In a recent paper in this journal, David Chalmers introduced the meta-problem of consciousness as “the problem of explaining why we think consciousness poses a hard problem” (Chalmers, 2018, p. 6). A solution to the meta-problem could shed light on the hard problem of consciousness. In particular, it would be relevant to elucidate whether people’s problem intuitions (i.e. intuitions holding that conscious experience cannot be reduced to physical processes) are driven by factors related to the nature of consciousness, or rather (...) by factors that are independent of consciousness. Whether people hold problem intuitions, and what factors drive those intuitions, are largely empirical questions. However, there is a lack of empirical research on these issues to date. The results of four studies will show that (1) problem intuitions are not widespread, and (2) when they arise, they do so because of factors that are unrelated to the nature of consciousness. This suggests that consciousness is, after all, not so problematic. (shrink)

In emotion research, both conceptual analyses and empirical studies commonly rely on emotion reports. But what do people mean when they say that they are angry, afraid, joyful, etc.? Building on extant theories of emotion, this paper presents four new studies (including a pre-registered replication) measuring the weight of cognitive evaluations, bodily changes, and action tendencies in people’s use of emotion concepts. The results of these studies suggest that the presence or absence of cognitive evaluations has the largest impact on (...) people’s emotion attributions, and that bodily changes and action tendencies are considered to depend on cognitive evaluations. Implications for theories of emotion (concepts) and the interpretation of emotion reports are discussed. (shrink)

I propose and defend the conjecture that what explains why Gettiered subjects fail to know is the fact that their justified true belief depends essentially on unknown propositions. The conjecture follows from the plausible principle about inference in general according to which one knows the conclusion of one’s inference only if one knows all the premises it involves essentially.

The goal of this paper is to suggest that theoretical thinking with respect to metaphysical determinations or indeterminations is not the appropriate realm for attributing moral responsibility. On the contrary, judgments that attribute moral responsibility (S is responsible for...) depend on the possibility that a rational narrative be built. Agents are capable of forging their future actions, as well as of reflecting upon past actions. With this it will also be shown how we assume control of our behavior because we (...) ignore whether actions are the result of causality or chance. It is claimed that contexts determine the degree of causal demand in narratives that attribute moral responsibility. In order to construct this type of narrative one must focus on a specific link in the causal chain of explanations. If context alone is not demanding enough so as to require that theoretical reflections strive for the ultimate foundation of our actions, then the agent may be considered responsible for his behavior. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that emotion concepts are purely descriptive. However, recent investigations suggest that the concept of happiness includes information about the morality of the agent's life. In this study, we argue that normative influences on emotion concepts are not restricted to happiness and are not about moral norms. In a series of studies, we show that emotion attribution is influenced by whether the agent's psychological and bodily states fit the situation in which they are experienced. People consider that (...) emotions are not just about feeling in certain ways, but also about feeling the right way. (shrink)

Saul Kripke argued that the requirement that knowledge eliminate all possibilities of error leads to dogmatism . According to this view, the dogmatism puzzle arises because of a requirement on knowledge that is too strong. The paper argues that dogmatism can be avoided even if we hold on to the strong requirement on knowledge. I show how the argument for dogmatism can be blocked and I argue that the only other approach to the puzzle in the literature is mistaken.

Jonathan Haidt’s _Moral Foundation Theory _has been criticized on many fronts, mainly on account of its lack of evidence concerning the genetic and neurological bases of the evolved moral intuitions that the theory posits. Despite the fact that Haidt’s theory is probably the most promising framework from which to integrate the different lines of interdisciplinary research that deal with the evolutionary foundations of moral psychology, _i) _it also shows a critical underspecification concerning the precise mental processes that instantiate the triggering (...) of our evolved moral intuitions, and that _ii) _that underspecification coexists with and overspecification of the structure of human nature when it comes to exploring alternatives to capitalist societies. (shrink)

