The founding text for the new current in modern philosophy—experi-mental philosophy—can be seen in Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Ste-phen Stich’s “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions” (2001). The authors describe in this article a study to prove cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions. On the basis of their results, they argue that since epistemic intuitions seem to serve a crucial role in the use of thought experiments, contemporary philosophical methodology is highly unjustified. That study has brought about at least three replication attempts (...) (Seyedsayam-dost 2015; Kim, Yuan 2015; Nagel, San Juan, Mar 2013). None of them confirmed the original results. The aim of this article is to critically analyze in detail Weinberg, Nichols and Stich’s methodology and the three replications mentioned. Regarding the results of my analysis, I will try to examine what conclusions can be drawn with regard to the outcomes of analized studies. In particular I will refer to far-reaching con-clusions about the universality of epistemic intuitions or universality of folk epis-temology, which are sometimes—hastily, as I will argue—extrapolated from the results of such kind of studies (e.g., Kim, Yuan 2015; Kim Yuan 2016). (shrink)

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

Much of our know-how is acquired through practice: we learn how to cook by cooking, how to write by writing, and how to dance by dancing. As Aristotle argues, however, this kind of learning is puzzling, since engaging in it seems to require possession of the very knowledge one seeks to obtain. After showing how a version of the puzzle arises from a set of attractive principles, I argue that the best solution is to hold that knowledge-how comes in degrees, (...) and through practice a person gradually learns how to do something. However, the two standard accounts of know-how in the literature, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, cannot properly account for the distinctive way in which know-how is gradually acquired by practice, a process in which conceptual representations and practical abilities are intimately interwoven. Drawing on Gareth Evans's work, I outline an account that may do so, and use this account to distinguish between two forms of learning to explain why skill generally cannot be learnt through testimony, and requires practice. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge’s (2006) framework of global justice can be adapted for individual agents or collective unilateral donations in the same way Peter Singer’s framework has been. I do so by amending Pogge’s institutional principles for international human rights NGOs and by adding two further principles to address challenges that arise when his framework is applied. This adapted framework enjoins donors to make principled philanthropic decisions that prioritize existing and near-term suffering, while also rectifying their part in causing this suffering. It (...) makes Pogge’s negative duty account easier to implement than his previous proposal, and provides well-off individuals with an alternative to Effective Altruism. (shrink)

An athlete has faith in her unathletic partner to run a marathon, a teacher has faith in her currently poor-performing students to improve in the future, and your friend has faith in you to succeed in the difficult project that you have been pursuing, even, and especially, when your chance of failing is non-trivial. This paper develops and defends a relational view of interpersonal faith by considering four interesting phenomena: first, in virtue of placing faith in someone, we stand in (...) solidarity with that person; second, interpersonal faith is called for during moments of difficulty, but it can seem inappropriate during moments of ease; third, one’s faith in others can feel unwelcomed, and can be rejected; and fourth, when interpersonal faith is frustrated, disappointment, rather than resentment, is warranted. I propose that when the faithor (e.g., your friend) places faith in the faithee (e.g., you) to φ, the faithor does something close to inviting the faithee to (re)commit to φ-ing. This invitation-like move, once properly taken up by the faithee, puts both sides of the faith in a new kind of normative relationship that is in the same broad family as a promissory relationship, albeit with a different normative profile. (shrink)

We provide new findings that add to the growing body of empirical evidence that important epistemic intuitions converge across cultures. Specifically, we selected three recent studies conducted in the US that reported surprising effects of knowledge attribution among English speakers. We translated the vignettes used in those studies into Mandarin Chinese and Korean and then ran the studies with participants in Mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea. We found that, strikingly, all three of the effects first obtained in the US (...) also emerged in the East Asian cultures we studied. Our findings not only cohere with but also provide—at least moderate—support for the existence of extensive convergences of important epistemic intuitions across cultures. (shrink)

Subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI), the view that whether a subject knows depends on the practical stakes, has been charged with ‘knowledge laundering’: together with widely held knowledge-transmission principles, SSI appears to allow improper knowledge acquisition. I argue that this objection fails because it depends on faulty versions of transmission principles that would raise problems for any view. When transmission principles are properly understood, they are shown to be compatible with SSI because they do not give rise to improper knowledge acquisition. The (...) upshot is a better understanding of the nature and structure of these transmission principles. (shrink)

