In this paper I focus on the historiographical fate of Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Pedro da Fonseca (1528–1599) in two Iberian journals ran by Jesuits and founded in 1945: the Spanish Pensamiento, and the Portuguese Revista portuguesa de filosofia. I endeavor to show that the discussions of Suárez’s and Fonseca’s ideas on these journal is a two-sided case of constructing the legacies of major figures in late scholasticism, and I emphasize how the demand to identify cultural national heroes intertwines with (...) theoretical and ideological elements, especially the peculiar history of the Iberian Peninsula, and to the historical relationships between Spain and Portugal. With regard to Suárez, the Pensamiento group strives to carve out a specific place for Neo-Suarezianism within Neo-Thomism, also via a substantive reassessment of Suárez’s importance in the history of scholasticism and of philosophy in general. Hence, Suárez’s thought undergoes triumphant reevaluation, which even aims at ousting Aquinas as the ultimate reference of scholasticism, to make Suárez’s Thomism the principal authority of contemporary schools. By contrast, Fonseca remains a rather obscure and neglected figure, dug up by his fellow compatriots on the Revista portuguesa de filosofia, also against this attempt at establishing a Suarezian, Spanish hegemony. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that a special kind of hermeneutical injustice occurs when someone is not permitted to interpret their experiences in a meaning-making way. I suggest that this occurs in certain cases where the possibility that the patient has a genuine religious experience is excluded by a medical diagnosis. In such cases, it is not that an experience is incomprehensible because of the absence of a valid interpretation. Instead, one perspective is not only dominant but exclusive, so the (...) ensuing power imbalance is absolute. I begin by introducing the notion of hermeneutical injustice and subsequent refinements that have been instrumental in applying it to psychiatry. Then I show how even though voice-hearers are liable to be victims of such injustices, the literature has neglected the specific harm done to someone whose interpretation of their own experience is obliterated because of the dominance of exclusive medical views. To illustrate this, I point to a case that evinces the harms perpetrated toward patients diagnosed with psychotic symptoms with religious content and argue that depriving persons of meaning-making interpretations of their own experiences constitutes a profound and willful form of hermeneutical injustice. I then gesture toward studies on the religious reframing of anomalous experiences through contact with a normalizing framework. Finally, I pry from a successful case a general directive toward the virtue of hermeneutical justice through the attitudes of respect to first-person authority and the hermeneutical flexibility it embodies. (shrink)

: En el trabajo se busca constatar y analizar los fundamentos de la simbiosis armoniosa que se da entre lo poético y lo filosófico en el pensamiento de José Martí. Tal imbricación la encontramos no sólo en él. Ha llegado a ser bastante frecuente en un contexto como el latinoamericano. Pero, tal vez sea en Martí en quien esa fusión se acrisola de manera más brillante. Nunca se preocupó demasiado por el contenido filosófico de su poesía ni por la (...) forma poética con que vertió sus pensamientos más profundos y de mayor alcance. O, dicho de manera más exacta, sí se preocupó, y mucho, porque lo uno y lo otro nunca estuviera ausente. Y por esa misma razón fue siempre más que poeta y más que filósofo, fue escritor y pensador, o como prefirieron llamarlo sus contemporáneos, fue maestro, en cualquier caso, universal, con todas las posibles acepciones que a este último término pueda otorgársele, excepto de aquella que asume la universalidad como el despego de lo propio y particular. Eso sí no lo encontraremos en Martí. En ningún momento olvidó, no importa el lugar donde se encontrara, que escribía y pensaba desde y para su colonizada Cuba y desde y para su también sufrida América. (shrink)

James Shaw has written an excellent book on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. It manages to provide fresh perspectives on a topic on which it seemed.

Education is essential to life, and the epidemic affected everything. Parents want to get their kids the most important teaching. However, since COVID-19 has affected schools and other institutions, providing education has become the most significant issue. Online learning pedagogy uses technology to provide high-quality learning environments for student-centered learning. Further, this study explores the experiences and challenges faced by Filipino tertiary students regarding the lack of gadgets amidst online learning. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study (...) were: Some college students still have difficulty with online learning. Attending online classes is difficult, especially for students with limited resources. Smartphones, other gadgets, and internet connections play a significant role in online classrooms because they are the ones that students utilize while learning online, which is essential for successful participation in online higher education as well as for solving a variety of other difficulties in the new normal. Further, College students face similar health challenges. Having an online learning setup is not just about students' struggles with learning resources but also about their health issues. When our respondents used their smartphones for an extended period, they reported eye aches and blurred vision. They also said that some of their body parts, such as their legs and back, are aching, and feel pressured because they tend to overthink things in their surroundings, which causes them incredible difficulty in performing their best in attending online classes. Even though college students continue to suffer from a lack of learning resources during online sessions, they do their best to manage their needs and the scarcity of learning resources. Students have unique coping methods for dealing with difficulties in online classes. (shrink)

