In this paper I discuss five meta-ethical challenges to Naturalistic Moral Realism, which includes secular moral codes such as Secular Humanism that, in my view, naturalists need to address to keep their commitment to moral realism from looking like special pleading. The five challenges are as follows: 1. The Ontological Problem (OP): How do such moral principles exist? 2. The Epistemic Problem (EP): How does our moral sense/intuition track such principles? 3. The Influence Problem (IP): What authority does the existence (...) of such principles have to supervene on our behavior? 4. The Axiological Problem (AP): What entities have moral value and deserve moral consideration? 5. Methodological Problem (MP): How do we go about arbitrating between moral claims when they conflict? (shrink)

Over the last three decades, studies in microbiology have exposed a world of diverse and dynamic interactions. Through metagenomic sequencing, complex bacterial communities became visible and proved important for many biological phenomena. As a result of discovering the connection between microorganisms and organisms’ survival, the notion of the holobiont has become prominent and has been suggested as a biological individual. The view of the holobiont as an individual, commonly known as the Hologenome Theory, focuses on the interactions and relations between (...) the host and its symbionts in the host’s development and evolution. Today, the holobiont is at the heart of the debate on the nature of the biological individual, a debate which is connected to the same question about the nature of the individual organism. (shrink)

In this essay, I will explain why Methodological Naturalism (MN) fails as a demarcating criteria for science. I will argue that MN is not precise enough to be useful for demarcation, unable to follow the evidence where it leads, not theologically neutral (despite its stated goals as such), and difficult to justify (and currently unjustified) as an ontological or epistemic principle.

Issues of pretense and imagination are of central interest to philosophers, psychologists, and researchers in allied fields. In this entry, we provide a roadmap of some of the central themes around which discussion has been focused. We begin with an overview of pretense, imagination, and the relationship between them. We then shift our attention to the four specific topics where the disciplines' research programs have intersected or where additional interactions could prove mutually beneficial: the psychological underpinnings of performing pretense and (...) of recognizing pretense, the cognitive capacities involved in imaginative engagement with fictions, and the real-world impact of make-believe. In the final section, we discuss more briefly a number of other mental activities that arguably involve imagining, including counterfactual reasoning, delusions, and dreaming. (shrink)

These three volumes, entitled Essays On Values, bring together fortyone recent articles by researchers at the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). They are a small sample of everything that, in the last four years, the Institute’s researchers have published, in English, in indexed journals and collections of essays with peer review. As a whole, they reflect very well the research work that is done at IFILNOVA. Section I. of Volume 1 gathers six articles that deal directly with the question “what (...) are values?”, the question that guides all the work of the institute’s different laboratories and research groups. The first article, by Susana Cadilha and Vítor Guerreiro, results from work developed in the Laboratory of Ethics and Political Philosophy (EPLab); the second, by João Constâncio, from the Lisbon Nietzsche Group; the third, by Alexandra Dias Fortes, from the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group; the third and fifth, by Nuno Fonseca, and Maria Filomena Molder, from the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Group of the Laboratory of Culture and Value (CultureLab); the last, by Erich H. Rast, from the Philosophy of Language and Argumentation Theory Group and the Lisbon Mind, Cognition & Knowledge Group of the Laboratory of Argumentation, Cognition, and Language (ArgLab). Section II. brings together three articles by members of the Lisbon Nietzsche Group. Since 2010, the Lisbon Nietzsche Group has completed several funded projects, and has established itself as a leading international research group on Nietzsche’s thought. The three articles demonstrate the crucial importance of the question of values in Nietzsche’s work, always thought from the perspective of the possibility of a “transvaluation of all values”. Maria João Mayer Branco’s article focuses on the value of introspection, and how Nietzsche anticipates Wittgenstein’s “expressivist” view of the “the Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’” and the impossibility of private languages. Marta Faustino’s article considers the theme of affirmation and the value of life through the interpretation of Nietzsche’s reflection on truthfulness, intellectual honesty and courage in the light of Michel Foucault’s work on parrhesia. Pietro Gori’s article studies how Nietzsche creates a new anthropological ideal based on his enquiry into the values of the “good European”. The area of Wittgenstein studies has had a strong influence on the institute since the time when it was a philosophy of language institute. The Wittgensteinian distinction between facts and values was decisive in defining the question of values as the central issue of IFILNOVA’s research project, replacing the focus on philosophy of language. More recently, the focus of research at the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group has been on epistemic values, in particular in their connection with the question of religious belief. In Section III., Nuno Venturinha’s article examines, in the light of an epistemological standpoint, the way Wittgenstein thinks about the possibility of translation. Robert Vinten’s article argues that Wittgenstein’s thought contains elements for a critique of the concept of justice and of the liberal political visions of both Richard Rorty and Chantal Mouffe, despite the fact that both have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein. Benedetta Zavatta’s article questions the value of mythology by thinking of it as a disease of language – not only in Wittgenstein, but also in a whole philosophical tradition that preceded him. The existence of a research group in ancient philosophy is a recent but very promising development in the life of IFILNOVA. Section IV. includes two articles by members of the group. Paulo Alexandre Lima’s article considers the critique of misology and the value of discourse in Plato’s Phaedo. Hélder Telo’s article examines the pedagogical and protreptic value of imperfection in Plato’s work. (shrink)

