The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering—channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter—proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In (...) the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a very general de nition of combination of logics by means of the concept of sheaves of logics. We first discuss some properties of this general definition and list some problems, as well as connections to related work. As applications of our abstract setting, we show that the notion of possible-translations semantics, introduced in previous papers by the first author, can be described in categorial terms. Possible-translations semantics constitute illustrative cases, since they provide a new (...) semantical account for abstract logical systems, particularly for many-valued and paraconsistent logics. (shrink)

This paper introduces new logical systems which axiomatize a formal representation of inconsistency (here taken to be equivalent to contradictoriness) in classical logic. We start from an intuitive semantical account of inconsistent data, fixing some basic requirements, and provide two distinct sound and complete axiomatics for such semantics, LFI1 and LFI2, as well as their first-order extensions, LFI1* and LFI2*, depending on which additional requirements are considered. These formal systems are examples of what we dub Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFI) (...) and form part of a much larger family of similar logics. We also show that there are translations from classical and paraconsistent first-order logics into LFI1* and LFI2*, and back. Hence, despite their status as subsystems of classical logic, LFI1* and LFI2* can codify any classical or paraconsistent reasoning. (shrink)

The main objective o f this descriptive paper is to present the general notion of translation between logical systems as studied by the GTAL research group, as well as its main results, questions, problems and indagations. Logical systems here are defined in the most general sense, as sets endowed with consequence relations; translations between logical systems are characterized as maps which preserve consequence relations (that is, as continuous functions between those sets). In this sense, logics together with translations form a (...) bicomplete category of which topological spaces with topological continuous functions constitute a full subcategory. We also describe other uses of translations in providing new semantics for non-classical logics and in investigating duality between them. An important subclass of translations, the conservative translations, which strongly preserve consequence relations, is introduced and studied. Some specific new examples of translations involving modal logics, many-valued logics, para- consistent logics, intuitionistic and classical logics are also described. (shrink)

There are two foundational, but not fully developed, ideas in paraconsistency, namely, the duality between paraconsistent and intuitionistic paradigms, and the introduction of logical operators that express meta-logical notions in the object language. The aim of this paper is to show how these two ideas can be adequately accomplished by the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) and by the Logics of Formal Undeterminedness (LFUs). LFIs recover the validity of the principle of explosion in a paraconsistent scenario, while LFUs recover the (...) validity of the principle of excluded middle in a paracomplete scenario. We introduce definitions of duality between inference rules and connectives that allow comparing rules and connectives that belong to different logics. Two formal systems are studied, the logics mbC and mbD, that display the duality between paraconsistency and paracompleteness as a duality between inference rules added to a common core– in the case studied here, this common core is classical positive propositional logic (CPL + ). The logics mbC and mbD are equipped with recovery operators that restore classical logic for, respectively, consistent and determined propositions. These two logics are then combined obtaining a pair of logics of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness (LFIUs), namely, mbCD and mbCDE. The logic mbCDE exhibits some nice duality properties. Besides, it is simultaneously paraconsistent and paracomplete, and able to recover the principles of excluded middle and explosion at once. The last sections offer an algebraic account for such logics by adapting the swap-structures semantics framework of the LFIs the LFUs. This semantics highlights some subtle aspects of these logics, and allows us to prove decidability by means of finite non-deterministic matrices. (shrink)

This paper briefly outlines some advancements in paraconsistent logics for modelling knowledge representation and reasoning. Emphasis is given on the so-called Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs), a class of paraconsistent logics that formally internalize the very concept(s) of consistency and inconsistency. A couple of specialized systems based on the LFIs will be reviewed, including belief revision and probabilistic reasoning. Potential applications of those systems in the AI area of KRR are tackled by illustrating some examples that emphasizes the importance of (...) a fine-tuned treatment of consistency in modelling reputation systems, preferences, argumentation, and evidence. (shrink)