The idea that thoughts are structured is essential to Frege's understanding of thoughts. A basic tenet of his thinking was that the structure of a sentence can serve as a model for the structure of a thought. Recent commentators have, however, identified tensions between that principle and certain other doctrines Frege held about thoughts. This paper suggests that the tensions identified by Dummett and Bell are not really tensions at all. In establishing the case against Dummett and Bell the paper (...) argues (a) that Frege was committed, in virtue of his doctrine of decomposition, to the thesis that a single sentence can express a range of thoughts, and (b) that Frege was committed, in virtue of his views about truth, to the thesis that a single thought can be expressed by structurally different sentences. But neither of these theses comes into conflict with the basic principle. (shrink)

El ensayo busca fundamentar la vigencia del concepto martiano de Nuestra América y del proyecto de sociedad y de pensamiento que este entraña. Se realiza un análisis comparativo de la idea compartida por Hegel y Martí sobre la centralidad que pueden asumir ciertos pueblos en la Historia y el diferente papel que cada uno le asigna a América en el concierto universal de naciones. Se analiza la posibilidad de que sea por fin el XXI el siglo de Nuestra América, los (...) elementos que confirman el inicio de su realización y los retos y peligros que la consumación de esa posibilidad enfrenta. (shrink)

This article aims to review the standard objections to dualism and to argue that will either fail to convince someone committed to dualism or are flawed on independent grounds. I begin by presenting the taxonomy of metaphysical positions on concrete particulars as they relate to the dispute between materialists and dualists, and in particular substance dualism is defined. In the first section, several kinds of substance dualism are distinguished and the relevant varieties of this kind of dualism are selected. The (...) remaining sections are analyses of the standard objections to substance dualism : It is uninformative, has troubles accounting for soul individuation, causal pairing and interaction, violates laws of physics, is made implausible by the development of neuroscience and it postulates entities beyond necessity. I conclude that none of these objections is successful. (shrink)

En este trabajo se busca constatar y analizar los fundamentos de la simbiosis armoniosa que se da entre lo poético y lo filosófico en el pensamiento de José Martí. Tal imbricación la encontramos no sólo en él. Ha llegado a ser bastante frecuente en un contexto como el latinoamericano. Pero, tal vez sea en Martí en quien esa fusión se acrisola de manera más brillante. Nunca se preocupó demasiado por el contenido filosófico de su poesía ni por la forma (...) poética con que vertió sus pensamientos más profundos y de mayor alcance. O, dicho de manera más exacta, sí se preocupó, y mucho, porque lo uno y lo otro nunca estuviera ausente. Y por esa misma razón fue siempre más que poeta y más que filósofo, fue escritor y pensador, o como prefirieron llamarlo sus contemporáneos, fue maestro, en cualquier caso, universal, con todas las posibles acepciones que a este último término pueda otorgársele, excepto de aquella que asume la universalidad como el despego de lo propio y particular. Eso sí no lo encontraremos en Martí. En ningún momento olvidó, no importa el lugar donde se encontrara, que escribía y pensaba desde y para su colonizada Cuba y desde y para su también sufrida América. (shrink)

In debating the ethics of immigration, philosophers have focused much of their attention on determining whether a political community ought to have the discretionary right to control immigration. They have not, however, given the same amount of consideration to determining whether there are any ethical limits on how a political community enforces its immigration policy. This article, therefore, offers a different approach to immigration justice. It presents a case against legitimate states having discretionary control over immigration by showing both how (...) ethical limits on enforcement circumscribe the options legitimate states have in determining their immigration policy and how all immigrants (including undocumented immigrants) are entitled to certain protections against a state’s enforcement apparatus. (shrink)

In this article, I broadly sketch out the current philosophical debate over immigration and highlight some of its shortcomings. My contention is that the debate has been too focused on border enforcement and therefore has left untouched one of the more central issue of this debate: what to do with unauthorized immigrants who have already crossed the border and with the “push and pull” factors that have created this situation. After making this point, I turn to the work of Enrique (...) Dussel and argue that his philosophical approach offers some insights that can help overcome these shortcomings. In particular, Dussel’s commitment to a social critique and transformation that begins with the material grievances of the most excluded and oppressed in a community. Under this type of approach, the immigration debate would begin with the grievances of the victims of immigration polices and reform (i.e. unauthorized immigrants) instead of with concerns for how to better enforce borders. Lastly, I point out that this type of approach is consistent with the current Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States. (shrink)

