Pragmatic genealogies seek to explain ideas by regarding them, primarily, not as answers to philosophical questions, but as practical solutions to practical problems. Here I argue that pragmatic genealogies can inform the formation of philosophical canons. But the rationale for resorting to genealogy in this connection is not the familiar one that genealogy renders the concepts of the present intelligible by relating them to the concerns of the past—the claim is rather the reverse one, that genealogy renders the concepts of (...) the past intelligible by relating them to the concerns of the present: past thinkers can be made to speak to us by revealing how their ideas tie in with our concerns, in the sense of helping us to remedy practical problems we still face in some form. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose and justify a framework for understanding the concept of personhood in both biological and artificial entities. The framework is based on a set of requirements that make up a suitable cognitive architecture for an entity to be considered a person, including the ability to have propositionally structured intentional states, having a form of sensory capabilities, and having a means of interacting with the environment. The case of individuals in a persistent vegetative state, as studied by (...) Owen, serves as an example to show the importance of each of these requirements and the possibility of a "hybridization" of personhood. The proposed set of requirements provide a complete framework for understanding the concept of personhood and highlight the significance of cognitive architecture in determining personhood. (shrink)

In this paper we give some suggestions from etymology on the contrast between Kaplan’s direct reference theory and a neo-Fregean view on indexicals. After a short summary of the philosophical debate on indexicals (§1), we use some remarks about the hidden presence of a demonstrative root in all indexicals to derive some provisional doubts concerning Kaplan’s criticism of what he calls “sloppy thinker” (§2). To support those doubts, we will summarise some etymological data on the derivation of the so-called “pure (...) indexicals” from an original demonstrative root (§ 3). The aim of the paper is to consider etymological data as providing evidence for alternative theories of language and fostering new directions in linguistic and philosophical research on specific topics. (shrink)

Critical discussion of the claim that Wittgenstein was a conservative thinker.

With Hegel’s metaphysics attracting renewed attention, it is time to address a long-standing criticism: Scholars from Marx to Popper and Habermas have worried that Hegel’s metaphysics has anti-individualist and authoritarian implications, which are particularly pronounced in his Philosophy of History, since Hegel identifies historical progress with reason imposing itself on individuals. Rather than proposing an alternative non-metaphysical conception of reason, as Pippin or Brandom have done, this article argues that critics are broadly right in their metaphysical reading of Hegel’s central (...) concepts. However, they are mistaken about what Hegel’s approach entails, when one examines the specific types of states discussed by the philosopher in his Philosophy of History. Even on a traditional metaphysical reading, Hegel is not only non-authoritarian; he also makes a powerful argument concerning freedom, whereupon the freest society involves collective oversight and the shaping of social structures so as to ensure that they benefit everybody. (shrink)

Persons think. Bodies, time-slices of persons, and brains might also think. They have the necessary neural equipment. Thus, there seems to be more than one thinker in your chair. Critics assert that this is too many thinkers and that we should reject ontologies that allow more than one thinker in your chair. I argue that cases of multiple thinkers are innocuous and that there is not too much thinking. Rather, the thinking shared between, for example, persons and their (...) bodies is exactly what we should expect at the intersection of part sharing and the supervenience of the mental on the physical. I end by responding to the overcrowding objection, the personhood objection, the personal-pronoun reference problem and the epistemic objection. (shrink)

Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have argued that AI systems such as large language models cannot think and understand if they lack sensory grounding. I argue that thought does not require sensory grounding: there can be pure thinkers who can think without any sensory capacities. As a result, the absence of sensory grounding does not (...) entail that large language models cannot think or understand. I also consider to what extent quasi-sensory grounding can at least boost the performance of a language model. (shrink)

On a widely shared assumption, our mental states supervene on our microphysical properties – that is, microphysical supervenience is true. When this thesis is combined with the apparent truism that human persons have proper parts, a grave difficulty arises: what prevents some of these proper parts from being themselves thinkers as well? How can I know that I am a human person and not a smaller thinker enclosed in a human person? Most solutions to this puzzle make radical, if (...) not absurd, claims. Recently, however, Michael Burke and Howard Robinson proposed conservative solutions that, according to them, do not have such undesired consequences. This paper argues that the conservative solutions tacitly assume at least one of the radical ones, and therefore they provide no alternative to the extreme solutions. (shrink)