“Trends in Logic XVI: Consistency, Contradiction, Paraconsistency, and Reasoning - 40 years of CLE” is being organized by the Centre for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science at the State University of Campinas (CLEUnicamp) from September 12th to 15th, 2016, with the auspices of the Brazilian Logic Society, Studia Logica and the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference is intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of CLE, and is centered around the areas of logic, epistemology, philosophy and history of (...) science, while bringing together scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science and other disciplines who have contributed significantly to what Studia Logica is today and to what CLE has achieved in its four decades of existence. It intends to celebrate CLE’s strong influence in Brazil and Latin America and the tradition of investigating formal methods inspired by, and devoted to, philosophical views, as well as philosophical problems approached by means of formal methods. The title of the event commemorates one of the three main areas of CLE, what has been called the “Brazilian school of paraconsistency”, combining such a pluralist view about logic and reasoning. (shrink)

In De Anima II.6, Aristotle divides the objects of perception into three kinds: “special perceptibles" (idia aisthêta) such as colours, sounds and flavours, which can be perceived in their own right by only one sense; “common perceptibles" (koina aisthêta) such as shapes, sizes and movements, which can be perceived in their own right by multiple senses; and “incidental perceptibles,” such as the son of Diares, which can be perceived only “incidentally” (kata sumbebêkos). In this paper, I examine this division of (...) perceptibles and consider what it amounts to. First, I argue that Aristotle’s distinction between perceiving something in its own right (kath' hauto) and perceiving it incidentally marks a causal distinction: what is perceived in its own right causes perception as such, whereas what is perceived incidentally coincides with what is perceived in its own right. Second, I argue that for Aristotle special perceptibles, unlike common perceptibles, belong to homogeneous bodies on account of their chemical composition. Finally, I explain the primacy Aristotle assigns to special perceptibles and his claim that perception of them alone is free from error. I conclude with some brief remarks on Aristotle and the primary/secondary quality distinction. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new solution to the old problem of how best to understand the meaning of the word ‘logos’ in the extant writings of Heraclitus, especially in fragments DK B1, B2 and B50. On the view I defend, Heraclitus was neither using the word in a perfectly ordinary way in these fragments, as some have maintained, nor denoting by it some kind of general principle or law governing change in the cosmos, as many have claimed. Rather, (...) I argue, Heraclitus deliberately traded on the ordinary use of the word in his time (to refer to a written or spoken presentation of things as ‘thus and so’) to denote the world’s constant presentation of itself as ‘thus and so’ to all of us in our experience – a kind of cosmic self-revelation. I show how this captures the sense in which ‘the logos’ is said to be ‘common’ (xunos) and to be the kind of thing most people fail to comprehend even before hearing Heraclitus’ own account, all without detaching Heraclitus’ use of the word from its ordinary contemporary meaning. This interpretation suggests Heraclitus was a thinker more centrally concerned with human (mis)understanding than with speculative cosmology. (shrink)

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

The sense of smell occupies a peculiar intermediate position within Aristotle's theory of sense perception: odours, like colours and sounds, are perceived at a distance through an external medium of air or water; yet in their nature they are intimately related to flavours, the proper objects of taste, which for Aristotle is a form of touch. In this paper, I examine Aristotle's claims about odour and smell, especially in De Anima II.9 and De Sensu 5, to see what light they (...) shed on his theory of sense perception more generally. In the first half, I argue that neither of the two most influential recent ways of understanding Aristotle's theory of perception can adequately account for what he says about the sense of smell. In the second half, I offer my own positive account, considering and resolving various puzzles raised by Aristotle's claims about the nature of odour and its relation to flavour. Finally, I conclude that Aristotle's discussions of odour and smell suggest a plausible and interesting way of understanding the relationship, on his view, between ordinary, material changes in the sense organs and the activation of the capacity to perceive, considered merely as such. (shrink)

Aristotle is history’s most famous and influential proponent of the view that there are exactly five senses. But was he entitled to hold this view, given his other commitments? In particular, was he entitled to treat touch as a single sense, given the diversity of its correlated objects? In this paper I argue that Aristotle wished to individuate touch on the basis of its correlated objects, just as he had the other four senses. I also argue, contrary to what is (...) often supposed, that he was well-placed to do so, given his other commitments and views. (shrink)