This paper examines Gandhian philosophy and practice to reinterpret UNESCO's educational vision towards establishing stable and sustainable knowledge societies. The uniqueness of the Gandhian perspective is its ability to withstand the dominant political, philosophical and religious challenges with its contextually rooted, spiritually oriented, socially responsible and human person centred reinterpretations. UNESCO’s educational vision-Learning: The Treasure Within published in 1996 is a catalyst in establishing stable and sustainable knowledge societies. Consistent changes and challenges in knowledge societies necessitates the reinterpretation of this (...) educational vision. The four pillars of learning in this educational vision are analysed together with four aspects of Gandhian philosophy and practice: ‘learning to know’ and Nai Talim, ‘learning to do’ and ashrams, ‘learning to live together’ and constructive programme and ‘learning to be’ and swaraj. The paper discusses this confluence of the UNESCO’s theoretical approach of four pillars of education with Gandhian pragmatic philosophy and practice to offer a contextually rooted and future-oriented outlook for reinterpreting the educational vision for establishing stable and sustainable knowledge societies. (shrink)

This chapter connects the phenomenon of double bookkeeping to two critical debates in the philosophy of delusion: one from the analytic tradition and one from the phenomenological tradition. First, I will show how the failure of action guidance on the part of some delusions suggests an argument to the standard view that delusions are beliefs (doxasticism about delusion) and how its proponents have countered it by ascribing behavioral inertia to avolition, emotional disturbances, or a failure of the surrounding environment in (...) supporting the agent’s motivation to act. Second, I will show how the mismatch between the experience of double bookkeeping and that of having the usual propositional attitudes of folk psychology suggests another, more recalcitrant argument not only against doxasticism but against the very attempt to fit delusion into folk psychology. Third, I will show how phenomenologically inspired theories of delusion, such as the multiple realities hypothesis, bypass the debates above and focus on describing and understanding the disturbances in the structure of experience undergone by patients. I conclude that the philosophical discussions ensuing from an appreciation of double bookkeeping show some of the limitations of the analytic philosophical approach to delusion. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that even when they appear to help, restrictions on migration are usually only an impediment, not an aid, to cosmopolitan justice. Even though some egalitarian cosmopolitans are well intentioned in their support of migration restrictions, I argue that migration restrictions are (i) not truly cosmopolitan and (ii) will not have the kinds of consequences they expect. My argument in defense of this claim begins, in section 1, by outlining a defense of migration restrictions based on (...) egalitarian cosmopolitan grounds. Then in sections two and three, I reply to the harms this position associates with open borders and provide some reasons as to why restrictions on migration are incompatible with cosmopolitan justice. (shrink)

In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack’s admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists have studied these primarily orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. Still, they involve practices, such as offering and sacrifice as well as spirit possession and (...) mediumship, that have yet to receive attention from philosophers. We argue that this is not an accident: philosophers have had a highly restricted diet of examples, have not looked at ethnography as source material, and thus still need to put together a methodology to tackle such practices. After elucidating Schilbrack’s suggestions to adopt an embodiment paradigm and apply conceptual metaphor theory and the extended mind thesis to consider religious practices as thoughtful, we offer criticism of the specifics of his threefold solution. First, it assumes language is linear; second, it takes a problematic view of the body; and third, it abides by a misleading view of the “levels” of cognition. We conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices as cognitive enterprises. (shrink)

Since at least the second half of the 19th century, the U.S. federal government has enjoyed “plenary power” over its immigration policy. Plenary power allows the federal government to regulate immigration free of judicial review and thereby, with regard to immigration cases, minimize the Constitutional protections afforded to non-citizens. The justification for granting the U.S federal government such broad powers comes from a certain understanding of sovereignty; one where limiting sovereign authority in cases like immigration could potentially undermine its legitimacy (...) and thereby lead to something like a Hobbesian “state of nature.” One of the potential downsides of allowing the federal government to have such broad powers, however, is the potential to place non-citizens in a situation analogous to what Giorgio Agamben has called the “state of exception.” This situation appears to leave us with the following dichotomy: without something like the plenary power doctrine a political community will end up with a state of nature, but with something like the plenary power doctrine they end up with a state of exception. This essay offers a two-part response to this dilemma. First, it argues that the plenary power doctrine goes against the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment. Non-citizens, even undocumented immigrants, are entitled to more Constitutional protections than they currently enjoy. Second, since extending these protections is more consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, I argue that curtailing the federal government’s power over matters of immigration does not undermine its sovereignty, but promotes it. In short, with regard to immigration, it is a false but seductive dichotomy that constitutional democracies must choose between a state of nature and a state of exception. (shrink)

Se trata de una antología que recoge los más importantes pasajes del pensamiento sobre los valores de Risieri Frondizi (1910-1983), uno de los más importantes axiólogos de América Latina. Además de la selección de fragmentos que integra la antología, José Ramón Fabelo Corzo escribe el Prólogo (que busca ubicar a Frondizi en el contexto histórico del pensamiento axiológico latinoamericano) y el Epílogo (en el que se realiza una valoración crítica de las propuestas de este destacado pensador argentino.

