Against those who dismiss Kant's project in the "Religion" because it provides a Pelagian understanding of salvation, this paper offers an analysis of the deep structure of Kant's views on divine justice and grace showing them not to conflict with an authentically Christian understanding of these concepts. The first part of the paper argues that Kant's analysis of these concepts helps us to understand the necessary conditions of the Christian understanding of grace: unfolding them uncovers intrinsic relations holding between God's (...) justice and grace. Parts two and three provide an analysis of two concepts of grace used by Kant. Getting clear on their differences is the key to understanding why Kant's account is not Pelagian. (shrink)

This paper explores Kant's concept of the highest good and the postulate of the existence of God arising from it. Kant has two concepts of the highest good standing in tension with one another, an immanent and a transcendent one. I provide a systematic exposition of the constituents of both variants and show how Kant’s arguments are prone to confusion through a conflation of both concepts. I argue that once these confusions are sorted out Kant’s claim regarding the need to (...) postulate God’s existence from a moral point of view makes much more sense. (shrink)

Memory is not a unitary phenomenon. Even among the group of long-term individual memory representations (known in the literature as declarative memory) there seems to be a distinction between two kinds of memory: memory of personally experienced events (episodic memory) and memory of facts or knowledge about the world (semantic memory). Although this distinction seems very intuitive, it is not so clear in which characteristic or set of interrelated characteristics lies the difference. In this article, I present the different criteria (...) proposed in the philosophical and scientific literature in order to account for this distinction: (1) the vehicle of representation; (2) the grammar of the verb “to remember”; (3) the cause of the memory; (4) the memory content; and (5) the phenomenology of memory representations. Whereas some criteria seem more plausible than others, I show that all of them are problematic and none of them really fulfill their aim. I then briefly outline a different criterion, the affective criterion, which seems a promising line of research to try to understand the grounds of this distinction. (shrink)

It seems natural to think that emotional experiences associated with a memory of a past event are new and present emotional states triggered by the remembered event. This common conception has nonetheless been challenged at the beginning of the 20th century by intellectuals who considered that emotions can be encoded and retrieved, and that emotional aspects linked to memories of the personal past need not necessary to be new emotional responses caused by the act of recollection. They called this specific (...) kind of memories “affective memories” and defended their existence. My aim here is to expound the historical background of this debate as well as the characterization and development of the notion of affective memory since its first inception. I aim to show that although the debate was left unresolved and the term disappeared from academy around 1930, many of the characterizations of the nature of emotions and memory done by the advocates of affective memory have reappeared in the scientific agenda and been further developed during the last decades. (shrink)

Higginbotham argued that certain linguistic items of English, when used in indirect discourse, necessarily trigger first-personal interpretations. They are: the emphatic reflexive pronoun and the controlled understood subject, represented as PRO. PRO is special, in this respect, due to its imposing obligatory control effects between the main clause and its subordinates ). Folescu & Higginbotham, in addition, argued that in Romanian, a language whose grammar doesn’t assign a prominent role to PRO, de se triggers are correlated with the subjunctive mood (...) of certain verbs. That paper, however, didn’t account for the grammatical diversity of the reports that display immunity to error through misidentification in Romanian: some of these reports are expressed by using de se triggers; others are not. Their IEM, moreover, is not systematically lexically controlled by the verbs, via their theta-roles; it is, rather, determined by the meaning of the verbs in question. Given the data from Romanian, I will argue, the phenomenon of IEM cannot be fully explained starting either from the syntactical or the lexical structure of a language. (shrink)

The continued development of General Circulation Models (GCMs) towards increasing resolution and complexity is a predominantly chosen strategy to advance climate science, resulting in channelling of research and funding to meet this aspiration. Yet many other modelling strategies have also been developed and can be used to understand past and present climates, to project future climates and ultimately to support decision-making. We argue that a plurality of climate modelling strategies and an equitable distribution of funding among them would be an (...) improvement on the current predominant strategy for informing policy making. To support our claim, we use a philosophy of science approach to compare increasing resolution and complexity of General Circulation Models with three alternate examples: the use of machine learning techniques, the physical climate storyline approach, and Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity. We show that each of these strategies prioritises a particular set of methodological aims, among which are empirical agreement, realism, comprehensiveness, diversity of process representations, inclusion of the human dimension, reduction of computational expense, and intelligibility. Thus, each strategy may provide adequate information to support different specific kinds of research and decision questions. We conclude that, because climate decision-making consists of different kinds of questions, many modelling strategies are all potentially useful, and can be used in a complementary way. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against two prevailing views of Kant’s Religion. Against commentators such as Michalson and Quinn, who have argued that Kant’s project in Religion is riddled with inconsistencies and circularities, I show that a proper understanding of Kant’s views on grace reveals these do not exist. And contra commentators that attribute to Kant at best a minimalist conception of grace, I show that Kant’s view of it is remarkably robust. I argue that Kant works with three different (...) conceptions of grace. These are: a) grace and the God within, b) grace and the transformation of the fundamental orientation, and c) grace that can be laid hold of; the first and the last play a significant role in his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

