En este artículo realizamos un relevamiento exhaustivo de las publicaciones de Médicos por la Verdad, uno de los principales grupos antivacunas de Latinoamérica, en la red social Twitter durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Clasificamos sus tipos de razonamiento y el contenido de sus mensajes y mostramos que las propuestas existentes de análisis de discursos anticientíficos no pueden aplicarse a este caso particular. Proponemos, en consecuencia, una nueva categorización y su aplicación focalizada en las herramientas disponibles para comunicadores de la ciencia, (...) por un lado, y público no especializado, por el otro. (shrink)

En este trabajo, se propone una clasificación epistemológica teórica para el discurso astrológico a partir de evidencia empírica a fin de abordar el problema de cómo determinar específicamente qué es lo que lo hace ilegítimo. A partir de esta clasificación, se diseñó una intervención didáctica, enmarcada en el enfoque de Enseñanza de las Ciencias Naturales en Contexto (ECNC), con el objetivo de fomentar, en estudiantes de nivel secundario, la capacidad de distinguir enunciados cognoscitivamente ilegítimos -por infalsables o por falsos- respecto (...) de aquellos que pueden constituir genuino conocimiento científico. La secuencia didáctica se implementó con un grupo de 51 estudiantes de 14 a 17 años. Se evaluó su impacto por comparación entre un pretest y un postest. Los resultados mostraron que su capacidad de discernimiento entre enunciados falsables y no falsables se incrementó apreciablemente. (shrink)

But the modelling of the Confucian gentleman or junzi type of human being under the music simile and the rules of propriety (li) 禮 needs to be brought within the perspective of the Confucian use of language and the ultimately harmonising role of this philosophy. Such considerations lead us back to a concept that Pound was always keen to produce in his expositions, and refers directly to the importance of precise language usage. Pound's first concern for 'le mot juste' and (...) later for zheng ming 正名 is consistent throughout his career. (shrink)

Poiché i miei interessi di ricerca si concentrano sul rapporto tra spazio e rappresentazione, nel presente articolo commenterò un lavoro di Achille C. Varzi pubblicato nel 2008 e intitolato, nella sua versione italiana, «Configurazioni, regole e inferenze». Accennerò anche a un secondo articolo scritto da Varzi e Massimo Warglien e pubblicato nel 2003, intitolato «The Geometry of Negation». Mi rivolgerò poi alla psicologia sperimentale, collegando alcuni aspetti delle osservazioni di Varzi a un articolo di Johnson- Laird del 2005 intitolato «The (...) Shape of Problems». Nelle conclusioni, farò un ultimo riferimento a un articolo di Varzi pubblicato nel 2000, scritto con Philip Kitcher e intitolato «Some Pictures Are Worth 2 אo Sentences». Le parole configurazioni, geometry, shape e picture nei titoli degli articoli di cui mi occuperò sono dei buoni indizi per capire quale sia il filo rosso che lega a mio avviso tutti questi lavori. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to take into account the functioning of representational cognitive tools, and in particular of notations and visualizations in mathematics. In order to explain their functioning, formulas in algebra and logic and diagrams in topology will be presented as case studies and the notion of manipulative imagination as proposed in previous work will be discussed. To better characterize the analysis, the notions of material anchor and representational affordance will be introduced.

Public deliberation has been defended as a rational and noncoercive way to overcome paradoxical results from democratic voting, by promoting consensus on the available alternatives on the political agenda. Some critics have argued that full consensus is too demanding and inimical to pluralism and have pointed out that single-peakedness, a much less stringent condition, is sufficient to overcome voting paradoxes. According to these accounts, deliberation can induce single-peakedness through the creation of a ‘meta-agreement’, that is, agreement on the dimension according (...) to which the issues at stake are ‘conceptualized’. We argue here that once all the conditions needed for deliberation to bring about single-peakedness through meta-agreement are unpacked and made explicit, meta-agreement turns out to be a highly demanding condition, and one that is very inhospitable to pluralism. (shrink)

Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or sounds themselves, they made some interesting observations that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds. On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the audible (...) qualities and so on, the representatives of that trend of thought have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in the phenomenological tradition. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours, yet the perspective carried out is that of analytic philosophy and, thus, I pay special attention to conceptual analysis as a methodological framework. In this sense, I first explain what sound ontology is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that it encompasses— namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)—. Secondly, I address the problems it entails, emphasising that of sound individuation. In a third section, I propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time” (for short “Brentano-Husserl analysis”) and outline the commonalities of both authors, without ignoring its discrepancies. My main focus is Husserl’s 1905 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins. While addressing the Brentano-Husserl analysis, I elaborate on the problem of temporal and spatial extension (Raumlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit, respectively) of both consciousness and sound. Such comparison is a key one, since after these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other. After examining the controversial claims concerning the temporal and spatial extension of both consciousness and sound, I argue in the concluding paragraphs that while considering the accounts of sound ontology, the Brentano-Husserl analysis would probably endorse a Property View and that this could have interesting consequences for the issue of Sound Individuation. (shrink)

Linguistics of Saying is to be analyzed in the speech act conceived as an act of knowing. The speaking, saying and knowing subject, based on contexts and the principles of congruency and trust in the speech of other speakers, will create meanings and interpret the sense of utterances supplying the deficiencies of language by means of the intellective operations mentally executed in the act of speech. In the intellective operations you can see three steps or processes: first the starting point, (...) intuition or aísthesis; second, the process of abstraction; and third, the inverse: the process of determination or fixing the construct created. (shrink)

Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth. Language is the mental activity executed by speaking subjects. Linguistics of saying consists in analyzing speech acts as the result of an act of knowing. Speaking subjects speak because they have something to say. Tthey say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in. And this is possible because they are able to know. Speaking, then, is speaking, saying and knowing. In this sense there is a progressive determination. Knowing makes (...) possible saying, and saying determines speaking, or, in other words: speaking involves saying and knowing, and saying involves knowing. The problem thus is to determine the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker to say something in every speech act. (shrink)

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the intentional meaningful purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is the performance of an intuition by the subject, both individual and social.

Some mental states have valence—they are pleasant or unpleasant. According to imperativism, valence depends on imperative content, while evaluativism tells us that it depends on evaluative content. We argue that if one considers valence’s informational profile, it becomes evident that imperativism is superior to evaluativism. More precisely, we show that if one applies the best available metasemantics to the role played by (un)pleasant mental states in our cognitive economy, then these states turn out to have imperative rather than evaluative content, (...) since: (i) they are much more informative about behaviour than they are about the world; and (ii) they occupy a stage in the information-processing chain that is closer to behaviour production than it is to the uptake of sensory information. This is our metasemantic argument for imperativism. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to develop a comparative analysis of the discursive structures that underlie the socialized formation of the interpretative paradigms of reality. We analyse how both political ideologies and the so-called “conspiracy theories” can be understood starting from the structure and functioning of Marc Augè's ideo-logic, namely the systemic-discursive device that defines the field of all possible sentences defining the real. -/- .