In this article I use the tropes of El Cucuy (the Mexican version of the boogyman), La Llorona (the wailer), and La Migra (the border patrol) to provide the beginnings of an ethical critique of the treatment of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

In this paper, we discuss an abductive argument for the existence of God from the experience of awe at natural beauty. If God's creative work is a viable explanation for why we experience awe at natural beauty, and there is no satisfactory naturalistic explanation for the origins of such experiences, then we have defeasible evidence that God exists. To evaluate the argument's tenability, we assess the merits of the two main theocentric frameworks that can be marshaled to answer the question (...) of why human beings experience awe at natural beauty: (1) taking the experience of natural beauty as resulting from God's design intentions and (2) conceiving experiences of natural beauty as religious experiences in themselves. We argue that the presence of phenomenological content the fine-grainedness of which exceeds our descriptive and conceptual capacities is better accounted for by the latter hypothesis: experiencing natural beauty amounts to experiencing divine attributes. We conclude that the argument's theological premise is tenable and, having previously argued for the empirical premise (Porcher & De Luca-Noronha, 2021), we conclude that awe at natural beauty is best explained by the existence of God. (shrink)

Cambios estructurales en el modelo económico apuntan a revalorizar el papel del trabajo en Cuba, indican expertos en mesa redonda convocada por BOHEMIA. Apremia descentralizar gestiones administrativas y que cada individuo sea responsable y participante, coinciden. Las motivaciones efectivas han de convertir al trabajo en primera necesidad y, junto a la educación de la familia, borrar la cultura del "rebusque". Formar en los valores del trabajo debe encontrar sustento en la realidad y sus ejemplos.

In the attempt of defending an interpretation of David Hume's moral and political philosophy connected to classical utilitarianism, intervenes in a key way the so called problem of the " Sensitive Knave " raised by this author at the end of his more utilitarian work, the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. According to the classic interpretation of this fragment, the utilitarian rationality in politics would clash with morality turning useless the latter. Therefore, in the political area the defense of (...) a moral utilitarianism would be an auto contradictory task. In order to show that, first, Hume does not say anything similar to this and second, that even indicates the way of overcoming this apparent contradiction between morality and rationality, we analyze briefly the arguments from which there comes basically this "anti-utilitarian" standard interpretation, and we defend an interpretation of the humean discussion on the problem of the supposed conflict between morality and rationality, or of rational incentives for immoral behavior, which allows to explain better Hume's position on this problem. Finally, we propose an instance of overcoming the contradiction morality/ rationality by a rule adjusted utilitarianism centered on the idea of the "progressive development of artificial institutions of reinforcement of morality", that Hume himself would suggest in other places in which he approaches the topic of the apparent contradiction between "morality" and "knavery". We propose also possible lines of future development of this idea, between them its use to clarify the relation of David Hume's thought with certain forms of contemporary liberalism. (shrink)

Clinical delusions are widely characterized as being pathological beliefs in both the clinical literature and in common sense. Recently, a philosophical debate has emerged between defenders of the commonsense position (doxasticists) and their opponents, who have the burden of pointing toward alternative characterizations (anti-doxasticists). In this chapter, I argue that both doxasticism and anti- doxasticism fail to characterize the functional role of delusions while at the same time being unable to play a role in the explanation of these phenomena. I (...) also argue that though a more nuanced view of belief in which mental states are more or less belief-like instills a healthy skepticism towards the precision of folk-psychological concepts, such a stance fails to be of use in building a theory of delusion that will be able to bridge different levels of explanation, such as the phenomenology and neurobiology of delusion. Thus, I advocate moving past the question ‘Are delusions beliefs?’ and their description as propositional attitudes toward the description of the processes that generate delusion, with a view toward explaining, rather than explaining away, the personal-level aspects of the phenomenon that have been made inscrutable by investing in doxastic terminology. (shrink)

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of so-called covert dogwhistles. I discuss whether a covert dogwhistle is a specific sort of mechanism of manipulation or whether, on the contrary, it draws on other already familiar linguistic mechanisms such as implicatures or presuppositions. I put forward a series of arguments aimed at illustrating that implicatures and presuppositions, on the one hand, and covert dogwhistles, on the other, differ in their linguistic behaviour concerning plausible deniability, cancellability, calculability and mutual acceptance. I (...) concluded this paper by outlining a simple theory for covert dogwhistles according to which they are attitude-foregrounders. (shrink)

Given the oncoming demographic changes—which are primarily driven by the growth in the Latinx community—the United States is predicted to become a minority-majority country by around 2050. This seems to suggest that electoral strategies that employ “dog-whistle” politics are destined for the dust-bin of history. Following the work of critical race theorists, such as Ian Haney-Lopez and Derrick Bell, I want to suggest that pronouncing the inevitable demise of dog-whistle politics is premature. This is because there are reasons to suspect (...) that certain segments of the Latinx community—much like the Southern and Eastern Europeans in the early part of 20th Century—might be co-opted into American whiteness. (shrink)