The way citizens regard and treat one another in everyday life, even when they are not engaged in straightforwardly “political” activities, matters for achieving democratic ideals. This claim provokes an underexamined unease in many. Here I articulate these concerns, which I argue are prompted by the approaches most often associated with these issues. Such theories, like democratic communitarianism, require problematic sorts of unity in everyday social life. To avoid these difficulties, I offer an alternative, called procedural democratic informal politics, which (...) allows democrats to evaluate everyday life without demanding questionable forms of unity within it. (shrink)

In this article, I will discuss some of the arguments for and against the existence of God, in particular the monotheistic God believed in the Abramahamic religions (Judiasm, Islam, and Christianity) as well as Babism, the Bahai Faith, and Sikhism. Arguments for the existence of God try to argue that either God exists (based on other things people agree with) or that belief in God is reasonable. Arguments against the existence of God try to argue that the existence of God (...) leads to some contradiction or other absurdity. (shrink)

The problem of evil is one of the most significant challenges to theism and Christianity in particular, asking why there seems to be so much evil if an omnibenevolent (all good), loving God exists. The problem of evil, as posed by many atheists and agnostics today, (following Epicurus) often asserts that the following premises cannot all be true: 1. God exists, and is omnipotent (all-powerful) 2. God exists, and is omnibenevolent (all-good) 3. God exists, and is omniscient (all-knowing) 4. Evil (...) exists Christian thinkers over the past two thousand years have given various responses to the problem of evil in the form of various theodicies, or attempts to explain why evil exists (or appears to exist) given the existence of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God. This document serves as a brief overview of different theodicies offered by Christian thinkers throughout history. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualism involves general mistrust of scholars, academics, and ex- perts, often as pretentious or power-motivated. While scholars have described currents of anti-intellectualism in American public life, evangelical Christianity, in responses to COVID, and rural identity, to my knowledge none have looked at how anti-intellectualism specifically manifests in the New Atheism movement. In this work, we explore the way anti-intellectualism is commonly found and expressed in New Atheism and the modern Skeptical Movement, including scientific skepticism more generally.

In this article, I define a cultural epistemology as a set of socially reinforced assumptions about how knowledge and truth are produced. Unlike a philosophical epistemology, a cultural epistemology is largely the product of culture and largely invisible. As products of culture, cultural epistemology are relatively unquestioned and, in many cases, philosophically unsophisticated. There are three common types of cultural epistemologies, influenced by who holds power in a given society: an epistemological monarchy, an epistemological oligarchy and an epistemological democracy. A (...) given cultural epistemology subsequently influences the legitimacy of culture and government itself. I argue argue that Americans tend to hold an "epistemological democracy" with two distinct facets: a trust in consensus, linked to living in a democratic republic, and a trust in their own self-interest, linked to market economics and capitalism more generally. These two facets combine, interact, and even oppose each other to legitimize and challenge American culture and its political and economic systems. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to criticize the notion that consensus is an epistemology. While I have never seen it explicitly claimed that “consensus is an epistemology,” I have nonetheless seen it implied in many scholarly (and layperson) articles. This occurs whenever articles cite, “a majority of scholars agree that…” or “most scientists/researchers think…” In our democratic, individualistic society, we put a value on high value votes and the quantification of majority viewpoints, whether it be in political polls (due to (...) living in a democracy), online on websites with ranking or voting systems such as Reddit, YouTube, or Instagram. The danger here is we may defer too much to the consensus view without appropriate justification. I will give several reasons why we should be skeptical of appeals to consensus (including a consensus of experts), which include its non-obvious link to ontology, the fact that consensus changes, and a lack of specificity of who counts as an ``expert,'' the lack of specificity on how to handle consensus (if it does occur), and epistemic undercutting defeaters from evolutionary epistemology. While an appeal to consensus may not tell us much about whether a theory is true, they can give us practical or pragmatic reasons for trusting a position. (shrink)