A post written by Marina Trakas, a philosopher and cognitive scientist interested in the ethical and epistemological aspects of memories of our personal past. -/- .

Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with (...) the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value. (shrink)

Taking as starting point Akira Kurosawa’s film, I analyse the tension between the reconstructive nature of memory and the possibility of knowing truths from the past, and I explore if the tendency to align our personal memories to our present interests necessarily leads to an sceptic and relativistic vision of the knowledge from the past.

Pensar es trabajar en transformar el pensamiento, escribía Meschonnic. La crítica es, ante todo, eso: reflexionar precisamente sobre lo que nuestros saberes nos impiden saber. Un gesto que transforma a partir de la interrogación misma. En diálogo con el Profesor Duncan Kennedy, el presente trabajo pretende repensar la relación entre enseñanza, crítica y acción en el campo jurídico, insistiendo en la necesidad de reinscribir la crítica no como develamiento de una “verdad esencial” oculta sino como una praxis que transforme a (...) partir de los propios límites que el orden simbólico instituye. Asimismo el artículo aborda la pregunta por la interpretación judicial sugiriendo la necesidad de desplazar el significante “trabajo jurídico” hacia la órbita de la “acción” en sentido arendtiano. El trabajo o la fabricación a diferencia de la acción se produce en aislamiento. La acción, en cambio, necesita de otros. Es por ello que se ofrece como cambio y sobre todo: ausencia de cálculo. (shrink)

Nadie sabe lo que quiere la Justicia porque la justicia no se deja escribir. Cuando digo escribir, digo instituir. La Justicia no se deja instituir. Con ello debe lidiar la actividad judicial, con el límite mismo, con la propia imposibilidad. Límite que exhibe oculto que hay algo allí que no hace cuerpo. Que hay algo que el orden de lo simbólico no logra apresar. Legendre decía: en occidente, instituir es escribir. Instituir a los hombres es ante todo, escribirlos, inscribirlos, ¿marcar (...) sus cuerpos? Kafka lo sabía bien. La democracia enfrenta también un desafío similar: asumir que el signo de lo ilimitado la acompaña en el regazo mismo que la dialéctica de la modernidad le ofrece. Los escritores, señala Milner, han descripto lo ilimitado para condenar sus consecuencias y sustraerse a ellas, como el caso de Rousseau, o para constatarlas y combatirlas mediante estrategias de inversión, de Baudelaire a Brecht.Arrasar con la diferencia es no soportar el límite, aquello que hace borde, aquello que no se deja decir. En otras palabras no aceptar la falta en el lenguaje. El presente trabajo pretende mostrar que es, precisamente, el punto de cruce que constituye el límite mismo, el lugar que aloja un encuentro posible entre justicia y democratización. El límite, lejos de clausurar, posibilita aquel enlace, lo augura. Es a nivel del lenguaje que esta relación requiere ser situada. Democratizar la lengua supone horizontalizarla, en otras palabras, abogar por la apertura y circulación del sentido. Son las teorías críticas del derecho las que aportan las herramientas necesarias para pensar esta articulación. Como señala Cárcova, es en el campo del sentido en donde el derecho adquiere su especificidad y produce los efectos que le son propios. Profundizar la democracia desde el campo jurídico exige, ante todo, democratizar al derecho mismo. (shrink)

This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...) intentional object and ontological object. Chapter 2 explores the possible contents of our personal memories, which prove to be heterogeneous, whereas chapter 3 analyses their possible intentional objects, with a special focus on past events. The second part of the thesis explores an aspect of our personal memories that was omitted in the first part: the senses in which our personal past is apprehended as personal. Chapter 4 examines the way in which the “self” intervenes in the construction of our personal memories. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the analysis of what seems to be the most subjective aspect of our memories, that is, the emotions and feelings of our past experiences. In these last two chapters, I analyze the different interactions that can take place between memories and emotions and defend the idea that there can be emotional memories that are reducible neither to a propositional memory nor an occurrent and present emotion. The overall intention of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to show to the philosophical community that there is still a lot to be said and discussed about memory as a mental phenomenon. And second, I intend to emphasize the importance of bringing into the philosophical discussions about the mind ideas coming from different philosophical traditions as well as ideas and empirical data coming from scientific research. (shrink)

