Subject of constant reflections in other works and published studies, the theme of memory and its relations between past and present always provokes renewed perspectives regarding the readings of the ancient texts in our academic discussions. Analyzing the present time of a community behind an ancient document is likewise always challenging. However, in the present document (Mark’s Gospel), when analyzed in the light of heuristic concepts - such as memory, for example - there are very effective indications in proposing new (...) perceptions about the constant interaction between past memories and memory constructions in present times (of the ancient document that has been analysed). New horizons open up in the field of study of the texts that make up the New Testament when dialogues with psychology and research on memory. In this sense, this work applies the postulate of D.L. Schacter on the adaptations that are made in the memories of the past so that they meet the needs of the present to the gospel of Mark. It follows that the author of the said gospel rewrote the traditions received so that they answered questions that were made to them in the present. (shrink)

Este trabalho pretende discutir que os teólogos alemães, comprometidos com a ideologia nazista, inclusive através do juramento de lealdade que fizeram ao Führer, não optaram pelo “silêncio virtual” nem demonstraram “um interesse limitado” pelo Jesus histórico. Muito pelo contrário, eles não apenas potencializaram o “retrato” de Jesus como sendo um ariano, como também o popularizaram, por meio de seus escritos, de suas homilias e de suas experiências cotidianas. Deve-se ter atenção aqui: a consolidação desse novo retrato é anterior ao advento (...) de Hitler, como se pode ler em um vasto conjunto de obras, tais como, por exemplo, as de Ernst Renan, Theodor Keim e Houston Stewart Chamberlain. No entanto, é com a ascenção de Hitler ao poder que a leitura do Jesus ariano ganhou uma dimensão até então não imaginada, já que ela culmina na efetiva colaboração de um expressivo número de teólogos cristãos com a política assassina do Estado nazista, culminando no holocausto judaico. (shrink)

Over 40 years of research have shown that traumatic brain injury affects brain volume. However, technical and practical limitations made it difficult to detect brain volume abnormalities in patients suffering from chronic effects of mild or moderate traumatic brain injury. This situation improved in 2006 with the FDA clearance of NeuroQuant®, a commercially available, computer-automated software program for measuring MRI brain volume in human subjects. More recent strides were made with the introduction of NeuroGage®, commercially available software that is based (...) on NeuroQuant® and extends its utility in several ways. Studies using these and similar methods have found that most patients with chronic mild or moderate traumatic brain injury have brain volume abnormalities, and several of these studies found—surprisingly—more abnormal enlargement than atrophy. More generally, 102 peer-reviewed studies have supported the reliability and validity of NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage®. Furthermore, this updated version of a previous review addresses whether NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage® meet the Daubert standard for admissibility in court. It concludes that NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage® meet the Daubert standard based on their reliability, validity, and objectivity. Due to the improvements in technology over the years, these brain volumetric techniques are practical and readily available for clinical or forensic use, and thus they are important tools for detecting signs of brain injury. (shrink)

Os nomes de Guido de Almeida, Ricardo R. Terra, Valerio Rohden e Zeljko Loparic representam, sem dúvida, uma marca nos estudos kantianos que não pode ser negligenciada nem mesmo pelo leitor mais desatento. Qualquer aproximação dos escritos de Immanuel Kant que demande o debate de idéias e o confronto de argumentos não deve ignorar as obras destes filósofos que, nas últimas décadas, balizaram o rumo das pesquisas filosóficas no Brasil. A maturidade do pensamento se reflete aqui na heterogeneidade de (...) abordagens, na especificidade das discussões, na riqueza dos temas e na precisão conceitual. Este livro reúne textos importantes que certamente permitem ver com clareza a orientação dos trabalhos da filosofia transcendental nos âmbitos cognitivo, prático e estético. (shrink)

