, the Bielefeld School of social history, headed by Hans- Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, rose to prominence. It had contrasting concerns: the focus on structures and processes of development sidelined intentional action and coexisted with a political rewriting of the past that indicted the interests and decisions of dominant elites in Germany from 1870 to 1933. History was viewed, oddly enough, as retrospective politics. This article analyses the main aporiae implied by both (...) the School’s programme and its scholarly output. How did a structuralist historiography contrive backward-looking political denunciations? Is our time entitled to judge and accuse the past? Notwithstanding the weight of structures and processes, were there real alternatives for the historical agents? Did systemic causality grant elbowroom to intentional action? What chances were then missed and why? Overall, the surmise that there were always choices clashes with received narratives of inevitability. (shrink)

This paper studies five approaches on the future of alterity that awaits ideas and doctrines. According to these predictions, embedded in texts by Weber, Meinecke, Butterfield, Merleau-Ponty and Koselleck, the coming forms of thinking shall endure the same destiny affecting the ideas of the past because they will evolve without relying on historical sameness. The future of Western thought, in short, is bound to an unpredictable “destiny of otherness”. These claims, taken together, outline a redirection of the genealogical untangling to (...) the future. While they persist on linking present phenomena to realities deemed historically “other”, they also foresee that this fate of alterity will prevail in future times, an enlargement of scope that results in a symmetrically expanded genealogy. This universalized “discourse of historical otherness” makes evident that genealogy, in addition to its involvement with past vicissitudes of ideas and beliefs, is also bound to explore their future emmeshing with alterity. Its “forward-looking inflection” will proscribe historiographic prolepsis, contending that the destiny of otherness awaiting ideas and doctrines excludes any surmise about the meaning they will be given in the future. (shrink)