In this paper I consider two related issues raised by Aristotle 's treatment of hearing and sounds. The first concerns the kinds of changes Aristotle takes to occur, in both perceptual medium and sense organs, when a perceiver hears a sounding object. The second issue concerns Aristotle 's views on the nature and location of the proper objects of auditory perception. I argue that Aristotle 's views on these topics are not what they have sometimes been taken to be, and (...) that when rightly understood they compare favourably in many respects with leading contemporary accounts. (shrink)

In book 9 of Plato's Republic, Socrates describes the nature and origins of the ‘tyrannical man’, whose soul is said to be ‘like’ a tyrannical city. In this paper, I examine the nature of the ‘government’ that exists within the tyrannical man's soul. I begin by demonstrating the inadequacy of three potentially attractive views sometimes found in the literature on Plato: the view that the tyrannical man's soul is ruled by his ‘lawless’ unnecessary appetites, the view that it is ruled (...) by sexual desire, and the view that it is ruled by a lust for power. I then present my own account. On the view I defend, the tyrannical man's soul is to be understood as ruled by a single, persistent, powerful desire for bodily pleasure: as much as he can get, and however he can get it. Finally, I show how understanding the tyrannical man's soul in the way I recommend helps resolve some commonly expressed concerns about this part of the Republic. I suggest, on this basis, that Plato's procedure in constructing his catalogue o.. (shrink)

In Republic 8–9, Socrates describes four main kinds of vicious people, all of whose souls are “ruled” by an element other than reason, and in some of whom reason is said to be “enslaved.” What role does reason play in such souls? In this paper, I argue, based on Republic 8–9 and related passages, and in contrast to some common alternative views, that for Plato the “enslavement” of reason consists in this: instead of determining for itself what is good, reason (...) is forced to desire and pursue as good a goal determined by the soul’s ruler. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how each of the four main kinds of corrupt person described in Plato's Republic, Books 8-9, first comes to be. Certain passages in these books can give the impression that each person is able to determine, by a kind of rational choice, the overall government of his/her soul. However, I argue, this impression is mistaken. Upon careful examination, the text of books 8 and 9 overwhelmingly supports an alternative interpretation. According to this view, the eventual (...) government of each person’s soul is decided by a struggle for power occurring within the person, among the soul’s parts, the outcome of which is determined by the relative strength and alignment of the competing parties. If this interpretation is correct, Plato adheres more closely to the city-soul analogy in these passages than has sometimes been thought. The ultimate origins of vice in the soul are also seen to lie squarely in upbringing and education, not in a mistaken choice of life. (shrink)

Canada, as one of the three Allied nations collaborating on atomic energy development during the Second World War, had an early start in applying its new knowledge and defining a new profession. Owing to postwar secrecy and distinct national aims for the field, nuclear engineering was shaped uniquely by the Canadian context. Alone among the postwar powers, Canadian exploration of atomic energy eschewed military applications; the occupation emerged within a governmental monopoly; the intellectual content of the discipline was influenced by (...) its early practitioners, administrators, scarce resources, and university niches; and a self-recognized profession coalesced later than did its American and British counterparts. This paper argues that the history of the emergence of Canadian nuclear engineers exemplifies unusually strong shaping of technical expertise by political and cultural context. (shrink)

This article examines the various Liar paradoxes and their near kin, Grelling’s paradox and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem with its self-referential Gödel sentence. It finds the family of paradoxes to be generated by circular definition–whether of statements, predicates, or sentences–a manoeuvre that generates pseudo-statements afflicted with the Liar syndrome: semantic vacuity, semantic incoherence, and predicative catalepsy. Such statements, e.g., the self-referential Liar statement, are meaningless, and hence fail to say anything, a point that invalidates the reasoning on which the various paradoxes (...) rest. The seeming plausibility of the paradoxes is due to the fact that often the sentence used to make the pseudo-statement is ambiguous in that it may also be used to make a genuine statement about the pseudo-statement. Hence, if a formal system is to avoid ambiguity and consequent paradox and contradiction, it must distinguish between the two statements the sentence may be used to make. Gödel’s Theorem presents a further complication in that the self-reference involved is sentential rather than statemental. Nevertheless, on the intended interpretation of the system as a formalization of arithmetic, the self-referential Gödel sentence can only be an ambiguous statement, one that is both a pseudo-statement and its genuine double. Consequently, the conclusions commonly drawn from Gödel’s theorem must be deemed unwarranted. Arithmetic might well be formalized in a proper system that either excludes circular definition or introduces disambiguators. (shrink)