This paper argues that a necessary condition on inferential knowledge is that one knows all the propositions that knowledge depends on. That is, I will argue in support of a principle I call the Knowledge from Knowledge principle: (KFK) S knows that p via inference or reasoning only if S knows all the propositions on which p depends. KFK meshes well with the natural idea that (at least with respect to deductively valid or induc- tively strong arguments) the epistemic status (...) of one’s belief in the conclusion of an argument is a function of the epistemic status of the attitudes one has to the premises of that argument. One gets what one puts in: S’s belief in the conclusion C of an argument A has epistemic status E for S only if S’s belief in each of the premises C depends on also has epistemic status E.1 This is compatible, of course, with the epistemic status of S’s conclusion being greater than the epistemic status of the premises on which the conclusion of her reasoning depends. Furthermore, even though KFK applies more straightforwardly to non-suppositional inferences, we can also plausibly apply the principle to sup- positional reasoning if we treat S’s assuming for the sake of argument that p,2 as S assuming for the sake of argument that she knows that p.3 Although extremely plausible, philosophers have failed to present a concerted case in support of KFK. Most of their energy goes to articulating and/or defending some form of closure principle for knowledge.4 What is more, recently versions of this principle have been dismissed as problematic but I think without the reasons in its support been fully appreciated. This paper is an e fort to change the current state of affairs. Its focus is positive, however: my goal is to make the best case I can in support of KFK.5 To that end, the paper presents the reasons we have to accept KFK (§1), consid- ers an objection to the principle (§2), and situates the principle in the broader normative context of knowledge norms (§3). (shrink)

Are feelings an essential part or aspect of emotion? Cases of unconscious emotion suggest that this is not the case. However, it has been claimed that unconscious emotions are better understood as either (a) emotions that are phenomenally conscious but not reflectively conscious, or (b) dispositions to have emotions rather than emotions proper. Here, I argue that these ways of accounting for unconscious emotions are inadequate, and propose a view of emotions as non-phenomenal attitudes that regard their contents as relevant (...) to one's motivations. (shrink)

Emergency situations require individuals to make important changes in their behavior. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, official recommendations to avoid the spread of the virus include costly behaviors such as self-quarantining or drastically diminishing social contacts. Compliance (or lack thereof) with these recommendations is a controversial and divisive topic, and lay hypotheses abound regarding what underlies this divide. This paper investigates which cognitive, moral, and emotional traits separate people who comply with official recommendations from those who don't. In (...) four studies (three pre-registered) on both U.S. and French samples, we found that individuals' self-reported compliance with official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic was partly driven by individual differences in moral values, disgust sensitivity, and psychological reactance. We discuss the limitations of our studies and suggest possible applications in the context of health communication. (shrink)

Descartes niega que una máquina pueda ser inteligente, pues los mecanismos son predecibles, inflexibles y limitados. Los seguidores de la Inteligencia Artificial clásica (o IA fuerte) argumentan lo contrario. Pese a esto, Descartes y la IA proponen que la mente podría no estar adscrita a propiedades físicas, posibilidad explorada por el primero a partir de una intuición modal que separa mente y cuerpo. La IA fuerte se acerca a esta tesis cuando reduce la mente a una Máquina de Turing cuya (...) realización física resulta irrelevante. Aunque ambos argumentos presuponen teorías e implicancias diferentes, en este trabajo examino cómo el Funcionalismo resulta compatible con una forma de Dualismo, lo que aleja a la IA clásica del Materialismo que originalmente la inspiró. (shrink)

In this article, I deal with Searle’s philosophy of society, the last step to complete his philosophical system. This step, however, requires an examination of the context and presuppositions, or default positions, that make possible the key concepts of this new branch of philosophy. In the first section, I address what the enlightenment vision implies. The second section focuses upon how consciousness and intentionality are biological tools that help us create and maintain the social world. In the third section, I (...) explain the importance of the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Finally, in the fourth section I elaborate upon the default positions: the existence of one world, truth as correspondence to facts, direct perception, meaning, and causation. Importantly, I show how the context and presuppositions of the philosophy of society are an opportunity of interdisciplinary work between philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

It is often claimed that fear has an important epistemological function in making us aware of danger. Reactive theories challenge this view. According to them, fear is a response to real or apparent danger. In other words, real or apparent danger is the reason for which we experience fear. Thus, fear depends on awareness of danger instead of making us aware of danger. Proponents of the reactive theory have appealed to phenomenological and, most prominently, linguistic observations to support their views. (...) In particular, they argue that how we talk about the objects of fear supports the view that fear is a response (rather than a perception), and that how we talk about reasons for fear supports the view that reasons for fear are necessarily evaluative (about danger). Building on systematic linguistic observations in the form of corpus analyses and survey data, we argue that how we talk about the objects of fear and how we talk about reasons for fear do not support the reactive theory. Indeed, these linguistic considerations undermine the reactive theory. Most importantly, they suggest that there are non-evaluative reasons for fear. This is good news for rival theories, like perceptual theories, which hold that emotions have epistemic value in contributing to knowledge of evaluative properties such as danger. (shrink)

