J. L. Austin showed that performative speech acts can fail in various ways, and that the ways in which they fail can often be revealing, but he was not concerned with understanding performative failures that occur in the context of poetry. Geoffrey Hill suggests, in both his poetry and his prose writings, that these failures are more interesting than Austin realized. This article corrects Maximilian de Gaynesford’s misunderstanding of Hill’s treatment of this point. It then explains the way (...) in which Hill’s understanding of the performative restrictions on poetry relate to his conception of poetry’s role, analogous to that of the Saturnalian misruler, in establishing the authority of ordinary language. (shrink)

This essay is an inquiry into John McDowell’s thinking on ‘subjectivity.’ The project consists in two parts. On the one hand, I will discuss how McDowell understands and responds to the various issues he is tackling; on the other, I will approach relevant issues concerning subjectivity by considering different aspects of it: a subject as a perceiver, knower, thinker, speaker, agent, person and (self-) conscious being in the world. The inquiry begins by identifying and resolving a tension generated by the (...) very idea of ‘rational animal’: human beings are at the same time natural and rational. Later the inquiry proceeds by considering how McDowell’s notion of ‘second nature’ enables us to be human subjects with many faces. By going through the diagnoses and responses of McDowell, two central problems in modern and contemporary philosophy – the narrow conception of nature and the Cartesian inner space model – are identified and repelled. In Episode N I first urge that we should leave room for a certain notion of ‘world.’ I further argue that mentality has many aspects, and to understand those aspects is to understand the many faces of human subject. In Episode Ⅰ the Aristotelian notion of ‘second nature’ is discussed in order to resolve the tension in the very idea of ‘rational animal.’ Later I reply to some worries about this maneuver, including the objection from Crispin Wright. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s distinction between world and environment is introduced and related to McDowell’s thinking. Episode Ⅱ discusses perception and knowledge; McDowell’s main target – the Cartesian inner space – is introduced and criticized. Barry Stroud’s and Simon Blackburn’s positions are evaluated. Later I connect the main theme of Mind and World to the present context; in particular, I discuss McDowell’s invocation of Donald Davidson and Immanuel Kant. And then I discuss a common accusation of idealism, and Robert Brandom’s accusation of ‘residual individualism.’ Episode Ⅲ concentrates on Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein, arguing that the master thesis behind the rule-following paradox is a version of the inner space model, and that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is not Wittgenstein. Martin Kusch’s objections are answered; Michael Dummett’s demand of reductionism is rebutted. After this, I turn to Davidson’s ‘no language’ claim, and discuss to what extent McDowell agrees with him. In Episode Ⅳ I evaluate objections from Hubert Dreyfus concerning action and agency. I discuss how Dreyfus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty commit ‘the Myth of the Disembodied Intellect’ identified by McDowell. I answer Michael Ayer’s charge of intellectualism in passing. Later I bring in McDowell’s objections to Derek Parfit on personhood and to Davidson on the mind-body relation. In Episode Ⅴ I focus on consciousness and self-consciousness. McDowell applies his argument against Parfit to Kant, but Maximilian de Gaynesford dissents. I reply to his objections on McDowell’s behalf. I further connect this to McDowell’s attacks on the dualism of scheme and content. This leads to my McDowellian rejection to the existence of qualia, and further brings me to the debate between intentionalism and disjunctivism in the context of the argument from illusion. I argue against Tim Crane’s ways of conceiving issues about intentionalism and the argument from illusion. Varieties of disjunctivism are also discussed. In my Epilogue, I express my worry about McDowell’s notion of ‘self-determining subjectivity.’ According to McDowell, human freedom consists in causations in the space of reason, but as Richard Gaskin points out, a satisfying story of it is yet to be provided. I close this essay with some rough ideas about how to fill in the details of the McDowellian picture. (shrink)

The exacerbating energy crises that are wreaking havoc around the globe, as well as the apparent effects of climate change, have spurred, amongst other causes, the concerted orientation towards amelioration aims such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). Although often presented as not only the solution to these global problems (if adopted wholesale), they are increasingly being used as a vehicle to traffic the centralisation of power and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. (...) This chapter aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG package the problem into what might otherwise be the solution to global problems, missing the forest for the trees. (shrink)

Does a nihilist who kills himself betray his own beliefs? An unreflected answer would probably turn out positive, because a nihilist may be defined as a person who embraces all aspects of life and pain itself. But someone who escapes his sorrowful existence by committing suicide seems not to accept his own human condition and therefore cannot die as a nihilist. If this argumentation is right, human life would not be possible outside cultural contexts, for the particularity of nihilism is (...) its large distance to and independence of culture and collectivity. In his autobiographical work "Arbeit und Struktur" Wolfgang Herrndorf portrays his three and a half years of living with brain cancer. At the same time he shows us how his originally humanistic nihilism turns into a more pessimistic one while coping with his disease. Herrndorf, in a manner of speaking, writes his own "myth to live" without being able to rely on the shelter of culture, without a "myth of collectivity". In the face of this, we must assume Herrndorf's ideological transformation from a cooperative nihilism to a pessimistic nihilism, which justifies his own death, was his sole opportunity to mentally survive the three and a half years of pain and dissolution. From this perspective, the example of Wolfgang Herrndorf and his "Arbeit und Struktur" would reveal mankind's absolute dependency on metaphysical significance and its need for individual myths to live. Despite regarding himself as a modern, secular and rationalistic human being, Herrndorf cannot overcome the necessity of the iconological translation of "reality to world". Therefore, the intent of this master's thesis is to show that all living human beings are captives of icons and their metaphysical representation, and that the endless effort of translating whole reality into a single myth to live is part of our conditio humana. (shrink)