This work deals with problems involving infinities and infinitesimals. It explores the ideas behind zero, its relationship to ontological nothingness, finititude (such as finite numbers and quantities), and the infinite. The idea of infinity and zero are closely related, despite what many perceive as an intuitive inverse relationship. The symbol 0 generally refers to nothingness, whereas the symbol infinity refers to ``so much'' that it cannot be quantified or captured. The notion of finititude rests somewhere between complete nothingness and something (...) having no end. -/- My concern is that many of the philosophers arguing for or against the ontology (or possibility) of an actual infinite set are unaware or unfamiliar with the mathematical literature attempting to clearly and rigorously define these terms. I believe it is a mistake to leave mathematicians out of this conversation, as analysts in particular have defined (and used) infinity in a way that is relevant to the ongoing debate between philosophers. -/- For this paper, I have selected examples from Principles of Analysis by Walter Rudin, which has become a standard text for Real Analysis classes taken by pure mathematicians and engineers. I will also restrict the scope of examples to Euclidean spaces for simplicity. Finally, I will be using addition, + and multiplication * in their usual way. (shrink)

In this position paper, we have used Alan Cooper’s persona technique to illustrate the utility of audio- and video-based AAL technologies. Therefore, two primary examples of potential audio- and video-based AAL users, Anna and Irakli, serve as reference points for describing salient ethical, legal and social challenges related to use of AAL. These challenges are presented on three levels: individual, societal, and regulatory. For each challenge, a set of policy recommendations is suggested.

It is argued that logic, and in particular mathematical logic, should play a key role in the undergraduate curriculum for students in the computing fields, which include electrical engineering (EE), computer engineering (CE), and computer science (CS). This is based on 1) the history of the field of computing and its close ties with logic, 2) empirical results showing that students with better logical thinking skills perform better in tasks such as programming and mathematics, and 3) the skills students are (...) expected to have in the job market. Further, we believe teaching logic to students explicitly will improve student retention, especially involving underrepresented minorities. Though this work focuses specifically on the computing fields, these results demonstrate the importance of logic education to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a brief overview of ideas from Reformed Epistemology, and the relationship between faith, evidence, and belief. I discuss what makes belief in God rationally warranted, and how reformed epistemology strikes a middle ground between fideism and evidentialism. In effect, reformed epistemology avoids the fideist idea that belief in God must be taken on "blind faith," but also avoids some of the epistemic issues present in evidentialism, such as its self-referential incoherence. The reformed epistemologist says belief (...) in God is rational, but not for the reasons demanded by evidentialists. (shrink)

For years, the European world saw millions of swans, and all of them without exception were white. If inductive reasoning is valid, one may conclude that all swans are white. However, this would be incorrect: in 1667 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh observed black swans in Australia, falsifying the hypothesis that all swans are white. While often used as a cautionary tale for the use of induction, such as with Popper’s falsification principle, I want to explore a slightly different idea: (...) does the existence of fabricated or otherwise failed accounts of Black swans give me a reason to ignore future arguments or doubt their existence? I argue that while faulty or fabricated reports do not give us a logical reason to reject a claim, they can give us a practical one for refusing to consider future arguments. This practical vs logical distinction gives an inductive reason for believing that future arguments will be invalid, but keeps one from being able to necessarily deny the claim in question without further argumentation. (shrink)

Western, secularized capitalism appraises the “worth” of a worker through a wage, a numerical value assumed to reflect the value of one’s time (in the case of hourly jobs) or contribution (in the case of salary or commision-based work). Computers and AI models are capable of matching and even exceeding human performance on a variety of tasks such as mathematical computation, handwritten digit recognition, and even complex tasks such as playing the game Go. Furthermore, they can work around the clock (...) with no need for sleep, healthcare, or even a salary. As a result, computers are more “valuable” than humans under capitalism because they are more productive (in terms of quantity and, in many cases, quality of work). Combined with an erosion of the religious idea of explicit human worth or dignity, other humans are seen as mere means to the ends of those powerful enough to exploit them. Any hope of reducing inequality or promoting justice must come from an explicit belief in the “value” of human life independent of his or her ability to produce. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of Big Tech companies into various societal domains (e.g., health, education, and agriculture) over the past decade has led to increasing concerns among governments, regulators, scholars, and civil society. While existing theoretical frameworks—often revolving around privacy and data protection, or market and platform power—have shed light on important aspects of Big Tech expansionism, there are other risks that these frameworks cannot fully capture. In response, this editorial proposes an alternative theoretical framework based on the notion of sphere (...) transgressions, which draws on political philosopher Michael Walzer's theory of justice. The editorial not only introduces the sphere transgressions framework, but it also highlights its potential to generate novel research questions. Furthermore, this editorial introduces eight articles and one commentary from a group of interdisciplinary scholars that critically examine Big Tech expansionism by reflecting on this expansionism from the perspective of different societal spheres or by engaging with the sphere transgressions framework itself. (shrink)

Linear Algebra is an extremely important field that extends everyday concepts about geometry and algebra into higher spaces. This text serves as a gentle motivating introduction to the principles (and philosophy) behind linear algebra. This is aimed at undergraduate students taking a linear algebra class - in particular engineering students who are expected to understand and use linear algebra to build and design things, however it may also prove helpful for philosophy majors and anyone else interested in the ideas behind (...) linear algebra. Linear algebra is used extensively in statistics, mechanical engineering, circuit theory, signal processing, economics and data science/machine learning. I have found in my teaching career that students tend to struggle the most with motivating the "why" behind the abstract concepts discussed in linear algebra. This can be difficult for professors to understand because we are so used to using the language of linear algebra we take for granted why these questions are important in the first place. In other words, we may understand the “why” (after years of using these tools), but our students may not. This text seeks to explain this “why” in an accessible, engaging way. (shrink)

Review of Tamar Schapiro, 'Feeling Like It'.