Can we experience emotion without the feeling of accelerated heartbeats, perspiration, or other changes in the body? In his paper “What is an emotion”, William James famously claimed that “if we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind” (1884, p. 193). Thus, bodily changes are essential to emotion. This is known as the Subtraction Argument. The Subtraction Argument is still (...) used to support Embodied theories of emotion. Proponents of Disembodied theories, however, have different intuitions regarding the role of bodily changes in the experience of emotion. In order to advance this debate, I conducted a series of studies testing people’s intuitions regarding the Subtraction Argument. Results show that, against James’ claims, most people consider that their hypothetical (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) emotions persist in the absence of bodily feelings. Furthermore, Study 1 found that participants’ responses were not related to individual differences in reflection or interoceptive awareness. These results pose a problem for Embodied theories of emotion and challenge extant explanations for the persistence of emotional experience in cases of impaired interoception. (shrink)

En este artículo argumento que, pese al llamado “escepticismo cartesiano”, el significado y alcance de la refutación cartesiana del escéptico y del ateo pueden comprenderse a la luz de tres hitos metafísicos. En la primera sección examino de qué forma este filósofo emplea argumentos escépticos como método, no como fin. Tal como enfatizo, el cogito es el punto en que la duda hiperbólica debe detenerse. Luego, en la segunda sección, discuto por qué Descartes es contrario al fideísmo. Debido a que (...) este se relaciona con el escepticismo, y con la imposibilidad de probar la existencia de Dios, Descartes prueba que Él existe. Sostengo, en la sección final, que Dios es garante de la certeza epistemológica, incluso en el caso de las ideas claras y distintas, cuya confiabilidad pareciera en peligro debido a la hipótesis escéptica del genio maligno. Según el francés, entonces, probar que Dios existe es necesario para garantizar el conocimiento cierto, y es base para inferir la existencia del mundo externo. Los tres hitos, entonces, parecen suficientes para delimitar el sentido y alcance del llamado escepticismo cartesiano. (shrink)

Human emotional expressions can communicate the emotional state of the expresser, but they can also communicate appeals to perceivers. For example, sadness expressions such as crying request perceivers to aid and support, and anger expressions such as shouting urge perceivers to back off. Some contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) systems can mimic human emotional expressions in a (more or less) realistic way, and they are progressively being integrated into our daily lives. How should we respond to them? Do we have reasons (...) to reply to the appeals made by AI emotional expressions? In this paper, we examine the conditions under which AI emotional expressions could give us prudential or even moral reasons to change our behavior. We argue that these conditions do not depend on whether the emotional expression is genuine or not, but rather on the presence of features some of which can be implemented in emotive AI given our current level of technological development. We extract recommendations and warnings for the development of emotive AI. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo examinar cómo el legado kantiano de la razón crítica sigue vigente, pues se sostiene en un imperativo teórico fundado en la autonomía. Tal como argumento, este imperativo «categórico-teórico» se estructura gracias a la primacía de la razón práctica por sobre la razón teórica. El ensayo está estructurado en tres secciones. En la primera discuto brevemente el compromiso con la verdad propio de la ética de Sócrates y Platón, quienes inauguran el racionalismo crítico, según Popper. Luego, (...) en la segunda sección examino la filosofía kantiana y su propuesta, la cual ciertamente influye en el «Tratado contra el Método» de Paul Feyerabend. Finalmente, en la tercera sección, analizo la conexión entre razón crítica y razón teórica. En particular, muestro que la primera gobierna la segunda, y que la autonomía es parte de la naturaleza racional humana. Dicha naturaleza ciertamente explica por qué la razón crítica sigue vigente en la época contemporánea. (shrink)

In support of Descartes’ epistemology, Lex Newman advances the ‘Non-atheistic-knowledge- thesis’, i.e., indefeasible knowledge cannot be gained unless the existence of God is proved. Here I expound the ‘non-atheistic-thesis-of-Cartesian-metaphysics’, which, unlike Newman’s, refers to how four Cartesian metaphysical conclusions require the existence of God. To test whether such conclusions need divine existence, we may ask what would happen if God did not play any decisive role in the Meditations. As I argue, four unpalatable consequences would follow for Cartesian metaphysics, which (...) would ruin Descartes’ plan to refute the skeptic and the atheist alike. (shrink)

