From the back cover: "Un repaso de las publicaciones que han abordado las relaciones e intercambios entre los Estados Unidos de América y España, arroja un saldo positivo en los ámbitos sociológico, político y cultural; no así en el estricto campo de la filosofía, necesitado todavía de mayores estudios. Los once trabajos que integran Estados Unidos/España: Diálogos filosóficosrepresentan un esmerado aporte en esta dirección: el de paliar el citado desequilibrio mediante la reflexión en torno al influjo del pensamiento estadounidense en (...) España y a la recepción de la filosofía española —a través de Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset y Julián Marías— en la patria de Walt Whitman.“Es muy deseable que este activo diálogo filosófico entre los Estados Unidos y España se desarrolle todavía más en los próximos años” (cit. Jaime Nubiola). Esta ha sido la principal aspiración de esta obra: ensanchar este intercambio, esclarecer sus múltiples direcciones y abrir nuevos caminos de investigación.". (shrink)

This book is the result of the last few years of study by the research group of the San Dámaso University ‘Thinking a University for the 21st century’, which had already published a book with the same title in this publishing house. This new work brings together different experts on the Spanish university and Spanish philosophy in the 20th century. Firstly, this work offers a look at the history of the university in our country from the Renaissance to the present (...) day. Secondly, it presents the ideas on the nature and mission of the university institution contributed by several of the most important Spanish thinkers of the last century. The book concentrates on authors who have been somewhat neglected in this respect, despite their generally substantial contributions to this field of study. Thus, here we are provided with studies that explore the ideas on the university of Miguel de Unamuno, Manuel García Morente, María Zambrano, Fernando Rielo, Pedro Laín Entralgo, Julián Marías and Antonio Millán-Puelles. We believe that the compilation here of their thought provides a rich and inspiring reflection for the university of the 21st century. (shrink)

Theoretical ethics includes both metaethics (the meaning of moral terms) and normative ethics (ethical theories and principles). Practical ethics involves making decisions about every day real ethical problems, like decisions about euthanasia, what we should eat, climate change, treatment of animals, and how we should live. It utilizes ethical theories, like utilitarianism and Kantianism, and principles, but more broadly a process of reflective equilibrium and consistency to decide how to act and be.

Phenomenal transparency was once widely believed to be necessary for cognitive extension. Recently, this claim has come under attack, with a new consensus coalescing around the idea that transparency is neither necessary for internal nor extended cognitive processes. We take these recent critiques as an opportunity to refine the concept of transparency relevant for cognitive extension. In particular, we highlight that transparency concerns an agent’s employment of a resource – and that such employment is compatible with an agent consciously apprehending (...) (or attending to) a resource. This means it is possible for an object to be transparent and opaque to an agent, even at a single moment in time. Once we understand transparency in this way, the detractors’ claims lose their bite, and existing arguments for transparency’s necessity for cognitive extension return to apply with full force. (shrink)

I defend a Deferred Ostension view of quotation, on which quotation-marks are the linguistic bearers of reference, functioning like a demonstrative; the quoted material merely plays the role of a demonstratum. On this view, the quoted material works like Nunberg’s indexes in his account of deferred ostensión in general. The referent is obtained through some contextually suggested relation; in the default case the relation will be … instantiates the linguistic type __, but there are other possibilities. In this way, the (...) deferred ostension view deals with a problem I pointed out for the identity proposal in my earlier work, that we do not merely refer with quotations to expression-types, but also to other entities related in some way to the relevant token we use: features exhibited by the token distinct from those constituting its linguistic type, features exhibited by other tokens of the same type but not by the one actually used (as when, by using a graphic token, we refer to its phonetic type), or even other related tokens (see the examples on p. 261 of García-Carpintero 1994). (shrink)

Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic vs pictorial discourses, (...) and (iii) the phenomenon of co-referencing across pictures. We extend Segmented Discourse Representation Theory to spell out a formal Super Pragmatics that applies to linguistic, pictorial and mixed discourses, while respecting the particular ‘genius’ of either medium and computing their distinctive pragmatic interpretations. (shrink)

A core challenge for contemporary bioethics is how to address the tension between respecting an individual’s autonomy and promoting their wellbeing when these ideals seem to come into conflict (Not...