Since at least Luhmann, contingency – whose conceivability must be reduced to a great extent by means of “reduction of complexity“ in order to assure stability of social and psychological systems – has been an important topos of sociological theory. What is a genuinely philosophical approach of the past decades, on the other hand, is the idea of its conceivability as being conducive for the purpose of individual autonomy. If both assumptions held equally true, collectivity and mature individuality would effectively (...) contradict each other: Mere affiliation with a collective would be the most efficient way to flee from the existential threat that is contingency, while the questioning of affiliation would require the capacity of enduring said threat. However, an individual that is thoroughly shielded from specific experiences of contingency will have little reason to break loose from its original collective environment and to expose itself to the burden of contingency. Consequently, autonomy would solely – if ever – be possible outside of any collective context and the idea of reasonably founded social liability coined at times of the Enlightenment would ultimately become obsolete. Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans Blumenberg rank among the authors who have dealt with this dilemma in their own specific ways. What makes both of them relevant to the search for a possible solution is the emphasis with which they have included existential as well as cultural contingency in the topos of human identity. The consideration of narrative categories plays an important part at this point: For it is MacIntyre´s conception of the human being as a “story-telling animal“ – surely Blumenberg would concur with this wording – that allows us to particularly understand the myth-building, rhetoric engagement with the world´s unreliability as a crucial structural factor of man´s conduct of life. Contingency always had to be “digested“ in some way or other, either had to be veiled and disowned or made accessible and bearable in order to guarantee man´s metaphysical potentiality – which both MacIntyre and Blumenberg do by molding the unpredictable and the perilous into collective and singular narrations. It is obvious that the collective narratives are superordinate to the individual ones: First and foremost, we are always members of a specific cultural environment who can only hope to obtain an autonomous identity by means of distancing ourselves from this environment to a certain extent. At the same time, as mentioned before, this cultural context serves as the best possible protection against existential contingency; in this regard, MacIntyre and Blumenberg think of cultural reduction of contingency as necessary but yet obstructive to the formation of a resilient individual and autonomous identity. Setting out from here, this essay discusses the extent to which the individual recognition of cultural and existential contingency plays a part in MacIntyre´s and Blumenberg´s concept of a responsible yet socially agreeable identity. It will become obvious that a close connection can be drawn between the affirmation of one´s own cultural contingency and the one of one´s potential suffering in “limit situations” (Karl Jaspers): Human identity could only live up to the task of dealing with existential contingency appropriately by equally admitting its own cultural contingency – and thus the cultural contingency of every other person as well. The affirmation of cultural contingencies and differences would establish a new “genre-specific” reliability that could potentially dismantle the paradigm of (post)modern tentativeness criticized by MacIntyre and Blumenberg and that could return visions of an open and humane future to contemporary societies. (shrink)

It was the emphasis of Søren Kierkegaard's railing against 19th-century Danish Christianity in all its ruthlessness that eventually led him to utterly reject and actively fight the majority of the contemporary as well as important aspects of the historical discourse on Christianity. One of the aspects that Kierkegaard distanced himself from sharply consists in the long tradition of Christian mysticism. Nevertheless his concept of the “knight of faith” reveals several deliberations that appear to be close to mystical Christian conceptions (e.g. (...) the meaning of suffering or despair for the leap of faith, an increasing awareness of sin and guilt as well as the conditions for the knight of faith's secular ministry). Thus, Kierkegaard's critique of mysticism suggests his misunderstanding of the mystical perspective's implications. This essay tries to solve said misunderstanding between Kierkegaard and christian tradition by interrelating the process of becoming a knight of faith with the mystical responsibility before the divine and the ethical responsibility before all of humanity. (shrink)

In this thesis I try to evaluate the risks and potentials of modern and archaic myths for human existence in a holistical approach. After Adorno's and Horkheimer's critique that enlightment would still be mythical the positive aspects of myth and ancient religion were - with a few exceptions (i.g. Blumenberg, Eliade) - mostly neglected: In the analysis of Critical Theory myth only serves power, its misuse in fashist and capitalistic societies is inevitable; therefore any hint of mythological structures needs to (...) be destroyed. Even so, myth as one of the first tools of sensemaking had made sure that humanity clings to life through entire history. In the words of Baudrillard and Blumenberg, mythical (and, further on, religious and rationalistic) icons preserves their followers to get in touch with an overwhelming reality. The mythical tills the world as an factual entity and, in the cultural aspect, as an entity shapeable by "our" collective power. With the evidence given of increasing difficulties for finding "Bedeutsamkeit" (Blumenberg) in individual life, the bivalency of myth illustrates a promising oppurtunity for individual and existential sensemaking. (shrink)

Ist die Begrenzung von staatlichen Ausgaben und Haushaltsdefiziten wirklich im Sinne der Generationengerechtigkeit? Wer begreift, wie unser Geldsystem tatsächlich funktioniert, muss diese Frage eindeutig und vehement verneinen.