Comentaba en el Prólogo a la 1ª edición que nos cuesta distinguir las técnicas de los métodos y aceptar que la buena investigación clínica es la que se realiza con método riguroso. Este método reposa en cuatro pilares: que la pregunta o cuestión formulada sea relevante, que esté enunciada de manera precisa y operativa, que sea abordada o respondida con el mejor medio disponible en cada circunstancia, y que evite redundancias o repeticiones de cuestiones que ya han sido examinadas por (...) otros investigadores. Añadía que es imprescindible una dosis de curiosidad y de entusiasmo por lo que se examina. Como se ha dicho con frecuencia, el ensayo clínico es, entre los métodos de investigación clínica, el "patrón oro", el que, gracias a su característica inherente (la distribución aleatoria), está sujeto a menores posibilidades de sesgos. Esta consideración no ha cambiado. Sin embargo, mayor validez interna del método no implica mayor relevancia de los resultados obtenidos. Actualmente es común examinar protocolos de ensayos clínicos bien diseñados, cuyo "único" problema es que pretenden evaluar aspectos de escaso interés farmacológico, terapéutico, epidemiológico o sanitario. ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación del quinto fármaco de una serie en una indicación para la que ya hay cuatro análogos que le han precedido en su desarrollo? ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación de un nuevo hipocolesterolemiante o de un nuevo fármaco para la osteoporosis si no se conocen, respectivamente, el impacto de la hipercolesterolemia como factor de riesgo de cardiopatía isquémica o la epidemiología de las fracturas en mujeres postmenopáusicas en nuestro medio? En relación con estos ejemplos, tendría mucho más interés conocer los determinantes epidemiológicos y la historia natural de la cardiopatía isquémica en nuestro medio y conocer la epidemiología de las fracturas "espontáneas" y su impacto sobre la demanda asistencial; para ello serían de mucha utilidad métodos de investigación cuya validez intrínseca podría ser considerada "subóptima" en comparación con el ensayo clínico. En los últimos años ha irrumpido con fuerza en numerosísimas publicaciones el concepto de la "medicina basada en pruebas". Esta moda refleja en parte la importancia que de manera creciente reguladores e industria farmacéutica han concedido a los ensayos clínicos: se ha alcanzado un consenso global sobre la necesidad de demostrar la "eficacia" de los nuevos medicamentos por medio de ensayos clínicos controlados. De este modo, los organismos reguladores y autoridades sanitarias exigen ensayos clínicos como uno de los elementos necesarios para obtener el registro de un nuevo medicamento. Como consecuencia, se realizan y publican muchos más ensayos clínicos que antaño, y actualmente se pueden encontrar ensayos que sustentan la eficacia de la mayoría de los medicamentos disponibles en indicaciones específicas. Si hace unos años bastaba con examinar si había ensayos clínicos que demostraran la eficacia de un determinado medicamento antes de adoptarlo como uno de los de uso común (o de incluirlo en el formulario de un hospital), en la actualidad estas decisiones son más complejas, y se basan sobre todo en una consideración atenta de los objetivos, los métodos y los resultados de cada ensayo o de otros estudios destinados a evaluar eficacia, seguridad, conveniencia o comodidad y coste. Un buen clínico debe saber a la vez leer críticamente las publicaciones científicas y producir información relevante. Leer críticamente significa evaluar la pertinencia de los problemas investigados, los métodos aplicados y la interpretación de los resultados obtenidos. Producir información relevante implica saber identificar los problemas que deben y pueden ser objeto de investigación, formularlos, y ser protagonista (generalmente como parte de un equipo) de la elaboración del plan de investigación. En los últimos años se han publicado varios textos similares al que tiene en sus manos, todos ellos de gran calidad. El presente no pretende ser el más exhaustivo, sino sobre todo interesar a los profesionales sanitarios en el apasionante campo de la investigación clínica, en su sentido más amplio, estimulando la autonomía del lector para investigar un problema o una situación, y para aprender a leer las publicaciones científicas clínicas. Su lectura debe contribuir a que términos como "doble ciego", "p<0,05", "casos y controles", etc. dejen de ser fetiches-misterios, para convertirse en herramientas conceptualmente sencillas, útiles para la evaluación de la actividad asistencial. Esta nueva edición está muy ampliada respecto a la anterior. Se han reorganizado las generalidades sobre los objetivos y métodos de la investigación clínica, se han ampliado algunos aspectos del ensayo clínico, como el análisis de subgrupos, los aspectos estadísticos y éticos y las publicaciones sobre ensayos clínicos, se han añadido cuatro nuevos capítulos, sobre efectividad y eficacia, metaanálisis, ensayos en un solo paciente y farmacoeconomía, y el Glosario ha sido revisado y ampliado (sobre todo con términos de farmacocinética, desarrollo preclínico de fármacos, estadística y biotecnología genética), e incluye casi 750 términos. Para su elaboración me he basado en numerosos textos y diccionarios,a aunque he reformulado la mayoría de las definiciones y he optado por añadir en ocasiones algún comentario personal a muchas de ellas. Carles Vallvé ha escrito el capítulo sobre Normas de Buena Práctica Clínica. Agradezco asimismo las precisones y comentarios de Eulalia Dalmau, Javier Jiménez, Josep Maria Castel y Xavier Vidal, así como los comentarios a versiones anteriores de Fernando Antezana y Jorleny Rojas. Eduard Diogène me sugirió la idea de la portada, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, que Goya comentaba así: " La fantasía abandonada de la razón produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas" La 1ª edición de este libro, que fue promovida por Zeneca, tuvo una amplia difusión, en España y en América Latina. AstraZeneca me propuso preparar esta 2ª edición del mismo modo abierto que en ocasión de la primera; su actual Director Médico Ramón Estiarte me ha ayudado en la selección de términos para el Glosario. A él y al anterior Director Médico de Zeneca, Manuel Martín, agradezco su idea inicial, su estímulo y ayuda, y las facilidades que han dado para la difusión de este libro. Joan-Ramon Laporte. (shrink)

This paper examines the debate about the referential meaning of Kant’s concept of substance. In the Critique of Pure Reason and other works such as the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, the category or concept of substance appears quite uncontroversially to have both a logical meaning (by which it means roughly ‘a thing that is the ultimate subject of predication’) and an objective meaning (by which it means roughly ‘a thing that is permanent’, or, equivalently, ‘a thing existing at all (...) times’). However, it is highly contested what kind of object, or objects, are supposed to meet, in experience, the criteria imposed by the conjunction of these two distinct meanings. I discuss two examples of the main interpretations to be found in the literature: Peter Strawson (2000), who contends that the reference of substance is only matter, and Claudia Jáuregui (2021), who also includes ordinary particular objects as substances. I scrutinize their fit with some of the textual evidence, primarily from the First Analogy of Experience, and finally reject Jáuregui’s interpretation as implying a kind of mereological essentialism about particular objects. Keywords: substance, meaning, matter, ordinary objects, First Analogy of Experience. (shrink)

This book is the culmination of the COST Action CA15212 Citizen Science to Promote Creativity, Scientific Literacy, and Innovation throughout Europe. It represents the final stage of a shared journey taken over the last 4 years. During this relatively short period, our citizen science practices and perspectives have rapidly evolved. In this chapter we discuss what we have learnt about the recent past of citizen science and what we expect and hope for the future.

