Norm theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986) described a tendency for people to associate stronger regret with a negative outcome when it is a result of an exception (abnormal behavior) compared to when it is a result of routine (normal behavior). In two pre-registered studies, we conducted a replication and extension of three classic experiments on past behavior exception/routine contrasts (N = 684). We successfully replicated Kahneman and Miller’s (1986) experiments with the classic hitchhiker-scenario (Part 1) and car accident-scenario (Part 2). (...) In both cases, participants examined negative outcomes and tended to indicate a protagonist who deviated from own past behavior as more regretful than another who followed routine. Pre-registered extensions also showed effects for ratings of social norms, negative affect, and perceived luck. We did not find support for the Miller and McFarland (1986) experiment robbery scenario (Part 3) using a compensation measure, in that compensation to a victim of a robbery was not significantly different comparing exceptional and routine circumstances. However, a pre-registered extension showed that robbery under exceptional circumstances was regretted more than robbery under routine circumstances. We discuss implications for current and future research. (shrink)

Constitutivism argues that the source of the categorical force of the norms of rationality and morality lies in the constitutive features of agency. A systematic failure to be guided by these norms would amount to a loss or lack of agency. Since we cannot but be agents, we cannot but be unconditionally guided by these norms. The constitutivist strategy has been challenged by David Enoch. He argues that our participation in agency is optional and thus cannot be a source of (...) categorical demands. In this paper, I defend the viability of constitutivism by showing that agency is indeed a special ‘inescapable’ enterprise. Agency has the largest jurisdiction, and it is closed under rational assessment. This inescapability does not exempt constitutivism from raising the question whether agents have reason to be agents, but this question has to be taken up within agency. If this question is answered affirmatively, then—I argue—the criteria of practical correctness are self-ratifying in a non-circular way. This is sufficient to show the viability of the constitutivist strategy. Whether agents have conclusive reasons to be agents, however, is a matter to be addressed in the terms of particular versions of constitutivism. (shrink)

Coherentism in epistemology has long suffered from lack of formal and quantitative explication of the notion of coherence. One might hope that probabilistic accounts of coherence such as those proposed by Lewis, Shogenji, Olsson, Fitelson, and Bovens and Hartmann will finally help solve this problem. This paper shows, however, that those accounts have a serious common problem: the problem of belief individuation. The coherence degree that each of the accounts assigns to an information set (or the verdict it gives as (...) to whether the set is coherent tout court) depends on how beliefs (or propositions) that represent the set are individuated. Indeed, logically equivalent belief sets that represent the same information set can be given drastically different degrees of coherence. This feature clashes with our natural and reasonable expectation that the coherence degree of a belief set does not change unless the believer adds essentially new information to the set or drops old information from it; or, to put it simply, that the believer cannot raise or lower the degree of coherence by purely logical reasoning. None of the accounts in question can adequately deal with coherence once logical inferences get into the picture. Toward the end of the paper, another notion of coherence that takes into account not only the contents but also the origins (or sources) of the relevant beliefs is considered. It is argued that this notion of coherence is of dubious significance, and that it does not help solve the problem of belief individuation. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Physics I-II into Portuguese, with commentaries. Tradução para o português dos livros I e II da Física de Aristóteles, com comentários.

Deflationists about truth hold that the function of the truth predicate is to enable us to make certain assertions we could not otherwise make. Pragmatists claim that the utility of negation lies in its role in registering incompatibility. The pragmatist insight about negation has been successfully incorporated into bilateral theories of content, which take the meaning of negation to be inferentially explained in terms of the speech act of rejection. We implement the deflationist insight in a bilateral theory by taking (...) the meaning of the truth predicate to be explained by its inferential relation to assertion. We combine this account of the meaning of the truth predicate with a new diagnosis of the Liar Paradox: its derivation requires the truth rules to preserve evidence, but these rules only preserve commitment. The result is a novel inferential deflationist theory of truth, which solves the Liar Paradox in a principled manner. We end by showing that our theory and simple extensions thereof have the resources to axiomatize the internal logic of several supervaluational hierarchies, including Cantini’s. This solves open problems of Halbach (2011) and Horsten (2011). (shrink)

This paper develops a new theory of the morality of promissory obligations. T. M. Scanlon notoriously argued that promising consists in assuring the promisee that we will do something. I disagree. I argue that it is true that promising consists in assuring the promisee, but what the promisor gives to the promisee is not an assurance that they will do something, but that the normative situation is in a certain way.