In his 1968 poetry collection „Fadensonnen“, Paul Celan offers a hermetic blend of existentialism and mysticism, which is unusual in two respects. Firstly, the European philosophy of existence, especially with its proponents Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger, had gone to great lengths to criticize and delegitimize the Abrahametic religions, for the concept of god seemed to be an obstacle to humanity in pursuit of its own humanization. Secondly, in the aftermath of the holocaust, the idea of man wanting (...) to merge with a god that had not prevented this cruelty from happening had lost much of its plausibility. Despite these two objections, Celan's poems address the struggle of togetherness in a world that negates the mere possibility of otherness, trying to salvage the unique identity and dignity of the other. With this in mind, the modus operandi of his poems is that of a butcher: Whatever has previously been alive – before the Shoah – now has to be stripped bare of its layers of individual and collective history, has to become less than body and flesh. In this way, the poems' inherent pain and misery transform the reader into a nobody, for only a nobody has got the prerequisites to encounter other people unbiasedly in their unique wholeness. Within this space of encounter, only the reminiscence of body and sexuality exists, commemorating the other, so that radical corporeality seems to be the prerequisite for togetherness. In this ahistorical sphere there is no room for a god that permitted the holocaust, redefining mysticism as the connection between men instead of one between man and god. Celan's poems act as a catalyst, for they exclude god from the spheres of man, making poetry a memorial site to the dead and the ones living in pain. This way, the poems are trying to save Eros (in the sense of creaturely love) from being mutilated by the crimes of European history while at the same time aiming at rehabilitating mankind in a post-holocaust world. (shrink)

Max Scheler's concept of the “becoming god” and its implication of mankind as his “ally” has been a long-time target of relentless criticism. The strongest objections were made mainly against the tendency of overestimating the human share in the affairs of being, culminating in the groundless self-idealization of mankind. Put aside these fierce reactions, Scheler's notion of “being in progress” however seems to be accurate overall: If the spheres of being can be described as matter, life and spirit, and the (...) balance between all of them is what defines being as a whole, then currently being is indeed not fully existent yet and therefore still has to be unfolded. Strangely enough, in Scheler's view it is mainly the lower spheres of being, more precisely the urge of life (“Lebensdrang”) that holds the power of unfolding all other – without it, pure spirit would have been absolutely powerless. In this sense, the life-related power of mankind holds the potential to help evolving the higher spheres of being, since natural evolution (at least in terms of experience) has mostly come to an end for the contemporary human race. Henceforth, helping spirit unfold is a matter of intentional decision, since it doesn't unfold by default anymore. When assuming Scheler's term of eros as the mediator between life and spirit, mankind analogously seems to become the becoming god's eros. In this article, I explore what the implications of this conclusion might be. (shrink)

Since Jürgen Habermas' speech for the Peace Price of the German Book Trade in October 2001, secular reason – personified by one of its main protagonists – has been able to debate with religion anew. For the purpose of an unbiased encounter between philosophy and religion, Habermas introduced the term “postsecular” back then in order to emphasize that this dialogue was inevitably necessary, all the more in the face of religiously motivated terrorism. Nonetheless, this willingness to debate was accompanied by (...) the conviction that secular reason itself, as a matter of fact, would be “ideologically neutral”. However, taking the necessity of accomplishing the confrontation with “world” (Weltbewältigung) seriously, the reflection on world view as a whole unveils its implied tasks of granting metaphysical and existential certainty (metaphysische Sicherheit), therefore resulting in the statement that there cannot be a neutral world view at all. Only dialogue as exchange of beliefs generates the general framework within which the discursive issues of world views are separated from their existential aspects, thus enabling a reasonably conducted debate without endangering the existential certainty of its participants. As a consequence, the neutrality of world views exclusively rests in dialogue and is no unique feature of secular reason at all. Eventually, this leads to the reconsideration of the conditions that must be given for an argument to be called “rational”. The article tries to point out that an argument in political contexts, whether given by a religious or a secular person, should only be acknowledged rational if it takes at least all living people – regardless of their group affiliations – into account. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Publikation dient als Grundlage für die interdisziplinäre Entwicklung einer Zertifizierung von Künstlicher Intelligenz. Angesichts der rasanten Entwicklung von Künstlicher Intelligenz mit disruptiven und nachhaltigen Folgen für Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Alltagsleben verdeutlicht sie, dass sich die hieraus ergebenden Herausforderungen nur im interdisziplinären Dialog von Informatik, Rechtswissenschaften, Philosophie und Ethik bewältigen lassen. Als Ergebnis dieses interdisziplinären Austauschs definiert sie zudem sechs KI-spezifische Handlungsfelder für den vertrauensvollen Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz: Sie umfassen Fairness, Transparenz, Autonomie und Kontrolle, Datenschutz sowie Sicherheit und (...) Verlässlichkeit und adressieren dabei ethische und rechtliche Anforderungen. Letztere werden mit dem Ziel der Operationalisierbarkeit weiter konkretisiert. (shrink)

El libro E-physicalism - A Physicalist Theory of PhenomenalConsciousness presenta una teoría en el área de la metafísica de laconciencia fenomenal. Está basada en las convicciones de que la experienciasubjetiva -en el sentido de Nagel - es un fenómeno real,y de que alguna variante del fisicalismo debe ser verdadera.