In this Chapter, Maria Kronfeldner discusses whether psychological essentialism is a necessary part of dehumanization. This involves different elements of essentialism, and a narrow and a broad way of conceptualizing psychological essentialism, the first akin to natural kind thinking, the second based on entitativity. She first presents authors that have connected essentialism with dehumanization. She then introduces the error theory of psychological essentialism regarding the category of the human, and distinguishes different elements of psychological essentialism. On that basis, Kronfeldner (...) connects historical, socio-psychological, and philosophical insights in order to show that although essentialism can act as a catalyst for dehumanization, it is not necessary for it. Examples relate to dehumanization in the context of colonialism and evolutionary thinking, to the history of dehumanizing women from Aristotle to 19th-century craniology, and to contemporary self-dehumanization and ‘lesser mind’ attribution. (shrink)

Yago es el mal incondicional\ sus acciones no pueden justificarse y, sin embargo, puede ser defendidas [T1]. Esta es la tesis que defiende Richard Raatzsch en *The Apologetics o f Evil. The Case o f Yago*. Su argumento descansa fundamentalmente en otras dos tesis, a saber: [T2] que no hay motivo alguno que dé cuenta de las acciones de Yago como un todo y [T3] que Yago es s uno de esos que mantienen su corazón atento solo a sí mismos. (...) Trataré de mostrar, sin embargo, que el argumento de Raatzsch en favor de [T1-T3] es inconsistente con su defensa de Yago, por lo que concluiré que Ratzsch no puede mantener coherentemente las tres tesis. Esta conclusión se verá, no obstante, complementada con una propuesta alternativa acerca de la naturaleza del mal incondicional en la que se subraya el papel de las experiencias corporales en la articulación de lo ético. (shrink)

Interview with the author of "why We are in Need of Tails." Iguana Books, Toronto, Canada.

Readers are awaiting a new encounter with stories united under the common title Why We Are in Need of Tales. Let me remind you that these deep philosophical books were written by Maria daVenza Tillmanns, a professional philosopher dedicated to the study of philosophizing with children, who has gained valuable experience in this field. Maria’s books are inspired by her work with her students at El Toyon Elementary School in National City (California), with whom Maria held philosophy (...) with children classes for three years before COVID-19. With parental permission, the children provided their drawings, which are used as illustrations for the books. I read Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part III with great pleasure. The focus of this book is on making decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. In Part II, the focus is on dreams — hopes and wishes we have for life. This book looks at how we may best decide how to make those hopes and wishes come true. And the answer Huk and Tuk suggest is deceptively easy: by making decisions “with your eyes wide open.” (5, p. ix). The author of this excellent book managed to describe how to make decisions with your eyes wide open through the playful dialogue between Huk and Tuk. The books are written in dialogue so the reader immediately plunges into the context of a lively conversation. Dialogue not only sharpens attention, but also invites the reader to participate in the conversation. In this way, the reader becomes a listener at the same time. (shrink)

This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how (...) a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. (shrink)

Maria Kronfeldner’s Preface and Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization maps the landscape of dehumanization studies. She starts with a brief portrayal of the history of the field. The systematically minded sections that follow guide the reader through the resulting rugged landscape represented in the Handbook’s contributions. Different realizations, levels, forms, and ontological contrasts of dehumanization are distinguished, followed by remarks on the variety of targets of dehumanization. A discussion on valence and emotional aspects is added. Causes, functions, (...) and consequences of dehumanization, and the prospects for reducing or undoing it, are introduced. The systematic overview closes with a discussion of some important theoretical complexities that arise in studying dehumanization. After these systematic sections, the scholarly work on dehumanization gets situated in the broader intellectual landscape of debates about the ‘human’ in the humanities and social sciences. The Introduction ends with some notes on scope, limitations, and intended readership of the Handbook. (shrink)

This paper seeks a better understanding of the elements of practical reasoning: premises and conclusion. It argues that the premises of practical reasoning do not normally include statements such as ‘I want to ϕ’; that the reasoning in practical reasoning is the same as in theoretical reasoning and that what makes it practical is, first, that the point of the relevant reasoning is given by the goal that the reasoner seeks to realize by means of that reasoning and the subsequent (...) action; second, that the premises of such reasoning show the goodness of the action to be undertaken; third, that the conclusions of such reasoning may be actions or decisions, that can be accompanied by expressions of intention, either in action, or for the future; and that these are justified, and might be contradicted, in ways that are not only peculiar to them (i.e. in ways that diverge from those found in theoretical reasoning), but are distinctively practical, in that they involve reference to reasons for acting and to expressions of intention, respectively.1. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the topics of trust and expertise from the perspective of political epistemology. In particular, it addresses four main questions: (§1) How should we characterise experts and their expertise? (§2) How can non-experts recognize a reliable expert? (§3) What does it take for non-experts to trust experts? (§4) What problems impede trust in experts?