In “The myth of mental illness” Thomas Szasz challenges the idea that mental illnesses are diseases in the biomedical sense. In his view they are more similar to a foreign language and for this reason they cannot be treated by means of biomedical therapies. The present article explores the semiotic implications of Szasz’s view of the hysterical symptoms as an iconic language. Following Reichenbach, Szasz distinguishes three classes of signs: indexical, iconic and symbolic. The somatic language of the hysteric person (...) would be an iconic protolanguage which is more primordial than the objective language. Nevertheless, it retains all the basic functions of the language: to transmit information, to induce mood, and to promote action. Five different but intertwined reasons for the use of such an iconic form of communication are discussed. In conclusion, the hysterical symptom speaks its proper language and our ethical commitment is primarily to empathically listen to it. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explain why knot diagrams are an effective notation in topology. Their cognitive features and epistemic roles will be assessed. First, it will be argued that different interpretations of a figure give rise to different diagrams and as a consequence various levels of representation for knots will be identified. Second, it will be shown that knot diagrams are dynamic by pointing at the moves which are commonly applied to them. For this reason, experts must (...) develop a specific form of enhanced manipulative imagination, in order to draw inferences from knot diagrams by performing epistemic actions. Moreover, it will be argued that knot diagrams not only can promote discovery, but also provide evidence. This case study is an experimentation ground to evaluate the role of space and action in making inferences by reasoning diagrammatically. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions on cognition (ranging from computational and representational approaches to the 4E fra-mework), on the one hand, and those on sound and auditory per-ception, on the other, have hitherto remained apart. In this paper, the author addresses the concept of “auditory cognition”. While committing to the conceptual analysis of the latter, the author in-troduces the discussion of modality-specif ic approaches. Since the contributions made so far in the domain of the philosophy of sound and auditory perception are prone to (...) favor computational-repre-sentational approaches —e.g., the perceptual coherence model (Méndez-Martínez, 2022)—, the exploration of 4E possibilities will lay down a series of questions aimed to encourage future developers from that viewpoint. In that sense, the author explores conceptual entailments and connections between the genealogy of theories within the philosophy of sound and auditory perception, and the hypothesis of the extended cognition (EX). (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate specific aspects connected with visualization in the practice of a mathematical subfield: low-dimensional topology. Through a case study, it will be established that visualization can play an epistemic role. The background assumption is that the consideration of the actual practice of mathematics is relevant to address epistemological issues. It will be shown that in low-dimensional topology, justifications can be based on sequences of pictures. Three theses will be defended. First, the representations used (...) in the practice are an integral part of the mathematical reasoning. As a matter of fact, they convey in a material form the relevant transitions and thus allow experts to draw inferential connections. Second, in low-dimensional topology experts exploit a particular type of manipulative imagination which is connected to intuition of two- and three-dimensional space and motor agency. This imagination allows recognizing the transformations which connect different pictures in an argument. Third, the epistemic—and inferential—actions performed are permissible only within a specific practice: this form of reasoning is subject-matter dependent. Local criteria of validity are established to assure the soundness of representationally heterogeneous arguments in low-dimensional topology. (shrink)

In recent years, several strategies have been proposed to tackle social controversies about topics in which science is settled, among which one of the most influential is that of Elizabeth Anderson, who argues that any lay person with access to the Internet and basic education can reliably assess the acceptability of various claims involving expert knowledge. In particular, the author shows that this procedure can be successfully applied to the case of anthropogenic global warming. In this article we will try (...) to argue why, even if we concede that Anderson's proposal is satisfactory in that particular case, it fails to generalize when applied to other controversies. In this article, we illustrate it with the cases of flat-Eartherism and anti-vaxxerism. (shrink)

The objective of this article is twofold. First, a methodological issue is addressed. It is pointed out that even if philosophers of mathematics have been recently more and more concerned with the practice of mathematics, there is still a need for a sharp definition of what the targets of a philosophy of mathematical practice should be. Three possible objects of inquiry are put forward: (1) the collective dimension of the practice of mathematics; (2) the cognitives capacities requested to the practitioners; (...) and (3) the specific forms of representation and notation shared and selected by the practitioners. Moreover, it is claimed that a broadening of the notion of ‘permissible action’ as introduced by Larvor (2012) with respect to mathematical arguments, allows for a consideration of all these three elements simultaneously. Second, a case from topology – the proof of Alexander’s theorem – is presented to illustrate a concrete analysis of a mathematical practice and to exemplify the proposed method. It is discussed that the attention to the three elements of the practice identified above brings to the emergence of philosophically relevant features in the practice of topology: the need for a revision in the definition of criteria of validity, the interest in tracking the operations that are performed on the notation, and the constant and fruitful back-and-forth from one representation to another in dealing with mathematical content. Finally, some suggestions for further research are given in the conclusions. (shrink)