Experiences like pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenal character: they feel pleasant or unpleasant. Imperativism proposes to explain affective phenomenal character by appeal to imperative content, a kind of intentional content that directs rather than describes. We argue that imperativism is on the right track, but has been developed in the wrong way. There are two varieties of imperativism on the market: first-order and higher-order. We show that neither is successful, and offer in their place a new theory: reflexive (...) imperativism. Our proposal is that an experience P feels pleasant in virtue of being constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content, while an experience U feels unpleasant in virtue of being constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content : More of P!Less of U! If you need a slogan: experiences have affective phenomenal character in virtue of commanding us Get more of me! Get less of me! (shrink)

We present epistemic multilateral logic, a general logical framework for reasoning involving epistemic modality. Standard bilateral systems use propositional formulae marked with signs for assertion and rejection. Epistemic multilateral logic extends standard bilateral systems with a sign for the speech act of weak assertion (Incurvati and Schlöder 2019) and an operator for epistemic modality. We prove that epistemic multilateral logic is sound and complete with respect to the modal logic S5 modulo an appropriate translation. The logical framework developed provides the (...) basis for a novel, proof-theoretic approach to the study of epistemic modality. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of the approach, we show how the framework allows us to reconcile classical logic with the contradictoriness of so-called Yalcin sentences and to distinguish between various inference patterns on the basis of the epistemic properties they preserve. (shrink)

As systems based on opaque Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to flourish in diverse real-world applications, understanding these black box models has become paramount. In response, Explainable AI (XAI) has emerged as a field of research with practical and ethical benefits across various domains. This paper not only highlights the advancements in XAI and its application in real-world scenarios but also addresses the ongoing challenges within XAI, emphasizing the need for broader perspectives and collaborative efforts. We bring together experts from diverse (...) fields to identify open problems, striving to synchronize research agendas and accelerate XAI in practical applications. By fostering collaborative discussion and interdisciplinary cooperation, we aim to propel XAI forward, contributing to its continued success. Our goal is to put forward a comprehensive proposal for advancing XAI. To achieve this goal, we present a manifesto of 27 open problems categorized into nine categories. These challenges encapsulate the complexities and nuances of XAI and offer a road map for future research. For each problem, we provide promising research directions in the hope of harnessing the collective intelligence of interested stakeholders. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLinguistic evidence supports the claim that certain, weak rejections are less specific than assertions. On the basis of this evidence, it has been argued that rejected sentences cannot be premisses and conclusions in inferences. We give examples of inferences with weakly rejected sentences as premisses and conclusions. We then propose a logic of weak rejection which accounts for the relevant phenomena and is motivated by principles of coherence in dialogue. We give a semantics for which this logic is sound and (...) complete, show that it axiomatizes the modal logic KD45 and prove that it still derives classical logic on its asserted fragment. Finally, we defend previous logics of strong rejection as being about the linguistically preferred interpretations of weak rejections. (shrink)

I review recent work on Phenomenal Conservatism, the position introduced by Michael Huemer according to which if it seems that P to a subject S, in the absence of defeaters S has thereby some degree of justification for believing P.