The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...) faces challenges concerning the inscrutability of predication and the incompatibility with bundle theory, whereas module trope theory faces challenges concerning character overdetermination and a collapse into austere nominalism. These differences indicate that the modifier/module distinction divides the advantages of general trope theory and thus presents the trope theorist with a pivotal choice. (shrink)

Anti-realism is plagued by Fitch’s paradox: the remarkable result that if one accepts that all truths are knowable, minimal assumptions about the nature of knowledge entail that every truth is known. Dorothy Edgington suggests to address this problem by understanding p is knowable to be a counterfactual claim, but her proposal must contend with a forceful objection by Timothy Williamson. I revisit Edgington’s basic idea and find that Williamson’s objection is obviated by a refined understanding of counterfactual knowability that is (...) grounded in possible courses of inquiry. I arrive at a precise definition of knowability that is not just a technical avoidance of paradox, but is metaphysically sound and does justice to the anti-realist idea. (shrink)

The paper defends a version of Direct Reference for indexicals on which reference-fixing material (token-reflexive conditions) plays the role of an ancillary presupposition.

The truth of a statement depends on the world in two ways: what the statement says is true if the world is as the statement says it is; on the other hand, what the expressions in the statement mean depends on what the world is like (for instance, on what conventions are in place). Each of these two kinds of dependence of truth on the world corresponds to one of the dimensions on the two-dimensional semantic framework, developed in the 1970’ (...) in the work of Evans, Kaplan, Kripke and Stalnaker. The introduction provides a systematic overview of the framework, the ideas of its earlier originators, recent developments and criticism. Finally, it gives a brief overview over the contributions to the volume. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the extent to which economies in the developed and developing world rely on gig workers to perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad hoc tasking services. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as mere low-skilled laborers, but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. The newly elevated moral and economic status of these workers increases consumer demand for corporate (...) social responsibility regarding this stakeholder group – specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, thereby bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves from future reputational crises. To do so, we advance a managerial strategy rooted in moral self-awareness theory in order to leverage customers’ virtuous self-perception and increase gig-worker freedom. (shrink)

Since the publication of Hartry Field’s influential paper “Tarski’s Theory of Truth” there has been an ongoing discussion about the philosophical import of Tarski’s definition. Most of the arguments have aimed to play down that import, starting with that of Field himself. He interpreted Tarski as trying to provide a physicalistic reduction of semantic concepts like truth, and concluded that Tarski had partially failed. Robert Stalnaker and Scott Soames claimed then that Field should have obtained a stronger conclusion, namely that (...) Tarski’s failure in his allegedly intended physicalistic reduction was total. From another front, Hilary Putnam argued for an even more sweeping thesis: “[a]s a philosophical account of truth, Tarski’s theory fails as badly as it is possible for an account to fail.” Scott Soames followed suit also on this count, endorsing Putnam’s argument in section iii of the aforementioned paper; and John Etchemendy used a very similar argument to contend that “a Tarskian definition of truth [...] cannot possibly illuminate the semantic properties of the object language.” The paper argues that these contentions are based on several misunderstandings about the nature of a definition like Tarski’s. Regarding the Putnam-Soames-Etchemendy argument, we must apply a distinction Frege found natural to draw—and is natural to draw anyway—between what he called “constructive” definitions, definitions properly so called, which are mere stipulations, and what he described as “analytic” definitions, definitions which aim to make explicit the meaning of a term already in use. Regarding the Field-Soames-Stalnaker criticism, the paper contends that the true aims of a Tarskian truth definition are perfectly well fulfilled without Field’s amendments. (shrink)