La literatura sobre razonamiento probatorio busca incidir en la determinación de los hechos en los procesos judiciales. Para alcanzar dicho propósito, no basta con dirigir la mirada hacia disciplinas extrajurídicas exitosas e integrar lo que de ellas pueda extraerse a las teorías jurídicas de la prueba y a la práctica judicial. Es necesario, además, considerar el tipo de hechos a probar, los roles de las reglas jurídicas aplicables, y asumir que litigantes y jueces, actuando en un contexto institucional, podrán ser (...) más o menos agudos en la discusión fáctica, entre otras cosas. Minimizar la influencia de tales factores expone a los estudios probatorios a tener un bajo rendimiento práctico. Algo de esto ha ocurrido con la llamada concepción racionalista de la prueba. Su innegable aporte al debate académico en español no ha ido a la par de su impacto judicial. Para explicar esta brecha entre teoría y práctica, identificamos tres creencias-obstáculo que afectan a su discurso sobre la prueba y que deben ser sorteadas si lo que se busca es influir en la forma en que se juzgan los hechos en un sistema judicial realmente existente. (shrink)

El Test de Turing es un método tan controvertido como desafiante en Inteligencia Artificial. Se basa en la imitación de la conducta lingüística de humanos, y tiene como objetivo recabar evidencia empírica en favor de la tesis de que las máquinas programadas podrían pensar. Alan Turing, su creador, ha sido catalogado como conductista por la mayor parte de los comentaristas. En este capítulo muestro que no lo es. Por el contrario, Turing es un funcionalista, porque todo el énfasis del juego (...) de la imitación está en el engaño de la máquina hacia los humanos. Por ello el género es importante en dicho juego, al menos en su versión preliminar. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of whether the evil demon could have caused the idea of God. In order to determine the capabilities of the evil demon, I perform a thought experiment in which I reaffirm the con-clusion that an imperfect being could have never caused an idea of perfection and infinitude, i.e., the idea of God. The article is divided into five sections and a conclusion. While the first section is introductory, the second looks at the problem (...) of God and knowledge certainty. Elucidating how reality is gradual according to Descartes, in the third section I address the distinction between objective, formal and eminent reality. In turn, in the fourth section, I argue that if the objective reality of God exists, that is, an idea of perfection, the imperfect evil demon could have never caused it. The last section examines the reverse argument of the fourth section, viz, whether God could have caused the existence of evil and imperfection. (shrink)

According to John Searle, default positions, i.e., those intelligibility and action presuppositions, are some departing points from which pre-reflective and pragmatic assumptions are made. Postulating such points helps us deal with certain perennial philosophical issues, by leaving them aside. These problems are the existence of the external world, truth and facts, “direct” perception, the meaning of words, and causality. In this article, we argue that those default positions described by Searle constitute a default humanity, and their absence would dehumanize us. (...) This is particularly relevant in a default position: cooperation, which is the basis of collective intentionality and the milestone of human civilization. (shrink)

John N. Williams argued that Peter Klein's defeasibility theory of knowledge excludes the possibility of one knowing that one has (first-order) a posteriori knowledge. He does that by way of adding a new twist to an objection Klein himself answered more than forty years ago. In this paper I argue that Williams' objection misses its target because of this new twist.

En este trabajo examinamos el tópico de la responsabilidad en el derecho penal internacional a la luz de la filosofía de John Searle, y del fallo dictado por la Corte Penal Internacional en el caso de Thomas Lubanga. En el primer acápite analizamos la declaración de responsabilidad penal en función de la teoría de actos de habla de Austin y de Searle, tratándola como un acto ilocucionario cuyo significado es dependiente de un marco institucional específico. Luego, en el segundo acápite, (...) mostramos de qué forma tal marco puede reconstruirse como un ejemplo paradigmático de la realidad social construida descrita por Searle, especialmente en virtud del nexo entre mente, lenguaje y sociedad. A nuestro juicio, los conceptos de intencionalidad colectiva, atribución de funciones de estatus y poderes deónticos son fundamentales para entender tal nexo. En efecto, tal como argumentamos en la tercera sección, los sistemas de poderes deónticos asociados al derecho internacional no solo explican la aparición de Tribunales penales internacionales, como la Corte Penal Internacional, sino además el carácter imprescriptible de los crímenes de lesa humanidad. Los acuerdos internacionales que promueven y protegen los derechos humanos, y que tratan la imprescriptibilidad de aquellos crímenes, son objeto de análisis en la sección final, en donde exponemos algunas reflexiones finales a partir del caso Lubanga. (shrink)