In An Inquiry into the Human Mind and in Essays on Intellectual Powers, Thomas Reid discusses what kinds of things perceivers are related to in perception. Are these things qualities of bodies, the bodies themselves, or both? This question places him in a long tradition of philosophers concerned with understanding how human perception works in connecting us with the external world. It is still an open question in the philosophy of perception whether the human perceptual system is providing us with (...) representations as of bodies, or only as of their properties. My project in this article is to explain how, on Reid's view, we can have perceptual representations as of bodies. This, in turn, enables him to argue that we have a robust understanding of the world around us, an understanding that would be missing if our perceptual system only supplied us with representations as of free-floating properties of bodies. (shrink)

The Sophistry, not a school in any ordinary sense, set new pedagogical standards in Greek educational practice, being as it were the highest stage of educational system. Two innovations of the sophistic education are of special interest: first, its professionalism, which presupposes a systematic transfer of specialized knowledge and includes such forms of “in-calls” learning as lectures and discussion in small groups and, second, the appearance of special rhetorical handbook or written manuals, actively used in the class.

In his paper “Wellbeing and Changing Attitudes Across Time”, Krister Bykvist investigates the challenge that changing attitudes pose for attitude-sensitive theories of well-being in determining temporal wellbeing. He offers both a useful tool to investigate the conceptual space of possible answers, namely an attitudinal matrix, as well as a seemingly plausible constraint on such an answer, which he terms ‘diagonalism’. This paper draws on his matrix to provide an argument against diagonalism and offer an error theory regarding its intuitive force. (...) Using his matrix, I sketch my own view of temporal well-being according to which it is not a single unified concept, but can rather be understood in two different ways (‘better for’ vs. ‘better off’), both of which are interesting in their own right. (shrink)

In this Master's dissertation, I try to show that the causal theory of memory, which is the only theory developed so far that at first view seems more plausible and that could be integrated with psychological explanations and investigations of memory, shows some conceptual and ontological problems that go beyond the internal inconsistencies that each version can present. On one hand, the memory phenomenon analyzed is very limited: in general it is reduced to the conscious act of remembering expressed in (...) a propositional format: the idea of an agent who can control his memory reports, in contrast to a passive subject who merely retrieve his encoded memories, is not even considered. Furthermore, the representational function of memory is the only function taken into account; and all the diachronic changes that could entail a dynamic conception of memory are ignored, as is the consideration of context in a broad sense of the term. On the other hand, causal theories make some implicit assumptions that are obviously questionable (e.g., the difference between facts and events) and leave some of their key concepts unexplained, like the nature of the causality, the isomorphism between the memory trace and the memory event, etc. Nonetheless, the principal point that we criticized is the idea of a correspondence between a past event or representation of it, the correspondent memory trace and the memory representation of it. Psychological models of memory, with the exception of the spatial analogy, question some of these assumptions and suggest that memory information is organized in a way other than that implied by the causal theory. But it is distributed connectionism that actually challenges the causal theory of memory, not only through some of its basic postulates, like the superpositional conception of memory traces, their mutual influence and constant state of change, but also because it is compatible with a more situated approach to memory phenomena as well as with the idea that memory in reality accomplishes a variety of functions that go beyond the representational one. The explicit and implicit ideas provided by distributed connectionism, together with the previous criticisms that we made to of causal theory, clearly suggest the possibility of developing another kind of philosophical theory of memory, different from existing theories. This task, nonetheless, implies: (a) A much deeper study of connectionism principles and memory models, as well as of the rival candidate, symbolism, plus the evaluation of these models in the light of psychological and neurophysiological empirical research, which unfortunately I have not dealt with in this work. (b) An analysis of the metaphysical nature of events and facts, in order to see if we should decide in favor of a realist or a non-realist account. It is also clear that this decision can’t be taken without an examination of perception studies (and not exclusively philosophical ones) which would be crucial for determining what is encoded in memory, and studies devoted to language, which, I suspect, plays an important role in the segmentation of reality. (c) A clarification of the notion of causality, because we wouldn’t like to deny any kind entail the complete disappearance of boundaries between memory and imagination. And even if I suspect that my future work will question the existence of absolute boundaries between these two capacities, the notion of causality can’t be completely erase from the theory of memory without erasing the memory phenomenon itself. But this causality, as we’ve already showed, can’t consist in the naïve conception adopted by the causal accounts of memory, nor can it be explained in counterfactual terms. If we think of the reconsolidation concept, of the interdependence between all the memory system, and of the deciding influence of context, it’s almost sure that more than one notion of causality will need to be invoked in order to explain memory. (d) Because I do not want to reduce the study of memory exclusively to cases of remembering, it’s essential to analyze how memory intervenes not only in imagination, but also in perception, reasoning and future projection, for example. In this respect, we could quote the interesting articles of Atance & O’Neill (2001) and Bucker & Carroll (2006), the first concerning the relationship between episodic memory and episodic future thinking, the second concerning the relationship between episodic memory and all kinds of self-projection, such as navigation and theory of mind, relations that would also have to be explored from a philosophical perspective, in particular to overcome the tendency to suppose that representation is the only function of memory. I will also mention the necessity of combining the notion of metamemory with that of memory to some extent; as I have already remarked, it is implausible to suppose that a subject who consciously remembers something is unable to exert any kind of control over his memory reports. (e) Finally, in order to integrate a situated conception of memory into a philosophical account, it will also be indispensable to take into consideration what is known as “everyday memory research” as well as studies in social and collective memory. (shrink)