Call ‘a substance’ a person who is at home in a relatively stable and unified sense-making framework: a social structure that to some degree specifies which categories are important for interpreting reality, which goals are worth pursing, which character traits are admirable, etc. Call ‘an accident’ a person who is not at home in one such framework. It is tempting to think that being a substance is preferable, but I present some considerations for thinking otherwise. Mexican philosophers Emilio Uranga and (...) Jorge Portilla, I argue, present notions of accidentality as decolonial tools. Uranga’s account enables Mexicans to have positive valuation of their being independently of the approving gaze of the colonizers and their standards of value. Portilla’s thought distinguishes between pernicious accidentality resulting from the disintegration of sense-making frameworks and authentic accidentality as a condition for freedom, self-creation, and ultimately for individual and communal liberation. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel account of focal stress and pitch contour in English dialogue. We argue that one should analyse and treat focus and pitch contour jointly, since (i) some pragmatic interpretations vary with contour (e.g., whether an utterance accepts or rejects; or whether it implicates a positive or negative answer); and (ii) there are utterances with identical prosodic focus that in the same context are infelicitous with one contour, but felicitous with another. We offer an account of two (...) distinct pitch contours that predicts the correct felicity judgements and implicatures, outclassing other models in empirical coverage or formality. Prosodic focus triggers a presupposition, where what is presupposed and how the presupposition is resolved depends on prosodic contour. If resolving the presupposition entails the proffered content, then the proffered content is uninteresting and hence the utterance is in-felicitous. Otherwise, resolving the presupposition may lead to an implicature. We regiment this account in SDRT. (shrink)

I elaborated a bibliographic report for the last issue of "Estudios Nietzsche," which is a monographic issue on Nietzsche and Women. -/- I aimed to select and combine important publications from multiple traditions and schools within Nietzsche scholarship. I hope it becomes a valuable resource to find literature on the topic for both teaching and research purposes.

Gottfried Leibniz embarked on a research program to prove all the Aristotelic categorical syllogisms by diagrammatic and algebraic methods. He succeeded in proving them by means of Euler diagrams, but didn’t produce a manuscript with their algebraic proofs. We demonstrate how key excerpts scattered across various Leibniz’s drafts on logic contained sufficient ingredients to prove them by an algebraic method –which we call the Leibniz-Cayley (LC) system– without having to make use of the more expressive and complex machinery of first-order (...) quantificational logic. In addition, we prove the classic categorical syllogisms again by a relational method –which we call the McColl-Ladd (ML) system– employing categorical relations studied by Hugh McColl and Christine Ladd. Finally, we show the connection of ML and LC with Boolean algebra, proving that ML is a consequence of LC, and that LC is a consequence of the Boolean lattice axioms, thus establishing Leibniz’s historical priority over George Boole in characterizing and applying (a sufficient fragment of) Boolean algebra to effectively tackle categorical syllogistic. (shrink)

The Second Sex can be read as a compelling philosophical exploration of masculinity. Beauvoir proposes to understand masculinity as a situation. It is an impasse as men are stuck in a position where they seek recognition from women, but they construct women in such a way that the recognition women can give them is incomplete and unsatisfying. This understanding of masculinity is crucial for Beauvoir’s emancipatory agenda and suggests that men have nonaltruistic reasons to take part in feminist movements.

Cultural evolution is normally framed in informational terms. However, it is not clear whether this is an adequate way to model cultural evolutionary phenomena and what, precisely, “information” is supposed to mean in this context. Would cultural evolutionary theory benefit from a well-developed theory of cultural information? The prevailing sentiment is that, in contradistinction to biology, informational language should be used nontechnically in this context for descriptive, but not explanatory, purposes. Against this view, this article makes the case for the (...) need to take a proper biology-based “informational turn” in the cultural evolutionary sciences. I argue that the current vague use of informational language misses out on the potential benefits for advancing understanding of phenomena that information-theoretic reasoning has provided in other sciences, especially genetics. In particular, by emphasizing the informational aspects of cultural evolutionary processes, this approach can clarify some conceptual and methodological problems that have plagued cultural evolutionary theory since its inception, including (1) how to determine the channel conditions of cultural information flow, (2) the nature and scope of cultural information, and (3) how to quantify trends of cultural cumulation. More generally, theories of cultural evolution will be incomplete until the mechanisms underlying cultural processes are better understood and integrated into the explanations. This article explores the adequacy of an information-theoretic framework to accomplish these purposes. (shrink)