Experimental balance is usually understood as the control for the value of the conditions, other than the one under study, which are liable to affect the result of a test. We will discuss three different approaches to balance. ‘Millean balance’ requires to identify and equalize ex ante the value of these conditions in order to conduct solid causal inferences. ‘Fisherian balance’ measures ex post the influence of uncontrolled conditions through the analysis of variance. In ‘efficiency balance’ the value of the (...) antecedent conditions is decided ex ante according to the efficiency they yield in the estimation of the treatment outcome. Against some old arguments by John Worrall, we will show that in both Fisherian and efficiency balance there are good reasons to randomize the allocation of treatments, in particular when there is no agreement among experimenters as to the antecedent conditions to be controlled for. (shrink)

In the realm of the philosophy of sounds and auditory experience there is an ongoing discussion concerned with the nature of sounds. One of the contestant views within this ontology of sound is that of the Property View, which holds that sounds are properties of the sounding objects. A way of developing this view is through the idea of dispositionalism, namely, by sustaining the theory according to which sounds are dispositional properties (Pasnau 1999; Kulvicki 2008; Roberts 2017). That portrayal, however, (...) is not sufficient, as it has not inquired the metaphysical debates about dispositions beyond the conditional analysis. In this paper, I try to advance this view by including recent developments (for instance Bird 2007; Vetter 2015) in the field of dispositionalism and I analyse whether this new version can sort out known and new objections to Property View. (shrink)

Achille Varzi è uno dei maggiori metafisici viventi. Nel corso degli anni ha scritto testi fondamentali di logica, metafisica, mereologia, filosofia del linguaggio. Ha sconfinato nella topologia, nella geografia, nella matematica, ha ragionato di mostri e confini, percezione e buchi, viaggi nel tempo, nicchie, eventi e ciambelle; e non ha disdegnato di dialogare con gli abitanti di Flatlandia, con Neo e con Terminator. Tra le sue opere principali: Holes and Other Superficialities e Parts and Places. The Structures of Spatial Representation, (...) entrambi scritti insieme a R. Casati per MIT Press; Il mondo messo a fuoco, Laterza; e il suo libro più recente: Le tribolazioni del filosofare, con C. Calosi, per Laterza. -/- Da una giornata all’Università di Urbino nasce questa conversazione a molte voci sulla e con la filosofia di Achille C. Varzi. In un dialogo critico al quale l’Autore si presta con generosità e onestà intellettuale, Andrea Borghini, Francesco Calemi, Claudio Calosi, Elena Casetta, Valeria Giardino, Pierluigi Graziani, Patrizia Pedrini, Daniele Santoro e Giuliano Torrengo lo interrogano e mettono alla prova sui temi affrontati, nel corso degli anni, in campi diversi. Il risultato è un percorso che si snoda attraverso molti mondi, dalla logica alla metafisica, dalla filosofia del linguaggio alla filosofia della matematica, dalla mereologia alla filosofia del tempo, spingendosi in qualche caso oltre i confini del saggio filosofico. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of sound individuation (SI) and its connection to sound ontology (SO). It is argued that the problems of SI, such as aspatiality, extreme individuation, indexical perplexity and duration puzzles are due to SO’s uncertainties. Besides, I describe the views in SO, including the wave view (WV), the property view (PV), and the event view (EV), as Casey O’Callaghan defends it. According to O’Callaghan, EV offers clear standards to individuate sounds. However, this claim is countered by (...) the consideration that any view could also defend the standards in SO, and thus, EV does not solve any of the problems mentioned above. As a way of showing the difficulties inherited by sound’s inner ontology, the problem of its linguistic representation is also addressed. The problem of SI can be developed within the frame of the philosophy of language and, specifically, regarding the discussion about mass vs count-­sortal terms. Is the term sound a mass or a count­-sortal? It is shown that, for reasons pertaining SO, the decision regarding the case of sound as a mass or count-­sortal term remains open. SI is, thus, covered from the SO to the philosophy of language. (shrink)

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a far from perfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what makes a pattern real. In this paper we derive a criterion of real-patternhood from the notion of conditional Kolmogorov complexity. The resulting account belongs to the philosophical tradition, initiated by Dennett :27–51, 1991), that links real-patternhood to data compressibility, but is simpler and formally more perspicuous than other proposals previously defended in (...) the literature. It also successfully enforces a non-redundancy principle, suggested by Ladyman and Ross, that aims to exclude from real-patternhood those patterns that can be ignored without loss of information about the target dataset, and which their own account fails to enforce. (shrink)