En este artículo examino dos criterios para la existencia de estados mentales, el de Descartes y el de Turing. Mientras que el primero plantea que las máquinas no pueden pensar en principio, el segundo defiende la inteligencia de máquina. Pese a esto, ambos parecen coincidir en que la decisión sobre la presencia de estados mentales es tomada por alguien que juzga internamente la misma. Si bien ello es esperable del racionalismo cartesiano, en el funcionalismo de Turing es sorprendente. En efecto, (...) ningún comentarista de su Juego de la Imitación repara en el hecho de que los interrogadores son una instancia que no parece reemplazable y, además, que dichos interrogadores aplican un criterio internalista para decidir si están frente a una mente o un computador. Tal aproximación internalista a la mente, argumento, representa una dificultad para que una máquina pase el Test de Turing. Por este motivo concluyo que dicho test no solo no reemplaza la pregunta ¿pueden pensar las máquinas?; adicionalmente traslada de modo dramático el foco del debate a la filosofía de la mente. (shrink)

En las dos entregas anteriores abordamos el inicio de la evolución del pensamiento matemático, desde el uso de herramientas matemáticas para problemas de cálculo concreto en la antigua Babilonia, pasando por el inicio de las matemáticas abstractas, las demostraciones y el nacimiento de la “geometría por la geometría” desde la visión religioso-filosófica de Platón y los pitagóricos, hasta la síntesis de ambas visiones en las matemáticas de la India, China y el mundo árabe, que fue la puerta de entrada de (...) las matemáticas a Europa, alrededor del siglo XV. (shrink)

Christine Tappolet’s book Philosophy of Emotion: A contemporary introduction, and many other works in emotion theory, focus primarily on emotional episodes at the expense of so-called “emotional dispositions.” I argue that there are no reasons for theories of emotion to focus on emotional episodes, or to reserve the term “emotion” for emotional episodes.

Within the framework of the epistemological debate on disagreement, this paper aims to examine the sceptical thesis that holds that, if it is impossible to rationally choose among two excluding positions, the only sensible or rational thing to do is to suspend judgement. The idea that ordinary life does not constitute the source of scepticism is presented, which rules out real disagreement between epistemic pairs as its foundation. Sceptical scenes differ ontologically from everyday scenes, without such ontological difference entailing an (...) epistemic difference, since epistemic practices do not vary from one sceptical scene to other types of scenes. (shrink)

If we want to say what “fundamentality” means, we have to start by approaching what we generally see at the empty place of the predicate “____ is fundamental”. We generally talk about fundamental entities and fundamental theories. At this article, I tried to make a metaphysical approach of what is for something to be fundamental, and I also tried to talk a little bit of fundamental incomplete and complete theories. To do that, I start stating the notion of “entity” and (...) looking at the difference at perceived entities. The difference led us to talk about the entities’ structures and their powers, and about the supervenience between these last two. The supervenience talk made us to see the fight between emergentism and reductionism as the difference between the irreducibility of laws and the reducibility of powers and structures to lower-order domains. Then, we conclude that “fundamentality” is a mereological relation – a relation that a whole structure has to a certain combination of its structural parts or that a power has to a certain combination of its constituent powers – of to be identical and to exist in virtue of them. (shrink)

This chapter analyses the prospects of using neuroimaging methods, in particular functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for philosophical purposes. To do so, it will use two case studies from the field of emotion research: Greene et al. (2001) used fMRI to uncover the mental processes underlying moral intuitions, while Lindquist et al. (2012) used fMRI to inform the debate around the nature of a specific mental process, namely, emotion. These studies illustrate two main approaches in cognitive neuroscience: Reverse inference and (...) ontology testing, respectively. With regards to Greene et al.’s study, the use of Neurosynth (Yarkoni 2011) will show that the available formulations of reverse inference, although viable a priori, seem to be of limited use in practice. On the other hand, the discussion of Lindquist et al.’s study will present the so far neglected potential of ontology-testing approaches to inform philosophical questions. (shrink)

This paper proposes a view on epistemic relativism that arises from the problem of the criterion, keeping in consideration that the assessment of criterion standards always occurs in a certain context. The main idea is that the epistemic value of the assertion “S knows that p” depends not only on the criterion adopted within an epistemic framework and the relationship between said criterion and a meta-criterion, but also from the collaboration with other subjects who share the same standards. Thus, one (...) can choose between particularist and methodist criteria according to the context of assessment. This position has the advantage of presenting a new perspective concerning both the criterion problem and the problem of inter-contextuality in the evaluation of different epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