Children are a group of persons whose political interests are systematically underrepresented. Here we will lay out the basic argument for proportionally representing children in political arenas, including some options for how children can best be politically represented. We will support our assumptions: 1) that people’s interests should be proportionally politically represented and that 2) children are people. Then we will discuss the possibly large impact that the enfranchisement of children promises, especially in its relation to the interests of the (...) long-term future. (shrink)

Lexical semantics has a problem. As Allesandro Lenci put it, the problem is that it cannot distinguish semantic from non-semantic relationships within its data. (2008, 2014). The data it relies on are patterns of co-occurrence of lexemes within linguistic corpora. But patterns of co-occurrence can reflect either our knowledge of what the world is like or our knowledge of what words mean -- matters of fact or matters of meaning. -/- In this essay, I develop a semantic theory which draws (...) this distinction in a way which makes it discernible in lexical semantics and cognitive science research. In doing so, this theory unifies truth-functional and structuralist approaches to semantics, and provides an integrated explanation of meaning and reference. -/- I base this semantic theory on linguistic dispositions to pair words with words, and to pair words with things, both based on learned patterns of association. These dispositions manifest themselves in verbal behavior, and (in Part 2) I propose a new neurophysical model to account for these dispositions which underlie both the intensional and extensional patterns in that behavior. (shrink)

This essay explores the nature of the most rudimentary form of empathy, interpersonal affective echoing, and attempts to give a cogent assessment of the roles it may play in human interactions. As an investigative background, it briefly sketches phenomenological findings with respect to feelings, to non-linguistic cognition, and to the analogical apperception of others. It then offers a phenomenological account of the basic structures of the experience of echoing another person’s feelings in a face-to-face situation. It also notes how echoing (...) differs from analogical apperception (while presupposing the latter), as well as from having one’s usual feelings and emotions. The relationship of echoing to sharing, caring, and morality is also briefly discussed. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the roles of ether and electrons in relativity theory. One of the most radical moves made by Albert Einstein was to dismiss the ether from electrodynamics. His fellow physicists felt challenged by Einstein’s view, and they came up with a variety of responses, ranging from enthusiastic approval, to dismissive rejection. Among the naysayers were the electron theorists, who were unanimous in their affirmation of the ether, even if they agreed with other aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity. (...) The eventual success of the latter theory (circa 1911) owed much to Hermann Minkowski’s idea of four-dimensional spacetime, which was portrayed as a conceptual substitute of sorts for the ether. (shrink)

The two greatest mathematicians of the early twentieth century, David Hilbert and Henri Poincaré transformed the mathematics of their time. Their personal interaction was infrequent, until Hilbert invited Poincaré to deliver the first Wolfskehl Lectures in Göttingen in the spring of 1909. A correspondence ensued, which fixed the content and timing of the lecture series. A close reading of the exchange throws light on what Hilbert wanted Poincaré to talk about, and on what Poincaré wanted to present to Hilbert and (...) his colleagues. To answer the latter question, reference is made to the published version of Poincaré’s six talks, with a focus on two of them, concerning the propagation of Hertzian waves, and the theory of relativity. (shrink)

This article is a sequel to ‘The Liar Syndrome’. It answers in detail the various criticisms of the latter expressed by Roy T. Cook in his article, ‘Curing the Liar Syndrome’, appearing in SATS/Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 3 (2): 126-141 (2002).

