Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i (...) William James”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

Dos místicos relativamente contemporáneos: Etty Hillesum y Benjamín González Buelta; dos estilos, dos contextos y una coincidencia establecida desde sus experiencias espirituales, en profunda conexión con la realidad, en medio de la vida y sus desafíos. Hillesum no habla propiamente de la experiencia mística, sin embargo, su proceso personal existencial en el duro contexto de guerra que le tocó vivir, la condujo a descubrirse profundamente habitada. Su experiencia de Dios le hizo posible comprender y gestionar el dolor en medio de (...) la guerra, así como la necesidad de ‘hacerse bálsamo sobre las heridas’ de sus hermanos judíos. Etty es una mística de ojos abiertos. Benjamín González Buelta ha profundizado en la comprensión de la mística, describiéndola y analizándola desde la experiencia de Dios en el contexto latinoamericano. Su reflexión permite hoy leer a Etty Hillesum desde la perspectiva del místico de ojos abiertos. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue against the received view among Unamuno scholars that Miguel de Unamuno was defending a sort of pragmatic argument for religious faith and that his notion of religious faith as “querer creer” (“wanting to believe”) is to be identified with William James’s “the will to believe”. As I will show in this paper, one of the aspects that makes Unamuno’s reasoning philosophically relevant is his ability to formulate a non-pragmatist defense of religious (...) faith without a prior commitment to the truth of any religious or theological statement and grounded in our longing for an endless existence through God’s Salvation. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

It has been argued that non-relativistic quantum mechanics is the best hunting ground for genuine examples of metaphysical indeterminacy. Approaches to metaphysical indeterminacy can be divided into two families: meta-level and object-level accounts. It has been shown :27–245, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400903097786; Skow in Philosophical Quarterly 60:851–858, 2010) that the most popular version of the meta-level accounts, namely the metaphysical supervaluationism proposed by Barnes and Williams, fails to deal with quantum indeterminacy. Such a fact has been taken by many as a challenge (...) to adapt supervaluationism to quantum cases. In this paper, I will focus on the very last of these attempts, i.e. the situation semantics account proposed by Darby and Pickup. After having shown where quantum indeterminacy arises and having surveyed the assumptions endorsed by the participants of the debate, I turn to Darby and Pickup’s proposal. I argue that, despite the machinery introduced, their account still fails to account for quantum indeterminacy. After considering some possible counterarguments, I suggest in the conclusion that one can plausibly extend the argument to those meta-level approaches that treat quantum indeterminacy as worldly indecision. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to explain and analyze the debate between W. K. Clifford ("The Ethics of Belief", 1877) and William James ("The Will to Believe", 1896). Given that the main assumption shared by Clifford and James in this debate is doxastic voluntarism –i.e., the claim that we can, at least in some occasions, willingly decide what to believe–, I will explain the arguments offered by Bernard Williams in his “Deciding to Believe” (1973) against doxastic voluntarism. (...) Finally, I will explain what happens with the debate between Clifford and James once we accept Bernard Williams’s arguments and refuse to accept doxastic voluntarism. (shrink)

El objetivo de este escrito es elucidar el contenido del argumento presentado por el filósofo norteamericano William James (1842-1910) en su “Is Life Worthliving?” [“¿Merece la vida ser vivida?”], conferencia pronunciada el año 1895 en la Harvard Young Men's Christian Association y publicada unos años más tarde, en 1897, en la compilación titulada The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy [La voluntad de creer y otros ensayos en filosofía popular]. Se trata de un argumento de tipo (...) moral cuyo objetivo es defender la obligación moral de la fe religiosa y que, aunque presupone y se construye sobre la supuesta adecuación práctica de la existencia de Dios, es independiente del argumento pragmático defendido en su “The Will to Believe” [“La voluntad de creer”]. (shrink)

In this paper I comment on the debate between W. K. Clifford ("The Ethics of Belief", 1877) and William James ("The Will to Believe", 1896). I argue that both authors assume doxastic voluntarism -i.e., the claim that we can, at least in some occasions, willingly decide what to believe- and I argue that doxastic voluntarism is unacceptable.