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to (...) social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

Escribir hoy en día un libro sobre hermenéutica, que tal hermenéutica se refiera a la desarrollada por G. Gadamer en su conocido Verdad y método y que se pretenda añadir algo nuevo a lo mucho escrito sobre el tema parecería, a primera vista, empresa irrealizable. Que ambas pretensiones inspiren la sólida monografía de María G. Navarro —titulada Interpretar y argumentar— constituye empresa audaz y arriesgada, plena de coraje innovador, que provoca admiración, curiosidad e interés. Contra lo que pudiera parecer a (...) primera vista, el libro contiene un alto componente de originalidad y creatividad, debido a la estratagema metodoló-gica de que se sirve la autora. A saber, una hermenéutica in obliquo, estrategia consistente en interpretar a la hermenéutica gadameriana a través del prisma de la lógica de la argumentación. (shrink)

In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility' in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities' ('a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise'). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, undercuts many of those debates. Such cases (...) all require a counterfactual mechanism that could cause an agent to perform an action that he cannot avoid performing. I argue that, given our concept of what it is for someone to act, this requirement is inconsistent. Frankfurt-style alleged counterexamples are cases where an agent is morally responsible for an action he performs even though, the claim goes, he could not have avoided performing that action. However, it has recently been argued, e.g. by John Fischer, that a counterexample to the Principle could be a 'Fischer-style case', i.e. a case where the agent can either perform the action or do nothing else. I argue that, although Fischer-style cases do not share the conceptual flaw common to all Frankfurt-style cases, they also fail as counterexamples to the Principle. The paper finishes with a brief discussion of the significance of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

Orang-utans played a communication game in two studies testing their ability to produce and comprehend requestive pointing. While the ‘communicator’ could see but not obtain hidden food, the ‘donor’ could release the food to the communicator, but could not see its location for herself. They could coordinate successfully if the communicator pointed to the food, and if the donor comprehended his communicative goal and responded pro-socially. In Study 1, one orang-utan pointed regularly and accurately for peers. However, they responded only (...) rarely. In Study 2, a human experimenter played the communicator’s role in three conditions, testing the apes’ comprehension of points of different heights and different degrees of ostension. There was no effect of condition. However, across conditions one donor performed well individually, and as a group orang-utans’ comprehension performance tended towards significance. We explain this on the grounds that comprehension required inferences that they found difficult – but not impossible. The finding has valuable implications for our thinking about the development of pointing in phylogeny. (shrink)

In the face of causal complexity, scientists reconstitute phenomena in order to arrive at a more simplified and partial picture that ignores most of the 'bigger picture.' This paper will distinguish between two modes of reconstituting phenomena: one moving down to a level of greater decomposition (toward organizational parts of the original phenomenon), and one moving up to a level of greater abstraction (toward different differences regarding the phenomenon). The first aim of the paper is to illustrate that phenomena are (...) moving targets, i.e., they are not fixed once and for all, but are adapted, if necessary, on the basis of the preferred perspective adopted for pragmatic reasons. The second aim is to analyze in detail the second mode of reconstituting phenomena. This includes an exposition of the kind of pragmatic-pluralistic picture resulting from the fact that phenomena are reconstituted by a move up to a level of greater abstraction. (shrink)

Important empirically informed proposals of virtue cultivation invoke techniques of goal pursuit. This paper argues that these techniques are effective in changing behavior due to the attention narrowing they bring about, and further show that such attention narrowing can threaten the appropriate exercise of phronetic-related capacities. When these phronetic-related capacities are threatened, two derivative problems arise: (1) One can end up acting in morally inappropriate ways, and (2) Even in cases where one performs the morally appropriate action, one nonetheless can (...) fail to notice and appreciate features of moral value. In light of these concerns, such techniques of goal pursuit – at least, by themselves – serve the most good for those who are merely trying to avoid vice, rather than cultivate virtue. And so, I suggest that such accounts of virtue cultivation are incomplete. I then go on to argue that these undesirable effects of attention narrowing brought about by these goal pursuit techniques may be ameliorated by also engaging in certain indirect modifications of cognition, particularly those which broaden attention. The suggestion, then, is that attention narrowing techniques of goal pursuit, along with attention broadening modifications, might best facilitate virtue cultivation when employed together. While the particulars of how we might best go about this are currently unclear, this paper ends by looking at empirical research on Open Monitoring Meditation as providing a hopeful option that might be further investigated. (shrink)