Albert Einstein's bold assertion of the form-invariance of the equation of a spherical light wave with respect to inertial frames of reference became, in the space of six years, the preferred foundation of his theory of relativity. Early on, however, Einstein's universal light-sphere invariance was challenged on epistemological grounds by Henri Poincaré, who promoted an alternative demonstration of the foundations of relativity theory based on the notion of a light-ellipsoid. Drawing in part on archival sources, this paper shows how an (...) informal, international group of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, including Einstein, Paul Langevin, Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Ebenezer Cunningham, Harry Bateman, Otto Berg, Max Planck, Max Laue, A. A. Robb, and Ludwig Silberstein, employed figures of light during the formative years of relativity theory in their discovery of the salient features of the relativistic worldview. (shrink)

In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c ) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal consciousness by drawing on the resources of state-based behavioral life history theory. By (...) comparing the different life histories of gastropods and arthropods, we will be able to make better sense of the possible origins of consciousness and its function for organisms in their natural environments. (shrink)

This book attempts to advance Donald Griffin's vision of the "final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution" by developing a philosophy for the science of animal consciousness. It advocates a Darwinian bottom-up approach that treats consciousness as a complex, evolved, and multidimensional phenomenon in nature rather than a mysterious all-or-nothing property immune to the tools of science and restricted to a single species. -/- The so-called emergence of a science of consciousness in the 1990s has at best been a science (...) of human consciousness. This book aims to advance a true Darwinian science of consciousness in which its evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity are moved from the field’s periphery to its very centre, thus enabling us to integrate consciousness into an evolutionary view of life. Accordingly, this book has two objectives: (i) to argue for the need and possibility of an evolutionary bottom-up approach that addresses the problem of consciousness in terms of the evolutionary origins of a new ecological lifestyle that made consciousness worth having and (ii) to articulate a thesis and beginnings of a theory of the place of consciousness as a complex evolved phenomenon in nature that can help us to answer the question of what it is like to be a bat, an octopus, or a crow. -/- A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in advancing our understanding of animal minds as well as anyone with a keen interest in how we can develop a science of animal consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper we present a philosophical motivation for the logics of formal inconsistency, a family of paraconsistent logics whose distinctive feature is that of having resources for expressing the notion of consistency within the object language in such a way that consistency may be logically independent of non-contradiction. We defend the view according to which logics of formal inconsistency may be interpreted as theories of logical consequence of an epistemological character. We also argue that in order to philosophically justify (...) paraconsistency there is no need to endorse dialetheism, the thesis that there are true contradictions. Furthermore, we show that mbC, a logic of formal inconsistency based on classical logic, may be enhanced in order to express the basic ideas of an intuitive interpretation of contradictions as conflicting evidence. (shrink)

Since Boorse [Philos Sci 44(4):542–573, 1977] published his paper “Health as a theoretical concept” one of the most lively debates within philosophy of medicine has been on the question of whether health and disease are in some sense ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘value-laden’. Due to the apparent ‘failure’ of pure naturalist, constructivist, or normativist accounts, much in the recent literature has appealed to more conciliatory approaches or so-called ‘hybrid accounts’ of health and disease. A recent paper by Matthewson (...) and Griffiths [J Med Philos 42(4):447–466, 2017], however, may bear the seeds for the revival of purely naturalist approach to health and disease. In this paper, I defend their idea of Biological Normativity against recent criticism by Schwartz [J Med Philos Forum Bioethics Philos Med 42(4):485–502, 2017] and hope to help it flower into a revival of naturalist approaches in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