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? In Burke 1994, employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defended a surprising position last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. This paper defends that position against objections by Stone, Carter, Olson, and others. Most notably, it offers a novel, conservative solution (...) to the many-thinkers problem, a solution that enables us to accept the existence of brain-containing person-parts while denying that those person-parts are thinking, conscious beings. (shrink)

The ability to engage in reflexive thought—in thought about thought or about other mental states more generally—is regarded as a complex intellectual achievement that is beyond the capacities of most nonhuman animals. To the extent that reflexive thought capacities are believed necessary for the possession of many other psychological states or capacities, including consciousness, belief, emotion, and empathy, the inability of animals to engage in reflexive thought calls into question their other psychological abilities. This chapter attacks the idea that reflexive (...) thought is required in this pervasive way and holds that supposing that it is derives from a tendency among philosophers and scientists toward overcomplication. Against this tendency, it recommends an aponoian framework, from apó, “away from” and noûs, “intelligence” or “thought,” arguing that seemingly complex psychological abilities are often not as complex as they seem, and do not require the ability to engage in reflexive thought. (shrink)

The research presented in this paper used a case study approach to concentrate on the critical thinking preparation and skill sets of professors who, in turn, were expected to develop those same skills in their students. The authors interviewed community college instructors from both academic and work force disciplines. In general, the results of the study supported the researchers’ hypothesis that the ability to teach critical thinking was not necessarily intrinsic to a teaching professional. The authors of this study would (...) like to suggest the following as a means of strengthening critical thinking expertise in faculty:1. Analyze current levels of critical thinking skills among faculty.2. Plan opportunities to bolster personal critical thinking knowledge within faculty ranks and develop a common critical thinking language among faculty.3. Assist faculty where necessary to develop new instructional models to strengthen critical thinking within their classrooms and critical thinking assessment instruments. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that doing philosophy makes people better thinkers. But what evidence is there for this empirical claim? This paper reviews extant evidence and presents some novel findings. We discuss standardized testing scores, review research on Philosophy for Children and critical thinking skills among college students, and present new empirical findings. On average philosophers are better at logical reasoning, more reflective, and more open-minded than non-philosophers. However, there is an absence of evidence for the claim that studying philosophy (...) led to these differences. We present some preliminary and suggestive evidence that, although some of these differences may be attributable to philosophical training, others appear to be selection effects. The key takeaway is that more data are needed. We conclude by urging philosophers and interdisciplinary collaborators to gather more data to test the claim that studying philosophy makes people better thinkers. (shrink)

El pensador suizo Andreas Urs Sommer es, sin dudarlo, uno de los actuales especialistas de Nietzsche. En el año 2017 publica un texto titulado Nietzsche und die Folgen, un libro que recobra la figura del pensador alemán a la luz de ideas bastantes novedosas que hasta ahora no habían sido presentadas por la mayoría de los intérpretes de Nietzsche. En ese sentido, la filosofía experimental (Experimentalphilosophie) que presenta Sommer es la que ha llamado la atención de la crítica. Se trataría (...) de esconder bajo el juego experimental la filosofía de Nietzsche, omitiendo de ese modo un cierto tipo de compromiso de sus postulados filosóficos. Esta determinación está cobrando fuerza en la medida en que nos muestra las consecuencias de la filosofía experimental. Este trabajo pretende desarrollar, por un lado, los postulados centrales de la propuesta de Sommer para luego confrontarlos a la luz de la crítica y en qué medida dicha crítica es medular. Lo anterior da luces a una discusión que, más que inclinarse a la polémica, muestra el nutriente de una fructífera investigación. -/- The Swiss thinker Andreas Urs Sommer is, undoubtedly, one of Nietzsche’s current specialists. In the year of 2017 publishes a text entitled Nietzsche und die Folgen, a book that recovers the figure of the German thinker in the light of quite novel ideas that until now had not been presented by most of the interpreters of Nietzsche. In that sense, the experimental philosophy (Experimentalphilosophie) presented by Sommer is the one that has caught the attention of critics. It would be a matter of hiding Nietzsche’s philosophy under the experimental game, thus omitting a certain type of commitment from his philosophical postulates. This determination is gaining strength insofar as it shows us the consequences of experimental philosophy. This work aims to develop, on the one hand, the central postulates of Sommer’s proposal and then confront them in the light of criticism and to what extent such criticism is central. The foregoing gives light of a discussion that more than leaning to the controversy shows the nutrient of a fruitful investigation. (shrink)