This paper delves into the character concept as applied to reproduction. Our argument is that the prevailing functional-adaptationist perspective falls short in explaining the evolution of reproductive traits, and we propose an alternative organismal-relational approach that incorporates the developmental and interactive aspects of reproduction. To begin, we define the functional individuation of reproductive traits as evolutionary strategies aimed at enhancing fitness, and we demonstrate how this perspective influences the classification of reproductive characters and modes, the comprehension of shared traits as (...) resulting from conflicts of evolutionary interest between individuals, and the explanation of reproductive diversity. After outlining the shortcomings of this framework, we introduce an organismal-relational approach grounded in evolutionary developmental studies of reproduction. This view provides a revised classification for reproductive characters and modes and offers a new understanding of interorganismal traits that takes into account their inherently relational nature. Lastly, we present the research agenda that emerges from this approach, which addresses the core explanatory gaps left by the adaptationist perspective, including the explanation of reproductive homologies and homoplasies, the developmental constraints associated with the evolution of reproductive modes, and the evolvability of reproductive characters. (shrink)

I argue that rejection is a speech act that cannot be reduced to assertion. Adapting an argument by Huw Price, I conclude that rejection is best conceived of as the speech act that is used to register that some other speech act is (or would be) violating a rule of the conversation game. This can be naturally understood as registering *norm violations* where speech acts are characterised by their essential norms. However, I argue that rejection itself is not to be (...) characterised by a norm. Instead, registering violations is a necessary condition for understanding the normative framework in the first place. The core observation is that the concept of an 'illegal move' is intelligible, so a speech act can be (say) an assertion, despite violating the essential norm of asserting. Rejection has the function of pointing out that a move is illegal. But registering rule violations is a precondition of playing games with rules (it is part of the concept 'game'), not itself a rule in a game. A similar special role of rejection (that it is not explicable in the terms provided by a framework, but needed to conceptualise these terms) likely occurs in other frameworks as well, e.g. characterising speech acts by commitments or their effect on a common ground. (shrink)

Descriptive semantic theories purport to characterize the meanings of the expressions of languages in whatever complexity they might have. Foundational semantics purports to identify the kind of considerations relevant to establish that a given descriptive semantics accurately characterizes the language used by a given individual or community. Foundational Semantics I presents three contrasting approaches to the foundational matters, and the main considerations relevant to appraise their merits. These approaches contend that we should look at the contents of speakers’ intuitions; at (...) the deep psychology of users and its evolutionary history, as revealed by our best empirical theories; or at the personal‐level rational psychology of those subjects. Foundational Semantics II examines a fourth view, according to which we should look instead at norms enforced among speakers. The two papers aim to determine in addition the extent to which the approaches are really rival, or rather complementary. (shrink)

There are propositions constituting the content of fictions—sometimes of the utmost importance to understand them—which are not explicitly presented, but must somehow be inferred. This essay deals with what these inferences tell us about the nature of fiction. I will criticize three well-known proposals in the literature: those by David Lewis, Gregory Currie, and Kendall Walton. I advocate a proposal of my own, which I will claim improves on theirs. Most important for my purposes, I will argue on this basis, (...) against Walton’s objections, for an illocutionary-act account of fiction, inspired in part by some of Lewis’s and Currie’s suggestions, but (perhaps paradoxically) above all by Walton’s deservedly influential views. (shrink)

Two or more attitudinal states are incoherent if and only if, necessarily, under conditions of full transparency, you are disposed to give up one of them. This is roughly the account of incoherence that has recently been put forward by Alex Worsnip (2018). In this paper, I argue that Worsnip’s account of incoherence is incorrect. Not only does it fail to be fully general (i.e., it does not allow us to assess the coherence of all combinations of attitudes), but it (...) also implies that an agent is necessarily incoherent just in virtue of being in one attitudinal state. (shrink)