In the last decades there has been a great controversy about the scientific status of emotion categories. This controversy stems from the idea that emotions are heterogeneous phenomena, which precludes classifying them under a common kind. In this article, I analyze this claim—which I call the Variability Thesis—and argue that as it stands, it is problematically underdefined. To show this, I examine a recent formulation of the thesis as offered by Scarantino (2015). On one hand, I raise some issues regarding (...) the logical structure of the claim. On the other hand, and most importantly, I show that the Variability Thesis requires a consensus about what counts as a relevant pattern of response in different domains, a consensus that is lacking in the current literature. This makes it difficult to assess what counts as evidence for or against this thesis. As a result, arguments based on the Variability Thesis are unwarranted. This raises serious concerns about some current empirical theories of emotions, but also sheds light on the issue of the scientific status of emotion categories. (shrink)

John Locke, a prominent liberalist, is widely known for his advocacy of tolerance and democracy, as evident in the Letter Concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of Government. However, in 1967, an unpublished work, Two Tracts on Government, revealed John Locke’s earlier Hobbesian or absolutist views. This paper delves into the historical context of religious conditions in England and Oxford during Locke's time and the influence of his trip to Kleve, Germany, on his ideological transformation. Furthermore, this study challenges the perspectives (...) of scholars (Peter Laslett and Mark Goldie) who attribute Locke's shift primarily or solely to his association with Lord Ashley, drawing on evidence from Locke's letter to Boyle. In summary, this paper underscores the significance of the religious environment (1660-1667, under the reign of Charles II) and how Locke's firsthand experiences shaped his transition from absolutism to liberalism while reconciling and refining the perspectives of other scholars in the process. (shrink)

Thomas Bonk has dedicated a book to analyzing the thesis of underdetermination of scientific theories, with a chapter exclusively devoted to the analysis of the relation between this idea and the indeterminacy of meaning. Both theses caused a revolution in the philosophic world in the sixties, generating a cascade of articles and doctoral theses. Agitation seems to have cooled down, but the point is still debated and it may be experiencing a renewed resurgence.

Effort and the feeling of effort play important roles in many theoretical discussions, from perception to self-control and free will, from the nature of ownership to the nature of desert and achievement. A crucial, overlooked distinction within the philosophical and scientific literatures is the distinction between theories that seek to explain effort and theories that seek to explain the feeling of effort. Lacking a clear distinction between these two phenomena makes the literature hard to navigate. To advance in the unification (...) and development of this area, this article provides an overview of the main theories of the nature of effort and the nature of the feeling of effort, and then discusses how efforts and their feelings are related. Two key takeaways emerge. First, there is widespread agreement that efforts are goal-directed actions. Second, one of the main philosophical issues to be decided is whether feelings of effort should be defined by reference to efforts (effort-first approach), or whether efforts are defined by reference to the feeling of effort (feeling-first approach). (shrink)

Researchers often claim that self-control is a skill. It is also often stated that self-control exertions are intentional actions. However, no account has yet been proposed of the skillful agency that makes self-control exertion possible, so our understanding of self-control remains incomplete. Here I propose the skill model of self-control, which accounts for skillful agency by tackling the guidance problem: how can agents transform their abstract and coarse-grained intentions into the highly context-sensitive, fine-grained control processes required to select, revise and (...) correct strategies during self-control exertion? The skill model borrows conceptual tools from ‘hierarchical models’ recently developed in the context of motor skills, and asserts that self-control crucially involves the ability to manage the implementation and monitoring of regulatory strategies as the self-control exercise unfolds. Skilled agents are able do this by means of flexible practical reasoning: a fast, context-sensitive type of deliberation that incorporates non-propositional representations into the formation and revision of the mixed-format intentions that structure self-control exertion. The literatures on implementation intentions and motivation framing offer corroborating evidence for the theory. As a surprising result, the skill of self-control that allows agents to overcome the contrary motivations they experience is self-effacing: instead of continuously honing this skill, expert agents replace it with a different one, which minimizes or prevents contrary motivations from arising in the first place. Thus, the more expert you are at self-control, the less likely you are to use it. (shrink)

I discuss Turri's puzzle about withholding. I argue that attention to the way in which evidence can justify withholding dissolves the puzzle.