Introduction to the book symposium on Katherine Puddifoot’s How Stereotypes Deceive Us.

En “The King´s two bodies” Kantorowicz explora la ficción legal de los dos cuerpos del Rey: cuerpo mortal y cuerpo político. Ficción en la cual el rey, constituido como persona ficta, trasciende la temporalidad de cualquier cuerpo individual sobre la idea de “dignitas non moritur”. El presente trabajo pretende abordar la lectura de esa dualidad corporal encarnada en el derecho a través de un doble registro: cuerpo textual y cuerpo imaginario, explorando asimismo cómo el discurso jurídico se construye en el (...) marco de dicha simbología y legitimidad. Instituir lo vivo del texto jurídico no puede hacerse más que sobre el rastro de la semiótica misma. Como señala Legendre, la normatividad produce un “Écrit vivant” en perpetua necesidad de interpretación. Es paradójicamente la batalla por la apertura del texto lo que permite la imagen misma de su continuidad. Una crítica de los montajes vividos, de la instancia de la censura que ata y moviliza el discurso jurídico, provee el fondo de una urgencia: el de la tarea iusfilosófica por venir. (shrink)

The notion of epistemic responsibility applied to memory has been in general examined in the framework of the responsibilities that a collective holds for past injustices, but it has never been the object of an analysis of its own. In this article, I propose to isolate and explore it in detail. For this purpose, I start by conceptualizing the epistemic responsibility applied to individual memories. I conclude that an epistemic responsible individual rememberer is a vigilant agent who knows when to (...) engage in different kinds of mental and non-mental actions in order to monitor and update her memories, and who develops and nurture different kinds of virtuous attitudes that guide those actions. These (epistemic) virtuous attitudes are oriented not only towards herself but also towards others. Whereas this conception of epistemic responsibility does not pose a problem to understand shared memories of family members and friends, it may seem suspicious when applied to large-scale collective memories. These memories, which I name historical memories, are memories of events that have a traumatic impact for the community, are permeated by unequal relations of power, keep a complex relationship with historical science, and present other characteristics that distinguish them from individual memories. But despite these differences, the analysis undertaken in this work shows that the general principles that govern the epistemic responsibility of individual and (large-scale) collective rememberers are similar, and are based on similar grounds: pragmatic considerations about the consequences of misremembering or forgetting and a feeling of care. The similarities at the individual and collective scale of the epistemic vigilant attitude that is and should be taken toward our significant past may partially justify the use of the same epithet—“memory”—to refer to these different kinds of representations. (shrink)

Epistemic harms associated with sexual violence, such as rape and sexual assault, are often linked to the distrust of the victim's testimonies or their inability to comprehend their own experiences. This chapter aims to demonstrate that the existing literature has largely overlooked other potential epistemic harms directly stemming from sexual violence. By analyzing the cognitive changes related to the fear and anxiety experienced by many victims of sexual violence, the chapter introduces two distinct types of epistemic harms: targeted epistemic harms, (...) which result in the formation of false beliefs about the dangerousness of certain people and contexts, thereby reducing opportunities for gaining specific knowledge from the feared and avoided individuals and contexts; and structural epistemic harms, which bring about profound shifts in core assumptions regarding one’s safety in the world and the trustworthiness of others. (shrink)