Contemporary criticism of religion, which itself mainly claims to be secular and “ideologically neutral”, has some difficulties in finding rational argu-ments that actually acknowledge the value of religious worldviews. Instead of reflecting on criteria for constructive and harmful religiosity, most of the current arguments set secular thinking as the mode and therefore seem to derive from “secularistic” ideology (Habermas). This problem intensifies considering the growing attraction of commercial esoteric teachings because “esoteric spirituality” blurs the conceptual distinction between secular spiri-tuality (Metzinger) (...) and secularistic religiosity. The essay therefore focuses on the argument that the spiritual should be seen as the rationality of religiosity in general and hence should be distinguished from the irrational will to belief which is frequently encountered on the esoteric market. (shrink)

El libro "E-physicalism - A Physicalist Theory of Phenomenal Consciousness" presenta una teoría en el área de la metafísica de la conciencia fenomenal. Está basada en las convicciones de que la experiencia subjetiva -en el sentido de Nagel - es un fenómeno real, y de que alguna variante del fisicalismo debe ser verdadera.

Dit werkstuk betrekt zich op de vraag of de de facto legitimiteit van Knoet de Grote als koning van Angelsaksisch Engeland, te verklaren is aan de hand van de theorieën over legitimiteit zoals gepostuleerd door Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (1864—1920). Bestaande literatuur over Knoet de Grote zijn troonsbestijging, zoals dat van vooraanstaand 19e-eeuws historicus Edward Augustus Freeman, zou een ‘geromantiseerd’ beeld hebben geschetst van de kwestie. Dit werkstuk zal kijken of dit beeld, aan de hand van Webers theorie over (...) waar legitimiteit in gegrond kan zijn, ten eerste terecht te noemen is en, ten tweede, of het Knoets status als legitiem vorst van het ‘Angelsaksische’ volk goed kan verklaren. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the semantics of the first person pronoun “I” from the perspective of the user/producer distinction. In the first part of the paper, I describe the Simple View and propose three interpretations of its thesis. In the second part, I analyze the notions of use and production of a linguistic token. In the next part, I show that all of the interpretations of SV are sensitive to counterexamples. In the end, I discuss possible answers of the (...) proponents of SV and argue against them. The first aim of this paper is to show that SV is wrong, and the second is to convince the reader that the user/producer distinction is of high importance in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Rémi Brague es un pensador francés reconocido por sus estudios de filosofía antigua y medieval. También ha analizado diversos aspectos de la antropología filosófica y cultural de nuestro tiempo, en un contexto amplio del estudio de la historia de las ideas. En la actualidad es profesor emérito de Filosofía Medieval en la Universidad de la Sorbona de París y de Historia del Cristianismo Europeo en la Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München en Alemania donde ocupó la cátedra Romano Guardini. Es miembro del Instituto de (...) Francia desde 2009. (shrink)

Preliminary Material /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Kosmos & Kontingenz /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- "De la théorie à la pratique“ /Eva Marie Noller -- Mittelalterliche Kosmologie und Kontingenz /Cornelia Selent -- Kontingenz der Stimmen im Kosmos der Lettern -,Atomologie', Technologie und William Baldwins Beware the Cat /Ronja Bodola -- Hypothese, Abweichung und Traum Keplers Ellipsen /Reto Rössler -- "Nur leerer Raum und Schatten“ /Hartmut Böhme -- Gewissheit als sentiment /Christian Reidenbach -- Poiesis im (...) "Gegenhalt“ der anderen Welten: Epistemische und kosmologische Kontingenz bei Breitinger und Brockes /Johannes Wankhammer -- Ungereimtheit - Poesie und Prosa um 1755 /Wolfgang Hottner -- "Es giebt freylich unzähliche Welten“ /Tim Sparenberg -- Kontingenz, Ordnung und realer Grund bei Kant /Thijs Menting -- Im Grunde das Regellose /Philipp Weber -- Kontingenz und Latenz /Helmut Müller-Sievers -- Revolution in Permanenz: Auguste Blanquis Ewigkeit durch die Sterne /Alexandra Heimes -- "Kosmische Gesetze“? /Elisa Ronzheimer -- Vom unendlichen Universum zur Dialektik der Kontingenz /Thomas Ebke -- Stetigkeit im kosmischen Diskontinuum /Timothy Attanucci -- Versuch einer Kosmologie des Performativen in der Kunst /Maximilian Haas -- Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus: Zwei Modelle, zwei Erbschaften /Étienne Balibar -- Vom kontingenten Kosmos zur Kosmopolitik /Karin Harrasser -- Auswahlbibliographie /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Begriffsregister /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Autorinnen und Autoren /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber. (shrink)

I raise an example that suggests that Andrea Kern’s Knowledge View of Perception should concede that a mere perceptual experience can be a potentiality for one to know something on its basis. I argue that the Knowledge View can accommodate this suggestion by distinguishing between two kinds of defective exercises of a capacity for perceptual knowledge, namely failed and incomplete exercises. I explain that, rather than collapsing the Knowledge View into the contrary Two-Capacity View, my suggestion further articulates the definitive (...) insight of the Knowledge View, namely that perceptual experience, on the basis of which one knows, issues from the same capacity as the knowledge enabled by it. (shrink)