Contribution to a symposium on Gendler's Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology.

Was Galileo’s clash with the Church about science or about legal procedures that he had apparently neglected? Was he ultimately condemned for heresy or for violating a legal precept by publishing the "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems"?

It is widely assumed that Kant’s moral psychology draws from the dualist tradition of Plato and Aristotle, which takes there to be distinct rational and non-rational parts of the soul. My aim is to challenge the air of obviousness that psychological dualism enjoys in neo-Kantian moral psychology, specifically in regard to Tamar Schapiro’s account of the nature of inclination. I argue that Kant’s own account of inclination instead provides evidence of his commitment to psychological monism, the idea that the (...) mentality of an adult human being is rational through and through. I first consider Schapiro’s “intuitions” in favour of dualism: inclination must have a non-rational source, she contends, because they assail us unbidden and are not immediately responsive to volition, and because we are not responsible simply for having inclinations (only for acting on them). I explain how a monistic account of the nature of inclination can accommodate the first two points, and explain why the third neither is a point a Kantian can accept, nor is its denial the affront to common sense that Schapiro supposes. Then I turn to Schapiro’s aim to conceive of reflection as non-rational and thus independent of justificatory thought, and yet such as to induce rational reflection. I argue that it remains mysterious how inclination, on her account, could be resourced to play this role; and with that criticism in mind, I conclude by making a positive case for Kant’s conceiving of inclination in monistic terms, as an expression of rational mindedness. (shrink)

We examine dialectical tensions between “dialogue” and “narrative” as these discourses supplant one another as the fundamental discourse of intelligibility, through juxtaposing two interpretations of Genesis 38 rooted in changing interpretative paradigms. Is dialogue properly understood as a narrative genre, or is narrative the content about which people are in dialogue? Is the divine–human relationship a narrative drama or is it a dialogue between a god and human beings? We work within parameters laid out by the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer (...) (primarily representing dialogue) and Ricoeur (primarily representing narrative). On the one hand, a feminist approach can develop Tamar as a courageous hero in impossible circumstances, strategizing to overturn Judah’s patriarchal naïveté. On the other hand, Judah seems to be able to be read as a tragic hero, seeking to save Tamar. These readings challenge one another, where either Tamar’s or Judah’s autonomy is undermined. By putting these interpretations into dialogue, our aim is to show that neither dialogue nor narrative succeeds the other with finality, and that we can achieve a fragile integration of the two (dialogue and narrative) despite their propensity toward polarization. (shrink)

Studie recenzuje následující díla: Maurice HALBWACHS, Kolektivní paměť. Praha: SLON 2009, 289 s. ; Françoise MAYER, Češi a jejich komunismus: paměť a politická identita. Praha: Argo 2009, 273 s. ; Zdeněk VAŠÍČEK – Françoise MAYER, Minulost a současnost, paměť a dějiny. Brno – Praha: CDK – Triáda 2008, 199 s. Studie konstatuje, že v češtině začíná být k dispozici dostatečné množství publikací o sociální paměti, aby teoreticky zabezpečily širší pojetí výzkumů paměti. Zároveň by však tyto výzkumy neměly být (...) podřizovány historiografii, a především je v nich zapotřebí pracovat nejen s koncepty identity a sociálních svazků, ale i moci a konfliktu. (shrink)

Tamar Gendler takes on “explaining our comparative difficulty in imagining fictional worlds that we take to be morally deviant” (56), otherwise known as the puzzle of imaginative resistance. Generally speaking, readers have no trouble believing untrue factual claims such as in Alice in Wonderland or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but we resist claims which advocate praise or approval of immoral acts such as murder. Gendler submits that the implied author aims to persuade the reader to change his or (...) her moral beliefs, thereby causing imaginative resistance. This paper will explain that imaginative resistance is fundamentally an interpersonal moral conflict as experienced in the ethical theory of moral subjectivism, and will suggest ways to manage imaginative resistance by looking at the whole work of fiction. (shrink)