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn’t rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects our rational credences. (...) If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don’t get off the ground because they assume that our experiences and our introspective beliefs that we have experiences have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also consider the question whether dogmatism has an antisceptical bite. I suggest that the answer turns on whether or not the Bayesian can determine the priors of hypotheses and conjectures on the grounds of their extra-empirical virtues. If the Bayesian can do so, the thesis that dogmatism has an antisceptical bite is probably false. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the various ways in which intentions can be said to be conditional, with particular attention to the internal conditions on the intentions’ content. I will first consider what it takes to carry out a conditional intention. I will then discuss how the distinctive norms of intention apply to conditional intentions and whether conditional intentions are a weaker sort of commitments than the unconditional ones. This discussion will lead to the idea of what I call (...) the ‘deep structure’ of intentions. Roughly, this is the idea that the conditional nature of our intentions is only partially made explicit in the expressions we use to communicate our intentions and in the explicit form of our thinking about and reasoning with them. Most conditions that qualify our intentions are part of a deep functional structure that can be evinced by observing the actual psychological functioning of intentions and by considering the rational requirements that they engage. I will argue that the deep structure of intentions is characteristically conditional. Genuinely unconditional intentions are only limiting instances of conditional intentions and their contribution to agency can only be understood in light of this fact. I will conclude by showing that the characteristic conditional structure of intentions is intimately related to distinctive features of human agency, especially to its unity over time. (shrink)

It is often argued that future-directed decisions are effective at shaping our future conduct because they give rise, at the time of action, to a decisive reason to act as originally decided. In this paper, I argue that standard accounts of decision-based reasons are unsatisfactory. For they focus either on tie-breaking scenarios or cases of self-directed distal manipulation. I argue that future-directed decisions are better understood as tools for the non-manipulative, intrapersonal division of deliberative labor over time. A future-directed decision (...) to ϕ gives rise to a defeasible exclusionary reason to ϕ. This reason is grounded on the default authority that is normally granted to one’s prior self as an “expert” deliberator. I argue that this kind of exclusionary reason is the only one that can account for the effectiveness of future-directed decisions at shaping our diachronic agency without violating our autonomy over time. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an impure somatic theory of emotion, according to which emotions are constituted by the integration of bodily perceptions with representations of external objects, events, or states of affairs. We put forward our theory by contrasting it with Prinz's pure somatic theory, according to which emotions are entirely constituted by bodily perceptions. After illustrating Prinz's theory and discussing the evidence in its favor, we show that it is beset by serious problems—i.e., it gets the neural correlates (...) of emotion wrong, it isn't able to distinguish emotions from bodily perceptions that aren't emotions, it cannot account for emotions being directed towards particular objects, and it mischaracterizes emotion phenomenology. We argue that our theory accounts for the empirical evidence considered by Prinz and solves the problems faced by his theory. In particular, we maintain that our theory gives a unified and principled account of the relation between emotions and bodily perceptions, the intentionality of emotions, and emotion phenomenology. (shrink)

This is an introductory handbook for some of the main themes around the notion of predication in Aristotle. It does not aim at being exhaustive, but only sketches some important lines about the subject; it contains an introductory essay, besides the translation (into Portuguese) and commentary of basic texts (such as Posterior Analytics I-22, Categories 1-5, Interpretation 1-6 etc.).

Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. John Campbell’s relational theory is a prominent representative of the latter (...) approach, and the main focus of this paper. We argue that Campbell’s theory is problematic for a variety of reasons, through which runs a common thread: most of the problems that the theory is faced with arise from the relational view of perception that he endorses, and, more generally, they suggest that perceptual experience is not sufficient for an analysis of joint attention. (shrink)

My object is Aristotle's discussion of principle of non-contradiction in the first stretch of Metaphysics IV.4. My main focus rests on the connections between Aristotle's discussion of the principle and some key notions of his (explicit or implied) semantics.

In this paper, I discuss whether there are genuinely *diachronic* constraints of practical rationality, that is, pressures on combinations of practical attitudes over time, which are not reducible to mere synchronic rational pressures. Michael Bratman has recently argued that there is at least one such diachronic rational constraint that governs the stability of intentions over time. *Pace* Bratman, I argue that there are no genuinely diachronic constraints on intentions that meet the stringent desiderata set by him. But I show that (...) there are at least two synchronic rational constraints with distinctive and important, although only indirect, diachronic dimensions. Neither of them, however, supports the practical conservatism in the face of normative underdetermination that, according to Bratman, is part and parcel of the diachronic rationality of intention stability. (shrink)

According to Originalism, word types are non-eternal continuants which are individuated by their causal-historical lineage and have a unique possible time of origination. This view collides with the intuition that individual words can be added to the lexicon of a language at different times, and generates other problematic consequences. The paper shows that such undesired results can be accommodated without abandoning Originalism.