Are living organisms--as Descartes argued--just machines? Or is the nature of life such that it can never be fully explained by mechanistic models? In this thought-provoking and controversial book, eminent geophysicist Walter M. Elsasser argues that the behavior of living organisms cannot be reduced to physico-chemical causality. Suggesting that molecular biology today is at the same point as Newtonian physics on the eve of the quantum revolution, Elsasser lays the foundation for a theoretical biology that points the way toward (...) a natural philosophy of organic life. Explicitly repudiating "vitalism" (the notion that the laws of nature need to be modified when applied to living organisms), Elsasser argues instead that the structural complexity of even a single living cell is "transcomputational"--that is, beyond the power of any imaginable system to compute. Beginning from this insight, Elsasser leads the reader through a step-by-step process that ultimately arrives at the conclusion that living and non-living matter are separated by "a no-man's land of irrationality." Trained in Germany as a physicist, Elsasser first pondered the implications of quantum mechanics for biology as early as 1951. The more closely he studied the inherent complexity of life, the more skeptical he became of the reductionist view of organisms as tiny machines. "An organism," he concluded, "is a source of causal chains which cannot be traced beyond a terminal point because they are lost in the unfathomable complexity of the organism." Like the physicist who works within the bounds of an unfathomable universe, Elsasser argues, the biologist must seek answers within a system that is no less unfathomable. (shrink)

Atomic energy developed from 1940 as a subject shrouded in secrecy. Identified successively as a crucial element in military strategy, national status and export aspirations, the research and development of atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were nurtured at isolated installations. Like monastic orders, new national laboratories managed their specialist workers in occupational environments that were simultaneously cosseted and constrained, defining regional variants of a new state-managed discipline: reactor technology. This paper discusses the significance of security in defining the new subject in (...) the USA, UK and Canada – wartime allies with similar political traditions but distinct trajectories in this field during the Cold War. The intellectual borders and content of the subject developed differently in each country, shaped under the umbrella of secrecy by disparate clusters of expertise, industrial traditions, and national goals. The nascent cadre was contained until the mid 1950s by classified publications and state-sponsored specialist courses. The early context of high security filtered its members and capped enduringly both their professional aspirations and public engagement. (shrink)

In Religious Experience, Wayne Proudfoot argued that a tout court rejection of reductionism in accounts of religious experience was not viable. According to Proudfoot, it’s possible to distinguish between an illegitimate practice of descriptive reductionism and the legitimate practice of explanatory reductionism. The failure to distinguish between these two forms of reductionism resulted in a protective strategy, or an attempt to protect religious experience from the reach of scientific explanation. Among the theorists whom he accused of deploying this illegitimate strategy (...) Proudfoot included William James and his work in The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this article, I argue that while James does occasionally deploy a protective strategy in Varieties, this is not the only nor most important method of treating religious experience James developed. Implicit in his rejection of medical materialism, James not only deploys the protective strategy Proudfoot criticizes, but the pragmatic method with which he treats all claims. I argue that James’s pragmatic method leads to what James called noetic pluralism, or the view that there is no privileged knowledge practice, but a plurality of knowledge practices, and that this method puts pressure on the explanatory reductionist, who is implicitly committed to noetic monism. (shrink)