In this work, we discuss the failure of the principle of truth functionality in the quantum formalism. By exploiting this failure, we import the formalism of N-matrix theory and non-deterministic semantics to the foundations of quantum mechanics. This is done by describing quantum states as particular valuations associated with infinite non-deterministic truth tables. This allows us to introduce a natural interpretation of quantum states in terms of a non-deterministic semantics. We also provide a similar construction for arbitrary probabilistic theories based (...) in orthomodular lattices, allowing to study post-quantum models using logical techniques. (shrink)

A central debate in philosophy of action concerns whether agential knowledge, the knowledge agents characteristically have of their own actions, is inferential. While inferentialists like Sarah Paul hold that it is inferential, others like Lucy O’Brien and Kieran Setiya argue that it is not. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for the view that agential knowledge is non-inferential, by posing a dilemma for inferentialists: on the first horn, inferentialism is committed to holding that agents have only alienated knowledge (...) of their own actions; on the second horn, inferentialism is caught in a vicious regress. Neither option is attractive, so inferentialism should be rejected. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

This book addresses key conceptual issues relating to the modern scientific and engineering use of computer simulations. It analyses a broad set of questions, from the nature of computer simulations to their epistemological power, including the many scientific, social and ethics implications of using computer simulations. The book is written in an easily accessible narrative, one that weaves together philosophical questions and scientific technicalities. It will thus appeal equally to all academic scientists, engineers, and researchers in industry interested in questions (...) related to the general practice of computer simulations. (shrink)

It has often been argued that charitable donations are not a sufficient response to global poverty; individuals need to address structural injustice. Proponents of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement have raised two main problems with this focus on structural injustice. In this paper, we respond to these concerns. The first problem raised by EA proponents is that focusing on structural injustice absolves individuals of any responsibility other than political ones. In response, we argue that discharging this duty requires more commitment (...) than EA defenders think, and we do so by framing individual responsibility in global structural injustice through the lens of Robin Zheng’s Role-Ideal Model (RIM). The second response given by EA proponents is that a focus on structural injustice does not provide concrete ways for any given individual to discharge such duties. To address this worry, we argue that RIM can be complemented with the Rawlsian account of moral maturation. This new framework makes it clear how individuals can form the right concept of justice and become responsible citizens who act in accordance with RIM. (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on (...) general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse “exclusionism”, the view that no instance of relearning qualifies as a case of genuine remembering, and vice versa. Appealing to simulationist, distributed causalist, and trace minimalist theories of remembering, I develop three conditional arguments against exclusionism. First, if simulationism is right to hold that some cases of remembering involve reliance on post-event testimonial information, then remembering does not exclude relearning. Second, if distributed causalism is right to hold that memory traces are promiscuous, then remembering does not exclude (...) relearning. Finally, if trace minimalism is right to hold that vicarious experiences sometimes produce the minimal traces that ground remembering, then remembering does not exclude relearning. While advocates of these theories might incorporate additional conditions designed to accommodate exclusionism, the only reason they can appeal to in favor of doing so is intuition: neither the fundamental components of the theories nor the empirical results on which they are based provide a reason to endorse exclusionism. An investigation of exclusionism thus raises metaphilosophical questions, so far overlooked in philosophy of memory, about the appropriate role of intuition in theorizing about remembering. (shrink)

This article aims to develop a new account of scientific explanation for computer simulations. To this end, two questions are answered: what is the explanatory relation for computer simulations? And what kind of epistemic gain should be expected? For several reasons tailored to the benefits and needs of computer simulations, these questions are better answered within the unificationist model of scientific explanation. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, I submit that the explanatory relation is between the simulation model and the (...) results of the simulation. I also argue that our epistemic gain goes beyond the unificationist account, encompassing a practical dimension as well. (shrink)