The question as to whether Ian Hacking’s project of scientific styles of thinking entails epistemic relativism has received considerable attention. However, scholars have never discussed it vis-à-vis Wittgenstein. This is unfortunate: not only is Wittgenstein the philosopher who, together with Foucault, has influenced Hacking the most, but he has also faced the same accusation of ‘relativism’. I shall explore the conceptual similarities and differences between Hacking’s notion of style of thinking and Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. It is a (...) fact that whether or not the latter entails epistemic relativism is still a controversial question. From my comparative analysis, it will emerge that there are stronger reasons to conclude that Hacking’s notion of style leads to epistemic relativism than there are to reach the same conclusion in the case of Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. This point will be at odds with the anti-relativistic stance that Hacking has taken in his more recent writings. (shrink)

A pressing and difficult practical problem concerns the general issue of the right social response to offenders classified as having antisocial personality disorder. This paper approaches this general problem by focusing, from a philosophical perspective, on the still relevant but more approachable question whether psychopathic offenders are morally responsible. In particular, I investigate whether psychopaths possess moral understanding. A plausible way to approach the last question requires a satisfactory philosophical interpretation of the empirical evidence that appears to show that psychopaths (...) fail to draw the distinction between conventional and moral norms. Specifically, I will consider a recent philosophical debate polarized between supporters of rationalist and sentimentalist accounts of moral understanding. These opponents have discussed whether the case of psychopathy offers empirical support for their account and undermine the rival view. I will argue that the available empirical data leave the outcome of this discussion indeterminate. However, this implies that both these principal theories of moral understanding, if independently motivated, would imply that psychopaths have certain deficits that might affect their moral understanding and, consequently, their moral responsibility. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Monstrous Conclusion, according to which, for any population, there is a better population consisting of just one individual (the Monster). The Monstrous Conclusion is deeply counterintuitive. I defend a version of Prioritarianism as a particularly promising population axiology that does not imply the Monstrous Conclusion. According to this version of Prioritarianism, which I call Asymptotic Prioritarianism, there is diminishing marginal moral importance of individual welfare that can get close to, but never quite reach, some upper limit. (...) I argue that Asymptotic Prioritarianism faces a theoretical cost, that I call the Absolute Priority Principle. However, the Absolute Priority Principle is an extreme version of what I call the Trade-off Condition, an already noteworthy problem facing other (more widely endorsed) versions of Prioritarianism. I conclude that it is better for a theory to imply the Absolute Priority Principle and avoid the Monstrous Conclusion than to imply the Monstrous Conclusion and the Trade-off Condition. The potential for Asymptotic Prioritarianism is substantial. (shrink)

In this chapter I shall bring to the fore the family resemblances of the different notions of the concept of ‘ways of thinking’ that I have introduced in the previous chapter. For example, I shall compare Hacking’s styles project with Daston and Galison’s study on objectivity as well as with other projects such as Fleck’s, Kuhn’s and Foucault’s. Thanks to these comparative analyses, I shall identify points where all these projects support one another. I shall also provide a model for (...) studying objectivity that incorporates the notions of Fleck, Foucault, Kuhn and Hacking. Used together, these notions provide a more profound understanding of how objectivity emerges. Furthermore, I shall propose a layered diagram that maps the differences between the notions of thought style, episteme, paradigm and style of reasoning. Finally I shall highlight two philosophical issues, relativism and contingency, connected with the concept of ‘ways of thinking’ in all its different notions. I shall argue that this issue is particularly controversial in the case of Hacking’s notion. (shrink)

I discuss some of Aristotle’s scattered remarks from which one can construct his conception of matter. Aristotle seems to oscillate between two conceptions: one in which matter is the principle of becoming, another in which matter is a constituent element with no contribution for processes of becoming. Sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a thing independent in itself, and the correlated form is a feature that does not contribute to the matter’s essence, nor is a necessary condition for its existence. But (...) sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a constituent element the existence of which depends on the whole thing it is the matter of. These different approaches to matter seem to suggest an inconsistent theory of matter. However, I argue that, quite to the contrary, Aristotle has a consistent theory about matter. One of my main points is to distinguish contexts in which Aristotle is indeed talking about matter in general from contexts in which he uses the term “matter” to refer to a given thing that was previously taken as matter and to talk about that thing not qua matter, but qua the thing it is. (shrink)

This book discusses Aristotle’s notions of essence and substance as they are developed in Metaphysics ZH. I examine Aristotle's argument at length and defends an unorthodox interpretation according to which his motivation is to provide an answer against a conflation between criteria for existential priority (delivering substances as primary beings) and criteria for explanatory priority (delivering essences as primary principles).