Many interpretations of Kant’s first Critique fail to appreciate the revolutionary nature of his account of knowledge and its implications for skepticism, givenness and mind-independence, because they read Kant as holding a compositional account of knowledge. I contend that the reason for this is that this account is both naturally appealing in its own right, and fits an influential reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. On this reading, the Deduction aims to respond to a skeptical worry which issues from the empiricist (...) version of epistemic compositionalism and which questions the intelligibility of the claim to knowledge of our judgements. Against this, I argue that what Kant’s Deduction actually aims to address is a radicalization of this epistemic worry, which instead questions the intelligibility of the objective purport of our judgements. I contend that the compositional account is unable to respond to this more radical worry, thereby putting it into question both as a reading of Kant, and as an account of knowledge generally. To corroborate this, I provide a reading of the Deduction that overcomes epistemic compositionalism by thinking through its shortcomings in order to arrive at a more adequate successor account: the hylomorphic account of knowledge, which, I contend, is able to dissolve both the more radical and the epistemic worry. I suggest that this implies generally that the epistemic worry issuing from the compositional account is not self-contained, but must give way to Kant’s more radical worry, which I argue can only be addressed within the underappreciated framework of epistemic hylomorphism. (shrink)

Can sensibility, as our capacity to be sensibly presented with objects, be understood independently of the understanding, as the capacity to form judgments about those objects? It is a truism that for judgments to be empirical knowledge they must agree with what sensibility presents. Moreover, it is a familiar thought that objectivity involves absolute independence from intellectual acts. The author argues that together these thoughts motivate a common reading of Kant on which operations of sensibility are conceived as intelligible independently (...) of acts of the understanding, so that their supposed objectivity can validate judgments as empirical knowledge. He contends that there are two reasons why this epistemic compositionalism is implausible both as a reading of Kant and in itself. First, read compositionally, Kant’s Transcendental Deduction is unable to fulfill its stated aim of showing that the categories are objectively valid, that is, exemplified by the objects that sensibility presents. Second, Kant sees that sensibility by itself cannot be understood to even purport to present objects, thus undermining the very intelligibility of compositionalism. The author argues that, given these challenges, Kant’s Deduction develops an alternative account, on which operations of sensibility and acts of the understanding can be understood only together. He contends that this epistemic hylomorphism transforms the familiar thought underlying compositionalism: objectivity simultaneously involves formal agreement with intellectual acts in general and material independence from any specific such act. He thus shows how Kant reconceives our conception of objectivity by overcoming compositionalism in favor of hylomorphism. (shrink)

Searle proposes an argument in order to prove the existence of universals and thereby solve the problem of universals: From every meaningful general term P(x) follows a tautology Vx[P(x) v -P(x)], which entails the existence of the corresponding universal P. To be convincing, this argument for existence must be valid, it must presume true premises and it must be free of any informal fallacy. First, the validity of the argument for existence in its non-modal interpretation will be proven with the (...) help of the formal deductive system F. Secondly, it will be shown that a self-contradictory tautology concept is employed, which renders the premises meaningless. Consequently, the inconsistency will be emended through redefinition and the argument's ensuing correctness will be demonstrated. Finally, it will be shown that the argument for existence presupposes the existence of universals in its premise and hence begs the question. (shrink)

This dissertation articulates our human capacity to judge as a capacity for knowledge, specifically for empirical knowledge, and for knowledge of itself as such. I interpret and draw on the account of such knowledge presented by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, situate this account historically, and relate it to relevant contemporary debates. The first chapter motivates my project by assessing the insights and shortcomings of Cartesian epistemology. I argue that while Descartes draws on the essential self-consciousness of judgement to show (...) that the cogito is knowledge, he fails, by his own standards, to secure this status for any judgement beyond the cogito. I conclude that self-consciousness alone is empty, but that, since we can judge beyond the cogito, judgement can be given content from elsewhere. The next chapter evaluates the empiricist doctrine that operations of the senses by themselves give content to judgement and can vindicate it as empirical knowledge. I contend that Kant deepens Hume’s finding, that empiricism fails to enable us to explain empirical knowledge, into the more radical insight that empiricism fails to enable us to understand the senses as providing any content. I conclude that the senses alone are blind and that our account of empirical knowledge must privilege neither sensory givenness nor intellectual self-consciousness. The third chapter contrasts two readings of Kant on the cooperation between sensibility and understanding in empirical knowledge. I argue, against many Kantians, that the Transcendental Deduction shows that instead of understanding this cooperation compositionally – so that operations of sensibility are intelligible independently of acts of the understanding – we must conceive of it hylomorphically – so that the operations of sensibility and understanding constitute the mutually dependent matter and form of empirical knowing respectively. The final chapter substantiates this hylomorphism by explicating the form of knowledge as synthesis. Following Kant, I argue that inference is a species of synthesis and provide a synthetic explanation of inference. The resulting account simultaneously illustrates synthesis, addresses a prominent contemporary problem regarding the nature of inference, and explains how our capacity to know provides not just isolated glimpses of empirical reality, but a unified conception of it. (shrink)