Some partitions of Natural Number set are built through recursive processesgenerating in this manner countable examples of countable and disjoint sets whose unionis a set also countable. This process is constructive, so the Axiom of choice is not used.We provide a PC program that generates one of these special partitions and shows howto generate infinite of them. This line of reasoning can have multiple applications in Settheory and Model theory. We proved that the number of ways to make these partitionsof (...) natural numbers is not countable, there are more of these partitions (named doublycountable) than natural numbers. For each natural number greater than 1, we show aneffective procedure that generates these partitions -/- . (shrink)

This article mainly investigates whether common Bayesian confirmation measures are affected by stopping rules. The results indicate that difference measure d, log-ratio measure r, and log-likelihood measure l are not affected by non-informative stopping rules, but affected by informative stopping rules. In contrast, Carnap measure $$\tau $$, normalized difference measure n, and Mortimer measure m are affected by (non-)informative stopping rules sometimes but sometimes aren’t. Besides, we use two examples to further illustrate that confirmation measures d, r, and l are (...) better than $$\tau,n$$, and m. (shrink)

En el presente texto me propongo mostrar cómo puede entenderse el concepto de ‘metafísica’, no como el estudio de algo “sobrenatural” o “más allá de lo físico”, sino como un estudio de segundo orden que tendría por objeto de análisis los hipotéticos principios fundamentales y modelos de dependencia de la realidad. En este sentido, más que sostener juicios taxativos acerca de lo que las cosas son o qué tipo de entidades existen, las reflexiones de la metafísica podrían entenderse como análisis (...) acerca de las condiciones necesarias y suficientes para que una teoría de primer orden explique un aspecto de la realidad —o toda ella en su conjunto— de la mejor manera posible. (shrink)

Carlos Vaz Ferreira argues that the problem of freedom is conceptually distinct from the problem of causal determinism. The problem of freedom is ultimately a problem regarding the ontologically independent agency of a being, and the problem of determinism is a problem regarding explanations of events or acts in terms of the totality of their antecedent causal conditions. As Vaz Ferreira sees it, failing to keep these problems apart gives rise to merely apparent but unreal puzzles pertaining to the nature (...) of freedom and its relation to determinism. In this article, I present my interpretation of Vaz Ferreira’s distinctive ideas regarding the nature of freedom and its relation to casual determinism. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux es un joven filósofo al que ya algunos consideran una estrella en el firmamento del pensamiento contemporáneo. Es el cabeza de fila de una nueva concepción filosófica, el “Realismo Especulativo”, que se pretende una revolución respecto de toda o prácticamente toda la filosofía habida desde Kant. Su obra principal, hasta ahora, es el libro Après la finitude, lo que podríamos traducir por “Después de la finitud”, y que lleva por subtítulo “Ensayo acerca de la necesidad de la contingencia”. (...) Ha escrito, también, varios artículos, un libro sobre Mallarmé, en el que sostiene haber hallado la codificación numérica de un poema del críptico poeta francés, y un libro aún no publicado, pero que circula por ahí, titulado L’inexistence divine. Se le augura una obra futura de gran relevancia. Meillassoux tiene un estilo bastante sobrio, contundente, “cartesiano”, pero con pasajes, también, de gran belleza concentrada. Se respira en sus escritos una calurosa frialdad, un apasionado antidramatismo, una muy racionalizada prédica de la falta de razón de todas las cosas, una profunda intuición de la superficie. (shrink)

I argue that normative requirements should be interpreted as the conditional obligations of dyadic deontic logic. Semantically, normative requirements are conditionals understood as restrictors, the prevailing view of conditionals in linguistics. This means that Modus Ponens is invalid, even when the premises are known.

Gibson defined affordances as action possibilities directly offered to an animal by the environment. Ambitiously, affordances are meant to show the inadequacy of the subjective-objective dichotomy in the study of cognition. Armed with similar concerns, some neo-Gibsonians recently thought of affordances as latent dispositions existing independently of individual organisms or whole species. It is no coincidence that critics had, on several occasions, objected that this theoretical stance dramatically neglects the role of the perceiver in the emergence of affordances. In this (...) paper, we provide a phenomenological characterization of the perceiver’s role in affordance perception. Specifically, we borrow from Husserlian phenomenology to characterize two features of affordance perception that can enrich our understanding of the individual’s engagement with the environment, namely, its affective and temporal aspects. Taking an everyday activity such as rock climbing as a case example, we show that phenomenological investigations, if not misinterpreted as mere introspection, can represent an ally for ecological psychologists. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant's philosophy of nature. My interpretation contradicts the robust tradition of reading Kant as a mechanist about nature – or as someone who endorses the view that we can know the internally purposive causality characteristic of organisms has no place in nature. By attending closely to Kant's remarks about the possibility of internal purposiveness in nature and to key premises from Kant's arguments in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, we shall see (...) that it is not only plausible, but preferable, to believe that internally purposive things (i.e., organisms) exist in nature. Making room for such a belief leaves Kant with a philosophy of nature that simultaneously aligns with and surpasses the philosophies of nature offered up by his Early Modern predecessors. (shrink)