As democracias ocidentais contemporâneas caracterizam-se pelo consenso a respeito da defesa dos direitos individuais fundamentais. O princípio da igualdade, tanto em sua formulação jurídica quanto em sua expressão social, tem por objetivo fazer com que fatores como poder econômico, influência política, origem familiar e preferências pessoais não possam promover desigualdades que não possuem justificativa moral. O princípio da liberdade tem por objetivo garantir espaço para a autonomia e a livre expressão individual. O conflito entre esses dois princípios, como se sabe, (...) define o contexto tanto das conquistas e dos impasses dos regimes democráticos quanto o contexto do debate filosófico a respeito da fundamentação da democracia. -/- Minha tese é a de que a instauração do individualismo nas democracias ocidentais é o resultado de um longo processo de desenvolvimento histórico que estabeleceu a igualdade – e não a liberdade – como o princípio organizador fundamental da ordem social democrática. Essa reavaliação permite superar os impasses gerados por teorias que colocam a autonomia e a racionalidade como fundamento das sociedades democráticas, inflacionando, assim, o conceito de liberdade, restringindo a política a processos de deliberação que deveriam se aproximar de condições idealizadas que não encontram correspondência na prática social e, quase sempre, pressupondo definições para o que seria a natureza humana, a escolha racional ou uma verdadeira autenticidade ou esclarecimento que permitiria escapar de todos os tipos de determinações heterônomas. -/- Para indicar em que sentido proponho essa reavaliação, inicio retomando a obra de Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859). Proveniente de uma família aristocrata em plena época pós-revolucionária na França, Tocqueville analisa a formação dos Estados Unidos da América mostrando que, na instauração da democracia americana, o ideal de igualdade ocupa um lugar anterior ao ideal de liberdade não só historicamente, mas também na justificação e na prática do sistema democrático. Subverte-se, assim, tanto a leitura da modernidade enquanto tentativa de efetivar conjuntamente os ideais de igualdade e liberdade, quanto a leitura de que o traço essencial da modernidade seria a instauração de uma racionalidade que acabou tornando-se instrumental ou técnica. Na primeira metade do século XIX, com uma interpretação que evita o unilateralismo, Tocqueville constata que a característica principal das democracias é o fato de que os homens, colocados em situação de igualdade, isolados e entregues a si mesmos, são indivíduos frágeis que, desprovidos de tradições, só possuem a razão para tentar justificar as leis que devem se auto-impor. -/- Essa leitura tocquevilleana negativa da democracia moderna permite compreender fenômenos contemporâneos aparentemente tão incompatíveis quanto, por exemplo, o isolamento social e o amplo consenso em relação aos direitos humanos ou as instituições jurídicas como instância última de mediação dos conflitos sociais e a falência praticamente completa da lei e de quaisquer instrumentos de poder para lidar com questões humanas e, mais recentemente, tecnológicas. -/- O individualismo democrático é, fundamentalmente, a consequência da efetivação cada vez maior do ideal moderno de igualdade. A filosofia política precisa levar a sério o fato de que, ao mesmo tempo em que corrói o ideal de uma racionalidade autofundante, essa condição democrática abre espaço, como nunca antes na história humana, para a responsabilidade individual. Essa responsabilidade é que nos permite, enquanto seres limitados e contingentes, chegar mais perto do ideal moderno de autonomia e autodeterminação. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a recent paper by Bobier and Omelianchuk in which they argue that the critics of Giubilini and Minerva’s defence of infanticide fail to adequately justify a moral difference at birth. They argue that such arguments would lead to an intuitively less plausible position: that late-term abortions are permissible, thus creating a dilemma for those who seek to argue that birth matters. I argue that the only way to resolve this dilemma, is to bite the (...) naturalist bullet and accept that the intuitively plausible idea that birth constitutes a morally relevant event is simply mistaken and biologically misinformed. (shrink)

The conditions animals experience during the early developmental stages of their lives can have critical ongoing effects on their future health, welfare, and proper development. In this paper we draw on evolutionary theory to improve our understanding of the processes of developmental programming, particularly Predictive Adaptive Responses (PAR) that serve to match offspring phenotype with predicted future environmental conditions. When these predictions fail, a mismatch occurs between offspring phenotype and the environment, which can have long-lasting health and welfare effects. Examples (...) include metabolic diseases resulting from maternal nutrition and behavioral changes from maternal stress. An understanding of these processes and their evolutionary origins will help in identifying and providing appropriate developmental conditions to optimize offspring welfare. This serves as an example of the benefits of using evolutionary thinking within veterinary science and we suggest that in the same way that evolutionary medicine has helped our understanding of human health, the implementation of evolutionary veterinary science (EvoVetSci) could be a useful way forward for research in animal health and welfare. (shrink)

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

Imagine a world where everyone is healthy, intelligent, long living and happy. Intuitively this seems wonderful albeit unrealistic. However, recent scienti c breakthroughs in genetic engineering, namely CRISPR/Cas bring the question into public discourse, how the genetic enhancement of humans should be evaluated morally. In 2001, when preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilisation (IVF), enabled parents to select between multiple embryos, Julian Savulescu introduced the principle of procreative bene cence (PPB), stating that parents have the obligations to choose (...) the child that is expected to have the best life. In this paper I argue that accepting the PPB and the consequentialist principle (CP) that two acts with the same consequences are morally on par, commits one to accepting the parental obligation of genetically enhancing one's children. (shrink)