El filósofo boliviano H. C. F. Mansilla estudió ciencias políticas y filosofía en universidades alemanas. La Freie Universität Berlin le concedió la venia legendi en 1976. Fue profesor visitante en universidades de Australia, Brasil, España y Suiza. Es miembro de número de la Academia Boliviana de Ciencias y de la Academia Boliviana de la Lengua y miembro correspondiente de la Real Academia Española y de la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española. Autor de varios libros sobre ecología social y tradiciones (...) político-culturales latinoamericanas. H. C. F. Mansilla, en esta entrevista, nos expresó sus ideas sobre diversos temas de su trayectoria académica y sus reflexiones acerca de la responsabilidad del pensador en la sociedad boliviana. (shrink)

Příspěvek se věnuje problematice antického řeckého sportu, konkrétně významu sportovních zápolení a jejich výchovné a vzdělávací roli. Pozornost autor věnuje rozboru pozic filosofů Sókrata, Platóna a Aristotela. Po nastínění kontextu tématu představuje a interpretuje základní filosofické a náboženské premisy sportovního výkonu a jeho výchovné role. Řadí mezi ně úsilí o dosažení božské přízně, nesmrtelnosti, vyššího společenského postavení, ale i ideálů kalokagathia, areté a dalších ctností. Důležitý rozměr antického sportu spatřuje rovněž v jeho formativním potenciálu směřujícímu k přípravě na duševní život. (...) Hlavní část příspěvku se věnuje přístupu k pohybovým zápolením u filosofů Sókrata, Platóna a Aristotela, kteří svými úvahami k chápání výchovné role sportu podstatně přispěli. Následně se autor zaměřuje na identifikaci dobrého sportu podle zmíněných myslitelů a na zkoumání role sportu v kontextu dobrého života, který nahlíží v aristotelském rámci jako dosahování blaženosti. Cílem textu je identifikovat a vyzdvihnout výchovný smysl sportování, poukázat na jeho filosofické konotace a možnou roli sportu v otázce vedení dobrého života. ----------- This manuscript deals with the problematics of ancient Greek sport, specifically with the significance of sporting practices and their educational role. Attention is given to a detailed analysis of the positions of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. After demonstrating the context, the author presents and interprets fundamental philosophical and religious premises of the athletic performance and its educational role. Among the identified features are the effort of acquiring divine favour, immortality, higher social status, but also the ideals of kalokagathia, areté, and other virtues. Important dimension of ancient Greek sport is also found in its formative potential which aims at the preparation for intellectual life. The main part of the article is focused on the approaches of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle towards the sporting practices. These thinkers made an important contribution to the understanding of the educational role of sport. Then, the author identifies a good sport according to these thinkers and examines the role of such sport in the context of a good life, which is considered in the Aristotelian perspective as achieving beatitude (eudaimonia). The aim of this article is to identify and highlight an educational purpose of sport, underlines its philosophical connotations, and demonstrate its possible role in the context of a good life. (shrink)

In his The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin develops concepts of consciousness, the noosphere, and psychosocial evolution. This paper explores Teilhard’s evolutionary concepts as resonant with thinking in psychology and physics. It explores contributions from archetypal depth psychology, quantum physics, and neuroscience to elucidate relationships between mind and matter. Teilhard’s work can be seen as advancing this psychological lineage or psychogenesis. That is, the evolutionary emergence of matter in increasing complexity from sub-atomic particles to the human brain and (...) reflective consciousness leads to a noosphere evolving towards an Omega point. Teilhard’s central ideas provide intimations of a numinous principle implicit in cosmology and the discovery that in and through humanity evolution not only becomes conscious of itself but also directed and purposive. (shrink)

This book documents the sublime and deep thoughts of great people worldwide on Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. While some had the privilege of meeting these divine personages, others have been deeply influenced by their life and teachings. A revised edition of the earlier book, this volume contains much new material like facsimiles of the tributes of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.