This paper examines an insoluble Cartesian problem for classical AI, namely, how linguistic understanding involves knowledge and awareness of u’s meaning, a cognitive process that is irreducible to algorithms. As analyzed, Descartes’ view about reason and intelligence has paradoxically encouraged certain classical AI researchers to suppose that linguistic understanding suffices for machine intelligence. Several advocates of the Turing Test, for example, assume that linguistic understanding only comprises computational processes which can be recursively decomposed into algorithmic mechanisms. Against this background, in (...) the first section, I explain Descartes’ view about language and mind. To show that Turing bites the bullet with his imitation game, in the second section I analyze this method to assess intelligence. Then, in the third section, I elaborate on Schank and Abelsons’ Script Applier Mechanism (SAM, hereby), which supposedly casts doubt on Descartes’ denial that machines can think. Finally, in the fourth section, I explore a challenge that any algorithmic decomposition of linguistic understanding faces. This challenge, I argue, is the core of the Cartesian problem: knowledge and awareness of meaning require a first-person viewpoint which is irreducible to the decomposition of algorithmic mechanisms. (shrink)

Pretendo demostrar que a) el tratado *De ira* de Séneca incluye no una sino dos estrategias terapéuticas diseñadas para evitar la ira, y que b) que la segunda de estas estrategias –la cual ha sido desatendida en la literatura secundaria– presenta problemas irresolubles cuando la contrastamos contra la teoría estoica de la acción, la cual se funda en premisas intelectualistas.

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to present four theories of the nature of natural laws, (2) to show that only one of them is capable of adequately answering to Tooley's Cases, and (3) indicate why these cases are relevant for our ontology. These purposes are important since the concept of "natural law" is used in many (if not all) realms of natural science and in many branches of philosophy; if Tooley's cases are possible, they represent situations that must (...) be adequately described. If there is only one theory that can adequately describe such cases, there are strong reasons to prefer this theory over the other ones. (shrink)

The paper introduces a new problem for fallibilist and infallibilist epistemologies – the diachronic threshold problem. As the name suggests, this is a problem similar to the well–known threshold problem for fallibilism. The new problem affects both fallibilism and infallibilism, however. The paper argues that anyone who worries about the well known problem for fallibilism should also worry about this new, diachronic version of the problem.

Testimonial injustices occur when individuals from particular social groups are systematically and persistently given less credibility in their claims merely because of their group identity. Recent “pluralistic” approaches to folk psychology, by taking into account the role of stereotypes in how we understand others, have the power to explain how and why cases of testimonial injustice occur. If how we make sense of others’ behavior depends on assumptions about how individuals from certain groups think and act, this can explain why (...) speakers are given different degrees of credibility depending on their group identity. For example, if people assume that women are more emotional than men, they will systematically give less credibility to women’s claims. This explanation involves three empirical claims: people assume that women are more emotional than men, people assume that emotionality hinders credibility, and people give less credibility to women’s claims. While extant studies provide some support for and, no study to date has directly tested. In two different studies, we tested all these three claims. The results from both studies provide support for, as we found significant negative correlations between emotionality and credibility attributions. However, in contrast to what some accounts of folk psychology posit, we did not find any significant difference in people’s attributions of emotionality and credibility towards women versus men speakers. We hope that our studies here pave the way for further empirical studies testing the phenomenon of testimonial injustice in a context-sensitive way, in order to have a better understanding of the conditions in which testimonial injustices are likely to happen. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to offer a critical analysis of the political projections that Antonio Damasio has put forward of his specific conception of homeostasis. By starting from a complex conception of homeostasis, one that focuses not only on the maintenance of life but also on flourishing, Damasio argues that certain cultures are contrary to the homeostatic imperative. I will suggest that, even if we adopt the complex interpretation of homeostasis (rather than the deflated one that is usual (...) in most evolutionary approaches), resorting to the concept of homeostasis would lead to a condemnation of modern capitalist societies, not from an ethical or political point of view, but from a strictly evolutionary one (i.e., a point of view that takes into consideration the preservation of the conditions under which our species can survive in the future). (shrink)