In a paper published recently in this journal, Buben attempted to show the philosophical relevance of Unamuno’s philosophical works when addressing the current debate on whether an endless existence would be something desirable—a debate which is nowadays commonly known as “The Makropulos Debate” since it was Bernard Williams’s “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” that aroused interest in this question among contemporary analytic philosophers. Unfortunately, Buben’s paper fails to capture or even outline the reasoning behind Unamuno’s claim (...) that we all naturally long for an endless existence —and consequently it also fails to clarify how Unamuno’s position may contribute to the current philosophical debate on the question as to whether an endless existence would be something desirable. In this paper I will point out that Unamuno’s affirmation that we all, without exception, long for an endless existence is grounded in his metaphysical claim that the most basic and natural inclination of all singular things is to increase their own singularity. In doing so, I will also be showing that Unamuno’s proposal is not philosophically relevant when addressing the current debate on the question as to whether living an endless existence would be something desirable. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer una exposición sistemática de la propuesta filosófica de Joaquim Xirau (Figueras, 1895 – Ciudad de México, 1946), señalando así su interés filosófico al tiempo que se vinculan sus dos grandes obras ensayísticas de madurez, Amor y mundo (1940) y Lo fugaz y lo eterno (1942).

Following Galileo's trial of 1633, the Jesuit theologian Melchior Inchofer, author of the most negative reports used by the Roman Inquisition against Galileo, repudiated the Copernicans for the ‘heresy’ of the soul of the world (anima mundi), in an unpublished manuscript. I show that Inchofer's arguments applied far more to the beliefs of Giordano Bruno than to those of Galileo. Since antiquity, various Christian authorities had repudiated several beliefs about the anima mundi as ‘heretical’, hence I review their critiques against (...) Pythagoras, Origen, and Peter Abelard, for allegedly asserting animistic beliefs about the Earth, or a universal spirit, or that souls move the heavenly bodies. Still, in the Renaissance such beliefs were defended by several advocates of Copernicus, including Bruno, William Gilbert, Johannes Kepler, and Philips Lansbergen, who all claimed that Earth moves because it has a soul. By comparing Inchofer's works and some of the Roman Inquisition's earlier censures against Bruno, I argue that the repudiation by many prominent Catholic theologians of pagan notions of the anima mundi as heretical contributed partly to the later theological opposition to the Copernicans. (shrink)

The articles in the special issue "Experience in natural philosophy and medicine" discuss the roles and notions of experience in the works of a range of early modern authors, including Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, the Dutch atomist David Gorlaeus, William Harvey, and Christian Wolff. The articles extend the evidential basis on which we can rely to identify trends, changes and continuities in the roles and notions of experience in the period of the Scientific Revolution. They shed light on the (...) longstanding influence of traditional views and the emergence of early modern experimental philosophy. This introduction highlights the benefits of considering medicine in connection with natural philosophy when studying early modern views on experience and summarizes the articles. (shrink)

Cockayne and Warman recently argued that William James’s argument as stated in his lecture ‘The Will to Believe’ can be reconstructed so as to justify a ‘passionately caused atheism.’ I will argue that this reading misses the important point of James’s argument, which is the attempt to show that our initial atheistic passional tendencies become untenable once we are aware of the beneficial consequences we might obtain from forming the belief that God exists.

Os escritos políticos de Ockham giram ao redor da pergunta a respeito do poder do papa. Como esse poder foi concedido por Cristo, deve-se consultar a Sagrada Escritura para saber o que ela diz a respeito. Mas a exegese bíblica cabe aos teólogos e não aos juristas. Na qualidade de teólogo Ockham afirma que os poderes do papa situam-se na ordem espiritual e mesmo nessa ordem ele não é ilimitado, pois se atém ao que foi concedido expressamente por Cristo e (...) deve respeitar a liberdade dos fiéis. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Guilherme de Ockham. Exegese bíblica. Plenitude do poder. Poder. Liberdade. ABSTRACT The political writings of Ockham circle around the question regarding the power of the pope. As such power was conceded by Christ, one must consult the Holy Bible to know what It tells about such power. However, biblical exegesis belongs to the theologians, not to jurists. As a theologian, Ockham states that the powers of the pope are set in the spiritual order, and even in such an order they are not without limits, for they are conformed to what was expressly conceded by Christ and must respect the liberty of the followers. KEY WORDS – William of Ockham. Biblical exegesis. Plentitude of power. Power. Liberty. (shrink)