The debate on the notion of function has been historically dominated by dispositional and etiological accounts, but recently a third contender has gained prominence: the organizational account. This original theory of function is intended to offer an alternative account based on the notion of self-maintaining system. However, there is a set of cases where organizational accounts seem to generate counterintuitive results. These cases involve cross-generational traits, that is, traits that do not contribute in any relevant way to the self-maintenance of (...) the organism carrying them, but instead have very important effects on organisms that belong to the next generation. We argue that any plausible solution to the problem of cross-generational traits shows that the organizational account just is a version of the etiological theory and, furthermore, that it does not provide any substantive advantage over standard etiological theories of function. (shrink)

This paper proposes some guidelines for the undeveloped discussion of auditory epistemology. Auditory epistemology is an approach concerned with the perceptual basis for knowledge and belief, specifically around audition. The article pursues two goals. Firstly, it claims that addressing auditory perception from the viewpoint of epistemology is more fruitful than the discussion on phenomenology which has thus far dominated the debates in the literature on sound. Secondly, it elaborates a concrete proposal pertaining to the cooperation of sense-modalities. In so doing, (...) a model for “Perceptual Coherence” is suggested. The first section of the paper critically reviews the problem of perception as it is usually understood in traditional epistemology. An ensuing section outlines the model of perceptual coherence. (shrink)

It does not seem particularly daring to say that one objective of science education is to enable students to understand different phenomena in the world in their mutual relationship. This is roughly equivalent to promoting knowledge of scientific explanations, which involve resorting to regular relationships between certain phenomena and which, certainly, is different from knowledge of this or that type of event taken in isolation. In this text, we will draw attention to two opposing tendencies that, however, tend towards the (...) common result of hindering the achievement of such an objective. On the one hand, we find characterizations of scientific explanation that assimilate it to argumentation and, therefore, lose sight of what specifically makes explanations explanatory; that is, they ask too little of a scientific explanation. On the other hand, those that consider paradigmatic cases of scientific explanation −such as those achieved by subsuming phenomena such as tides to Newton's laws− do not really constitute explanations but merely descriptions; it is about asking too much of an explanation here. We will therefore point out that a greater attention to the elaborations provided by the philosophy of science about the notion of explanation is crucial to better serve educational purposes. (shrink)

The first aim of this note is to describe an algebraic structure, more primitive than lattices and quantales, which corresponds to the intuitionistic flavour of Linear Logic we prefer. This part of the note is a total trivialisation of ideas from category theory and we play with a toy-structure a not distant cousin of a toy-language. The second goal of the note is to show a generic categorical construction, which builds models for Linear Logic, similar to categorical models GC of (...) [deP1990], but more general. The ultimate aim is to relate different categorical models of linear logic. (shrink)

The Texas borderlands have come to be increasingly important in the historical literature and in public opinion for the way that the region shapes national thought on race, borders, and ethnicity. With this increasing importance, it is pressing to examine the history of these issues in the region so that they may be accurately and insightfully deployed. This article contributes to the existing scholarship with a close discursive analysis of race in the booster materials, 1904-1941. The booster materials forge a (...) notion of race relations that borrows from tropes common across the West but is also informed by Jim Crow and the unique demands of the region. The booster materials forward a notion of race that is largely unique in Western boosterism, positing only two major characters, Mexicans and white Northerners. The figure of ‘the Mexican’ is drawn more as a part of nature than human society in that it shares the fundamental characteristics of the land, animals, and rivers of the region. Nature in the region is depicted as an adventitious, disorderly, and wasteful body that calls out for northern discipline. The ‘Northerners’ are figured as the ones who, through applying discipline to the natural resources of the area (land, water, and Mexicans) can bring reason, fertility, and profitable connection to the national economy. The consequences of this racial division are further explored in the article as they play out in schooling, religion, justice, beauty, leisure, and sport. (shrink)