I assess Tamar Gendler's (2007) account of self-deception according to which its characteristic state is not belief, but imaginative pretense. After giving an overview of the literature and presenting the conceptual puzzles engendered by the notion of self-deception, I introduce Gendler's account, which emerges as a rival to practically all extant accounts of self-deception. I object to it by first arguing that her argument for abandoning belief as the characteristic state of self-deception conflates the state of belief and the (...) process of belief-formation when interpreting David Velleman's (2000) thesis that belief is an essentially truth-directed attitude. I then call attention to the fact that Velleman's argument for the identity of motivational role between belief and imagining, on which Gendler's argument for self-deception as pretense depends, conflates two senses of 'motivational role'-a stronger but implausible sense and a weaker but explanatorily irrelevant sense. Finally, I introduce Neil Van Leeuwen's (2009) argument to the effect that belief is the practical ground of all non-belief cognitive attitudes in circumstances wherein the latter prompt action. I apply this framework to Gendler's account to ultimately show that imaginative pretense fails to explain the existence of voluntary actions which result from self-deception. (shrink)

A challenge we face in a world that has been shaped by, and continues to be shaped by, racist attitudes and institutions is that the evidence is often stacked in favor of racist beliefs. As a result, we may find ourselves facing the following conflict: what if the evidence we have supports something we morally shouldn’t believe? For example, it is morally wrong to assume, solely on the basis of someone’s skin color, that they’re a staff member. But, what if (...) you’re in a context where, because of historical patterns of discrimination, someone’s skin color is a very good indicator that they’re a staff member? When this sort of normative conflict looms, a conflict between moral considerations on the one hand and what you epistemically ought to believe given the evidence on the other, what should we do? It might be unfair to assume that they’re a staff member, but to ignore the evidence would mean risking inaccurate beliefs. Some, notably Tamar Gendler (2011), have suggested that we simply face a tragic irresolvable dilemma. In this chapter, I consider how these cases of conflict arise and I canvass the viability of suggested resolutions of the conflict. In the end, I argue that there’s actually no conflict here. Moral considerations can change how we epistemically should respond to the evidence. (shrink)

Action is not always guided by conscious deliberation; in many circumstances, we act intuitively rather than reflectively. Tamar Gendler (2014) contends that because intuitively guided action can lead us away from our reflective commitments, it limits the power of knowledge to guide action. While I agree that intuition can diverge from reflection, I argue that this divergence does not constitute a restriction on the power of knowledge. After explaining my view of the contrast between intuitive and reflective thinking, this (...) paper argues against the conclusions Gendler draws from empirical work on implicit bias. (shrink)

O argumentare a importanței dualiste a emoțiilor în societate, individual și la nivel de comunitate. Tendința actuală de conștientizare și control al emoțiilor prin inteligența emoțională are un efect benefic în afaceri și pentru succesul activităților sociale dar, dacă nu suntem atenți, poate duce la o alienare ireversibilă la nivel individual și social. Lucrarea se compune din trei părți principale: Emoții (Modele ale emoțiilor, Procesarea emoțiilor, Fericirea, Filosofia emoțiilor, Etica emotiilor), Inteligența emoțională (Modele ale inteligenței emoționale, Inteligența emoțională în cercetare (...) și educație, Filosofia inteligenței emoționale, Inteligența emoțională în filosofia orientală) și Inteligența emoțională în organizații (Munca emoțională, Filosofia inteligenței emoționale în organizații, Critica inteligenței emoționale în organizații, Etica inteligenței emoționale în organizații). În Concluzii prezint un rezumat al afirmațiilor din lucrare. CUPRINS: Abstract 1. Emoții 1.1 Modele ale emoțiilor 1.2 Procesarea emoțiilor 1.3 Fericirea 1.4 Filosofia emoțiilor 1.5 Etica emoțiilor 2. Inteligența emoțională 2.1 Modele ale inteligenței emoționale 2.1.1 Modelul de abilități al lui Mayer și Salovey 2.1.2 Modelul mixt al lui Goleman 2.1.3 Modelul mixt al lui Bar-On 2.1.4 Modelul de trăsături al lui Petrides 2.2 Inteligența emoțională în cercetare și educație 2.3 Filosofia inteligenței emoționale 2.3.1 Inteligența emoțională în filosofia orientală 3. Inteligența emoțională în organizații 3.1 Munca emoțională 3.2 Filosofia inteligenței emoționale în organizații 3.3 Critica inteligenței emoționale în organizații 3.4 Etica inteligenței emoționale în organizații Concluzii Bibliografie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32991.20640. (shrink)