Cet article considère la question de la légitimité du financement public des écoles dites ethnoreligieuses à la lumière du modèle interculturaliste de citoyenneté. La première section dresse un bref portrait historique du débat autour de cette question tel qu’il s’est présenté au Québec. Ensuite, elle explique en quoi cette problématique révèle une tension inhérente aux principes clés de l’interculturalisme. La seconde partie propose une critique de l’approche standard pour aborder l’enjeu du financement public des écoles ethnoreligieuses et défend une approche (...) alternative fondée sur une vision plus globale des finalités politiques de l’interculturalisme. La troisième et dernière section propose, en s’appuyant sur le modèle alternatif défendu, quatre mesures régulatrices visant à répondre aux difficultés que posent les politiques de financement public des écoles ethnoreligieuses. (shrink)

The present investigation concerns Reid’s explanation of how objects (be they real or nonexistent) are conceived. This paper shows that there is a deep-rooted tension in Reid’s understanding of conception: although the type of conception employed in perception is closely related to the one employed in imagination, three fundamental features distinguish perceptual conception (as the former will be referred to throughout this paper) from imaginative conception (as the latter will be called henceforth). These features would have been ascribed by Reid (...) himself to conception as involved in perception, but not to conception as involved in imagination. He should have recognized them as marking the former as a different kind from the latter, and he should not have hastily lumped perceptual and imaginative conceptions together. (shrink)

This paper explores the charge by Bruce Aune and Allen Wood that a gap exists in Kant's derivation of the Categorical Imperative. I show that properly understood, no such gap exists, and that the deduction of the Categorical Imperative is successful as it stands.

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “‘To be dead is an unthinkable anomaly’ Reversed Necropolitics and the Death Imaginary.” Lo Sguardo - rivista di filosofia N. 23, 2017 (I) - Reinventare il reale. Jean Baudrillard (2007-2017) a cura di Eleonora de Conciliis, Enrico Schirò, Daniela Angelucci, pp. 127-137. Articolo sottoposto a peer review. Ricevuto il 14/10/2016. Accettato il 12/01/2017. ISSN: 2036-6558 -/- --------- -/- The concept or the theory of Death in the thought of Jean Baudrillard is not given the particular attention (...) it needs. When one speaks of the thought of Baudrillard, one rarely will mention ‘death’ as one of the keywords of his corpus. I think, though, that it deserves such a key place, for three reasons. Firstly, because the theme of Death is a gargantuan concept in the history of Philosophy and it even emerges with the definition of Philosophy itself, since, at least, Plato. Every philosopher, more or less is preoccupied with it, as an archetypical necessity of both human culture and of philosophy in particular. It is always interesting to see how each philosopher or each person thinks on it, as their thoughts on Death are a departure point and an indication of their whole philosophical system or, for non-philosophers, of their whole way of life. Secondly, it is important to examine this theme in Baudrillard because it inseparably interconnects, explains, and is explained by all the other, key, and the less prominent themes in his philosophy. Baudrillard’s thinking might take new dimensions when viewed through his thoughts on Death. Finally, Baudrillard is considered a difficult thinker, because, unlike other philosophers, he grasps themes which people are used to seeing as the pre-occupation or within the realm of fiction, even science-fiction. I would like to show, using simple language, that his philosophy, especially surrounding the subject of Death, is completely naked of any metaphysical, romanticised, fantastic, or fiction-like properties; it is realistic and political. (shrink)

La Dra. Marina Trakas, coordinadora del dossier "Memoria y emoción" de la Revista de Psicología de la UNLP presenta los contenidos del mismo: -/- Trakas - Memoria y emoción: introducción al dossier Ramirez, Ruetti et al. - Memoria emocional en niñas y niños de diferentes condiciones socio-ambientales Saive - Reír para recordar: mejora de la memoria en relación con el humor Diaz Abrahan, Justel et al. - Memoria emocional. Una revisión sistemática de la capacidad modulatoria de la música, de (...) la actividad física y del bilingüismo Bonilla, Forcato et al. - Mejora de las memorias maladaptativas durante el sueno y la vigilia: una visión interdisciplinaria Fierro - Eros el memorioso Trakas - Dimensiones de análisis de los recuerdos personales como recuerdos afectivos Vieira Lopes - Sentimientos existenciales y memoria corporal: dos casos en la filosofía de la psiquiatría . (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende explorar las contribuciones que lecturas y categorías posestructuralistas ofrecen a la conformación de una crítica decolonial. En particular, se orienta a la recuperación del concepto de tercer espacio desarrollado por Homi Bhabha, la reinscripción de una política del reconocimiento en las figuraciones del lenguaje propuesta por Julia Kristeva y la crítica al humanismo de Sylvia Wynter. Lejos de confundir colonialismo y colonialidad o estudios poscoloniales y decoloniales, el artículo intenta dar cuenta de su íntima productividad. Es (...) precisamente en la torsión de la enunciación donde se esboza una apuesta por la subversión de dicha disputa. A partir de estos acercamientos se delinea una propuesta para repensar las subjetividades jurídicas. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