Este artigo aborda sobre as clássicas concepções do atual modelo de sociedade em meio a um contexto de pandemia viral. Para tanto, a questão que o permeia é a seguinte: O que caracteriza uma “sociedade em rede”, alterada pelo “meio técnico-científico-informacional” e imersa numa “modernidade líquida”? Essa abordagem, sobretudo num latente contexto de crises, revela-se imprescindível para a compreensão do que venha a ser progresso na sociedade contemporânea. Adotando como pano de fundo o contexto da pandemia do novo Coronavírus no (...) Brasil, objetiva-se desvelar os paradoxos desse modelo de sociedade. Caracteriza-se, metodologicamente, como uma revisão de literatura que traz à tona paradoxos de uma “modernidade líquida”. Para tanto, ancora-se em fundamentos filosóficos, históricos, geográficos e socioculturais que envolvem o tema. Como principais resultados, evidencia que o contexto pandêmico, adotado como caso empírico de análise, se faz necessário: pensar os atributos inerentes a uma “modernidade líquida”, os quais, paradoxalmente, estão vinculados à noção daquilo que se idealizou por chamar de progresso e/ou visão de futuro; desvelar a falsa consciência de seres autossuficientes e a importância que possui o sentimento de alteridade em qualquer sociedade; e romper com a ilusão de que o homem é, em si, o único responsável por sua própria existência. Conclui-se defendendo uma complementariedade entre a sentença aristotélica sobre natureza social humana e os postulados hegelianos acerca da ontologia do Ser. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta uma breve reflexão sobre a politização do fundamentalismo protestante norte-americano e sua possível influência no tipo de práxis sociopolítica que vem caracterizando o pentecostalismo brasileiro a partir de meados da década de 1980. Partindo de uma discussão sobre o que seria, de fato, o fundamentalismo e sobre os desenvolvimentos e reconfigurações desse movimento ao longo da história norte-americana, buscar-se-á analisar a influência e os possíveis paralelos entre o fundamentalismo e o recente engajamento político-eleitoral que vêm marcando o (...) pentecostalismo brasileiro. Observando-se a história recente do pentecostalismo brasileiro, pode-se perceber, especialmente após 1986 (ano em que as igrejas pentecostais se organizaram para eleger seus representantes na Assembléia Nacional Constituinte), tal influência do modelo fundamentalista na utilização da mídia, no conservadorismo político, na formação de grupos de pressão, na defesa dos “valores da família”, nos projetos de eleição de políticos comprometidos com os posicionamentos das igrejas, na busca do estreitamento das relações com o Estado na busca de influir em suas decisões. Palavras-chave: Pentecostalismo; Fundamentalismo; Religião e Política; História Contemporânea.This article presents a brief reflection about the politization of the American protestant fundamentalism and its possible influence on the socio-political praxis that has characterized the Brazilian Pentecostalism from the mid-1980s. Starting with a discussion of what would fundamentalism be and about this movement’s developments and reconfigurations throughout American history, the text seeks to analyze the influence and the possible parallels between fundamentalism and the recent political engagement that have characterized Brazilian Pentecostalism. Observing the Brazilian Pentecostalism in recent history, we notice, especially after 1986 (the year in which the Pentecostal churches organized to elect their representatives in the National Constituent Assembly) such influence of the fundamentalistic model in several ways: in the use of media, in the political conservatism, in the formation of pressure groups to defend the "family values​​", in the projects of electing politicians committed to the churche’s positions and in the pursuit of closer relations with the state in seeking to influence their decisions. Keywords: Pentecostalism; Fundamentalism; Religion and Politics; Contemporary History. (shrink)

Analytic epistemology is traditionally interested in rational reconstructions of cognitive pro- cesses. The purpose of these rational reconstructions is to make plain how a certain cognitive process might eventually result in knowledge or justi?ed beliefs, etc., if we pre-theoretically think that we have such knowledge or such justi?ed beliefs. Typically a rational reconstruction assumes some unproblematic basis of knowledge and some justi?cation-preserving inference pattern and then goes on to show how these two su ce to generate the (...) explicandum. (shrink)

BAPTISTA, Saulo. Pentecostais e neopentecostais na política brasileira : um estudo sobre cultura política, Estado e atores coletivos religiosos no Brasil. São Paulo: Annablume; São Bernardo do Campo: Instituto Metodista Izabela Hendrix, 2009. 432 p.

Book reviews RIBEIRO, Claudio de Oliveira. Religião, Democracia e Direitos Humanos : Presença pública inter-religiosa no fortalecimento da democracia e na defesa dos direitos humanos no Brasil. São Paulo: Reflexão, 2016. 159p. ISBN 978.85.8088.194-3.