The deep influence of affectivity on learning is now widely acknowledged (Keefer et al., 2018; Sánchez-Álvarez et al., 2021). For instance, it has been shown that affect influences key learning-relevant processes, such as motivation, perception, behavior, and critical thinking (Izard, 2002; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Evidence also shows that emotion and mood strongly influence attention, which in turn drives learning and memory (Elbertson et al., 2010; Elias et al., 1997). Intersubjective phenomena, such as the degree of affection and respect (...) between child and teacher, also affect the child’s learning processes, academic outcomes, and brain development (Kusché & Greenberg, 2006; Ryan & Patrick, 2001). However, the relevant literature is not paying attention to increasing evidence showing that affective phenomena are rooted in interoceptive and homeostatic self- and co-regulatory processes within and between people’s living bodies (Barrett, 2017; Carvalho & Damasio, 2021; Craig, 2015, 2018; Fotopoulou et al., 2022; Fotopoulou & Tsakiris, 2017; Seth & Friston, 2016). In this theoretical chapter, we explore this connection and its importance for learning. We argue that affective experience plays a fundamental role in learning, and that affective experience is rooted in the homeostatic self-/co-regulation of living bodies. Therefore, the homeostatic self-/co-regulation of living bodies plays a fundamental role in learning. In other words, there is an intra- and interpersonal somatic dimension of learning that demands explicit consideration in educational contexts. In this way, we aim to contribute to an understanding of learning and education that moves away from an individualistic, brain-centered information-processing conception toward one centered on sentient, interdependent living bodies. (shrink)

The paper is a contribution to the debate on the epistemological status of thought experiments. I deal with the epistemological uniqueness of experiments in the sense of their irreducibility to other sources of justification. In particular, I criticize an influential argument for the irreducibility of thought experiments to general arguments. First, I introduce the radical empiricist theory of eliminativism, which considers thought experiments to be rhetorically modified arguments, uninteresting from the epistemological point of view. Second, I present objections to the (...) theory, focusing on the critique of eliminativism by Tamar Szabó Gendler based on the reconstruction of famous Galileo's Pisa experiment. I show that her reconstruction is simplistic and that more elaborate reconstruction is needed for an appropriate assessment of the epistemic power of general argument. I propose such a reconstruction and demonstrate that general version of Pisa experiment is epistemically equal to the particular one. Thus, from an epistemological perspective, Galileo's thought experiment is reducible to a straightforward argument without particular premises. (shrink)

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be consistent with the belief that the fudge is really poop. They alieve that it is disgusting, while they (...) believe it is not. This paper investigates laughter from self-proclaimed egalitarian, tolerant folk, in response to oppressive jokes that might fit the alief-model. If I merely alieve the content of a joke at which I laugh, will that constitute morally exculpating reasons for such laughter? And what else might it imply? This paper will provide insights at the intersections of humor studies, ethics, epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind, all while being moderately and appropriately amusing. (shrink)

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been conceptualized in the literature either as a dispositional tendency, in line with a personality trait (trait EI; Petrides and Furnham, 2001), or as an ability, moderately correlated with general intelligence (ability EI; Mayer and Salovey, 1997). Surprisingly, there have been few empirical attempts conceptualizing how the different EI approaches should be related to each other. However, understanding how the different approaches of EI may be interwoven and/or complementary is of primary importance for clarifying the (...) conceptualization of EI and organizing the literature around it. We introduce a theoretical framework explaining how trait EI, ability EI, and emotion information processing – a novel component related to EI recently introduced in the literature (e.g., Fiori and Vesely Maillefer, 2018) – may contribute to effective emotion-related performance and provide initial evidence supporting its usefulness in predicting EI-related outcomes. More specifically, we show that performance in a task in which participants had to infer the mental and emotional states of others, namely a Theory of Mind task, was predicted jointly (e.g., interaction effects) by trait EI, ability EI, and emotion information processing, after controlling for personality and IQ (N = 323). Our results argue for the importance of investigating the joint contribution of different aspects of EI in explaining variability in emotionally laden outcomes. (shrink)

Contribution to a book symposium on Tamar Gendler's Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology.

This collection for a course in Social Thought and the Critique of Power includes selections from Sandra Bartkey, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, Juergin Habermas, Margaret Kohn, Saskia Sassen, Margit Mayer, David Ciavatta, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Jeremy Waldron. Selections include material on the city, neoliberalism, computer-mediated life, precarity, cosmopolitanism, and gender. This packet may still be available as a print-on-demand title at the Ryerson University Bookstore.

The term philosophy of chemistry is here construed broadly to include some publications from the history of chemistry and chemical education. Of course this initial selection of material has inevitably been biased by the interests of the author. This bibliography supersedes that of van Brakel and Vermeeren (1981), although no attempt has been made to include every single one of their entries, especially in languages other than English. Also, readers interested particularly in articles in German may wish to consult the (...) bibliography by Dittus and Mayer which also contains some material not included here (Dittus and Mayer, 1992). The aim is to maintain an up-to-date version of this bibliography and to publish a revised version in due course. Suggestions for further inclusions should be sent to the author. (shrink)

This paper is the first part of a three-part project ‘How the principle of energy conservation evolved between 1842 and 1870: the view of a participant’. This paper aims at showing how the new ideas of Mayer and Joule were received, what constituted the new theory in the period under study, and how it was supported experimentally. A connection was found between the new theory and thermodynamics which benefited both of them. Some considerations are offered about the desirability of (...) taking a historical approach to teaching energy and its conservation. (shrink)