(written in 2017) According to Dorothea Debus (2007), all emotional aspects related to an act of remembering are present and new emotional responses to the remembered past event. This is a common conception of the nature of the emotional aspect of personal memories, if not explicitly defended then at least implicitly accepted in the literature. In this article, I first criticize Debus’ arguments and demonstrate that she does not give us valid reasons to believe that all the emotional aspects related (...) to a memory are present and new emotional responses to that past event. I then criticize Debus’ thesis tout court for being a direct consequence of assuming a particular conceptualization of the nature of emotions: emotions as physiological changes. Finally, based on a different conceptualization of emotions that focuses on their relational nature, I propose an alternative framework for analyzing the different possible emotional aspects of our personal memories. This leads me to conclude, contrary to Debus, that some emotional aspects of our memories are not occurrent emotions but are better conceived as quasi-emotions. (shrink)

La metáfora de la memoria como “viaje mental en el tiempo” (“mental time travel” en inglés) ha tenido una gran influencia en la ciencia cognitiva de la memoria así como también en la filosofía de la memoria contemporánea. A pesar de su relevancia, no ha habido ninguna discusión teórica real ni sobre el significado de la metáfora en sí misma ni sobre su adecuación para dar cuenta de los recuerdos de experiencias pasadas. Este artículo trata de llenar este vacío al (...) examinar con más detalle la metáfora del “viaje mental en el tiempo”, centrándose más específicamente en los problemas que dicha noción presenta. Si la metáfora del “viaje mental en el tiempo” pretende referir no solo a una facultad o sistema cerebral sino también a una experiencia subjetiva particular, como así ha sido sugerido en la literatura, no es de por sí evidente que sea compatible con las nociones de (re)construcción y simulación con las que se la asocia frecuentemente, ni que describa de manera fehaciente la fenomenología de todo recuerdo del pasado personal. Si, por el contrario, sólo se refiere a una facultad o sistema cerebral y no pretende dar cuenta de la fenomenología del recuerdo, el uso de dicho término parece perder todo sentido para nombrar dicha facultad. A pesar de su relevancia, la metáfora del “viaje mental en el tiempo” no se ha impuesto como paradigma único: otras metáforas distintas continúan guiando actualmente programas más o menos fructíferos de investigación de la memoria. El artículo concluye que aunque dicha metáfora fue beneficiosa en su momento para la ciencia y la filosofía de la memoria, el examen minucioso de dicha noción sugiere que no constituye realmente una buena metáfora de la memoria sobre las experiencias pasadas, por lo que debería ser abandonada. (shrink)

This paper combines both an exegetical and philosophical approach to the treatment of miracles in the Markan gospel. Using key insights developed by biblical scholars bearing on the problem of Mark’s treatment of miracles as a basis, I conclude that for the author of Mark, miracles are effects, and as such, signs and symbols of what occurs in the moral and spiritual order. I argue that Mark connects miracles with faith in Jesus, a faith qualified through a grasp of the (...) proper exercise of human power in the kingdom of God. The last section of the paper explores the ontological conditions for the possibility of miracles as they are portrayed in this gospel; there I argue that the best candidate for a theory that squares with Mark’s understanding of miracle is a different one from that found in the contemporary philosophical literature on miracles. (shrink)