The synthetic theory of evolution has gone stale and an expanding or (re-)widening of it towards a new synthesis has been announced. This time, development and culture are supposed to join the synthesis bandwagon. In this article, I distinguish between four kinds of synthesis that are involved when we extend the evolutionary synthesis towards culture: the integration of fields, the heuristic generation of interfields, the expansion of validity, and the creation of a common frame of discourse or ‘big-picture’. These kinds (...) of synthesis are connected to epistemic values that are used to evaluate theories as well as analogies. A review of these epistemic values and the kinds of synthesis connected to them shall illustrate two points. First, that the discussions about culture and evolution exhibit an epistemic bias towards synthesis, even if, as history shows, synthesis and well as isolation can be fruitful epistemic strategies in science. The paper thus contains some critical notes on the value of synthesis in science. Second, reviewing the kinds of synthesis and values involved allows for a new perspective on the analogies involved in theories of cultural evolution. It is a perspective that makes the criteria with which these theories are usually evaluated explicit. With this we can compare the different standpoints people have taken on the usefulness of theories of cultural evolution at a higher level. Differences arise because of different epistemic values assumed. (shrink)

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 exacerbated two distinct concerns about the independence of central banks: a concern about legitimacy and a concern about economic justice. This paper explores the legitimacy of independent central banks from the perspective of these two concerns, by presenting two distinct models of central banking and their different claims to political legitimacy and distributive justice. I argue primarily that we should avoid construing central bank independence in binary terms, such that central banks either are, or (...) are not, independent. I will argue that we should instead construe central bank independence in scalar terms, so that independence admits of degree, thus allowing us to develop an account of independence in which central banks can retain it to the extent necessary for economic efficiency, while meeting reasonable concerns regarding democratic legitimacy and economic justice. (shrink)

Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a (...) wide range of phenomena involving all sorts of animate and inanimate substances. This diversity has encouraged the thought that the term 'reason' is ambiguous or has different senses in different contexts. Moreover, this view often goes hand in hand with the claim that reasons of these different kinds belong to different ontological categories: to facts (or something similar) in the case of normative/justifying reasons, and to mental states in the case of motivating/explanatory reasons. In this paper I shall explore some of the main roles that reasons play and, on that basis, I shall offer a classification of kinds of reasons. As will become clear, my classification of reasons is at odds with much of the literature in several respects: first, because of my views about how we should understand the claim that reasons are classified into different kinds; second, because of the kinds into which I think reasons should be classified; and, finally, because of the consequences I think this view has for the ontology of reasons. (shrink)

Relatar lo ocurrido como invención: una introducción a la filosofía de la ficción contemporánea ofrece al lector en castellano una magnífica oportunidad para familiarizarse con algunos aspectos centrales de la filosofía del lenguaje contemporánea y sus implicaciones para la teoría de la ficción. García-Carpintero recorre los argumentos fundamentales en favor y en contra de cada una de las posiciones relevantes, y nos propone finalmente un análisis alternativo de la norma de la ficción y una teoría neofregeana de los términos referenciales (...) que logra esquivar algunas objeciones tradicionales. Esta discusión incluye, no obstante, dos objeciones a su norma de la ficción: una se refiere a las formas de la conciencia que esa norma presupone y la otra a la naturaleza del interés que suscitan los proyectos imaginativos vinculados a las obras de ficción. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.

Ignorance is often a perfectly good excuse. There are interesting debates about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake subvert obligation, but little disagreement about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake exculpate. What about agents who have all the relevant facts in view but fail to meet their obligations because they do not have the right moral beliefs? If their ignorance of their obligations derives from mistaken moral beliefs or from ignorance of the moral significance of the facts they have in (...) view, should they be excused for failing to meet their moral obligations? It is not obvious that they should. In this paper we argue that the best non-skeptical accounts of moral responsibility acknowledge that factual ignorance and mistake will diminish moral responsibility in a way that moral ignorance and mistake will not. That is because factual ignorance is often non-culpable so long as it meets certain merely procedural epistemic standards but the same is not true of moral ignorance. Our argument is that the assumption that it is gets the standards of culpability for moral ignorance wrong, and that the mistake is encouraged by the thought that culpability in general requires an instance of known wrongdoing: that acting wrongly requires de dicto unresponsiveness to one’s obligations at some stage. We deny this and conclude that, therefore, ignorance and mistaken belief are indeed often perfectly good excuses – but far less often than some philosophers claim. (shrink)

This short paper comments on the connections between epigenetics, responsiveness and embodiment. Epigenetics has solidified a new conception of DNA as “responsive,” and rightfully so. Yet, the discussion too easily falls back to metaphors of agency and can show a tendency to see responsiveness and embodiment as based on epigenetics, which is shown to be wrong.