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven. That is, heaven is an imaginable world in a similar way that logically possible scenarios in any fiction are imaginable. However, like some of the (...) imaginable stories in fiction where we are asked to envision an immoral act as a moral one, we resist. I will employ the works of Tamar Gendler on imaginative resistance and Keith Buhler’s Virtue Ethics approach to moral imaginative resistance and apply them to the conception of heaven and the problem of evil. While we can imagine God as an omnibenevolent parent permitting evil to allow for morally significant freedom and the rewards in heaven or punishments in hell (both possible worlds), we should not. This paper is not intended to be a refutation of particular theodicies; rather it provides a very general groundwork connecting issues of horrendous suffering and imaginative resistance to heaven as a possible world. (shrink)

Emotional intelligence is the ability of individuals to recognize their own and others' emotions, to discern between different feelings and to label them correctly, using emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and to manage and adjust emotions to adapt to the environment or to achieve their own goals. There are several models that aim to measure emotional intelligence levels. Goleman's original model is a mixed model that combines abilities with traits. A trait model was developed by Konstantinos V. Petrides (...) in 2001, with a focus on self-knowledge, and an ability model was developed by Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 2004 focusing on social relationship. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13623.75685. (shrink)

Introduction to a collection of essays that celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Quine's paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". Contributor: Herbert Schnädelbach, Paul A. Boghossian, Kathrin Glüer, Verena Mayer, Christian Nimtz, Åsa Maria Wikforss, Hans-Johann Glock, Peter Pagin, Tyler Burge, Geert Keil und Donald Davidson.

La relation entre l'intelligence émotionnelle et la personnalité a été prise en compte dans plusieurs modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle, tels que les modèles mixtes de Bar-On et Goleman. Dans ces modèles, les composants de l'intelligence émotionnelle sont similaires à ceux de la théorie de la personnalité. Ce chevauchement est évident dans les comparaisons empiriques des constructions. Même dans le modèle de Mayer et Salovey, des corrélations empiriques significatives avec la personnalité peuvent être mises en évidence. Pour la plupart des spécialistes, (...) la connaissance ou l'intelligence cognitive ne peuvent pas être les seuls prédicteurs du succès, ils ont montré que la capacité de prédire la performance d'un leader dépend d'une série de compétences. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33674.18888 . (shrink)

These three volumes, entitled Essays On Values, bring together fortyone recent articles by researchers at the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). They are a small sample of everything that, in the last four years, the Institute’s researchers have published, in English, in indexed journals and collections of essays with peer review. As a whole, they reflect very well the research work that is done at IFILNOVA. Section I. of Volume 1 gathers six articles that deal directly with the question “what (...) are values?”, the question that guides all the work of the institute’s different laboratories and research groups. The first article, by Susana Cadilha and Vítor Guerreiro, results from work developed in the Laboratory of Ethics and Political Philosophy (EPLab); the second, by João Constâncio, from the Lisbon Nietzsche Group; the third, by Alexandra Dias Fortes, from the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group; the third and fifth, by Nuno Fonseca, and Maria Filomena Molder, from the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Group of the Laboratory of Culture and Value (CultureLab); the last, by Erich H. Rast, from the Philosophy of Language and Argumentation Theory Group and the Lisbon Mind, Cognition & Knowledge Group of the Laboratory of Argumentation, Cognition, and Language (ArgLab). Section II. brings together three articles by members of the Lisbon Nietzsche Group. Since 2010, the Lisbon Nietzsche Group has completed several funded projects, and has established itself as a leading international research group on Nietzsche’s thought. The three articles demonstrate the crucial importance of the question of values in Nietzsche’s work, always thought from the perspective of the possibility of a “transvaluation of all values”. Maria João Mayer Branco’s article focuses on the value of introspection, and how Nietzsche anticipates Wittgenstein’s “expressivist” view of the “the Peculiar Grammar of the Word ‘I’” and the impossibility of private languages. Marta Faustino’s article considers the theme of affirmation and the value of life through the interpretation of Nietzsche’s reflection on truthfulness, intellectual honesty and courage in the light of Michel Foucault’s work on parrhesia. Pietro Gori’s article studies how Nietzsche creates a new anthropological ideal based on his enquiry into the values of the “good European”. The area of Wittgenstein studies has had a strong influence on the institute since the time when it was a philosophy of language institute. The Wittgensteinian distinction between facts and values was decisive in defining the question of values as the central issue of IFILNOVA’s research project, replacing the focus on philosophy of language. More recently, the focus of research at the Lisbon Wittgenstein Group has been on epistemic values, in particular in their connection with the question of religious belief. In Section III., Nuno Venturinha’s article examines, in the light of an epistemological standpoint, the way Wittgenstein thinks about the possibility of translation. Robert Vinten’s article argues that Wittgenstein’s thought contains elements for a critique of the concept of justice and of the liberal political visions of both Richard Rorty and Chantal Mouffe, despite the fact that both have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein. Benedetta Zavatta’s article questions the value of mythology by thinking of it as a disease of language – not only in Wittgenstein, but also in a whole philosophical tradition that preceded him. The existence of a research group in ancient philosophy is a recent but very promising development in the life of IFILNOVA. Section IV. includes two articles by members of the group. Paulo Alexandre Lima’s article considers the critique of misology and the value of discourse in Plato’s Phaedo. Hélder Telo’s article examines the pedagogical and protreptic value of imperfection in Plato’s work. (shrink)