La investigación reciente en psicología cognitiva sobre la memoria emocional ha estudiado las distintas formas en que las emociones afectan a la memoria, sin profundizar no obstante en la comprensión de la manera en que los aspectos emocionales, afectivos y mnemónicos se encuentran estrechamente entrelazados en el contenido mismo de un acto de reminiscencia. En este artículo propongo un marco conceptual de análisis que nos permite entender los recuerdos personales como recuerdos esencialmente afectivos, y que se articula en torno a (...) dos variables continuas e independientes: por un lado, la intencionalidad del recuerdo, es decir, el objeto hacia el cual el recuerdo está dirigido, que puede ser descriptiva o evaluativa; por el otro, la perspectiva afectiva del recuerdo, que puede fluctuar desde la perspectiva de primera persona hasta la perspectiva de tercera persona. Las dos dimensiones son analizadas en profundidad y las limitaciones de este marco y las futuras líneas de investigación son igualmente presentadas. (shrink)

This paper provides analysis of Kant's Categorical Imperative and its relevance to religion. I discuss what the concept of a categorical imperative implies about self-transcendence, and what this understanding of self-transcendence indicates about the self's relation to God and others.

This paper examines Aristotle's attempt to describe space in terms of place in the Physics, and shows why Aristotle rejected both Platonic and Atomistic understandings of space.

Debate about the nature of time has been dominated by discussion of two issues: the reality of absolute time and the reality of A-series. We argue that Aristotle adopts a form of the A-theory entailing a denial of the reality of absolute time. Furthermore, Aristotle's denial of absolute time is linked to a denial of the reality of pure temporal becoming, namely, the idea that the now moves through a fixed continuum along which events are arranged in chronological order. We (...) show that the puzzles discussed by Aristotle in IV:10 of the Physics are generated by this view of time and that Aristotle's own theory of time, according to which changes are used to measure one another, avoids these problems. (shrink)

In this paper I explore how Kant’s development of the idea of the disposition in the Religion copes with problems implied by Kant’s idea of transcendental freedom. Since transcendental freedom implies the power of absolutely beginning a state, and therefore of absolutely beginning a series of the consequences of that state, a transcendentally free act is divorced from the preceding state of an agent, and would thus seem to be divorced from the agent’s character as well. The paper is divided (...) into two parts. First I analyze Kant’s understanding of the disposition and discuss the ways in which it allows us to understand a person’s transcendentally free actions in terms of that person’s character. I then discuss Kant’s resources for understanding the Socratic injunction to care for the soul in light of his concept of the disposition. (shrink)

Citation: Marina Christodoulou, “I Own therefore I Am. The Ontology of Property”, In Why Does What Exists Exist? Some Hypotheses on the Ultimate “Why” Question, edited by Mariano L. Bianca,Paolo Piccari. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021, pp. 169-182. Contributors: Mariano L. Bianca, Konstantinos Boultzis, Marina Christodoulou, Maurizio Ferraris, Marco G. Giammarchi, Enrico Guglielminetti, Roberta Lanfredini, Fabio Minazzi, Crister Nyberg, Paolo Piccari, Paolo Rossi. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6294-8; ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6294-3 -/- -------------- -/- The concept of Property is what attaches us (...) to Existence, Property, and Life, instead of non-existence, non-Being and Non-life (or Death). I occupy, I possess, I own, therefore I am, therefore I exist. I own a body, therefore, I am a being; I also own a self, therefore I am. -/- What exists exists because we have the notion, the concept, the idea, the habit of property and of ownership. There is something rather than nothing because we own it. Why private property? Because we have the notion, the concept, the idea, the habit of property and of ownership. There is private property because we need to own things, including ourselves, and we need to own because we need to sign and vice versa. (shrink)

Review of Ulrich Lehner's Kant's Vorsehungskonzept auk diem Hintergrund der Deutschen Schulphilosophie und Theologie.

One of the principle aims of the B version of Kant’s transcendental deduction is to show how it is possible that the same “I think” can accompany all of my representations, which is a transcendental condition of the possibility of judgment. Contra interpreters such as A. Brook, I show that this “I think” is an a priori (reflected) self-consciousness; contra P. Keller, I show that this a priori self-consciousness is first and foremost a consciousness of one’s personal identity from a (...) first person point of view. (shrink)

This paper explores two themes—Schleiermacher’s realism and his perspectivalism—and their significance for a theory of religion. I show that Schleiermacher's theory offers an account of human subjectivity and epistemological modesty that at the same time allows us to affirm the reality of the Absolute.

La literatura de Kafka no es ciertamente complaciente, obliga al lector a releer una y otra vez. El sentido no está dado allí en el texto sino desplazado, porque la única manera que tiene de acontecer es en lo ausente, en lo inacabado. En diálogo con V. Karam, el presente artículo pretende recorrer parte de esa huella, intentando repensar allí la inasibilidad del tiempo, de la ley y de la interpretación.