O ensaio visual pretende refletir sobre o processo de realização do documentário Do Outro Lado do Atlântico, com estudantes de Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa no Brasil, a partir da ideia de um “encontro etnográfico” com os personagens do filme. Traz uma reflexão sobre a abordagem dos documentários de busca, e seus processos de subjetivação, ao mesmo tempo que busca reafirmar uma postura contra-colonial e antirracista, desconstruindo imaginários visuais de raça, subalternidade e estereótipos de África.

We reconsider the pragmatic interpretation of intuitionistic logic [21] regarded as a logic of assertions and their justi cations and its relations with classical logic. We recall an extension of this approach to a logic dealing with assertions and obligations, related by a notion of causal implication [14, 45]. We focus on the extension to co-intuitionistic logic, seen as a logic of hypotheses [8, 9, 13] and on polarized bi-intuitionistic logic as a logic of assertions and conjectures: looking at (...) the S4 modal translation, we give a de nition of a system AHL of bi-intuitionistic logic that correctly represents the duality between intuitionistic and co-intuitionistic logic, correcting a mistake in previous work [7, 10]. A computational interpretation of cointuitionism as a distributed calculus of coroutines is then used to give an operational interpretation of subtraction.Work on linear co-intuitionism is then recalled, a linear calculus of co-intuitionistic coroutines is de ned and a probabilistic interpretation of linear co-intuitionism is given as in [9]. Also we remark that by extending the language of intuitionistic logic we can express the notion of expectation, an assertion that in all situations the truth of p is possible and that in a logic of expectations the law of double negation holds. Similarly, extending co-intuitionistic logic, we can express the notion of conjecture that p, de ned as a hypothesis that in some situation the truth of p is epistemically necessary. (shrink)

Este trabalho analisa reflexões sobre a abordagem pedagógica denominada “Metodologias Ativas”, que estão sendo apresentadas como alternativa para melhorar os resultados de ensino e aprendizagem no Brasil. Por meio de uma revisão bibliográfica, são apresentados alguns dos principais elementos das Metodologias Ativas, principalmente suas características mais evidentes. Busca, também, trazer à discussão alguns questionamentos sobre essa abordagem pedagógica, indicando a existência de possíveis dificuldades que possam comprometer a aplicação das Metodologias Ativas. A partir deste estudo, registra-se que são necessários (...) novos estudos sobre as potencialidades e dificuldades de implantação de Metodologias Ativas, analisando resultados efetivos de aprendizagem ativa. Palavras-chave: Metodologias Ativas. Aprendizagem ativa. Tecnologias digitais. Educação. (shrink)

Na dinâmica do campo religioso brasileiro, novas formas de crer surgem, algumas religiões têm maior expansão - como algumas correntes evangélicas - e religiões tradicionais - como o catolicismo - vão-se “desencantando”. Este artigo pretende, a partir dos dados sobre religião da Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares (POF/IBGE, 2009), publicados em estudo da Fundação Getúlio Vargas - FGV (NERI, 2011), discutir a composição deste novo mapa religioso. Em relação às igrejas cristãs, o estudo da FGV mostrou, em termos quantitativos, a diminuição (...) do número de católicos, a estabilização do percentual de evangélicos pentecostais e o crescimento dos evangélicos não-pentecostais. Partindo da evolução histórica dos dados estatísticos sobre religião no Brasil, analisar-se-á, inicialmente, o declínio numérico do catolicismo, suas implicações e perspectivas. Em seguida buscar-se-á, através de uma análise crítica das conclusões do estudo da FGV sobre o campo protestante brasileiro, interpretar as possibilidades e os limites do uso dos dados da pesquisa para a compreensão da dinâmica do campo religioso brasileiro. Nesta via, o panorama religioso brasileiro deve ser interpretado além dos dados estatísticos. Palavras-chave: Pluralidade Religiosa. Campo Religioso Brasileiro. Catolicismo. Pentecostalismo. Demografia das Religiões.The article shows that within the Brazilian religious field new ways of believe have emerged. In this way, it also shows that some religions are in expansion – as some evangelical movements and traditional religions while some traditional religions – like Catholicism – are in a process of disenchantment. This article aims, from the 2009 Household Budget Survey – Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares (POF/IBGE, 2009) – data on religion published in a recent study elaborated by Fundação Getúlio Vargas (NERI, 2011), discuss the composition of this new religious map. Regarding the Christian churches, the FGV` study showed, in quantitative terms, the decrease in the number of Catholics, the stabilization of Pentecostal evangelicals’ percentage and the growth of non-Pentecostal evangelicals. Initially, based on the historical development of statistics on religion in Brazil, the numerical decline of Catholicism, its implications and perspectives will be analyzed. Basing on a critical analysis of the FGV’s study conclusions about the Brazilian protestant field numbers, the article will interpret the possibilities and limitations of using survey data for understanding the Brazilian religious field dynamics. In this way, the Brazilian religious landscape should be interpreted beyond the statistics Keywords: Religious Plurality. Brazilian Religious Field. Catholicism. Pentecostalism. Demography of Religions. (shrink)