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of (...) warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics I into Portuguese, with a few notes, experimental glossary and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2003/4, was preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

R. Feldman defends a general principle about evidence the slogan form of which says that ‘evidence of evidence is evidence’. B. Fitelson considers three renditions of this principle and contends they are all falsified by counterexamples. Against both Feldman and Fitelson, J. Comesaña and E. Tal show that the third rendition––the one actually endorsed by Feldman––isn’t affected by Fitelson’s counterexamples, but only because it is trivially true and thus uninteresting. Tal and Comesaña defend a fourth version of Feldman’s principle, which––they (...) claim––has not yet been shown false. Against Tal and Comesaña I show that this new version of Feldman’s principle is false. (shrink)

We present an inferentialist account of the epistemic modal operator might. Our starting point is the bilateralist programme. A bilateralist explains the operator not in terms of the speech act of rejection ; we explain the operator might in terms of weak assertion, a speech act whose existence we argue for on the basis of linguistic evidence. We show that our account of might provides a solution to certain well-known puzzles about the semantics of modal vocabulary whilst retaining classical logic. (...) This demonstrates that an inferentialist approach to meaning can be successfully extended beyond the core logical constants. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has given an explanation of how a first time warrant can fall short of transmitting across a known entailment. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright’s informal explanation into cogent Bayesian reasoning. In this paper, I analyse two Bayesian models of Wright’s account respectively proposed by Samir Okasha and Jake Chandler. I argue that both formalizations are unsatisfactory for different reasons, and I lay down a third Bayesian model that appears to me to capture the valid kernel of (...) Wright’s explanation. After this, I consider a recent development in Wright’s account of transmission failure. Wright suggests that his condition sufficient for transmission failure of first time warrant also suffices for transmission failure of supplementary warrant. I propose an interpretation of Wright’s suggestion that shield it from objections. I then lay down a fourth Bayesian framework that provides a simplified model of the unified explanation of transmission failure envisaged by Wright. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics IV and VI, with notes. The translation is preliminary and intended as a provisional teaching tool to be also used in seminars and discussions with peers in order to reach a more elaborated version.

John Hardwig has championed the thesis (NE) that evidence that an expert EXP has evidence for a proposition P, constituted by EXP’s testimony that P, is not evidence for P itself, where evidence for P is generally characterized as anything that counts towards establishing the truth of P. In this paper, I first show that (NE) yields tensions within Hardwig’s overall view of epistemic reliance on experts and makes it imply unpalatable consequences. Then, I use Shogenji-Roche’s theorem of transitivity of (...) incremental confirmation to show that (NE) is false if a natural Bayesian formalization of the above notion of evidence is implemented. I concede that Hardwig could resist my Bayesian objection if he re-interpreted (NE) as a more precise thesis that only applies to community-focused evidence. I argue, however, that this precisification, while diminishing the philosophical relevance of (NE), wouldn’t settle the tensions internal to Hardwig’s views. (shrink)

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, if you have an experience as if P, you acquire immediate prima facie justification for believing P. Pryor contends that dogmatism validates Moore’s infamous proof of a material world. Against Pryor, I argue that if dogmatism is true, Moore’s proof turns out to be non-transmissive of justification according to one of the senses of non-transmissivity defined by Crispin Wright. This type of non-transmissivity doesn’t deprive dogmatism of its apparent antisceptical bite.

Tradução preliminar em pré-print. A Tradução definitiva é a de 2009.