(draft) In this chapter, I examine the most significant ethical questions surrounding memory, both at the collective and individual levels, as discussed in the literature. I begin by exploring the values associated with memory, including truth, accuracy, integrity, and broader social and political dimensions. I then address the concept of a duty to remember, particularly in the context of genocide and other human atrocities, and the complex questions this concept raises. Following this, I analyze the ethical challenges posed by forgetting, (...) focusing on its collective implications for forgiveness and its individual dimensions, such as the responsibility for forgetting and the right to be forgotten. After briefly discussing memory virtues—a topic that remains underexplored in the literature—I explore the ethical considerations surrounding the wishes of individuals with severe memory loss, such as those with dementia. Finally, I summarize ethical debates related to current and hypothetical cases of memory modification, erasure, and enhancement, highlighting their potential impacts on personal identity, agency, authenticity, moral responsibility, testimony, and their overall desirability. (shrink)

Policies that require male-female sex comparisons in all areas of biomedical research conflict with the goal of improving health outcomes through context-sensitive individualization of medical care. Sex, like race, requires a rigorous, contextual approach in precision medicine. A “sex contextualist” approach to gender-inclusive medicine better aligns with this aim.

This paper provides an analysis of Rudolph Otto's understanding of the structures of human consciousness making possible the appropriation of revelation. Already in his dissertation on Luther's understanding of the Holy Spirit, Otto was preoccupied with how the " outer " of revelation could be united to these inner structures. Later, in his groundbreaking Idea of the Holy, Otto would explore the category of the numinous, an element of religious experience tied to the irrational element of the holy. This paper (...) first provides a brief account of Otto's account of the holy, especially its numinous, irrational elements. Second, the paper analyzes Otto's understanding of the structures of consciousness grounding the experience of the numinous and allowing the irrational element to be " schematized " by the rational element. Otto's exposition of these structures is heavily influenced by his reception of Kant's analysis of the two stems of human cognition, namely understanding and sensibility, and their possible relation to a common root, which Otto identified with what the mystics called the ground of the soul. Yet it is in Otto's reception of Kant's Critique of Judgment that all of these ideas find their completion, and it is here where we must look to understand the relation between the religious a priori and Otto's category of the numinous. Kant's aesthetic idea is a singular representation given in intuition; it is infinitely saturated and as such intimates the ideas of God, the soul, and the world as a whole. I show how Otto appropriates Kant's aesthetic idea and its relation to ideas of reason in order to make sense of how an empirically given revelation, for instance, an experience of the numinous, can connect with the inner structures of consciousness and thereby have the singular import that it does. (shrink)

The essay discusses F. Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto on the centrality of religious experience.

This chapter traces how theism was developed by leading 19th and 20th century figures (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rahner, and Tillich) responding to Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy. Part one deals with the ontological nature of subjectivity itself and what it reveals about the conditions of the possibility of a subject’s relation to the Absolute. Part two explores the role of subjectivity and interiority in the individual’s relation to God, and part three takes a look at the theme of the (...) “unhappy consciousness,” how its development led to important attacks on theism, and the resources available to theology in countering these attacks. (shrink)

Thomas Reid believed that the human mind is well equipped, from infancy, to acquire knowledge of the external world, with all its objects, persons and events. There are three main faculties that are involved in the acquisition of knowledge: (original) perception, memory, and imagination. It is thought that we cannot understand how exactly perception works, unless we have a good grasp on Reid’s notion of perceptual conception (i.e., of the conception employed in perception). The present paper argues that the same (...) is true of memory, and it offers an answer to the question: what type of conception does it employ? (shrink)

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “Philosophical An(n)ales: Laideur Abject Dégoût...comme une allergie à l’Autre (féminin),” (trans. Bertrand Naivin) in Sur la laideur. [Actes du symposium On Ugliness, organizé par Lars Aagaard- Mogensen au Wassard Elea (Ascea, Italie) en juin 2016], edited by d Bertrand Naivin and Lars Aagaard-Mogensen (Paris: Editions Complicités, 20178, 97-109. ISSN: 9782351201435 -/- -------------------- -/- Laideur Abject Dégoût ... comme une allergie à l’Autre (féminin) Sur l’art et l’esthétique sexués. -/- Pourquoi le dégoût est-il (ou peut-il être considéré) (...) comme sexiste (phallocratique et misogyne): Une allergie à l’Autre. (shrink)

This is the third chapter of my book Transformation of the self, which covers Schleiermacher's reception of Kant on the problem of personal identity.