Os escritos políticos de Ockham giram ao redor da pergunta a respeito do poder do papa. Como esse poder foi concedido por Cristo, deve-se consultar a Sagrada Escritura para saber o que ela diz a respeito. Mas a exegese bíblica cabe aos teólogos e não aos juristas. Na qualidade de teólogo Ockham afirma que os poderes do papa situam-se na ordem espiritual e mesmo nessa ordem ele não é ilimitado, pois se atém ao que foi concedido expressamente por Cristo e (...) deve respeitar a liberdade dos fiéis. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Guilherme de Ockham. Exegese bíblica. Plenitude do poder. Poder. Liberdade. ABSTRACT The political writings of Ockham circle around the question regarding the power of the pope. As such power was conceded by Christ, one must consult the Holy Bible to know what It tells about such power. However, biblical exegesis belongs to the theologians, not to jurists. As a theologian, Ockham states that the powers of the pope are set in the spiritual order, and even in such an order they are not without limits, for they are conformed to what was expressly conceded by Christ and must respect the liberty of the followers. KEY WORDS – William of Ockham. Biblical exegesis. Plentitude of power. Power. Liberty. (shrink)

A hopeless individual is more vulnerable and is threatened with indifference, meaninglessness, anxiety, and despair. Are there symptoms of this in the West? Is it an individual phenomenon or has it been historically and culturally transmitted? This book analyzes how hope contributes to forming a healthy and responsible identity. But, what hop...

According to Alberto Coffa in The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap, Kant’s account of mathematical judgment is built on a ‘semantic swamp’. Kant’s primitive semantics led him to appeal to pure intuition in an attempt to explain mathematical necessity. The appeal to pure intuition was, on Coffa’s line, a blunder from which philosophy was forced to spend the next 150 years trying to recover. This dismal assessment of Kant’s contributions to the evolution of accounts of mathematical necessity is (...) fundamentally backward-looking. Coffa’s account of how semantic theories of the a priori evolved out of Kant’s doctrine of pure intuition rightly emphasizes those developments, both scientific and philosophical, that collectively served to undermine the plausibility of Kant’s account. What is missing from Coffa’s story, apart from any recognition of Kant’s semantic innovations, is an attempt to appreciate Kant’s philosophical context and the distinctive perspective from which Kant viewed issues in the philosophy of mathematics. When Kant’s perspective and context are brought out, he can not only be seen to have made a genuinely progressive contribution to the development of accounts of mathematical necessity, but also to be relevant to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mathematics in underappreciated ways. (shrink)

According to Alberto Coffa in The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap, Kant’s account of mathematical judgment is built on a ‘semantic swamp’. Kant’s primitive semantics led him to appeal to pure intuition in an attempt to explain mathematical necessity. The appeal to pure intuition was, on Coffa’s line, a blunder from which philosophy was forced to spend the next 150 years trying to recover. This dismal assessment of Kant’s contributions to the evolution of accounts of mathematical necessity is (...) fundamentally backward-looking. Coffa’s account of how semantic theories of the a priori evolved out of Kant’s doctrine of pure intuition rightly emphasizes those developments, both scientific and philosophical, that collectively served to undermine the plausibility of Kant’s account. What is missing from Coffa’s story, apart from any recognition of Kant’s semantic innovations, is an attempt to appreciate Kant’s philosophical context and the distinctive perspective from which Kant viewed issues in the philosophy of mathematics. When Kant’s perspective and context are brought out, he can not only be seen to have made a genuinely progressive contribution to the development of accounts of mathematical necessity, but also to be relevant to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mathematics in underappreciated ways. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

مداخلة مترجمة عن الفرنسية للفيلسوف الفرنسي جيل دولوز.

Cultural evolution studies are characterized by the notion that culture evolves accordingly to broadly Darwinian principles. Yet how far the analogy between cultural and genetic evolution should be pushed is open to debate. Here, we examine a recent disagreement that concerns the extent to which cultural transmission should be considered a preservative mechanism allowing selection among different variants, or a transformative process in which individuals recreate variants each time they are transmitted. The latter is associated with the notion of “cultural (...) attraction”. This issue has generated much misunderstanding and confusion. We first clarify the respective positions, noting that there is in fact no substantive incompatibility between cultural attraction and standard cultural evolution approaches, beyond a difference in focus. Whether cultural transmission should be considered a preservative or reconstructive process is ultimately an empirical question, and we examine how both preservative and reconstructive cultural transmission has been studied in recent experimental research in cultural evolution. Finally, we discuss how the relative importance of preservative and reconstructive processes may depend on the granularity of analysis and the domain being studied. (shrink)