From a Quantum Cosmic perspective, a new theology is developed based on the doctrine that humans have an energy code and a biological code that allow us to achieve direct contact with the cosmic energies permeating the universe and flow in with the Alpha Energy, namely, the energy of the Creator or God. The energy codes of human beings transcend physical death as energy never ceases to exist, only to transform. Moreover, our ‘energy body network’ produces new energy through biophotons (...) which allow beings to be in total command of their existence and communicate with the cosmos through a cosmic language. Patient and consistent practice of cosmic meditation and mental physics will lead to an awakening and evolution to a Cosmic Quantum Consciousness that resembles the ultimate connection with the Alpha Energy. This article will explore the perennial approach of Quantum Cosmic Theology which suggests that all people can be united under one fundamental creed while concurrently respecting relatively minor differences in religious belief and practice. (shrink)

The two main theories of perceptual reasons in contemporary epistemology can be called Phenomenalism and Factualism. According to Phenomenalism, perceptual reasons are facts about experiences conceived of as phenomenal states, i.e., states individuated by phenomenal character, by what it’s like to be in them. According to Factualism, perceptual reasons are instead facts about the external objects perceived. The main problem with Factualism is that it struggles with bad cases: cases where perceived objects are not what they appear or where there (...) is no perceived object at all. The main problem with Phenomenalism is that it struggles with good cases: cases where everything is perfectly normal and the external object is correctly perceived, so that one’s perceptual beliefs are knowledge. In this paper we show that there is a theory of perceptual reasons that avoids the problems for Factualism and Phenomenalism. We call this view Propositionalism. We use ‘proposition’ broadly to mean the entities that are contents of beliefs and other doxastic attitudes. The key to finding a middle ground between Phenomenalism and Factualism, we claim, is to allow our reasons to be false in bad cases. Despite being false, they are about the external world, not our phenomenal states. (shrink)

A general mathematical framework, based on countable partitions of Natural Numbers [1], is presented, that allows to provide a Semantics to propositional languages. It has the particularity of allowing both the valuations and the interpretation Sets for the connectives to discriminate complexity of the formulas. This allows different adequacy criteria to be used to assess formulas associated with the same connective, but that differ in their complexity. The presented method can be adapted potentially infinite number of connectives and truth values, (...) therefore, it can be considered a general framework to provide semantics to several of the known logic systems (eg, LC, L3 LP, FDE). The presented semantics allow to converge to different standard semantics if the separation complexity procedure is annulled. Therefore, it can be understood as a framework that allows greater precision (in complexity terms) with respect to formula satisfaction. Naturally, because of how it is built, it can be incorporated into non-deterministic semantics. The presented procedure also allows generating valuations that grant a different truth value to each formula of propositional language. As a positive side effect, our method allows a constructive proof of the equipotence between N and N^n for all Natural n. (shrink)

La migración internacional nos enfrenta con problemas irresolubles desde la figura moderna del Estado nacional, su concepto de ciudadanía y su noción de justicia. Juan Carlos Velasco critica las limitaciones y la orientación de las políticas contemporáneas que nos hacen percibir a la migración como una “invasión”, y propone un modo radicalmente diferente de entender e intervenir el fenómeno desde lo trasnacional. Nacer de uno u otro lado de una línea divisoria es un evento azaroso, no obstante delimitar la (...) frontera es una construcción histórico-política: la desigualdad en las oportunidades que ofrecen las naciones es una situación estructural de injusticia que se perpetúa con las políticas de exclusión de los migrantes y la deslegitimación de su derecho a buscar una vida mejor. Esa circunstancia genera fracturas sociales, injustificables pero normalizadas, que imposibilitan alcanzar la justicia global. Velasco presenta un análisis completo que abarca las dimensiones política, jurídica y moral del tema, en el que lleva a la filosofía política a un terreno práctico del que se desprenden las claves para entender y actuar en esta nueva era en la que, debido a los conflictos sociales y políticos, la migración vuelve a ser argumento de discusión relevante. (Texto de la CONTRAPORTADA del libro). (shrink)