Last time we introduced the notion of an illocutionary perspective . The basic idea is that the very act of speaking up introduces several discourse referents. The speech act itself (e ) is introduced as the central perspective point ( ε ). In addition, all the speech spheres (p ) where this speech act is realized, as well as the worlds of each sphere (w ∈p ) are introduced as modal topics ( Ω and  ω ).

The first of three lectures on nominal and modal discourse reference across languages (IMS, Stuttgart, 2000).

The received view about rationalizing explanations divides our psychological status into two kinds: beliefs and desires. In *The Retrieval of Ethics*, Talbot Brewer makes a case against this view. In this paper, I examine our experience as readers of *The Castle* by Franz Kafka to support Brewer's critical program, that is, his challenge to the received view. I will argue, however, that a proper analysis of this experience poses a serious problem to Brewer's alternative approach, that is, to his attempt (...) to retrieve our agency thanks to a proper understanding of the role of the good in rationalizing explanations. (shrink)

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far from imprisoning its students in (...) outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history. (shrink)

Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...) rather than blind, integrating developments from contemporary research on creativity. On that basis, I discuss three compatibility arguments that have been used to answer the critique. These arguments do not deny guided variation but insist that an important analogy exists nonetheless. These compatibility arguments all fail, even though they do so for different reasons: trivialisation, conceptual confusion, and lack of evidence respectively. Revisiting the debate in this manner not only allows us to see where exactly a ‘Darwinian’ account of creative hypothesis formation goes wrong, but also to see that the debate is not about factual issues, but about the interpretation of these factual issues in Darwinian terms. (shrink)

Data involving epistemic modals suggest that some classically valid argument forms, such as _reductio_, are invalid in natural language reasoning as they lead to modal collapses. We adduce further data showing that the classical argument forms governing the existential quantifier are similarly defective, as they lead to a _de re–de dicto_ collapse. We observe a similar problem for disjunction. But if the classical argument forms for negation, disjunction and existential quantification are invalid, what are the correct forms that govern the (...) use of these items? Our diagnosis is that epistemic modals interfere with hypothetical reasoning. We present a modal first-order logic and model theory that characterizes hypothetical reasoning with epistemic modals in a principled manner. One upshot is a sound and complete natural deduction system for reasoning with epistemic modals in first-order logic. (shrink)

The current “exemplarist turn” within virtue ethics is increasingly shedding light on the importance of exemplars both as enabling one to identify the virtues and for the importance they bear for orienting one’s conduct, as well as for educating the novice. However, even if categorizations of exemplars have already been proposed, there seems to be a lack of discussion on the kind of imitation different exemplars are supposed to elicit. In order to offer a preliminary answer to this question, in (...) this paper I present three paths to flourishing via imitation of exemplary individuals: The Platonic, the Stoic, and the Aristotelian. Then, I sketch an attempt to reconcile these models. In conclusion, I suggest that, when it comes to education, this reconciliation becomes necessary. Along these lines, I recommend that a multi-step educational program is elaborated. (shrink)

Creativity has often been declared, especially by philosophers, as the last frontier of science. The assumption is that it will defy explanation forever. I will defend two claims in order to oppose this assumption and to demystify creativity: (1) the perspective that creativity cannot be explained wrongly identifies creativity with what I shall call metaphysical freedom; (2) the Darwinian approach to creativity, a prominent naturalistic account of creativity, fails to give an explanation of creativity, because it confuses conceptual issues with (...) explanation. I will close with some remarks on the status and differences in some explanations available in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper investigates civility from an Aristotelian perspective and has two objectives. The first is to offer a novel account of this virtue based on Aristotle’s remarks about civic friendship. The proposed account distinguishes two main components of civility—civic benevolence and civil deliberation—and shows how Aristotle’s insights can speak to the needs of our communities today. The notion of civil deliberation is then unpacked into three main dimensions: motivational, inquiry-related, and ethical. The second objective is to illustrate how the post-truth (...) condition—in particular, the spread of misinformation typical of the digital environments we inhabit—obstructs our capacity to cultivate the virtue of civility by impairing every component of civil deliberation. The paper hopes to direct virtue theorists’ attention to the need to foster civic virtues as a means of counteracting the negative aspects of the post-truth age. (shrink)