The status of art in Plato's philosophy has always been a difficult problem. As a matter of fact, he even threw the poets out from his ideal state, a passage that has led some interpreters to assess that Plato did not develop a proper philosophy of art. Nevertheless, R. G. Collingwood, wrote an article titled “Plato's Philosophy of Art”. How can it be? What could lead one of the most important aesthetic scholars of the first half of the twentieth century (...) to make this thesis about Plato? To understand Collingwood's position at that time, I will review it in a new light: his own philosophy of art at that moment as it was propounded in Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, a work he published that same year. I will also examine how Collingwood's position changed when he returned to the same subject in 1938, on the publication of The Principles of Art. Finally, I will end this article defending the correctness of Collingwood's earlier interpretation of Plato's position on art. (shrink)

This essay argues that we should find Crimmigration, which is the collapsing of immigration law with criminal law, morally problematic for three reasons. First, it denies those who are facing criminal penalties important constitutional protections. Second, it doubly punishes those who have already served their criminal sentence with an added punishment that should be considered cruel and unusual (i.e., indefinite imprisonment or exile). Third, when the tactics aimed at protecting and serving local communities get usurped by the federal government for (...) immigration enforcement purposes, they often undermine these original aims or get used in ways that conflict with the U.S. Constitution. These concerns should prompt us therefore either to reject the government’s plenary power over immigration or require the federal government to be more consistent about maintaining the separation between criminal law and immigration law. (shrink)

Although delusion is one of the central concepts of psychopathology, it stills eludes precise conceptualization. In this paper, I present certain basic issues concerning the classification and definition of delusion, as well as its ontological status. By examining these issues, I aim to shed light on the ambiguity of the clinical term ‘delusion’ and its extension, as well as provide clues as to why philosophers are increasingly joining the ranks of psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscientists in the effort to come to (...) a comprehensive understanding of delusion. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the scientific respectability of delusion as a psychiatric category. First, I present the essentialist objection to the natural kindhood of psychiatric categories, as well as non-essentialism about natural kinds as a response to that objection. Second, I present a nuanced classification of kinds of kinds. Third, drawing on the claim that the attribution of delusion relies on a folk psychological underpinning, I present the mind-dependence objection to the natural kind status of delusion. Finally, I argue (...) that even if delusion as a generic kind stands little chance of being vindicated as a non-essentialist natural kind, we stand to gain from a natural kind methodology regarding subtypes of delusion for which there is evidence of genuine causal signatures and mechanisms. (shrink)

The distinction between potentiality and possibility in Aristotle’s modal teleology is sometimes conflated by the implicative conjunction that potentiality implies possibility and possibility implies potentiality. In his unpublished doctoral dissertation Richard Rorty warns that trying to pin down Aristotle’s definition of potentiality often leads to treating the term as a “mere façon de parler.” Consonant with Rorty, this paper observes that the definition of possibility in Aristotle’s works is not without its own share of semantic snags. Subsequently, I abide by (...) Rorty’s caveat not only to resist the lure of expressive convenience some commentators have taken in describing potentiality, but also to elucidate possibility’s two-fold field of modal application. Consequently, this paper aims to present a nuanced account of how notions of potentiality and possibility are presented in Aristotle’s treatises for the sake of demonstrating that both sides of the potentiality/possibility conjunction do not mutually imply. (shrink)

In 2008 Robert Lovato coined the phrase Juan Crow. Juan Crow is a type of policy or enforcement of immigration laws that discriminate against Latino/as in the United States. This essay looks at the implications this phenomenon has for an ethics of immigration. It argues that Juan Crow, like its predecessor Jim Crow, is not merely a condemnation of federalism, but of any immigration reform that has stricter enforcement as one of its key components. Instead of advocating for increased enforcement, (...) I want to suggest that just immigration reform must adhere to two standards, equality of burdens and universal protections, and that only by doing so can the potential for Juan Crow be adequately avoided. (shrink)