Some contemporary semantic views defend an asymmetry thesis concerning defi-nite descriptions and indexicals. Semantically, indexicals are devices of singular refer-ence; they contribute objects to the contents of the speech acts made with utterances including them. Definite descriptions, on the other hand, are generalized quantifiers, behaving roughly the way Russell envisaged in “On Denoting”. The asymmetry thesis depends on the existence of a sufficiently clear-cut distinction between semantics and pragmatics, because indexicals and descriptions are often used in ways that apparently contradict (...) the asymmetry thesis; the semantics/pragmatics distinction is invoked to see behind the appearances. The paper critically examines arguments by Schiffer against the asymmetry thesis, based on referential uses of incomplete descriptions. (shrink)

I present a novel position vis-à-vis the views in the Latin American philosophy literature regarding whether subjects more aptly use "Hispanic" or "Latinx" to refer to Hispanic- or-Latinx people. To this end, I will argue (C) the term "Afro-Latinx" is more apt than "Hispanic" or "Latinx" in a significant number of cases. This conclusion is based on three premises. The first premise (P1) is that use of "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US (...) society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The second premise (P2) is that that neither the term "Hispanic" nor the term "Latinx" provide subjects with this understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The third premise (P3) is that the term "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with more understanding of these events than the terms, "Hispanic" and "Latinx.” I present three cases which feature the experiences of Afro-Dominican people. The 1992 murder of Dominican man Kiko García by New York Police officer O’Keefe is first case. The second case is the Washington Heights Uprising that ensued Kiko García’ murder. An instance where a nightclub bouncer in the Dominican Republic denies a Dominican women entry because of her hair texture composes the third case. (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis can reinforce a cynical dismissal of human potential. This attitude can allow online platform designers to rationalize employing manipulative neuromarketing techniques to control user decisions. We point to cognitive boosting techniques at both user and designer levels to build critical reflection and mindfulness.

I argue racial injustice undermines the reliability of news source reports in the information domain of racial injustice. I argue that this in turn undermines subjects’ doxastic justification in inferences they base on these news sources in the racial injustice information domain. I explain that racial injustice does this undermining through the effect of racial prejudice on news organizations’ members and the effect of society's racially unjust structure on non-dominant racial group-controlled news sources.

We offer an argument for the extended mind based on considerations from brain development. We argue that our brains develop to function in partnership with cognitive resources located in our external environments. Through our cultural upbringing we are trained to use artefacts in problem solving that become factored into the cognitive routines our brains support. Our brains literally grow to work in close partnership with resources we regularly and reliably interact with. We take this argument to be in line with (...) complementarity or “second-wave” defences of the extended mind that stress the functional differences between biological elements and external, environmental resources in putative cases of extended cognition. Complementarity defences argue that many of the kinds of cognition humans excel at can only be accomplished by brains working together with a body that directly manipulates and acts on the world [Rowlands (1999); Menary (2007); Sutton (2010)]. We argue that complementarity and functionalist defences of the extended mind aren’t opposed, but that complementarity considerations can provide much needed and hitherto under exploited leverage in defending EMT. Moreover, the developmental work we will describe adds extra weight to the complementarity case for EMT. (shrink)

The requirements of rationality are fundamental in practical and theoretical philosophy. Nonetheless, there exists no correct account of what constitutes rational requirements. This paper attempts to provide a correct constitutive account of ‘rationality requires’. I argue that rational requirements are grounded in ‘necessary explanations of subjective incoherence’, as I shall put it. Rationality requires of you to X if and only if your rational capacities, in conjunction with the fact that you not-X, explain necessarily why you have a non-maximal degree (...) of subjective coherence. (shrink)

This paper describes Wittgenstein's pre-theoretical transcendentalist conception of ethics and the challenge it presents for the kind of global cosmopolitan perspective required of any multinational social responsibility strategy. It is argued that this challenge can be overcome through establishing a sense of solidarity with all stakeholders via a corporate social compact rooted in what Wittgenstein refers to as spontaneous agreement and sympathy. Contemporary examples of successful strategies are provided.

The generative AI boom is unleashing its minions. Enterprise software vendors have rolled out legions of automated assistants that use large language model (LLM) technology, such as ChatGPT, to offer users helpful suggestions or to execute simple tasks. These so-called copilots and chatbots can increase productivity and automate tedious manual work. In this article, we explain how that leads to the risk that users' ethical competence may degrade over time — and what to do about it.