An intuitive and widely accepted view is that (a) beliefs aim at truth, (b) many citizens have stable and meaningful political beliefs, and (c) citizens choose to support political candidates or parties on the basis of their political beliefs. We argue that all three claims are false. First, we argue that political beliefs often differ from ordinary world-modelling beliefs because they do not aim at truth. Second, we draw on empirical evidence from political science and psychology to argue that most (...) people lack stable and meaningful political beliefs. Third, we claim that the true psychological basis for voting behavior is not an individual’s political beliefs but rather group identity. Along the way, we reflect on what this means for normative democratic theory. (shrink)

Estas reflexões têm como principal objetivo mostrar como a concepção do belo em Agostinho de Hipona é tributária da tradição platônico-aristotélica e das Escrituras. No que tange à primeira influência, a ênfase é colocada nas noções de simetria, de proporção, de forma, de unidade e, portanto, de belo. No que diz respeito às Escrituras, Agostinho considera em primeiro lugar o papel da criação e a ação de Deus no universo como o Ser a partir do qual todas as coisas se (...) mantêm harmônica e proporcionalmente vinculadas entre si. Neste universo, ao pôr o acento sobre o homem como a imagem e semelhança de Deus, o teólogo explora igualmente o conceito de participação, que também remete a Platão e às Escrituras. O texto termina apontando para o paradoxo, tipicamente estoico, do apesar de, isto é, apesar do mal, existe o bem, apesar do feio e do desgracioso, existe o belo. (shrink)

Little is known about the aetiology of philosophical intuitions, in spite of their central role in analytic philosophy. This paper provides a psychological account of the intuitions that underlie philosophical practice, with a focus on intuitions that underlie the method of cases. I argue that many philosophical intuitions originate from spontaneous, early-developing, cognitive processes that also play a role in other cognitive domains. Additionally, they have a skilled, practiced, component. Philosophers are expert elicitors of intuitions in the dialectical context of (...) professional philosophy. If this analysis is correct, this should lead to a reassessment of experimental philosophical studies of expertise. (shrink)

Historical and cultural approaches to climate generally consider climate to be a stabilising concept between weather and culture. Different historical and cultural concepts of climate signify different ways of learning to live with the weather. However, anthropogenic climate change evidences the limit of this approach: instead of stabilising, climates ephemeralise together with the ways we have come to adapt to them. Changing climates require a concept of climate that captures how climates are experienced both as stable and ephemeral. To create (...) such a concept, I engage in an exercise of counterfactual etymology, reconstructing the concept of climate that might have emerged from the Ancient Greek term hora as opposed to klima. Central to my re-creation of phenomenological climate are Plato's myths, through which I highlight the methodological kinship between myth and phenomenology. Drawing on a later dialogue, Philebus, I provide an ontological account of climates as both stable and ephemeral. I conclude by situating my approach to climate and its changes in recent work on the relationship between weather and climate, arguing for the necessity of phenomenological climate in order to make sense of what changes with climate change. My turn to Ancient Greek philosophy and its application to the phenomenology of climate and its changes sounds out a novel approach to research in historical geography. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an enactive account of loving as participatory sense-making inspired by the “I love to you” of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. Emancipating from the fusionist concept of romantic love, which understands love as unity, we conceptualise loving as an existential engagement in a dialectic of encounter, in continuous processes of becoming-in-relation. In these processes, desire acquires a certain prominence as the need to know (the other, the relation, oneself) more. We build on Irigaray’s account of (...) love to present a phenomenology of loving interactions and then our enactive account. Finally, we draw some implications for ethics. These concern language, difference, vulnerability, desire, and self-transformation. (shrink)

Debate about cognitive science explanations has been formulated in terms of identifying the proper level(s) of explanation. Views range from reductionist, favoring only neuroscience explanations, to mechanist, favoring the integration of multiple levels, to pluralist, favoring the preservation of even the most general, high-level explanations, such as those provided by embodied or dynamical approaches. In this paper, we challenge this framing. We suggest that these are not different levels of explanation at all but, rather, different styles of explanation that capture (...) different, cross-cutting patterns in cognitive phenomena. Which pattern is explanatory depends on both the cognitive phenomenon under investigation and the research interests occasioning the explanation. This reframing changes how we should answer the basic questions of which cognitive science approaches explain and how these explanations relate to one another. On this view, we should expect different approaches to offer independent explanations in terms of their different focal patterns and the value of those explanations to partly derive from the broad patterns they feature. (shrink)

Richard Dawkins has argued on several occasions that bringing up your child religiously is a form of child abuse. According to Dawkins, teaching children about religion is fine (it helps them to understand cultural references, for instance), but indoctrinating children – by which Dawkins means any form of education that teaches religious beliefs as facts – is morally wrong and harmful. Dawkins is not alone: the American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, for instance, recently argued that teaching Young Earth Creationism (henceforth (...) YEC) is a form of child abuse. Here, I want to focus on the role of parents in instilling religious beliefs in their children, especially beliefs that are incompatible with science, such as YEC. Instead of using the rather laden term “child abuse,” I want to tease apart two questions: Are YEC parents harming their children, and is what they do morally wrong? (shrink)

Despite the fact that common sense taxes emotions with irrationality, philosophers have, by and large, celebrated their functionality. They are credited with motivating, steadying, shaping or harmonizing our dispositions to act, and with policing norms of social behaviour. It's time to restore emotion's bad rep. To this end, I shall argue that we should expect that some of the “norms” enforced by emotions will be unevenly distributed among the members of our species, and may be dysfunctional at the individual, social, (...) moral, or even species levels. I”ll adduce three considerations in support of that pessimistic view: The fallacy of adaptive fixation, the moral randomness of group selection, and the lack of fit between “natural norms” set up by evolution and those moral and social norms we would like philosophy to justify. (shrink)

Na era das tecnologias digitais, entender vieses algorítmicos por meio das teorias da verdade ajuda a fazer perguntas cujas respostas facilitam a filtragem da informação de forma mais eficaz. O ganho é a compreensão aprofundada da realidade.