Neste texto trato da possibilidade de defender uma “ontolo- gia da singularidade” e seus reflexos no problema do conhecimento, bem como de oferecer uma introdução à questão da linguagem, todos estes problemas compreendidos como elementos de interesse no pensamento de Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), restringindo-me a uma investigação situada nos limites de Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie (1839). Em primeiro lugar procuro desenvolver a demarcação con- ceitual do que chamo de “ontologia da singularidade”, pressuposto a partir do qual coube a Feuerbach (...) empreender uma rearticulação da filosofia com a realidade material concreta, e as implicações desta questão para o tema do conhecimento. Em segundo, proponho que estes problemas parecem vir de algum modo relacionados a uma discussão sobre a linguagem, concebida como meio de expressão do pensamento. -/- This text deals with the possibility of defending “ontology of singularity” and its reflexes on the problem of knowl- edge, as well as offering an introduction to the question of language, all these problems understood as elements of interest in Ludwig Feuerbach’s thought (1804-1872), what bounds the investigation to the limits of Zur Kritir der Hegelschen Philosophie (1839). It seeks, firstly, to develop the conceptual demarcation of what is called here in this work “ontology of singularity”, on the basis of which it was up to Feuerbach to come up with the reartic- ulating of philosophy with concrete material reality, including the implications of this question for the theme of knowledge. On a second hand, it is proposed that these problems seem to come in some way from a discussion of language conceived as a means of expressing thought. (shrink)

I assess Tamar Gendler's (2007) account of self-deception according to which its characteristic state is not belief, but imaginative pretense. After giving an overview of the literature and presenting the conceptual puzzles engendered by the notion of self-deception, I introduce Gendler's account, which emerges as a rival to practically all extant accounts of self-deception. I object to it by first arguing that her argument for abandoning belief as the characteristic state of self-deception conflates the state of belief and the process (...) of belief-formation when interpreting David Velleman's (2000) thesis that belief is an essentially truth-directed attitude. I then call attention to the fact that Velleman's argument for the identity of motivational role between belief and imagining, on which Gendler's argument for self-deception as pretense depends, conflates two senses of 'motivational role'-a stronger but implausible sense and a weaker but explanatorily irrelevant sense. Finally, I introduce Neil Van Leeuwen's (2009) argument to the effect that belief is the practical ground of all non-belief cognitive attitudes in circumstances wherein the latter prompt action. I apply this framework to Gendler's account to ultimately show that imaginative pretense fails to explain the existence of voluntary actions which result from self-deception. (shrink)

Para favorecer la interacción disciplinar y recuperar la dimensión práctica del conocimiento matemático en la escuela secundaria, Yves Chevallard plantea la necesidad de introducir en los programas de estudio la matemática mixta. La matemática mixta, cuyo apogeo tuvo lugar en Europa entre los siglos XVI y XVIII, se propone el abordaje de problemas surgidos por fuera de la propia matemática valiéndose de nociones mecánicas -como la de centro de gravedad y fuerza centrífuga- y del empleo de variados instrumentos para realizar (...) las construcciones requeridas. En este trabajo consideramos a la matemática mixta en la cultura matemática de la segunda mitad del siglo XVII y, en dicho contexto, presentamos dos casos de la práctica matemática de G. W. Leibniz en los que la investigación matemática involucra el diseño de máquinas. La consideración de tales casos permite situar a la matemática mixta, siguiendo la terminología de Ian Hacking, en un terreno medio entre representar e intervenir. El terreno medio entre representar e intervenir es un valle fértil donde la matemática aporta a, y se nutre de, una multiplicidad de otros dominios. También es una vía de acceso para historizar el conocimiento matemático, destacando las condiciones materiales para su desarrollo y el importante rol de los problemas. Palabras clave: Práctica matemática, Resolución de problemas, Siglo XVII, Máquinas, Cultura material. (shrink)

I offer a critical review of several different conceptions of the activity of foundational research, from the time of Gauss to the present. These are (1) the traditional image, guiding Gauss, Dedekind, Frege and others, that sees in the search for more adequate basic systems a logical excavation of a priori structures, (2) the program to find sound formal systems for so-called classical mathematics that can be proved consistent, usually associated with the name of Hilbert, and (3) the historicist alternative, (...) guiding Riemann, Poincaré, Weyl and others, that seeks to perfect available conceptual systems with the aim to avoid conceptual limitations and expand the range of theoretical options. I shall contend that, at times, assumptions about the foundational enterprise emerge from certain dogmas that are frequently inherited from previous, outdated images. To round the discussion, I mention some traits of an alternative program that investigates the epistemology of mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

The social trust argument asserts that a political community cannot survive without social trust, and that social trust cannot be achieved or maintained without a political community having discretionary control over immigration. Various objections have already been raised against this argument, but because those objections all assume various liberal commitments they leave the heart of the social trust argument untouched. This chapter argues that by looking at the socio-historical circumstances of Latino/as in the United States, an inherent weakness of the (...) social trust argument gets exposed. Giving a political community discretionary control over immigration not only fails to deliver on the promise of social trust, but it actually seems to promote its opposite, social mistrust. This suggests that a far better way of promoting the goal of social trust, and at the same time abating social mistrust, is to actually circumvent a political community’s ability to control immigration by giving priority both to socio-historical circumstances and immigrant rights (at least in a minimalist sense) in determining immigration policy. (shrink)