Van Inwagen proposes that besides simples only living organisms exist as composite objects. This paper suggests expanding van Inwagen’s ontology by also accepting composite objects in the case that physical bonding occurs (plus some extra conditions). Such objects are not living organ-isms but rather physical bodies. They include (approximately) the complete realm of inanimate ordinary objects, like rocks and tables, as well as inanimate scientific objects, like atoms and mol-ecules, the latter filling the ontological gap between simples and organisms in (...) van Inwagen’s origi-nal picture. We thus propose a compositional pluralism claiming that composition arises if and on-ly if bonding or life occurs. (shrink)

Is the brain the biological substrate of consciousness? Most naturalistic philosophers of mind have supposed that the answer must obviously be «yes » to this question. However, a growing number of philosophers working in 4e (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognitive science have begun to challenge this assumption, arguing instead that consciousness supervenes on the whole embodied animal in dynamic interaction with the environment. We call views that share this claim dynamic sensorimotor theories of consciousness (DSM). Clark (2009) a founder and (...) leading proponent of the hypothesis of the extended mind, demurs, arguing that as matter of fact the biology of consciousness doesn’t allow for a brain, body and world boundary crossing architecture. We begin by looking at one of the arguments for DSM, the variable neural correlates argument. We then outline two criticisms that Clark has made of this argument and endorse his criticisms. However we finish up by using the case of sensory substitution to argue that something of this argument for DSM nevertheless survives. We suggest that Clark ought to concede sensory substitution as a case in which the conscious mind extends. (shrink)

Delusions have traditionally been considered the hallmark of mental illness, and their conception, diagnosis and treatment raise many of the fundamental conceptual and practical questions of psychopathology. One of these fundamental questions is whether delusions are understandable. In this paper, we propose to consider the question of understandability of delusions from a philosophy of language perspective. For this purpose, we frame the question of how delusions can be understood as a question about the meaning of delusional utterances. Accordingly, we ask: (...) “what meaning(s) can delusional utterances possibly have?”. We argue that in the current literature, there is a standard approach to the meaning of delusional utterances, namely the descriptive account which assumes that a delusional utterance “p” means that p is the case. Drawing on Speech Act Theory, we argue that solely relying on the descriptive account disregards essential ways of how linguistic meaning is constituted. Further, we show that Speech Act Theory can prove a helpful addition to the theoretical and clinical “toolbox” used for attempting to understand delusional utterances. This, we believe, may address some of the theoretical and clinical shortcomings of using only the currently predominant descriptive account. (shrink)

La crisis en la que estamos inmersos tiene entre sus causas una profunda crisis de relaciones entre las personas y los Estados. Si superamos esta crisis de relaciones, asumiendo nuevos paradigmas políticos y sociales, aseguraremos la base de una nueva convivencia democrática, integradora y solidaria, que responda al reto de la globalización y la interdependencia. Sólo se saldrá de la crisis de relaciones desde valores basados en la solidaridad, asentada en la confianza mutua. Algunas propuestas para regenerar el sistema de (...) valores apelan el paradigma de la fraternidad: la globalización de la solidaridad como respuesta a la crisis de la globalización. (shrink)

In the course of his discussion of perception, Searle criticizes representative theories in general. In this paper I will argue that, even though his criticisms may be adequate regarding a certain form of these theories, perhaps the most frequently defended by philosophers of perception, a version I will outline here scapes to them. A second issue I raise concerns Searle’s claim that his theory of perception is a form of direct realism. I will raise difficulties for Searle’s attempt to maintain (...) at the same time a “token-reflexive” theory of perception and the thesis of direct realism. (shrink)