Externalism about mental content is now widely accepted. It is therefore surprising that there is no established definition of externalism. I believe that this is a symptom of an unrecognized fact: that the labels 'mental content externalism' -- and its complement 'mental content internalism' -- are profoundly ambiguous. Under each of these labels falls a hodgepodge of sometimes conflicting claims about the organism's contribution to thought contents, the nature of the self, relations between the individual and her community, and the (...) epistemic availability of thoughts. This situation stems from the fact that contributors to debates about externalism differ in how they understand 'internal property'; these differences reveal (or, perhaps, generate) disparate conceptions of what is at issue in these debates. I argue that this situation is irremediable. There is no way to understand 'internal property' that will conform with prevailing beliefs about the nature of internalism and externalism, and with the usual taxonomy of leading positions. This ambiguity carries a heavy price: participants in these debates often argue at cross-purposes, disagreeing even on the nature of the evidence that could settle the question of externalism. Progress on the broad range of issues associated with these debates requires that we abandon the categories 'internalism' and 'externalism'. I close by suggesting a promising avenue for future research related to these issues. (shrink)

The different “postmodern” philosophies that arose from the 1970s to the 1990s have often been considered as a kind of irrationalist-skeptical-relativist “ideology” or assorted amalgam, which in our time would dangerously take over the philosophical academy and western cultures, with grave risk for universalist or simply rationalist projects. Nevertheless, as the title of this article shows, a closer examination of some trends of postmodern thought would be able to perceive that they not only are uncomfortable with the label “relativist,” “irrationalist” (...) or “skeptical,” but also that they offer substantial arguments against, for example, the main theses of relativism. Naturally, none of these trends has any qualms about abominating universalism as well (the presumed mortal enemy of the relativists). Thus the most sensible conclusion would be that what really seems erroneous to authors such as those we shall approach here is the presumed dilemma (presented as inevitable) between relativism and universalism (it is curious that, at least as far as faith in the existence of such a dichotomy is concerned, these presumed irreconcilable enemies, which both the relativists and the universalists believe themselves to be, are plainly in agreement). Only if they subscribe to such a rejection of this dilemma could it be explained that important thinkers of the heterogeneous postmodern group (such as those whom I propose to have a dialogue with in this article) have scorned, on the one hand, any and all universal project of rationality, but have also strongly disallowed relativist proposals (just as, naturally, they have likewise taken advantage of the issue to deny their presumed adherence to relativism as such). This idea, however, has not been understood by a large part of the scholars involved today in epistemology and practical philosophy (the two philosophical specialties in which one most frequently faces the question of relativism). To approach this understanding, therefore, perhaps it would not be amiss to review the different arguments that some postmodern thinkers use against relativism. Specifically, we shall tale a look at the reasoning in this sense that has come from Gianni Vattimo (1936), Paul K. Feyerabend (1924-1994), and Richard Rorty (1931). All of them have too often had to suffer from the suspicion of being considered as relativists. To absolve philosophers such as these from such an accusation seems to be a sine qua non condition for understanding their true position towards the universalism versus relativism dilemma. (shrink)

It has been recently argued by a number of metaphysicians—Trenton Merricks and Eric Olson among them—that any variety of dualism that claims that human persons have souls as proper parts (rather than simply being identical to souls) will face a too-many-thinker problem. In this paper, I examine whether this objection applies to the views of Aquinas, who famously claims that human persons are soul-body composites. I go on to argue that a straightforward readingof Aquinas’s texts might lead us to believe (...) that he falls prey to Merricks and Olson’s objection, but that a more heterodox interpretation reveals a way to avoidthis problem. (shrink)

On the History of Political Philosophy: Great Political Thinkers from Thucydides to Locke is a lively and lucid account of the major political theorists and philosophers of the ancient Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods. The author demonstrates the continuing significance of some political debates and problems that originated in the history of political philosophy. Topics include discussions concerning human nature, different views of justice, the origin of government and law, the rise and development of different forms (...) of government, idealism and realism in international relations, the distinction between just and unjust war, and the sources of public authority and the nature of legitimate sovereignty. The organizing principle of the book is the idea that the great political thinkers were searching for the best political order and a criterion for human conduct in both domestic and international politics. The book presupposes no previous knowledge of political philosophy. It will therefore be a valuable introductory book for students of philosophy, politics, and international relations. As it opens eyes to the perceptions that historical knowledge may convey, it will also be an illuminating and engaging reading for a general reader. (shrink)

Philosophy has long been seen as a crucial instrument for living a meaningful life. Nonetheless, for more than a decade, systematic philosophical study in Africa has been dominated by a single compound question: Is there an African philosophy, and if so, what is its nature? When it comes to Africa and philosophy, there is a lot of debate about whether or not Africans have a philosophy. Africans have long been accused of being irrational. Some Western scholars’ interpretations of African philosophy (...) may help us comprehend it better. The Aime Cesaire-led Negritude movement, the Harlem Revolution, the South African Apartheid movement, and others are all examples of recent literature expressing opposition to the perspective of black inferiority and various insults directed at black Africans. Some European scholars did accuse Africans of being irrational beings. These claims provided the impetus for the spread of various beliefs and ideologies masquerading as African philosophy. In light of this, the purpose of this essay is to disprove prejudicial claims made against Africans and African philosophy. The works of Western thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, and Lucien Levy-Bruhl would be highlighted. (shrink)

A brief review of my How To Think Like a Philosopher, drawing attention to the valuable thinking of David Hume and some Scottish connections.