The recent publications reported in 2022 reveal the possibility of obtaining mouse embryos without the need for egg or sperm. These ‘artificial embryos’ can recapitulate some stages of development ex utero – from neurulation to organogenesis – without implantation. Synthetic mouse embryos might serve as a valuable model to gain further insights into early developmental stages. Indeed, it is expected for these models to be replicated by employing human cells. This promising research raises ethical issues and expands the horizon of (...) ethics in regard to the development of the human embryo. From this point of view, we state some of the new open venues for bioethical research. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend that demonstratives are expressions of joint attention. Though this idea is not exactly new in the philosophical or linguistic literature, we argue here that their proponents have not yet shown how to incorporate these observations into more traditional theories of demonstratives. Our purpose is then to attempt to fill this gap. We argue that coordinated attentional activities are better integrated into a full account of demonstratives as meta-pragmatic information. Our claim is twofold. First, we claim (...) that pragmatically presupposing salience is a fundamental aspect of using demonstratives. Secondly, we hold that the pragmatics of demonstrating can only be properly understood in relation to meta-pragmatic conditions that have to do with joint attention. We use tests of truth-value gap as evidence for our claim. Our proposal provides us with a complete view of what speakers do and presuppose when engaging in acts of demonstrative reference through language. (shrink)

Multivariate pattern analysis, or MVPA, has become one of the most popular analytic methods in cognitive neuroscience. Since its inception, MVPA has been heralded as offering much more than regular univariate analyses, for—we are told—it not only can tell us which brain regions are engaged while processing particular stimuli, but also which patterns of neural activity represent the categories the stimuli are selected from. We disagree, and in the current paper we offer four conceptual challenges to the use of MVPA (...) to make claims about neural representation. Our view is that the use of MVPA to make claims about neural representation is problematic. (shrink)

What makes it possible to affect one another, to move and be moved by another person? Why do some of our encounters transform us? The experience of moving one another points to the inter-affective in intersubjectivity. Inter-affection is hard to account for under a cognitivist banner, and has not received much attention in embodied work on intersubjectivity. I propose that understanding inter-affection needs a combination of insights into self-affection, embodiment, and interaction processes. I start from Michel Henry's radically immanent idea (...) of self-affection, and bring it into a contrastive dialogue with the enactive concepts of autonomy and (participatory) sense-making. I suggest that the latter ideas can open up Henry's idea of self-affection to inter-affection (something he aimed to do, but did not quite manage) and that, in turn, Henry's work can provide insights into underexplored elements of intersubjectivity, such as its ineffable and mysterious aspects, and erotic encounters. (shrink)

In his recently published posthumous works "Prefiguration" and "The Rigorism of Truth" Hans Blumenberg surprisingly steps into the area of political history that he had left widely unconsidered in "Work on Myth". While "Prefiguration" tackles the “demonic” aspects of Napoleon and Hitler that Blumenberg tries to dismantle and bring into derision, in "Rigorism of Truth" he attacks Hannah Arendt's phrase of the Banality of Evil in relation to the Jerusalem trial against Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In this latter issue Blumenberg (...) defends the demonic he sees culminated in the form of Eichmann to assert what he calls the “mythical dimension“ in the Israeli process of nation-building. To him, Eichmann represents a prototypical demon incarnate that must be slaughtered by the heroic character seen in young state Israel. This obviously turns Blumenberg's criticism of Napoleon and Hitler into an affirmation of political myths that, on the face of it, appears to be a contradiction in terms. The essay focuses on this theoretical tension and tries to point out that significance (“Bedeutsamkeit”) is not only a necessity for individual self-assertion (“Selbstbehauptung”) but also a category of communality that must be handled with care. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to extend the semantics for the kind of logic of ground developed in (deRosset and Fine, 2023). In that paper, we very briefly suggested a way of treating universal and existential quantification over a fixed domain of objects. Here we explore some options for extending the treatment to allow for a variable domain of objects.

During emerging public health crises, both policymakers and members of the public are looking to scientific experts to provide guidance. Even in cases where there are significant uncertainties, there is pressure for experts to “speak with one voice” to avoid confusion, allow officials to make evidence-based decisions rapidly, and encourage public support for such decisions. This can lead experts to engage in masking of information about the state of the science or regarding assumptions involved in policy recommendations. Although experts might (...) have good reasons for masking disagreements, uncertainties, or assumptions when offering policy advice, we argue that this strategy can result in epistemic harms. Using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that public health authorities masked two types of information necessary for laypersons to evaluate public health recommendations: (1) experts’ disagreements about the scientific evidence and (2) the role of values in making inferences from the science to policy positions. We contend that this resulted in epistemic harms against laypeople that provide a pro tanto case against masking information. We further argue that when the science is in flux and policies need to be implemented despite significant uncertainties, there is an all-things-considered case against masking the types of information discussed. (shrink)

Void is at the heart of Stoic metaphysics. As the incorporeal par excellence, being defined purely in terms of lacking body, it brings into sharp focus the Stoic commitment to non-existent Somethings. This article argues that Stoic void, far from rendering the Stoic system incoherent or merely ad hoc, in fact reflects a principled and coherent physicalism that sets the Stoics apart from their materialist predecessors and atomist neighbors.