The aim of the paper will be to analyze the different strategies that the Stoics of the Imperial times designed in order to put our sense of justice on hold, due to the fact that it is deemed responsible for certain attitudes which do not contribute to our search for _eudaimonía_. I will organize such strategies in two groups: the first one corresponds to the strategies that target the idea that an injustice has been committed; the second one corresponds to (...) the ones that aim to show that there are more convenient attitudes towards injustice than the demand for punishment or the desire for revenge. I will end by pointing at the difficulty of reconciling both sets of strategies, and I will suggest a possible way to account for that difficulty. (shrink)

El objetivo del trabajo consiste en relevar las funciones asignadas explícitamente por Epicuro a las distintas epítomes que se han conservado de su obra. Dicho relevamiento tendrá por objetivo, en primer lugar, señalar algunas dificultades implícitas en lo que denominaré la Interpretación Mínima, la cual se funda sobre tres presupuestos centrales: i) que el epicureísmo constituye una filosofía accesible a cualquier individuo, sin importar su género, estatus social, linaje o formación filosófica; ii) que, en concordancia con esto, las epítomes epicúreas (...) constituyen resúmenes de las doctrinas principales del epicureísmo que pueden ser leídas por cualquier individuo independientemente de su formación filosófica; iii) que el manejo de las epítomes es suficiente por sí mismo para garantizar el acceso a la eudaimonia. A continuación, analizaré una línea de interpretación alternativa ya sugerida parcialmente por algunos comentaristas, la cual enfatiza la existencia simultánea de dos modalidades de abordaje de las epítomes, para concluir señalando las dificultades inherentes a dicha línea de lectura. (shrink)

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of (...) Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning. (shrink)

Since the automation revolution of our technological era, diverse machines or robots have gradually begun to reconfigure our lives. With this expansion, it seems that those machines are now faced with a new challenge: more autonomous decision-making involving life or death consequences. This paper explores the philosophical possibility of artificial moral agency through the following question: could a machine obtain the cognitive capacities needed to be a moral agent? In this regard, I propose to expose, under a normative-cognitive perspective, the (...) minimum criteria through which we could recognize an artificial entity as a genuine moral entity. Although my proposal should be considered from a reasonable level of abstraction, I will critically analyze and identify how an artificial agent could integrate those cognitive features. Finally, I intend to discuss their limitations or possibilities. (shrink)

Against the epicurean position, the rationality about the preoccupation with death is discussed by the present paper. For this purpose two elemental thesis are proposed. The first one supports that it is rational to worry about death before dying because we conceive the idea of a discourse in which the impossibility of interfere in the world to satisfy our pending goals is lamented. The second thesis is that death afflicts any prejudice only to whom wonders about it, because this question (...) encloses the idea that one transcends by means of the achievement of our purpose, for that it is presupposed that with death the interests and aim are kept constant. (shrink)

I review a tentative list of the examples of ethical (or spiritual) exercises that have been proposed as Epictetan by contemporary commentators. Based on a minimal definition of the notion of ethical exercises, I suggest that some practices have been misidentified and propose some revisions to that repertoire.

It was argued by Célia Teixeira (2003) that the actualized descriptivist theory of names have the problem of generating undesired epistemic necessities. In this paper I want to argue for a descriptivis theory that does not suffer from such problem. For this I will explain Teixeira's objections and later present my own conception of an actualized descriptivist theory of names; it is, protected against the problem of undesired necessities.

In this paper I intend to expose some of Nathan Salmon's arguments, which aim to show that the conceptual theories of the informational value of singular terms cannot be the case, and to present some objections to these arguments, objections which seek to restore the capacity of the conceptual theories to secure the referent, and to have a concept as the informational value of a singular term. I fulfill such goal by making an initial introduction, where I briefly explain Frege's (...) Puzzle, and then I show Salmon's presentation of Frege's Puzzle along with his arguments against the conceptual theories, and I intermittently present my objections to Salmon's arguments. Finally, I conclude that if the objections are satisfactory, they restore the capacity of conceptual theories that would have been removed by the arguments advanced by Salmon. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é ser uma introdução aos diversos tipos de possibilidades e mostrar o caminho que a discussão sobre a existência de possibilidades não-atuais deve seguir a partir da aceitação do determinismo. E essa discussão é relevante porque sua resposta tem bastante infl uência em nossos pensamentos e lógicas sobre as modalidades da necessidade e da possibilidade. Cumprimos tal objetivo através de um diálogo a respeito das possibilidades. Este formato de texto tem a vantagem de ser mais pedagógico (...) do que os ensaios em terceira pessoa, pois insere o problema fi losófi co das possibilidades em uma situação real particular sem que a generalidade do assunto e dos argumentos seja perdida. (shrink)

Are emotions bodily feelings or evaluative cognitions? What is happiness, pain, or “being moved”? Are there basic emotions? In this chapter, I review extant empirical work concerning these and related questions in the philosophy of emotion. This will include both (1) studies investigating people’s emotional experiences and (2) studies investigating people’s use of emotion concepts in hypothetical cases. Overall, this review will show the potential of using empirical research methods to inform philosophical questions regarding emotion.