Behavioral intervention techniques leveraging reactive responses have gained popularity as tools for promoting ethical behavior. Choice architects, for example, design and present default opt-out options to nudge individuals into accepting preselected choices deemed beneficial to both the decision-maker and society. Such interventions can also employ mild financial incentives or affective triggers including joy, fear, empathy, social pressure, and reputational rewards. We argue, however, that ethical competence is achieved via reflection, and that heavy reliance on reactive behavioral interventions can undermine the (...) development of ethical competence over the long term. Specifically, drawbacks may occur through motivational displacement, dependency, moral crowding out, loss of personal autonomy, and reactance. We introduce complementary cognitive boosting techniques designed to stimulate reflective cognition, as a more promising long-term strategy for instilling ethical behavior. One such approach is the Moral Self-Awareness (MSA) motivational construct, which incrementally leads agents to increasing levels of ethical reflection. We explain why ethical boosting approaches present more edifying and durable alternatives to reactive behavioral interventions and offer suggestions for social and organizational policy. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Peacocke (2001) continues an ongoing debate with McDowell and others, providing renewed arguments for the view that perceptual experiences and some other mental states have a particular kind of content, nonconceptual content. In this article I want to object to one of the arguments he provides. This is not because I side with McDowell in the ongoing debate about nonconceptual content; on the contrary, given the way I understand it, my views are closer to Peacocke’s, and (...) have been strongly influenced by him. It is just that I am not persuaded by the particular argument I will be questioning here. (shrink)

Numerous high-profile ethics scandals, rising inequality, and the detrimental effects of climate change dramatically underscore the need for business schools to instill a commitment to social purpose in their students. At the same time, the rising financial burden of education, increasing competition in the education space, and overreliance on graduates’ financial success as the accepted metric of quality have reinforced an instrumentalist climate. These conflicting aims between social and financial purpose have created an existential crisis for business education. To resolve (...) this impasse, we draw on the concept of moral self-awareness to offer a system-theoretical strategy for crowding-in a culture of ethics within business schools. We argue that to do so, business schools will need to (1) reframe the purpose of business, (2) reframe the meaning of professional success, and (3) reframe the ethos of business education itself. (shrink)

There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves (...) are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA), an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely what one’s actions say about oneself given the impacts on others or society that one’s action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Künne’s Modest Theory of truth, and develop a variation on a worry that Field expresses with respect to Horwich’s related view. The worry is not that deflationary accounts are false, but rather that, because they take propositions as truth-bearers, they are not philosophically interesting. Compatibly with the intuitions of ordinary speakers, we can understand proposition so that the proposals do account for a property that such truth-bearers have. Nevertheless, we saliently apply the truth-concept also to (...) entities such as utterances or assertions , and the de flationary accounts do not provide a similarly deflationary account for those applications. In fact, there are good reasons to suspect that no such account would be forthcoming; we need something more substantive or in flationary there. (shrink)

In the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin argued that his revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection represented a significant breakthrough in the understanding of instinctive behaviour. However, many aspects in the development of his thinking on behavioural phenomena indicate that the explanation of this particular organic feature was by no means an easy one, but that it posed an authentic challenge – something that Darwin himself always recognized. This paper explores Darwin’s treatment of instincts within his theory of natural (...) selection. Particular attention is given to elucidate how he tackled the difficulties of explaining instincts as evolving mental features. He had to explain and demonstrate its inheritance, variation, and gradual accumulation within populations. The historical and philosophical aspects of his theory are highlighted, as well as his study of the case in which the explanation of instincts represented a ‘special difficulty’; that is, the sterile castes of social insects. (shrink)

In his paper “Obras de ficción, formas de conciencia y literatura”, Josep Corbí raises a few sharp objections to my distinction between fiction and non-fiction, as I formulate it in my recently published Relatar lo ocurrido como invención. In this response, I present first in a compact form such ideas, and then I try to answer to Corbí’s criticisms.

After a critical examination of several attempts to characterize the Analytic tradition in philosophy, in the book here discussed Hanjo Glock goes on to contend that Analytic Philosophy is “a tradition that is held together both by ties of influence and by a family of partially overlapping features”. Here I question the need to appeal to a “family resemblance” component, arguing instead (in part by drawing on related attempts to characterize art, art genres and art schools) for a genealogical characterization. (...) Nonetheless, I point out that the difference between these two views might end being merely terminological, for, properly understood, a genealogical characterization will have to mention a “family of partially overlapping features” in describing the origins of Analytic Philosophy and the lines of influence among analytic philosophers. (shrink)