An argumentation for the dualistic importance of emotions in society, individually and at community level. The current tendency of awareness and control of emotions through emotional intelligence has a beneficial effect in business and for the success of social activities but, if we are not careful, it can lead to irreversible alienation at individual and social level. The paper consists of three main parts: Emotions (Emotional models, Emotional processing, Happiness, Philosophy of emotions, Ethics of emotions), Emotional intelligence (Models of emotional (...) intelligence, Emotional intelligence in research and education, Philosophy of emotional intelligence, Emotional intelligence in Eastern philosophy), Emotional intelligence in organizations (Emotional work, Philosophy of emotional intelligence in organizations, Criticism of emotional intelligence in organizations, Ethics of emotional intelligence in organizations). In the Conclusions I present a summary of the statements in the paper. CONTENTS: Abstract 1. Emotions 1.1 Models of emotion 1.2 Processing emotions 1.3 Happiness 1.4 The philosophy of emotions 1.5 The ethics of emotions 2. Emotional intelligence 2.1 Models of emotional intelligence 2.1.1 Model of abilities of Mayer and Salovey 2.1.2 Goleman's mixed model 2.1.3 The mixed model of Bar-On 2.1.4 Petrides' model of traits 2.2 Emotional intelligence in research and education 2.3 The philosophy of emotional intelligence 2.3.1 Emotional intelligence in Eastern philosophy 3. Emotional intelligence in organizations 3.1 Emotional labor 3.2 The philosophy of emotional intelligence in organizations 3.3 Critique of emotional intelligence in organizations 3.4 Ethics of emotional intelligence in organizations Conclusions Bibliography DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32802.79041 . (shrink)

Une argumentation pour l'importance dualiste des émotions dans la société, individuellement et au niveau communautaire. La tendance actuelle à la prise de conscience et au contrôle des émotions grâce à l'intelligence émotionnelle a un effet bénéfique dans les affaires et pour le succès des activités sociales mais, si nous n'y prenons pas garde, elle peut conduire à une aliénation irréversible au niveau individuel et social. L'essai est composé de trois parties principales: Émotions (Modèles d'émotions, Le processus des émotions, La bonheur, (...) La philosophie des émotions, L'éthique des émotions), Intelligence émotionnelle (Modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle, L'intelligence émotionnelle dans la recherche et l'éducation, La philosophie d'intelligence émotionnelle, L'intelligence émotionnelle dans la philosophie orientale) et Intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations (Travail émotionnel, La philosophie de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations, La critique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations, L'éthique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations). Dans les Conclusions, je présente un résumé des déclarations contenues dans le document. SOMMAIRE: Abstract 1. Émotions 1.1 Modèles d'émotion 1.2 Traitement des émotions 1.3 Bonheur 1.4 La philosophie des émotions 1.5 L'éthique des émotions 2. Intelligence émotionnelle 2.1 Modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle 2.1.1 Modèle d'habilités de Mayer et Salovey 2.1.2 Le modèle mixte de Goleman 2.1.3 Le modèle mixte de Bar-On 2.1.4 Modèle de traits de Petrides 2.2 Intelligence émotionnelle dans la recherche et l'éducation 2.3 La philosophie de l'intelligence émotionnelle 2.3.1 L'intelligence émotionnelle dans la philosophie orientale 3. Intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations 3.1 Travail émotionnel 3.2 La philosophie de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations 3.3 Critique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations 3.4 Éthique de l'intelligence émotionnelle dans les organisations Conclusions Bibliographie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28567.93600 . (shrink)

Imaginative resistance (IR) is rejecting a claim that is true within a fictional world. Accounts that describe IR hold that readers exit a fiction at points of resistance. But if resistance entails exiting a fiction, then learning morality from fiction doesn’t occur. But moral learning from fiction does occur; some such cases are instances of accepting a norm one first denied. I amend current solutions to IR with poetic license. The more poetic license granted a work, the more flexible one (...) is regarding perceived falsehoods. Instead of exiting the fiction, one has the chance to stay engaged and possibly learn norms she previously denied. (shrink)