In this paper I investigate whether there are genuine and irreducible pressures of diachronic rationality grounded on the structure of the subject rather than on substantive considerations, such as pragmatic ones. I argue that structural pressures of diachronic rationality have a limited scope. The most important pressure only tells against arbitrary interference with the mechanisms for the retention of attitudes over time. I then argue that in the practical case, a substantial account in terms of the agent's temporal identity appears (...) more promising than a purely structural one, but in the end it still leaves many questions about diachronic practical rationality underdetermined. (shrink)

In Posterior Analytics 71b9 12, we find Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge. The definiens is taken to have only two informative parts: scientific knowledge must be knowledge of the cause and its object must be necessary. However, there is also a contrast between the definiendum and a sophistic way of knowing, which is marked by the expression “kata sumbebekos”. Not much attention has been paid to this contrast. In this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s definition paying due attention to this contrast (...) and to the way it interacts with the two conditions presented in the definiens. I claim that the “necessity” condition ammounts to explanatory appropriateness of the cause. (shrink)

A number of experiences have demonstrated how digital solutions are effective in improving quality of life (QoL) and health outcomes for older adults. Smart Health Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) is a new concept introduced in Europe since 2017 that combines the concept of Age-Friendly Environments with Information Technologies, supported by health and community care to improve the health and disease management of older adults and during the life-course. This chapter aims to provide an initial overview of the experiences available not only (...) in Europe, based on the research work of the participants of the International Interdisciplinary Network on Health and Well-being in an Age-Friendly Digital World (NET4Age-Friendly), which could be of interest to preventive, health and social authorities. The chapter reports good practices, pain points, and bottlenecks that may require a collaborative, interdisciplinary research approach to facilitate the transformations towards smart, sustainable, health and age-friendly cities and communities. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics II into Portuguese, with a few notes, experimental glossary and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2002 (with a new printing in 2004), was preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

We develop a novel solution to the negation version of the Frege-Geach problem by taking up recent insights from the bilateral programme in logic. Bilateralists derive the meaning of negation from a primitive *B-type* inconsistency involving the attitudes of assent and dissent. Some may demand an explanation of this inconsistency in simpler terms, but we argue that bilateralism’s assumptions are no less explanatory than those of *A-type* semantics that only require a single primitive attitude, but must stipulate inconsistency elsewhere. Based (...) on these insights, we develop a version of B-type expressivism called *inferential expressivism*. This is a novel semantic framework that characterises meanings by inferential roles that define which *attitudes* one can *infer* from the use of terms. We apply this framework to normative vocabulary, thereby solving the Frege-Geach problem generally and comprehensively. Our account moreover includes a semantics for epistemic modals, thereby also explaining normative terms under epistemic modals. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the first part of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics A-33, 88b30-89a10. I claim that Aristotle is not concerned with an epistemological distinction between knowledge and belief in general. He is rather making a contrast between scientific knowledge (which is equivalent to explanation by the primarily appropriate cause) and some explanatory beliefs that falls short of capturing the primarily appropriate cause.

In this paper, I argue against the popular philosophical thesis---aka the ‘own action condition’---that an agent can only intend one’s own actions. I argue that the own action condition does not hold for any executive attitude, intentions included. The proper object of intentions is propositional rather than agential (‘I intend that so-and-so be the case’ rather than ‘I intend to do such-and-such’). I show that, although there are some essential de se components in intending, they do not restrict the content (...) of intentions to one’s own actions. I then discuss the special way in which one’s own actions can figure in the content of one’s intentions, which shows that the distinction between intending and acting is less stark than it appears at first. This is a conclusion that many defenders of the own action condition might find appealing but which, I argue, is better supported by rejecting the own action condition. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify under what conditions a philosophical problem arises. I will describe two ways in which we might perceive a question as a problem. First, when we fnd ourselves inclined to believe in propositions that appear incompatible with each other. Second, when we fnd ourselves inclined to believe in propositions that seem incompatible with our desires. I will discuss both of these cases and articulate a didactic strategy – the Clash Strategy – which can (...) be used in order to plan and facilitate dialogic inquiry in the classroom. This strategy suggests introducing stimuli that will help students appreciate the clash that drives the philosophical question to be explored during the dialogue. In summary, this paper aims to ofer insights to all teachers interested in promoting dialogic inquiry, whether philosophical or otherwise, in education. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics I-III into Portuguese, with a few notes and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2007, is preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