Fragmentalism allows incompatible facts to constitute reality in an absolute manner, provided that they fail to obtain together. In recent years, the view has been extensively discussed, with a focus on its formalisation in model-theoretic terms. This paper focuses on three formalisations: Lipman’s approach, the subvaluationist interpretation, and a novel view that has been so far overlooked. The aim of the paper is to explore the application of these formalisations to the alethic modal case. This logical exploration will allow us (...) to study (i) cases of metaphysical incompatibility between modal facts and (ii) cases of modal dialetheias. In turn, this will enrich our understanding of the role of impossibility in the fragmentalist framework. (shrink)

Natural theology is the branch of theology and philosophy that attempts to gain knowledge of God through non-revealed sources. In a narrower sense, natural theology is the discipline that presents rational arguments for the existence of God. Given that these arguments rarely directly persuade those who are not convinced by their conclusions, why do they enjoy an enduring appeal? This article examines two reasons for the continuing popularity of natural theological arguments: (i) they appeal to intuitions that humans robustly hold (...) and that emerge early in cognitive development; (ii) they serve an argumentative function by presenting particular religious views as live options. I conclude with observations on the role of natural theology in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on the moral responsibility of organized groups in light of historicism. Historicism is the view that any morally responsible agent must satisfy certain historical conditions, such as not having been manipulated. We set out four examples involving morally responsible organized groups that pose problems for existing accounts of historicism. We then pose a trilemma: one can reject group responsibility, reject historicism, or revise historicism. We pursue the third option. We formulate a Manipulation Condition and a (...) Guarding Condition as addendums to historicism that are necessary to accommodate our cases of group responsibility. (shrink)

Metaphysical underdetermination arises when we are not able to decide, through purely theoretical criteria, between competing interpretations of scientific theories with different metaphysical commitments. This is the case in which non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) finds itself in. Among several available interpretations, there is the one that states that the interaction with the conscious mind of a human observer causes a change in the dynamics of quantum objects undergoing from indefinite to definite states. In this paper, we argue that there seems (...) to be also a metaphysical underdetermination concerning London and Bauer’s theory of measurement between two methods of phenomenological reduction: the eidetic and the transcendental approaches. Recently, Steven French argued that both methods can be combined in order to interpret London and Bauer’s formalism. However, in this paper we argue that the eidetic one is the only viable phenomenological way to interpret this particular theory of measurement in QM based on the formalism presented by London and Bauer, hence breaking this phenomenological underdetermination. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on Alfred Schutz’s theoretical framework to better understand how oppression is enacted through discriminatory acts. By closely examining the role of typifications and relevances in our experience of others, and by supplementing this analysis with contemporary social scientific resources, we argue that a Schutzian perspective on oppression yields important phenomenological insights. We do this in three key steps. Firstly, we contextualise Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World within Schutz’s broader body of work, (...) elucidating his central conditions of discrimination. Secondly, we highlight the limitations of Schutz’s account, in how it fails to capture more peripheral, subtle, and implicit oppressive practices. Finally, we introduce two underexplored insights derived from Schutz’s framework: the role of relevances in understanding the motivational underpinnings of implicit biases, and the connection between self-typification and stereotype threat. With this multidimensional approach, we hope to enhance our understanding of oppression whilst bridging gaps in Schutz’s original conceptualization. (shrink)

Providing equitable food security for a growing population while minimizing environmental impacts and enhancing resilience to climate shocks is an ongoing challenge. Here, we quantify the resource intensity, environmental impacts and nutritional output of a small (0.075 ha) low-input subsistence Mediterranean agroecological farm in a developed nation that is based on intercropping and annual crop rotation. The farm provides one individual, the proprietor, with nutritional self-sufficiency (adequate intake of an array of macro- and micro-nutrients) with limited labor, no synthetic fertilizers (...) or herbicides, and zero waste, effectively closing a full farm-table-farm cycle. We find that the agroecological farm outperforms conventional farming as practiced in the same country in terms of both lower environmental burdens, across all examined environmental metrics (63% lower on average) per kg produce, and higher nutritional score (66% higher on average). Per equal farmland, the environmental lopsidedness was even higher (79% lower than conventional farming on average), with nearly the same nutritional score (3% lower on average). Moreover, when considering total land area, which includes farmland and supporting non-agricultural lands, as well as postgate impacts and food losses, the advantage of the agroecological system over conventional farming is even more pronounced. Situated within a Mediterranean region that is undergoing rapid climate change, this food system is a unique case study of nutrition- and environment-oriented food production system. While its deployment potential is limited by lack of supportive policies, it nonetheless represents one of the most starkly bold alternatives to current food systems. (shrink)