This article discusses Rik Peels's response to Williams's argument against voluntary belief. Williams argues that voluntary beliefs must be acquired independently of truth-considerations, so they cannot count as beliefs after all, since beliefs aim at truth. Peels attempted to reply by showing that in cases of self-fulfilling beliefs, a belief can indeed be voluntarily acquired in conditions which retain the necessary truth-orientation. But even if we make two crucial concessions to Peels’s proposal, his argument ultimately fails. The first concession is (...) that beliefs can be weakly voluntary-namely, we can acquire them at will though we do not preserve them at will but on the basis of evidence. Conceding this, however, only lands us in the “acquisition problem”: how a belief can be acquired qua belief when we still do not think we have justification for it. This leads us to the second concession: that knowing in advance that a certain belief is self-fulfilling provides us with such a justification. However, this concession lands us in the ultimate obstacle: that, precisely because such a justification is available both before and at the moment of forming the belief, the cognitive perspective of the subject is identical at both moments, which obscures what it even means to say that at a certain moment she started to have a belief. (shrink)

since the 20th century bodybuilding has been an object of study that interests and challenges researchers in the sociology of sport (see Conquet, 2014 - Tajrobehkar, 2016 - Wellman, 2020) and, recently, in the philosophy of sport (see Aranyosi, 2017 - Madej, 2021 - Worthen, 2016). However, many of its problems are little known in the orthodox philosophical literature. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to contribute from STS studies to the posing and discussion of the central ethical and (...) social problems of bodybuilding by contributing to the philosophy of sport or the philosophy of body techniques. Therefore, I will plant the following problems in relation to bodybuilding: gender and sexism; racism, ableism and eugenics; and lastly, fatphobia. Finally, I propose that many of these problems are generated from the indiscriminate use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) within this sport subculture. In this sense, a precautionary framework (epistemic values, moral values, hormonal benefit principle and sports precautionary principle) is proposed from STS studies with the aim of regulating their use, avoiding adverse effects in individuals who are not professional bodybuilders. -/- . (shrink)

This thesis describes two classes of Dialectica categories. Chapter one introduces dialectica categories based on Goedel's Dialectica interpretation and shows that they constitute a model of Girard's Intuitionistic Linear Logic. Chapter two shows that, with extra assumptions, we can provide a comonad that interprets Girard's !-course modality. Chapter three presents the second class of Dialectica categories, a simplification suggested by Girard, that models (classical) Linear Logic and chapter four shows how to provide modalities ! and ? for this second class (...) of construction. (shrink)

The renewed interest in concepts and their role in psychological theorizing is partially motivated by Machery’s claim that concepts are so heterogeneous that they have no explanatory role. Against this, pluralism argues that there is multiplicity of different concepts for any given category, while hybridism argues that a concept is constituted by a rich common representation. This article aims to advance the understanding of the hybrid view of concepts. First, we examine the main arguments against hybrid concepts and conclude that, (...) even if not successful, they challenge hybridism to find a robust criterion for concept individuation and to show an explanatory advantage for hybrid concepts. Then we propose such a criterion of individuation, which we will call ‘functional stable coactivation’. Finally, we examine the prospects of hybridism to understand what is involved in recent approaches to categorization and meaning extraction. 1 The Heterogeneity of Conceptual Representations2 Two Challenges for Hybrid Concepts: Individuation and Explanation2.1 The coordination criterion2.2 Concepts as constituents of thoughts3 Individuating Hybrids: Functional Stable Coactivation4 The Explanatory Power of Hybrid Concepts4.1 Categorization4.2 Meaning extraction4.2.1 Linguistic comprehension and rich lexical entries4.2.2 Polysemy and hybrid concepts5 Conclusion. (shrink)

El escepticismo antiguo es una corriente filosófica tan controversial como interesante. En este artículo se analiza su particular método investigativo como forma de vida y las objeciones que le han hecho los dogmáticos a lo largo de la historia. Algunas de ellas son: ¿cómo es posible una investigación que no lleva a nada (suspensión del juicio) si las investigaciones tienen como fin hallar algo? ¿Cómo es posible que un escéptico diga que “sigue investigando” aun cuando no investiga aparentemente nada? ¿No (...) es esta una investigación contradictoria? (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the book "Relations: Ontology and Philosophy of Religion" which is a collection of invited and selected papers dealing with both ontology and the philosophy of religion. It aims at showing how the two disciplines can fruitfully interact and provide useful tools for philosophical investigation. The background is relational ontology and analytical philosophy.

Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the phenomenon is still insufficiently examined. This paper analyzes (...) the main properties of unsymbolized thinking and advances an explanation of its origin. According to our analysis, unsymbolized thoughts appear as propositional states, that is, they are experienced as compositional conceptual phenomena, with semantic and syntactic features analogous to those of the contents of utterances. Based on this characterization, we hypothesize that UT is continuous with the activity of inner speech, in particular, it i... (shrink)

Dysmenorrhea, or menstrual pain, is regularly suffered by 45 to 95% of menstruating women. Despite its prevalence, and despite the philosophical importance of pain as a general phenomenon, dysmenorrhea has been all but completely overlooked in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. This paper aims at rectifying this situation. We single out three properties of what is often considered the paradigmatic case of painful experience, what we call injury-centered pains, and argue that dysmenorrhea does not have any of them, and hence (...) that it does not neatly conform to the injury-centered model of pain. This calls into question the centrality of the injury-centered model, and suggests novel research avenues within theoretical debates on affectivity. (shrink)

We introduce the virtual special issue on content in signalling systems. The issue explores the uses and limits of ideas from evolutionary game theory and information theory for explaining the content of biological signals. We explain the basic idea of the Lewis-Skyrms sender-receiver framework, and we highlight three key themes of the issue: (i) the challenge of accounting for deception, misinformation and false content, (ii) the relevance of partial or total common interest to the evolution of meaningful signals, and (iii) (...) how the sender-receiver framework relates to teleosemantics. (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can only result from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behavior, but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’s fading qualia argument falls in it. (shrink)

We very often discover ourselves engaged in inner speech. It seems that this kind of silent, private, speech fulfils some role in our cognition, most probably related to conscious thinking. Yet, the study of inner speech has been neglected by philosophy and psychology alike for many years. However, things seem to have changed in the last two decades. Here we review some of the most influential accounts about the phenomenology and the functions of inner speech, as well as the methodological (...) problems that affect its study. (shrink)

La lengua española nació cuando los hablantes del latín de la península Ibérica cambiaron de modo de pensar. Desde el pensar absoluto latino, asimilaron el pensar substantivo de los griegos a través del pensar cristiano. Haciendo una síntesis de estos tres pensares absolutos, crearon el pensar individual, el pensar abstracto y el pensar real. De este modo crearon lo que se puede designar como una ontología lingüística, la manifestación directa del pensar español. Los modos de pensar tienen que ver con (...) los modos de concebir lo que nos rodea. Ambos a dos preceden y determinan el pensamiento y la manifestación de las actividades libres del hombre, tanto si este es considerado individualmente, como si es considerado socialmente dentro del conjunto de hablantes que participan y contribuyen dentro de una comunidad lingüística. (shrink)

El lenguaje o la actividad cognoscitiva del ser humano que se debate en su lucha contra la circunstancia en la que le ha tocado vivir es hablar, decir y conocer. El hombre habla porque tiene algo que decir, dice porque se define a sí mismo ante la circunstancia en la que vive en cada momento, y esto es posible porque conoce de forma creativa. En este sentido el decir determina el hablar, por arriba, y el conocer por abajo. El conocer (...) humano empieza en una sensación sensible, la aísthesis, la cual es transformada en un universal, extracto o concepto, logos, el cual es el fruto de una serie de operaciones intelectivas realizadas por el propio sujeto en u solo acto, el acto único de hablar, decir y conocer. (shrink)