"Romanticism, when attains a fullness of complexity..there occurs of the supernatural unique". http://philpapers.org/profile/112741.

The Philosophy of Parmenides: The Provocative Thinker.

This article seeks to justify the claim that Thomas Aquinas proposed a concept of natural law which is immune to the argument against the recognition of an objective grounding of the good formulated by a well-known representative of the liberal tradition, Isaiah Berlin, in his famous essay “Two Concepts of Freedom.” I argue that Aquinas’s concept of freedom takes into account the very same values and goals that Berlin set out to defend when he composed his critique of natural law. (...) In particular, the article suggests that Aquinas recognizes freedom as a greater perfection of man than rationality, and that this freedom is realized, among other things, through the co-construction of the good that gives a goal and a shape to human action and to the whole of a person’s life. I argue that the co-construction of such a good involves the co-construction of natural law in the strict sense of the term. Indeed, the content of natural law can be understood as a set of goods which are goals that inform human action. From a human perspective, natural law is not a pre-existing recipe which has merely to be “read.” Defining the concrete content of natural law is an ongoing process. The process of defining natural law’s content takes humanly knowable, objective elements into account, and so draws on knowledge. Yet free choice also plays an important part in this process. When speaking of the process of defining the content of natural law, therefore, and in determining what here-and-now is to be done, it is reasonable to describe man as a creator of the natural law, or as a legislator, just as the members of a parliament are the creators of civil law — bearing in mind that only a just law is truly law and therefore the creation of both civil and natural law reaches only as far is the scope of just actions directed by these laws. From the perspective of human action, we may speak of each person’s free choice to establish a given good as the end of a specific act, and in so doing to declare that action proper under natural law in the strict sense of the term (which differs from the rules of natural law). An appreciation of what is particular and individual (particulare et individuum), and an appreciation of free choice that goes hand-in-hand with this, is deeply embedded in Thomas’s system of thought. Particularity and individuality has its basis in an especially excellent way of human existence. (shrink)

Good governance, first appeared in the nineties within the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund refers to describe how public organizations best conduct public affairs and deliver public goods and services. Today, about three decades later good governance seems to be still popular since there are still many challenges ahead for many governments especially in less-developed and developing countries. Hence the notion of good governance was emerged as a normative commencement of the principles, values and ethics to (...) realise the acts of governance. Some thoughts on good governance and related topics advocated by three great ancient philosophers, who appear to be relevant at the present time are considered herein. One of the said philosophers is Kautilya (also known as Chanakya and Vishnugupta), who lived in India around 150AD. The others are the two great Greek philosophers Plato (427- 347BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), who stand with Socrates as the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West. The thoughts are extracted from that detailed manual of state-craft and the science of living known as the Arthashastra written by one of classical India’s greatest minds Kautilya, Plato’s great work known as ‘The Republic’ and Aristotle’s treatise titled ‘The Politics”. The objective of this paper is to study the thoughts of ancient Greek philosophers who lived many centuries ago and their ideas are still relevant today. (shrink)

[This is the full issue of the first issue of Mɛtascience] -/- This inaugural issue of the journal Mεtascience is also a special issue since it pays tribute to Mario Bunge (1919-2020) to high light his contribution to knowledge and our filiation with his thought. Mario Bunge's project is part of the humanist and scientific tradition of the Enlightenment. At the end of his intellectual journey, he wrote more than 150 books and 540 articles or chapters, including translations into several (...) languages. The work covers almost all branches of philosophy, from ontology to ethics, semantics, episte mology, methodology, praxeology and axiology, as well as a large number of scientific disciplines, ranging from physics to sociology, chemistry, biology and psychology. Without a doubt, Bunge's mag num opus is the Treatise on Basic Philosophy in nine volumes (1974- 1989). The six contributions gathered here come from authors from differ ent backgrounds. Like Bunge's project, they are neither part of the an alytic or continental movement in philosophy. The reader will find studies on the Bungean system, applications of Bungean thought, re flections and testimonies, and metascientific contributions. From the point of view of metascience as theorized in these pages, Bunge is the last of the philosophers and the first metascientific. He kept from philosophy the idea of a complete system that would inte grate semantics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, axiology and praxe ology, but he refused to problematize scientific knowledge in a tradi tional way. The result is surprising: even by accepting science as it is, he finds room for questioning. May Mεtascience be a place of questioning and deployment of the approach designed by Mario Bunge. (shrink)