José Blanco White (1775-1841) not only is an active witness of a crucial period in the political life of the Hispanic world on both sides of the Atlantic, but he is also one of the most recognized thinkers and writers of his time. His legacy includes a valuable poetic work. These pages are interested in the theological spirit of one of his most critically admired English sonnets, Night and Death. However, in order to know that own faithful way in which (...) the author expresses in his poem the human questioning for hope in the face of the experience of darkness and death, it is necessary to first penetrate, even if only in a synthetic way, in his understanding and experiencing of the relationship between religion and church, instinct of reason and truth of faith. This leads us to better meet with the background that encourages the poetic expression of his sensitivity towards the beauty of the world and the way in which man can discover in it the call of divine transcendence. (shrink)

Self-control is the ability to inhibit temptations and persist in one’s decisions about what to do. In this article, we review recent evidence that suggests implicit beliefs about the process of self-control influence how the process operates. While earlier work focused on the moderating influence of willpower beliefs on depletion effects, we survey new directions in the field that emphasize how beliefs about the nature of self-control, self-control strategies, and their effectiveness have effects on downstream regulation and judgment. These new (...) directions highlight the need to better understand the role of self-control beliefs in naturalistic decision-making. (shrink)

In “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions”, Weinberg, Nichols and Stich famously argue from empirical data that East Asians and Westerners have different intuitions about Gettier -style cases. We attempted to replicate their study about the Car case, but failed to detect a cross - cultural difference. Our study used the same methods and case taken verbatim, but sampled an East Asian population 2.5 times greater than NEI’s 23 participants. We found no evidence supporting the existence of cross - cultural difference about (...) the intuition concerning the Gettier car case. Taken together with the failures of both of the existing replication studies, our results provide strong evidence that the purported cross - cultural difference in Gettier intuitions does not exist. (shrink)

El propósito principal de este libro es mostrar hasta qué punto el pensamiento teórico de Habermas está animado por un fuerte aliento práctico, más concretamente práctico-político, con el que concretaría el muy ilustrado propósito de hacer uso público de la razón. De hecho, la intencionalidad práctica de su pensamiento es tan destacada que el conjunto de su obra se entiende mucho mejor si se la concibe, tal como él mismo insiste, como un intento de guiar con una finalidad emancipatoria el (...) camino de la praxis, o, si se prefiere, de orientar racionalmente la acción política en las sociedades contemporáneas. (shrink)

This chapter explores the possibility of integrating the enactive and the Free Energy Principle’s (FEP) approaches to life and mind. Both frameworks have been linked to the life-mind continuity thesis, but recent debates challenge their potential integration. Critics argue that the enactive approach, rooted in autopoiesis theory, has an internalist view of life and a contentful view of cognition, making it challenging to account for adaptive behavior and minimal cognition. Similarly, some find the FEP’s stationary view of life biologically implausible. (...) Here, I address recent challenges in integrating the FEP and enactivism, thereby focusing on the life-mind continuity thesis. I suggest that the FEP, without explicitly defining life and mind, can be used to model the autopoietic dynamics of organisms. Additionally, I argue that the enactive conception of cognition as sense-making overcomes issues associated with contentful views of cognition. Furthermore, I refute the misinterpretation of the FEP’s assertion of stationary organisms, allowing for the modeling of enactive adaptive behavior through free energy minimization. Ultimately, I offer a constructive and interactionist approach to life and mind, transcending internalist and externalist perspectives. (shrink)

This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

See Abstract in piece of paper uploaded.