The traditional conception of self-deception takes it for an intrapersonal form of interpersonal deception. However, since the same subject is at the same time deceiver and deceived, this means attributing the agent a pair of contradictory beliefs. In the course of defending a deflationary conception of self-deception, Mele [1997] has challenged traditionalists to present convincing evidence that there are cases of self-deception in which what he calls the dual belief-requirement is satisfied. Levy [2009] has responded to this challenge affirming that (...) there is at least one real cases of self-deception that meets this requirement, namely, that of anosognosia. In this family of conditions, the patient apparently believes that there is nothing wrong with her while, at the same time, providing behavioral cues that indicate that the patient is somehow aware of his disease. If Levy is right, then traditionalism about self-deception could be vindicated, after having been widely abandoned due to its need to postulate exotic mental processes in order to make sense of the attribution of contradictory beliefs. In this paper, I assess whether Levy’s response to Mele’s challenge is successful by analyzing his interpretation of the empirical evidence to which he appeals. Finally, I attack the cogency of the underlying commitments about the nature of folk psychology to which one is required to defer in order to draw from conflicting evidence the attribution of contradictory beliefs. (shrink)

Clinical delusions have traditionally been characterized as beliefs in psychiatry. However, philosophers have recently engaged with the empirical literature and produced a number of objections to the so-called doxastic status of delusion, stemming mainly from the mismatch between the functional role of delusions and that expected of beliefs. In response to this, an appeal to dispositionalism about the nature of belief has been proposed to vindicate the doxastic status of delusion. In this paper, I first present the objections to attributing (...) beliefs to delusional patients and the application of dispositionalism in the attempt to vindicate doxasticism. I then assess this application and some responses to the objections to the doxastic characterization. Finally, I offer some conclusions about the limits of folk-psychological concepts in the characterization and explanation of complex psychological phenomena such as delusions. (shrink)

This paper discusses the history of the confusion and controversies over whether the definition of consequence presented in the 11-page 1936 Tarski consequence-definition paper is based on a monistic fixed-universe framework?like Begriffsschrift and Principia Mathematica. Monistic fixed-universe frameworks, common in pre-WWII logic, keep the range of the individual variables fixed as the class of all individuals. The contrary alternative is that the definition is predicated on a pluralistic multiple-universe framework?like the 1931 Gödel incompleteness paper. A pluralistic multiple-universe framework recognizes multiple (...) universes of discourse serving as different ranges of the individual variables in different interpretations?as in post-WWII model theory. In the early 1960s, many logicians?mistakenly, as we show?held the ?contrary alternative? that Tarski 1936 had already adopted a Gödel-type, pluralistic, multiple-universe framework. We explain that Tarski had not yet shifted out of the monistic, Frege?Russell, fixed-universe paradigm. We further argue that between his Principia-influenced pre-WWII Warsaw period and his model-theoretic post-WWII Berkeley period, Tarski's philosophy underwent many other radical changes. (shrink)

Examino a controvérsia sobre como melhor definir o delírio—um sintoma central de patologias como a esquizofrenia e a demência—e apresentarei algumas das principais dificuldades envolvidas em sua caracterização como crenças. A partir disso, tiro conclusões sobre os limites do vocabulário mentalista da dita psicologia do senso comum e sobre a forma como delírios e outros fenômenos elusivos devem ser propriamente caracterizados pela psiquiatria para que uma explicação integrativa destes seja alcançada.

Machiavelli is commonly known by a political theory associated to his name: "machiavellism". The initial effort of the article is to take apart Machiavellian thought from such a conception. After this it tries a detailed analysis of all occurrences of the term "education", which amounts to eleven times in his work. The hypothesis by which our reflexion is guided is that education is conceived by Machiavelli as a force addressed to control the desire's as well as the nature's inherent movement (...) disorder, preventing the deleterious effects of the first on the political life. Due to education the human being is able to know the "nature of things", i.e., to know what things "always were", and, through such knowledge, to anticipate to the "course of the things ordered by the heaven". Finally, we will try to demonstrate that for Machiavelli education provides the adaptation of the individuals behaviour in such a way that it is possible to redirect the course of things for a coherent order in regard to the collective good.Maquiavel é popularmente conhecido por uma teoria política associada ao seu nome: "maquiavelismo". O artigo realiza um esforço inicial para afastar o pensamento maquiaveliano de semelhante concepção. Em seguida, faz uma análise detalhada de todas as ocorrências do termo "educação", num total de onze, na sua obra. A hipótese que orienta nossa reflexão é de que a educação é pensada por Maquiavel como uma força destinada a controlar a desordem inerente ao movimento tanto do desejo quanto da natureza impedindo os efeitos deletérios daquele sobre a vida política. Graças à educação, o homem é capaz de conhecer a "natureza das coisas", isto é, saber o que as coisas são "desde sempre" e, desta maneira, antecipar-se ao "curso das coisas ordenado pelos céus". Por fim, procuramos mostrar que, para Maquiavel, a educação possibilita moldar o comportamento dos indivíduos de tal modo que é possível redirecionar o curso das coisas para uma ordem coerente com o bem coletivo. (shrink)