Originally published in 1996, this book presents and analyses children’s reasonings about fundamental metaphysical problems. The first part describes dialogues with children that were constructed on the basis of Descartes’ _Mediations on First Philosophy_ and which look at children’s ideas about the relationships between true and false knowledge, mental images and physical objects, mind and body, personal existence and the external world, dreams and reality, and the existence of the Supreme Being, among others. The second part of the book draws (...) on concepts that children of various ages have about psychological and metapsychological aspects of human reality such as: cognitive and moral development; personal freedom and responsibility; the relationships between conscious and unconscious; living and non-living; and about the fundamental drives of an individual for development and expansion of his or her needs and passions, for eternal life, and for the dreamlike world of fulfilled wishes. The book presents a systematic empirical and theoretical study of the problems, some of which were touched on in Piaget’s early writing but which he later abandoned and which were only sporadically illuminated by other authors, whereas others were completely new to research in developmental psychology at the time. It will still be a helpful guide for developmental psychologists, teachers, educationalists, social workers, lawyers, and other professionals interested in the knowledge that 4- to 14-year-old children have about the most fundamental aspects of reality and human beings. (shrink)

This book-chapter briefs Eliezer Schweid's thought, and demonstrates the role of some core-concepts of classical American pragmatism within it.

Animalism, the thesis that each of us is a human animal, is a prominent materialist account of what we are. Animalism is often motivated by an attractive line of reasoning, the Thinking Animal Argument. And, independently, animalism has been challenged by appeals to a metaphysical puzzle, the problem of the many. In this paper, I draw attention to the relationship between the Thinking Animal Argument and the problem of the many. I further argue that in virtue of this relationship, animalists (...) are left in an unfortunate position: animalists cannot hold onto their most successful argument without undermining animalism itself. (shrink)

It is hard to see why the head and other brain-containing parts of a person are not themselves persons, or at least thinking, conscious beings. Some theorists have sought to reconcile us to the existence of thinking person-parts. Others have sought to avoid them but have relied on radical theories at odds with the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. This paper offers a novel, conservative solution, one on which the heads and other brain-containing parts of persons do exist (...) but are neither persons, thinkers, nor conscious beings. A much briefer statement of the solution is found in section 5 of Burke 2004. (shrink)

Constitution theorists have argued that due to a difference in persistence conditions, persons are not identical with the animals or the bodies that constitute them. A popular line of objection to the view that persons are not identical with the animals/bodies that constitute them is that the view commits one to undesirable overpopulation, with too many minds and too many thinkers. Constitution theorists are well aware of these overpopulation concerns and have gone a long way toward answering them. However, (...) there is one mental excess worry that remains especially problematic. It is argued here that the worry about too many thoughts, or too many instantiations of mentality in general, remains a serious threat to the constitution view of persons. What exactly the threat is and how it arises is described in detail in Section III. It is then shown that attempts to allay the concern are unsuccessful. I argue, in particular, that appealing to the distinction between derivative and non-derivative instantiation fails to solve the problem. (shrink)

Bolivian writer Victor Hugo Viscarra is a constant figure on whom a good number of readers have focused their attention. Review after review of his work has been appearing in the Bolivian press and, in that sense, readers have taken his writings with a blind acceptance omitting in such a way a position that goes beyond the literary frontier. The existence of any work on Viscarra’s role as a thinker, his views on politics, the customs of society itself or the (...) imaginaries and identities in Bolivian territory is doubtful. This work aims, on the one hand, to take a critical tour of his thought from a philosophical view (particularly inspired by Nietzsche) and, on the other hand, to try to place the figure of Viscarra next to the virtues of genius and as a “critic of society”. What do Víctor Hugo Viscarra’s ideas express? Is it possible to find in your writings a critique of the way of thinking, living and acting of Bolivian society, in particular to today’s society? In short, does Viscarra’s thinking diagnose the malaise of society at that time? Answering these questions is the intention of this work. (shrink)