Geschlecht und Gewalt, das Thema dieses Bandes, betrifft nicht nur die Frage nach den Charakteristika und Ursachen sexueller Aggression, sondern auch die Frage nach angeblichen geschlechtsspezifischen Formen der Aggression. Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich mit beidem und diskutiert sie als Teil von begrifflichen Ausweitungen der Kampfzone, d.h. der Erweiterungen des Aggressionsbegriffs im Verlauf der wissenschaftlichen Aggressionsforschung der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der Beitrag zeigt unter Anderem: was als Aggression wahrgenommen wird und in der Wissenschaft als solche gezählt wird, verändert (...) sich mit der Gesellschaft. Dabei wird aus epistemologischer bzw. wissenschaftsphilosophischer Perspektive gezeigt, wie sich rassistische, Status-, und Geschlechtsstereotype auf begriffliche Entscheidungen in wissenschaftlicher Forschung auswirken und somit die wissenschaftliche Arbeit am Begriff beeinflussen können. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that for blame to be appropriate the wrongdoer must be blameworthy. However, blameworthiness is not sufficient for appropriate blame. It has been argued that for blame to be appropriate the blamer must have standing to blame. Philosophers writing on the topic have distinguished several considerations that might defeat someone’s standing to blame. This paper examines the underexplored consideration of how personal relationships can influence who has the standing to express blame. We seem to assume that if (...) we do not stand in the right relation to the wrongdoer, it is not our business to blame them. I identify three challenges to this view. First, we do not know what is wrong with meddling (whether it is morally or prudentially wrong). Second, there are cases where we have no close relation to the wrongdoer, but where we seem to have standing nonetheless – murder and other serious moral offences are examples of this. Third, we don’t seem to have a clear conception of what ‘standing’ means, and this makes it hard to see how discussion on standing can help us determine the propriety of blame. This paper defends the notion of standing as a propriety condition on blame in cases of meddling. I argue that personal relationships influence who has the standing to blame through constitution of relationship-specific norms; and that the role these norms play in developing and regulating our relationships can explain why meddlesome blame is morally wrong. (shrink)

In this Interview, Professor Robert B. Brandom answered ten detailed questions about his philosophy of Rational Pragmatism and Semantic Expressivism, grouped into four topics. 1. Metaphysics and Anthropology, 2. Pragmatics and Semantics, 3. Epistemic Expressivism and 4. Philosophy of Logic. With his careful answers Professor Brandom offers many additional insights into his rigorously constructed account of the relationship “between what we say and think, and what we are saying and thinking about” around the human practice of asking for and giving (...) reasons. A final, additional question pointed at a principal motivation for putting together the present issue: how to reconcile Wittgenstein’s assertion that philosophy must not proffer any theories with the very explicit system of explanations Brandom has constructed. This same issue is addressed to some extent already in Professor Brandom’s new article contained in this issue, but his answer, asserting that he does not proffer a theory but only makes explicit what is already there, might be seen as an unambiguous statement of the continuous presence of a contested Wittgensteinian principle in Brandom’s work. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva fornecer uma apresentação crítica, compreensiva e inédita na língua portuguesa do Processamento Preditivo (PP) – um esquema teórico para a compreensão da cognição que propõe uma inversão de nosso entendimento padrão da ação, percepção, sensação e sua relação. Aqui, nosso objetivo primário será introduzir os principais conceitos e ideias do PP, tratando-o como um modelo moderadamente corporificado de cognição e analisando suas credenciais como uma proposta teórica unificadora. Para tanto, partiremos de uma contextualização histórica de algumas (...) correntes de pensamento que teriam fomentado seu desenvolvimento inicial, passando por uma descrição não-matemática do Princípio da Energia Livre, que fundamenta e subentende a atuação de suas especificidades para, então, esclarecermos o papel que, segundo o PP, a inferência bayesiana, a minimização dos erros de predição e a chamada Inferência Ativa possuiriam na manutenção homeostática de nossos cérebros e corpos preditivos. Por fim, forneceremos uma síntese de algumas consequências daquilo que o PP poderia trazer à compreensão contemporânea do cérebro e comportamento humanos, concluindo que, embora sua descrição da cognição como um processo preditivo único e contínuo prometa eventualmente unificar paradigmas explicativos e níveis de análise distintos, por ora, talvez seja melhor concebê-lo de forma mais modesta, como uma ferramenta ou heurística para nos auxiliar a repensar vários dos tópicos centrais ao estudo científico e filosófico da mente. (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or (...) two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive, explanatory, definitional, or explanatory and definitional. These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts. (shrink)