In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or (...) meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a version of the medical model of disability, which defines disability as an enduring biological dysfunction that causes its bearer a significant degree of impairment. We should accept the medical model, I argue, because it succeeds in capturing our judgments about what conditions do and do not qualify as disabilities, because it offers a compelling explanation for what makes a condition count as a disability, and because it justifies why the federal government should spend hundreds (...) of billions of dollars, annually, on aid and accommodations for disabled people. After responding to a pair of objections Elizabeth Barnes has raised against the medical model, I contrast it with Guy Kahane and Julian Savulescu's welfarist account of disability, and with Barnes's own mere-difference view. Both of these accounts face serious challenges, although elements of Barnes's view can—and, in my opinion, should—be adopted by proponents of the medical model. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

Brian Hedden has proposed that any successful account of options for the subjective “ought” must satisfy two constraints: first, it must ensure that we are able to carry out each of the options available to us, and second, it should guarantee that the set of options available to us supervenes on our mental states. In this paper I show that, due to the ever-present possibility of Frankfurt-style cases, these two constraints jointly entail that no agent has any options at any (...) time. This consequence, however, is clearly unacceptable, so one of Hedden’s constraints must go. Because the ability constraint is indispensable, I argue, we have no choice but to reject the supervenience constraint. Hedden’s underlying motivation for imposing the supervenience constraint is the conviction that our options should be transparent to us, but transparency also proves to be incompatible with the ability constraint, so it must be rejected as well. I conclude by sketching an unabashedly externalist account of options, which conceives of options as exhaustive combinations of atomic movements. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

Fifteen years ago, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce advanced evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, which purported to show that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes moral realism untenable. These arguments have since given rise to a flurry of objections; the epistemic principles Street and Joyce relied upon, in particular, have come in for a number of serious challenges. My goal in this paper is to develop a new account of evolutionary debunking which avoids the pitfalls Street and (...) Joyce encountered and responds to the most pressing objections they faced. I begin by presenting a striking thought experiment to serve as an analogy for the evolution of morality; I then show why calibrationist views of higher-order evidence are crucial to the evolutionary debunking project; I outline a new rationale for why finding out that morality was selected to promote cooperation suggests that our moral judgments are unreliable; and I explain why evolutionary debunking arguments do not depend on our having a dedicated faculty for moral cognition. All things considered, I argue, evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism are on relatively secure footing – provided, at least, that we accept a calibrationist account of higher-order evidence. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to show that, if moral realism is true, all of our moral beliefs are unjustified. In this paper, I respond to two of the most enduring objections that have been raised against these arguments. The first objection claims that evolutionary debunking arguments are self-undermining, because they cannot be formulated without invoking epistemic principles, and epistemic principles are just as vulnerable to debunking as our moral beliefs. I argue that this objection suffers from several defects, the most (...) serious of which is that it has the unpalatable consequence that we should never revise our moral beliefs in response to evidence that our capacity for normative cognition is globally impaired. The second objection, which comes to us from Katia Vavova, claims that evolutionary debunking arguments are doomed to fail, because they attempt to show that our moral beliefs are unreliable without making any assumptions about the nature of morality, and this is impossible. I argue, to the contrary, that the etiological higher-order evidence cited by debunking arguments can give us good reason to think that our moral beliefs are unreliable, even if we make no assumptions about what morality is like. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of (...) cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