In “Willpower with and without effort”, G. Ainslie advances our understanding of selfcontrol by theoretically unifying multiple forms of willpower. But one crucial question remains unanswered: How do agents pick the right forms of willpower in each situation? I argue that willpower requires tactical skill, which detects willpower-demanding contexts, selects context-appropriate tactics, and monitors their implementation. Research on tactical skill will significantly advance our understanding of willpower.

I argue for a novel interpretation of Leibniz’s conception of the kind of contingency that matters for freedom, which I label ‘agential contingency.’ In brief, an agent is free to the extent that she determines herself to do what she judges to be the best of several considered options that she could have brought about had she concluded that these options were best. I use this novel interpretation to make sense of Leibniz’s doctrine that the reasons that explain free actions (...) are merely inclining and not necessitating. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo, analizamos el cuento El Inmortal de Borges prestándole principal atención a las situaciones donde se entrelazan, o se tratan sin diferenciar demasiado, cuestiones vinculadas con la animalidad y la divinidad. Sostenemos que esta especie de confusión o falta de precisión al tratar cuestiones que se alejan tanto de la identidad personal y del Yo, como la inmortalidad, no es un elemento casual ni sin fundamento, sino que puede ser analizado filosóficamente adentrándonos la otredad animal. El Inmortal (...) nos manifiesta que la filosofía podría no haber sido lo suficientemente precisa al tratar la otredad, permitiendo que animalidad y divinidad, o más bien ciertas propiedades características de cada una, puedan amalgamarse dentro de los lindes de este concepto. Que el cuento de Borges haga convivir de forma tan característica la inacción con la inmortalidad hace de esta obra un objeto de reflexión obligatorio para todos los interesados en el concepto de otredad. (shrink)

Evidentialism and Reliabilism are two of the main contemporary theories of epistemic justification. Some authors have thought that the theories are not incompatible with each other, and that a hybrid theory which incorporates elements of both should be taken into account. More recently, other authors have argued that the resulting theory is well- placed to deal with fine-grained doxastic attitudes (credences). In this paper I review the reasons for adopting this kind of hybrid theory, paying attention to the case of (...) credences and the notion of probability involved in their treatment. I argue that the notion of probability in question can only be an epistemic (or evidential) kind of probability. I conclude that the resulting theory will be incompatible with Reliabilism in one important respect: it cannot deliver on the reductivist promise of Reliabilism. I also argue that attention to the justification of basic beliefs reveals limitations in the Evidentialist framework as well. The theory that results from the right combination of Evidentialism and Reliabilism, therefore, is neither Evidentialist nor Reliabilist. (shrink)

One of the ideas that characterises the enactive approach to cognition is that life and mind are deeply continuous, which means that both phenomena share the same basic set of organisational and phenomenological properties. The appeal to phenomenology to address life and basic cognition is controversial. It has been argued that, because of its reliance on phenomenological categories, enactivism may implicitly subscribe to a form of anthropomorphism incompatible with the modern scientific framework. These worries are a result of a lack (...) of clarity concerning the role that phenomenology can play in relation to biology and our understanding of non-human organisms. In this paper, I examine whether phenomenology can be validly incorporated into the enactive conception of mind and life. I argue that enactivists must rely on phenomenology when addressing life and mind so that they can properly conceptualise minimal living systems as cognitive, as well as argue for an enactive conception of biology in line with their call for a non-objectivist science. To sustain these claims, I suggest that enactivism must be further phenomenologised by not only drawing from Hans Jonas’s phenomenology of the organism (as enactivists often do) but also from Edmund Husserl’s thoughts on the connection between transcendental phenomenology and biology. Additionally, phenomenology must be considered capable of providing explanatory accounts of phenomena. (shrink)

Leibniz endorses several tenets regarding explanation: (1) causes provide contrastive explanations of their effects, (2) the past and the future can be read from the present, and (3) primitive force and derivative forces drive and explain changes in monadic states. I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, these tenets do not preclude an intelligible conception of contingency in Leibniz’s system. In brief, an agent is free to the extent that she determines herself to do that which she deliberately judges to (...) be the best from several considered options that she could have brought about, had she come to the deliberative conclusion that these options were best. I develop a model which illustrates how Leibnizian agents could have come to different deliberative conclusions, and which thus illustrates how Leibnizian agents could have acted differently. (shrink)