Tradition has it that first-person thought is somehow special. It is also commonplace to maintain that the first-person concept obeys a rule of reference to the effect that any token first-person thought is about the thinker of that thought. Following Annalisa Coliva and, more recently, Santiago Echeverri, I take the specialness claim to be the claim that thinking a first-person thought comes with a certain guarantee of its pattern of reference. Echeverri maintains that such a guarantee is explained by a (...) fairly flatfooted interpretation of the thinker-reflexive rule. I argue, however, that the explanatory aspirations of the thinker-reflexive rule are fulfilled only if we accept an epistemically loaded gloss on the notion of a thinker of a thought featuring the rule. That gloss is unpacked in terms of the subject’s ability to be acquainted with the phenomenal character of their thoughts. (shrink)

Part of the philosophical interest of the topic of organic individuals is that it promises to shed light on a basic and perennial question of philosophical self-understanding, the question what are we? The class of organic individuals seems to be a good place to look for candidates to be the things that we are. However there are, in principle, different ways of locating ourselves within the class of organic individuals; organic individuals occur at both higher and lower mereological levels than (...) the stereotypical bounded and physiologically unified vertebrate organism. The view that we are organic individuals smaller than the physiological organism is one that has recently been endorsed by Derek Parfit. This paper attempts to resolve a dispute between Parfit’s ‘embodied part’ view and a contrary ‘animalist’ view according to which we are whole organisms. It is explained why a problem of multiple thinkers presents a serious obstacle to a straightforward resolution of this dispute. Parfit’s own strategy for dealing with this obstacle is found to be problematic. However his strategy has a certain general shape, which can be instantiated in a different, and better, specific way. I close in the final section, not with a definite resolution of the dispute, but with illustration of how progress on the question of about which organic individuals we are requires engagement with questions about the nature and function of self-awareness. (shrink)

JOTIRAO GOVINDRAO PHULE occupies a unique position among the social reformers of Maharashtra in the nineteenth century. While other reformers concentrated more on reforming the social institutions of family and marriage with special emphasis on the status and right of women, Jotirao Phule revolted against the unjust caste system under which millions of people had suffered for centuries and developed a critique of Indian social order and Hinduism. During this period, number of social and political thinkers started movement against (...) such systems and methods. These thinkers aimed at upliftment of the status of women socially, economically, educationally and politically. Of these socio-political thinkers Mahatma Phule, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and such other have organized movement for striving equality for dalits, backward classes and women. As such, Mahatma Phule was an earliest leader, who strongly opposed gender inequality. He was in the real sense a great thinker finder of truth. He was of the view that every individual should search for the truth and mould accordingly, only then the human society can remain happy. He said that British rule provided an opportunity for the masses to get themselves liberated from the slavery of the Brahmins. But at the same time, he also criticized the British bureaucracy for its policy of supporting higher education and for its tendency to rely upon Brahmin subordinates. Interestingly, Mahatma Phule nurtured a favourable perspective of the British Rule in India because he thought it at least introduced the modern notions of justice and equality into the Indian society. He also criticized the economic policy of the British rule in many respects it was unfavorable to the poor peasants. He suggested a number of solutions to improve the conditions of the agriculture sector. In place of exploitative Indian social order, Phule wanted to establish a society founded on principles of individual liberty and equality and in place of Hinduism he would have liked to put universal religion. In this paper my attempt is to give an analysis of ideas of Mahatma Phule with his core philosophical outlook. (shrink)

The present article traces the development of the concept of social justice through different philosophical traditions. The notion and philosophy of 'Justice' is the core of socio-legal and political streams and ethics. The idea of justice is applied not just to individual engagements but to broader aspects such as public policies and laws of the land. Justice is often used in the context of 'righteousness' and as a 'virtue'. Still, it is not easy to define and completely clarify the concept (...) of justice. We can analyse it by employing specific terms, which acquaint us with the best possible understanding of justice. A single definition would not suffice to fulfil our aim of the study. Therefore, in this essay, the author delineates how philosophers and thinkers have theorised 'Justice' throughout ancient, medieval and modern times. (shrink)