The pessimistic hypothesis is the hypothesis that life is bad for us, in the sense that we are worse off for having come into existence. Suppose this hypothesis turns out to be correct — existence turns out to be more of a burden than a gift. A natural next thought is that we should stop having children. But I contend that this is a mistake; procreation would often be permissible even if the pessimistic hypothesis turned out to be correct. Roughly, (...) this is because we are often in a position to know that future people will approve of having been created, and their approval will not be inappropriate even if they are worse off for having been created. And our respect for the attitudes of future people can permit us to create them. (shrink)

Simon May has argued that the notion of a principled compromise is incoherent. Reasons to compromise are always in his view strategic: though we think that the position we defend is still the right one, we compromise on this view in order to avoid the undesirable consequences that might flow from not compromising. I argue against May that there are indeed often principled reasons to compromise, and that these reasons are in fact multiple. First, compromises evince respect for persons that (...) we have reason to think of as our epistemic peers, and acknowledgement of our own finitudes as moral reasoners. Second, compromises are often made morally necessary by the shortfalls that unavoidably separate democratic institutions from democratic ideals. Third, compromises express a desirable form of democratic community. And fourth, compromises are often justified from a consequentialist point of view, in that they allow for the realization of values that would not be realized as well by the failure to compromise. (shrink)

Over 50% of the world population will develop a psychiatric disorder in their lifetime.1 In the realm of psychiatric treatment, two primary modalities have been established: pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. Yet, pharmacological interventions often take precedence as the initial treatment choice despite their comparable outcomes, severe side effects and disputed evidence of their efficacy. This preference for medication foregrounds a vital re-examination of what it means to be invasive in medical treatments, namely in psychiatric care. De Marco et al challenge the (...) standard account of invasiveness, presenting considerations that transcend the traditional criteria of physical intrusion.2 Through case studies centred on treatments for schizophrenia and depression, we aim to (1) reinforce De Marco et al ’s challenge to the standard account of invasiveness and (2) extend the dialogue to the moral imperative of redefining mental invasiveness. Our aims are to broaden the definition of mental invasiveness, aligning with De Marco et al ’s emphasis on context sensitivity, and to include the severity of side effects as a critical factor in this assessment. Redefining what is considered invasive in psychiatric treatment has profound implications for patient care and medical decision-making. Labelling treatments, namely medications, as invasive encourages both patients and healthcare providers to approach these options with a heightened level of scrutiny and care. This is …. (shrink)

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann's new approach captures the entire meaning of complex expressions and overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous analyses.

Examines the lived experience of social encounters drawing on phenomenological insights.

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

Suppose that Sherlock Holmes has just closed another case, and is convinced that Moriarty is the perpetrator. At that very moment, Inspector Lestrade arrives to inform Holmes that a Scotland Yard analysis of his past investigations shows that he only identifies the correct suspect in 50% of cases. How should Holmes respond to this new information? This is a question about higher-order evidence. Higher-order evidence can be understood as evidence about the rationality of your beliefs, or about your reliability in (...) judging matters in a certain domain. Some views on higher-order evidence, like calibrationism, say that Holmes should drastically reduce his confidence that Moriarty is the perpetrator, in light of what he learns about his track record. Other perspectives will recommend that Holmes stick to his guns instead. This dissertation explores the nature and epistemic significance of higher-order evidence, and considers whether higher-order evidence we acquire from empirical research into human evolution might serve to undermine the justification for our moral beliefs, as evolutionary debunking arguments, like those advanced by Sharon Street and Richard Joyce, have alleged. Ultimately, I argue that the calibrationist response to higher-order evidence is the right one, and that our emerging understanding of how morality evolved does indeed pose a serious challenge to the epistemic status of our moral beliefs. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

" Qualia " is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the (...) moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia ; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them. (shrink)

The rapidly increasing numbers of elderly people in our society have raised some important moral questions: How should we distribute social resources among different age groups? What does justice require from both the young and the old? In this book, Norman Daniels offers the first systematic philosophical discussion of these urgent questions, advocating what he calls a "lifespan" approach to the problem: Since, as they age, people pass through a variety of institutions, the challenge of caring for the elderly becomes (...) the prudent allocation of public resources among the various stages of people's lives. Using this philosophical approach, Daniels addresses specific public policy issues such as the allocation of medical funds, the adequacy of long-term care, current Medicare cost-containment measures, and the equitable distribution of income support over the lifespan and between generations. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)