Contrary to what he expected, Primo Levi didn’t experience his life after being released from Auschwitz as cheerful and light-hearted. He – like many other survivors – was haunted by an obscure and solid anguish. It took some effort for him to discern the object or source of this anguish. He finally identified it as springing from a sense of shame or guilt in front of the drowned, that is, of those who were exterminated in the Lager. He could not (...) determine, however, whether his shame or guilt was at all rational. In this paper l examine Levi’s shame in light of what I regard as the dominant conception of practical deliberation, according to which principles and emotional detachment are central to our ability to deliberate appropriately. This conception underlies the role that John Rawls ascribes to the original position in the determination of the fundamental principles of justice. Deliberation in the original position is supposed to abstract away from any particular moral situations that one may actually have faced, since these are purely circumstantial elements to be discarded as both irrelevant and misleading for a proper deliberation on the principles of justice. In this paper, I intend both to make a case against the conception of practical deliberation on which Rawls’ original position relies and to vindicate the rationality of Levi’s shame, once some well-entrenched assumptions are brought to light and challenged. (shrink)

Natural languages exhibit a great variety of grammatical paradigms. For instance, in English verbs are grammatically marked for tense, whereas in the tenseless Eskimo-Aleut language Kalaallisut they are marked for illocutionary mood. Although time is a universal dimension of the human experience and speaking is part of that experience, some languages encode reference to time without any grammatical tense morphology, or reference to speech acts without any illocutionary mood morphology. Nevertheless, different grammatical systems are semantically parallel in certain respects. Specifically, (...) I propose that English tenses form a temporal centering system, which monitors and updates topic times, whereas Kalaallisut moods form a modal centering system, which monitors and updates modal discourse referents. To formalize these centering parallels I define a dynamic logic that represents not only changing information but also changing focus of attention in discourse (Update with Centering, formalizing Grosz et al 1995). Different languages can be translated into this typed logic by directly compositional universal rules of Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) The resulting centering theory of tense and illocutionary mood draws semantic parallels across different grammatical systems. The centering generalizations span the extremes of the typological spectrum, so they are likely to be universal. In addition, the theory accounts for the translation equivalence of tense and illocutionary mood in a given utterance context. Following Stalnaker (1978) I assume that the very act of speaking up has a ‘commonplace effect’ on the context. It focuses attention on the speech act and thereby introduces default modal and temporal topics. These universal defaults complement language-specific grammars, e.g. English tenses and Kalaallisut moods. In a given utterance context the universal discourse-initial defaults plus language-specific grammatical marking may add up to the same truth conditions.. (shrink)

Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant 'psychological conception', which says that motivating reasons are an agent's believing something; and (2) the 'non-psychological' conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties - in particular, difficulties concerning (...) 'error cases' (cases where what the agent believes is false); and difficulties concerning the explanation of action. Concerning error cases, I argue that if we are motivated by something believed that is true, what motivates us to act is a motivating reason. By contrast, if we are motivated by something believed that is false, then what motivates us to act is merely an apparent motivating reason. Either way, what motivates us is, as the non-psychological conception says, what we believe and not our believing it. I offer an account of the relation between motivating reasons and the explanation of action, and argue that this account helps bring out two important points. One is that the fact that we often do, and indeed sometimes must, use explanations such as 'He did it because he believed that p' does not vindicate the psychological conception of motivating reasons. The other is that endorsing the non-psychological conception of motivating reasons does not commit one to a non-factive view of explanations of action. (shrink)

Marta Suria writes *Ella soy yo* as part of her response to the irruption of the memories of the sexual aggressions she had suffered since childhood. She is convinced that the way she narrates her experience will transform and liberate her. How is it at all possible that a certain kind of narrative may transform and li- berate us? In this paper, we will first describe the conception of the relationship between language and experience that lies behind this perplexity and, (...) secondly, we will sketch an alternative conception that will hopefully allow us to account for the transformative power of certain kinds of narratives. This alternative conception will hinge on the idea of expression and on the concept of aspect perception. For this purpose, we will firstly argue that language can be used not only to describe or evaluate our experience, but also to express it; we will, then, defend the view that linguistic or gestural expressions of our experiences not only announce or manifest them, but contribute to shaping and modulating them; finally, we will highlight the transformative, humanizing power of certain expressive uses of language. (shrink)