My main purpose in this article is to present an argument for the idea that necessity qua truth in all possible worlds, without other qualifications, leads us to contradiction. If we do not want to accept the contradiction, we will face a dilemma: or accepting that everything we take as contingent is in fact necessary, or accepting that we cannot translate some sentences – at least the indexed to worlds sentences – to the possible worlds vocabulary. We have an intuition (...) – and we develop an argument for it – that if “P”, evaluated in w*, is a contingent truth, so it cannot be the case that “P in w*” is a necessary truth. Generally, the argument tries to show that “P”, evaluated in w*, and “P in w*” are made true by the same contingent fact. If we suppose that “P in w*” is necessary, we would have to suppose that the fact that makes it true is also necessary, which would be contradictory with the fact that makes “P” true in w*, if we accept that what makes “P” in w* and “P in w*” true is the same fact. I attain such an aim by presenting an argument that is divided in two parts, one to imply the contradiction and the other to show that there is no relevant difference between the indicated sentences, by showing how the dilemma arises, and by answering some possible objections. This is an important objective because the possible worlds vocabulary is the default vocabulary to treat the modalities of necessity and possibility. And if it is flawed, it is important that we identify the flaw and fix it – which is exactly what we intend to do at the end of this article, by suggesting some qualification at the necessity notion, that the necessity is the native truth in all possible worlds. And this would save the possible worlds vocabulary from the presented objection. (shrink)

Do moral beliefs motivate action? To answer this question, extant arguments have considered hypothetical cases of association (dissociation) between agents’ moral beliefs and actions. In this paper, I argue that this approach can be improved by studying people’s actual moral beliefs and actions using empirical research methods. I present three new studies showing that, when the stakes are high, associations between participants’ moral beliefs and actions are actually explained by co-occurring but independent moral emotions. These findings suggest that moral beliefs (...) themselves have little or no motivational force, supporting the Humean picture of moral motivation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to indicate the purpose of education and how it implies changes in the curricula of basic education and in the methods of teaching, guidance and evaluation. We start with the concepts of capacities and overlapping consensus, created respectively by Amartya Sen and John Rawls, and find something that we can call a good life and what it means to improve life. So, we established that education should have as its primary function to enable the (...) subject to lead a good life in harmony with the social environment. To decide whether the basic educational curriculum fulfills this function, we started with an analysis of school subjects. We realized that both the curriculum and the teaching methods were important for the fulfillment of the function of education, and that Brazilian basic education fails to fulfill these two points satisfactorily, as the current curriculum does not fully enable the individual to lead a good life and teaching methods are not guided and evaluated pedagogically by professionals. Anyway, the conclusion we reached was that we need certain changes in the curriculum and teaching methods. / O objetivo deste artigo é indicar qual a finalidade da educação e como isso implica modificações nos currículos da educação básica e nos métodos de orientação e avaliação de ensino. Partimos dos conceitos de capacidades e consenso sobreposto, criados respectivamente por Amartya Sen e John Rawls, e encontramos algo que podemos chamar de vida boa e o que significa melhoria de vida. Então, estabelecemos que a educação deve ter como função primordial capacitar o sujeito a levar uma vida boa em harmonia com o meio social. Para decidirmos se o currículo educacional básico cumpre essa função, partimos para uma análise das disciplinas escolares. Percebemos que tanto o currículo, quanto os métodos de ensino eram importantes para a realização da função da educação, e que a educação básica brasileira não consegue cumprir esses dois pontos satisfatoriamente, pois o currículo atual não capacita plenamente o indivíduo a levar uma vida boa e os métodos de ensino não são orientados e avaliados pedagogicamente por profissionais. Enfim, a conclusão que chegamos foi a de que precisamos de certas mudanças no currículo e nos métodos de ensino. (shrink)