Are philosophy and literature allies or enemies in Jorge Luis Borges's fictions? In this paper, I argue that Borges can satisfy membership in the allies camp because his fictions provide the imaginative scenarios the allies believe are so necessary to this coalition; however, because his stories question philosophy's hold on reality, they can also seem to fall into the enemies camp by countervailing any claim philosophy has on reality and truth; although, ultimately, the manner in which Borges forges an alliance (...) between philosophy and literature will be for reasons not traditionally accepted by those in either the allies or enemies camps. (shrink)

In his influential work on Kant and history, Yirmiyahu Yovel identifies a problem which he terms ‘the historical antinomy.’ The problem states that no possible mediation can take place between the atemporal realm of pure reason and the empirical realm of human history. In this paper, I aim to bridge this gap based on a two-aspect reading of the faculty of reason, and then proceed to show reason’s ability to apply transcendental ideas on empirical history for the sake of grasping (...) a rational idea of history in a single, mediated process. (shrink)

John Searle’s theory of social ontology posits that there are indispensable normative components in the linguistic apparatuses termed status functions, collective intentionality, and collective recognition, all of which, he argues, make the social world. In this paper, I argue that these building blocks of Searle’s theory are caught in a petitio of constitutive circularity. Moreover, I note how Searle fails to observe language in reciprocal relation to the institutions which not only are shaped by it but also shape language’s practical (...) applications. According to Searle, social theorists that tried to show a connection between society, culture, and language all failed to see the constitutive role of language in the making of social reality. Consequently, I believe that Searle is himself guilty of a certain kind of blind presumption, and argue that Hegel’s philosophy of culture, which Searle dismisses as implausible, offers a more cohesive account of the normative transactions between human beings and their social world. (shrink)

In this paper we intend to offer a first approach to the incorporation of certain formal tools in the elucidation of some issues discussed in epistemological contexts. The aim is not to offer an exhaustive resolution of these problems but merely to point out the usefulness of modal semantics when applied to different fields. Here we will show how a series of skeptical arguments eventually involve a modal (counterfactual) structure, which we will try to generalise into a useful scheme. -/- (...) . (shrink)

Philosophers have assumed that as long as discriminatory admission and exclusion policies are off the table, it is possible for one to adopt a restrictionist position on the issue of immigration without having to worry that this position might entail discriminatory outcomes. The problem with this assumption emerges, however,when two important points are taken into consideration. First, immigration controls are not simply discriminatory because they are based on racist or ethnocentric attitudes and beliefs, but can themselves also be the source (...) of social and civic ostracism. Second, by focusing so much on questions of admission and exclusion, philosophers have tended to overlook the discriminatory potential of immigration enforcement mechanisms. In this essay, I make the case that philosophers who deal with the issue of immigration cannot dispense with the potential for discrimination in a state's enforcement mechanism as easily as they have with the potential for discrimination in a state’s admission and exclusions criteria. In addition, I put forth the positive claim that the way to combat this potential for discrimination (e.g., xenophobia) must begin with a defense of, and advocacy for, immigrant rights. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s work on the sublimity of aesthetic experience lends itself to puzzlement, if not misclassification. Complicating matters, Kant distinguishes between two kinds of sublimity: respectively, the “mathematical” and “dynamical” sublime. More mystifying is that the sublime is ineffable, beyond the ken of human comprehension. These perplexities notwithstanding, Kant argues that sublime sentiment produces a feeling of supersensible comfort. Commentators identify this comfort emanating most strongly from the dynamical sublime. However, in this paper I draw from the unity of reason (...) thesis to offer a plausible account of how the mathematical sublime is equally capable of providing the same feeling of supersensible comfort. (shrink)

Ethics normally proceeds by establishing some kind of ground from which norms can be derived for human action. However, no such terra firma is found in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, which instead lays down a sedimentary soil consisting of a blend of nothingness and contingency. This paper aims to show how Sartre is able to build an ethical theory from this seemingly groundless mixture, and it proceeds in three sections. Section one aims to disentangle the relation between the for-itself (...) (pour-soi) and the in-itself (en-soi) from antithetical characterizations by placing them in a state of supervenience. Section two works to explain how both the in-itself and the for-itself are not divided ontologically, but are both in the same ontological state, namely, contingency. And in section three, it is argued that Sartre’s ethics reveals that because human beings share the same thrownness with Others in a world, they have to take title for such a world. Within a Sartrean ethics of nothingness, one’s nothingness leads one to the shared nothingness of Others, of which one must take responsibility. (shrink)