Besides his philosophical essays, Emil Cioran also maintained a vast correspondence. He sent and received numerous letters; from his parents and his brother Aurel, as well as from various personalities, friends and romantic interests. These represent a part of the philosopher’s personality which deserves to be organically integrated in the corpus of Cioran’s work and writings. Most of Cioran’s letters are inevitably literary; they preserve a productive ambiguity and express attitudes and feelings belonging to both the organic man and the (...) thinker who brushed against life. The letters thus appear as notes the philosopher sent from the underground of his being. The present text analyses two fragments of correspondence: with Alina Diaconu (1985–1989), a journalist and writer of Romanian origin settled in Argentina; and (in German) with the editor and philosopher Wolfgang Kraus (1971–1990). (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are aligned, not competition problems in (...) which individual interests compete with group interests. In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems result largely from “between-group” dynamics. (shrink)

Environmental thinkers recognize that ecological thinking has a vital role to play in many wise choices and policies; yet, little theoretical attention has been given to developing an adequate philosophical psychology of the imaginative nature of such thinking. Ecological imagination is an outgrowth of our more general deliberative capacity to perceive, in light of possibilities for thinking and acting, the relationships that constitute any object. Such imagination is of a specifically ecological sort when key metaphors, images, symbols, and the (...) like used in the ecologies shape the mental simulations we use to deliberate—i.e., when these interpretive structures shape what John Dewey calls our “dramatic rehearsals.” There is an urgent practical need to cultivate ecological imagination, and an equally practical need to make theoretical sense of the imaginative dimension of ecological reflection. (shrink)

Various thinkers are concerned that the Orthodox view of Ancestral Sin does not avoid the age-old Augustinian concern of Pelagianism. After all, the doctrine of Ancestral Sin maintains that fallen human beings do not necessarily or inevitably commit actual sins. In contemporary literature, this claim could be articulated as a denial of the ‘inevitability thesis.’ A denial of the inevitability thesis, so contemporary thinkers maintain, seems to imply both that human beings can place themselves in right relation to (...) God as well as the Pelagian denial that all require Christ's work to attain this right relation to God. This article demonstrates that the Ancestral Sin, along with a denial of the inevitability thesis, is neither Pelagian nor Semi-Pelagian. I show that the doctrine of Ancestral Sin denies (Semi-) Pelagianism in various ways. I show that, for Ancestral Sin to entail (Semi-) Pelagianism, one must commit to several assumptions, each of which is plausibly deniable and none of which Orthodox thinkers affirm. (shrink)

Confucian thinkers have traditionally stressed the importance of li 禮, or “ritual” as it is commonly translated, and believed that ancient sages had established an ideal set of rituals for people to follow. Now, most scholars of Confucianism understand li as distinct from law, and hence do not typically discuss Confucian sages as great lawgivers. Nevertheless, I suggest that there is something valuable to be learned from considering the similarities and dissimilarities between great lawgivers and the sages. In particular, (...) this essay reviews some of the challenges for, and virtues of, great legislators, and compares and contrasts these with the challenges for, and virtues of, master inventors of ritual, with the aim of showing how such observations might deepen our understanding of the conception of sages in the Confucian tradition, while perhaps also bringing out certain insights about good lawgivers. I end by using these reflections to point to some challenges for developing rituals to fit our modern context. (shrink)

This chapter explores the place of remorse in Sophie de Grouchy’s moral theory, as presented in her 1798 work, Letters on Sympathy, which was originally published with her translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that, for Grouchy, a cultivated sense of remorse weakens our self-conceit by drawing our attention to the ways in which we harm others, even for seemingly justifiable reasons. In so doing, we are led to recognize the equal standing of others, which gives (...) rise to the “sentiment of natural equality.” This “sentiment of natural equality” places a check on our norms and institutions and allows for the potential of moral progress. While Grouchy frames the Letters as a commentary on Smith’s writings, her discussion of remorse, equality, and moral progress shows her to be a bold and original thinker, and one worth taking seriously. (shrink)

There has been an explosion of interest in the metaphysics of fundamentality in recent decades. The consensus view, called metaphysical foundationalism, maintains that there is something absolutely fundamental in reality upon which everything else depends. However, a number of thinkers have chal- lenged the arguments in favor of foundationalism and have proposed competing non-foundationalist ontologies. This paper provides a systematic and critical introduction to metaphysical foundationalism in the current literature and argues that its relation to ontological dependence and substance (...) should be qualified in important ways. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian and others, inference is subject to the taking condition: it necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion, and drawing the conclusion because of that fact. Boghossian argues that this condition vindicates the idea that inference is an expression of agency, and that it has several other important implications too. However, we argue in this paper that the taking condition should be rejected. The condition gives rise to several serious prima facie problems and (...) the reasons which have been offered in favour of it fail to convince. (shrink)