The first half of this article follows Mario Bunge’s early realist moves, his efforts to articulate the achievements of theoretical physics as gains in the quest for objective truth and understanding, particularly in the context of the fights against the idealist and subjectivist interpretations of quantum mechanics that, at least until the mid-1970s, prevailed in physics. Bunge’s answers to the problems of quantum mechanics provide a good angle for understanding how his realist positions grew on the “battlefield.” The second half (...) discusses Bunge’s general conception of the scientific realist stance and confronts it with some current approaches to realism in the mainstream literature. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the concept of love —understood in the broad and Christian-inspired sense of love as agape-charis love— in relation to the animes Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. I first comment on the character of Piccolo —and how his friendship with Son Gohan— leads to him losing all his original villainous traits. I argue that the evolution of the character of Piccolo through his friendship with Son Gohan illustrates the philosophical claim that a (...) loving and giving of oneself to the other —far from being a sign of weakness— is a courageous and self-affirming exercise. The result may move the individual to an inner transformative experience that leads to the enjoyment of a renewed and authentic life that is worth living. I then argue that Son Goku’s respectful attitude towards his opponents is ultimately a loving attitude. Last, I argue that it is the inspiring and loving example of Son Goku that ultimately explains why characters such as Vegeta —who are at first presented as villains— end up losing their villainous traits after fighting against Son Goku. (shrink)

Sections include: experiments and generalised causal inference; statistical conclusion validity and internal validity; construct validity and external validity; quasi-experimental designs that either lack a control group or lack pretest observations on the outcome; quasi-experimental designs that use both control groups and pretests; quasi-experiments: interrupted time-series designs; regresssion discontinuity designs; randomised experiments: rationale, designs, and conditions conducive to doing them; practical problems 1: ethics, participation recruitment and random assignment; practical problems 2: treatment implementation and attrition; generalised causal inference: a grounded theory; (...) generalised causal inference: methods for single studies; generalised causal inference: methods for multiple studies; a critical assessment of our assumptions. (shrink)

In this foundational work in contemporary political theory, William Connolly makes a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the relationship between ...

Introduction: Jai Mata Di (praise the mother goddess) -- Sutra 1: Samadhi, or yogic ecstasy -- Sutra 2: realization, or the practice of yoga -- Sutra 3: the Siddhis, or the magical powers -- Sutra 4: absolute freedom.

Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the possibilities (...) of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places. Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

Second, there is a form of ampliative inference that has come to be called ‘inference to the best explanation,’ or more briefly ‘explanatory inference.’ Roughly: From the fact that a certain hypothesis would explain the data at hand better than any other available hypothesis, we infer with some degree of confidence that that leading hypothesis is correct. There is no question but that this inference is often performed. Arguably, every human being performs it many times in a day, perhaps without (...) letup. (shrink)

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as `at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)'. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the $\langle moment, history\rangle$ semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (3-modal) (...) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames. (shrink)

In fourteen scholarly yet delightfully readable essays, Ober solves some ancient mysteries and reveals the secret kinks and passions of famous and obscure historical figures.

Most of the existing studies on Bourdieu and the digital regards the social and class distinctions in the use of digital technologies, thus presupposing a certain transparency of technologies themselves. Our proposal is to refer to this attitude as “Bourdieu outside the digital.” Yet in this paper, another perspective called “Bourdieu inside the digital” is developed, which moves the focus on the effects of some emerging technologies on social distinctions and discrimination. The main hypothesis is that algorithms of machine learning (...) are producers and reproducers of habitus. Although their results present a greater granularity with respect to the standard techniques of the past, these algorithms still reduce individuals to categories, general trends, classes, and behaviors. Such a reduction has flattening effects on the individuals’ self-understanding, especially in terms of identity and interaction with the social world. This is the phenomenon described in the article as the “personalization without personality,” whose consequences are both existential and social-political. This idea will be illustrated through qualitative and comparative analysis between the correspondence analysis and the multiple correspondence analysis used by Bourdieu in his works and some of those techniques that are performed today in big data analytics. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, written by Jim Uhls, and first released in the fall of 1999. The movie is based on the homonym novel by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1996. I will argue that Fight Club is to be understood in primarily existentialist, nonethical, and nonevidential terms, showing the struggle felt by each and every one of us to find a convincing answer to the question of what (if (...) anything) counts as an authentic life that is worth living. Moreover, I will argue that the movie does not merely illustrate the struggle and the existential angst it engenders; it also advances, if not strictly speaking a theoretical answer grounded in an indisputable philosophical reasoning, then at least a practical way to face it. It is only after positively endorsing the claim that absolutely nothing (whatever it may be) externally imposed on a person can give their life ultimate meaning that a person is free to engage in a conscious, laborious, and exhausting attempt at self-affirmation, a full and positive endorsement of one’s own authenticity. (shrink)