In this chapter, I shall consider a number of connections between various ideas of the theory of styles of reasoning and the issue of the contingency and inevitability of science. By ‘contingency issue’ it is meant the question as to whether the history of a particular branch of our science could have taken a different route and provided results incompatible with those of our actual science. Apart from Hacking’s recent comments, the discussions on the contingency issue have not involved the (...) notion of style of reasoning. I will fill this gap in the literature by drawing some important implications for the issue of contingency from the theory of styles of reasoning that I have developed so far. I shall address four fundamental questions. First of all, in the next section I shall discuss to which extent the emergence of styles of reasoning at a certain point of history is a contingent circumstance. In the following section I shall ask whether the endurance of styles of reasoning was inevitable by tackling the connected question as to why the styles are long lasting. Afterwards, I shall focus on the growth of knowledge by dealing with questions such as: if a certain style of reasoning continues to be employed and if Q is a ‘live question’, is science bound to converge on a single answer to Q? Finally, on the basis of my previous reflections I shall look into the question of the convergence of science in the long run. The answers to these questions will rely on some basic assumptions of the theory of style of reasoning and imply a picture of the evolution of sciences in which both contingency and inevitability play a key role. (shrink)

Dummett has recently presented his most mature and sophisticated version of justificationism, i.e. the view that meaning and truth are to be analysed in terms of justifiability. In this paper, I argue that this conception does not resolve a difficulty that also affected Dummett’s earlier version of justificationism: the problem that large tracts of the past continuously vanish as their traces in the present dissipate. Since Dummett’s justificationism is essentially based on the assumption that the speaker has limited (i.e. non-idealized) (...) cognitive powers, no further refinement of this position is likely to settle the problem of the vanishing past. (shrink)

We discuss a well-known puzzle about the lexicalization of logical operators in natural language, in particular connectives and quantifiers. Of the many logically possible operators, only few appear in the lexicon of natural languages: the connectives in English, for example, are conjunction _and_, disjunction _or_, and negated disjunction _nor_; the lexical quantifiers are _all, some_ and _no_. The logically possible nand (negated conjunction) and Nall (negated universal) are not expressed by lexical entries in English, nor in any natural language. Moreover, (...) the lexicalized operators are all upward or downward monotone, an observation known as the Monotonicity Universal. We propose a logical explanation of lexical gaps and of the Monotonicity Universal, based on the dynamic behaviour of connectives and quantifiers. We define update potentials for logical operators as procedures to modify the context, under the assumption that an update by \( \phi \) depends on the logical form of \( \phi \) and on the speech act performed: assertion or rejection. We conjecture that the adequacy of update potentials determines the limits of lexicalizability for logical operators in natural language. Finally, we show that on this framework the Monotonicity Universal follows from the logical properties of the updates that correspond to each operator. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda into Portuguese.

In this chapter I shall address the question as to whether there exists a universal and atemporal justification for the claims made by a community that adopts a particular style of reasoning. I shall present a case study in which a claim made in the laboratory style of reasoning has no universal and atemporal justification. As I shall explain, Hacking justifies his belief that unobservable entities exist on the ground that they can be regularly manipulated by experimenters in order to (...) find out and produce various phenomena (experimental realism); he also maintains that no belief that our theories are true is required in order to be realist about unobservable entities. I shall argue that his justification is relative to the laboratory style of reasoning. Ultimately, from this case study I shall draw the important conclusion that the styles of reasoning project implies epistemic relativism. In the first part of this chapter, I shall analyse Hacking’s experimental realism in the light of the styles of reasoning project. I shall start by making these points: Hacking’s theory anti-realism denies the possibility of ranking styles of reasoning in terms of their capacity to explain phenomena; furthermore, Hacking is not successful in showing that his entity realism is justified for a community that does not adopt the laboratory style of reasoning. It will follow that the styles of reasoning project is in conflict with the claim that we know about unobservable entities. (shrink)