The goal of this programmatic paper is to highlight a close connection between the core problem in the philosophy of medicine, i.e. the concept of health, and the core problem of the philosophy of mind, i.e. the concept of consciousness. I show when we look at these phenomena together, taking the evolutionary perspective of modern state-based behavioural and life-history theory used as the teleonomic tool to Darwinize the agent- and subject-side of organisms, we will be in a better position to (...) make sense of them both as natural phenomena. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends an account of model-based science that I dub model pluralism. I argue that despite a growing awareness in the philosophy of science literature of the multiplicity, diversity, and richness of models and modeling practices, more radical conclusions follow from this recognition than have previously been inferred. Going against the tendency within the literature to generalize from single models, I explicate and defend the following two core theses: any successful analysis of models must target sets of (...) models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history and for almost any aspect x of phenomenon y, scientists require multiple models to achieve scientific goal z. (shrink)

Animal welfare has a long history of disregard. While in recent decades the study of animal welfare has become a scientific discipline of its own, the difficulty of measuring animal welfare can still be vastly underestimated. There are three primary theories, or perspectives, on animal welfare - biological functioning, natural living and affective state. These come with their own diverse methods of measurement, each providing a limited perspective on an aspect of welfare. This paper describes a perspectival pluralist account of (...) animal welfare, in which all three theoretical perspectives and their multiple measures are necessary to understand this complex phenomenon and provide a full picture of animal welfare. This in turn will offer us a better understanding of perspectivism and pluralism itself. (shrink)

Do the hard problem of consciousness and the simulation argument potentially resolve each other? Here we will argue for four possible views: that consciousness may be possible only (a) outside of, (b) inside and/or outside of, (c) inside of, or (d) interfacing with simulations. The first two of these views have been developed at length by David Chalmers and are used as jumping off points to introduce and develop the latter two views here. If any one of these views could (...) be proven true, it would simultaneously both support a kind of account of properties of consciousness and also provide a kind of sign as to whether or not we are indeed living in the kind of immersive computer simulation that Nick Bostrom hypothesizes about. However, given that none of these views are proven true but all are plausible, these considerations should tend to neutralize our credence that we are either simulated or not simulated, by themselves giving us no sign one way or the other. (shrink)

Identification of factors that predict recurrent antisocial behavior is integral to the social sciences, criminal justice procedures, and the effective treatment of high-risk individuals. Here we show that error-related brain activity elicited during performance of an in- hibitory task prospectively predicted subsequent rearrest among adult offenders within 4 y of release (N =96). The odds that an offender with relatively low anterior cingulate activity would be rearrested were approximately double that of an offender with high activity in this region, holding (...) constant other observed risk factors. These results suggest a potential neurocognitive biomarker for persistent antisocial behavior. (shrink)

Abstract: Of the five perspectives set forth in this essay, four of them specify obstacles that block experiential understandings of emotions. The obstacles in one way and another subvert the living body, whether presenting it as a mere face or as an ahistorical adult body, as an embodied phenomenon or as a brain unattached to a whole-body nervous system. Such accounts bypass the affective dynamics that move through bodies and move them to move. Being true to the truths of experience, (...) the fifth perspective, requires recognition of our infancy and even of our prenatal lives, both of which are tethered to developmental movement. It furthermore requires recognition of affective realties as subject-world relationships and recognition of the dynamic congruency of emotions and movement. In the end, the perspectives lead us to inquire about “the things themselves.” Keywords: Animate · Dynamic · Brain · Embodied · Infancy. (shrink)

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be sick? These two questions are much closer to one another than has hitherto been acknowledged. Indeed, both raise a number of related, albeit very complex, philosophical problems. In recent years, the phenomenology of health and disease has become a major topic in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine, owing much to the work of Havi Carel (2007, 2011, 2018). Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to (...) the phenomenology of animal health and suffering. This omission shall be remedied here, laying the groundwork for the phenomenological evaluation of animal health and suffering. (shrink)