Mi concepción sobre el lenguaje parte de tres realidades ciertas: el hablar (Coseriu), el decir (Ortega y Gasset), y el conocer (Descartes, Kant, Ortega y Gasset), tres realidades tan ciertas como que yo vivo porque estoy haciendo algo ahora mismo. Y este hacer algo constituye mi vida (Ortega y Gasset). Yo soy porque vivo y porque tengo la necesidad de hablar con otros seres humanos, quienes constituyen mi circunstancia, para definirme a mí mismo (decir) sobre aquello de lo que hablo (...) para conseguir un fin, aunque este sólo sea pasajero y volátil. La aparición del hablar, decir y conocer en el acto lingüístico nos revela el pensamiento y lo que llamamos el lenguaje y la lengua. Además, estas realidades radican en mí, en el ser humano, y manifiestan la condición de ser del ser humano, quien es capaz de conocer creativamente, definirse ante la situación que analiza antes de hablar (=decir), y de hablar utilizando palabras que no son suyas sino de la comunidad lingüística (=la lengua, Coseriu) en la que vive (Ortega y Gasset). Así, pues, considero el lenguaje como realidad que subyace en la conciencia del ser humano individual que habla, dice y conoce. (shrink)

Benchmarking automated theorem proving (ATP) systems using standardized problem sets is a well-established method for measuring their performance. However, the availability of such libraries for non-classical logics is very limited. In this work we propose a library for benchmarking Girard's (propositional) intuitionistic linear logic. For a quick bootstrapping of the collection of problems, and for discussing the selection of relevant problems and understanding their meaning as linear logic theorems, we use translations of the collection of Kleene's intuitionistic theorems in the (...) traditional monograph "Introduction to Metamathematics". We analyze four different translations of intuitionistic logic into linear logic and compare their proofs using a linear logic based prover with focusing. In order to enhance the set of problems in our library, we apply the three provability-preserving translations to the propositional benchmarks in the ILTP Library. Finally, we generate a comprehensive set of reachability problems for Petri nets and encode such problems as linear logic sequents, thus enlarging our collection of problems. (shrink)

In consciousness studies there is a growing tendency to consider experience as (i) fundamentally affective and (ii) deeply interlinked with interoceptive and homeostatic bodily processes. However, this view still needs further development to be part of any rigorous theory of consciousness. To advance in this direction, we ask: (1) is there any affective type that is always present in consciousness?, (2) is it related to interoception and homeostasis?, and (3) what are its properties? Here we analyse and compare Jim Russell's (...) core affect and Thomas Fuchs' concept of vitality, and propose a more encompassing notion that subsumes both: continuous organismic sentience. It provides affirmative answers to questions 1 and 2, and, regarding question 3, a preliminary list of thirteen properties divided into ontological, phenomenological, and functional categories. This is the first of a series of studies that will systematically address different notions of a fundamental, homeostatically-rooted affective type, to achieve a rigorous, unified concept for consciousness science. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, rationality is, at least in part, a matter of one’s attitudes cohering with one another. Theorists who endorse this idea have devoted much attention to formulating various coherence requirements. Surprisingly, they have said very little about what it takes for a set of attitudes to be coherent in general. We articulate and defend a general account on which a set of attitudes is coherent just in case and because it is logically possible for the attitudes to (...) be jointly satisfied in the sense of jointly fitting the world. In addition, we show how the account can help adjudicate debates about how to formulate various rational requirements. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza la técnica del fracking como una solución a la problemática que en materia hidrocarburos se había dado en las últimas dos décadas, y los impactos negativos que conlleva para la salud y el ambiente. Se plantea como solución la aplicación del principio de precaución que le permite al Estado actuar ante una situación de riesgo e incertidumbre. La metodología escogida fue de corte analítico-deductivo a partir de la normatividad vigente y de los postulados teóricos de algunos (...) autores que son referentes en la materia. Como resultados se presentan algunas reflexiones que invitan a considerar la aplicación de este principio, hasta tanto no se tengan estudios suficientes que garanticen que esta práctica preservará el ambiente y no afectará la salud humana. (shrink)

Our aim in this article, after providing the general framework of the reception of William James in Spain, is to trace the reception of The Varieties of Religious Experience through Unamuno’s reading of this book.