Descartes estabeleceu conceitos através dos quais explicaria sua tese geral para o movimento dos corpos. Em total desacordo, Newton realizou um ostensivo ataque a teoria cartesiana concluindo que o movimento assumido pelo filosofo francês não deveria ser considerado como um movimento real. O diálogo desenvolvido ao longo da discussão, fundamentada na teoria newtoniana referente à natureza física do mundo, demonstra de forma sutil e refinada as observações precisas feitas por Newton acerca das contradições a que levavam o desenvolvimento dos conceitos (...) propostos por Descartes. Imbuída de espírito físico-filosófico, este artigo tem por objetivo elucidar as “ficções” cartesianas, bem como demonstrar a forma pela qual Newton buscou refutá-las: contrapondo a referida teoria de movimento com a sua. (shrink)

No mais profundo centro: João da Cruz e o Sufismo Sadili cantam a união transformante Carlos Frederico Barboza de Souza O camelô em Belo Horizonte: aspectos da informalidade e da identidade Maria Aparecida Carvalho de Castro Igreja, povo de Deus, sujeito da comunhão e da missão Cleto Caliman A literatura como questionamento do sujeito da modernidade: Memórias do cárcere, de Graciliano Ramos, e A peste, de Albert Camus João Pereira Pinto O ensino religioso na rede pública estadual de Belo (...) Horizonte -MG: história, modelos e percepções de professores sobre formação e docência Douglas Cabral Dantas. (shrink)

This article is a slightly modified version of the first part of Chapter 4 of Revoluciones sin sujeto. Slavoj Žižek’s y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno (Madrid: Akal, 2015) translated by Douglas Kristopher Smith and Nicolas Lema Habash. This text seeks to overcome the scission between Slavoy Žižek and Michel Foucault by challenging the notion that Foucault lacks an ontology of power, beyond contingent historical processes. By exposing the underlying Nietzschean relational ontology of struggle—as distinct from a fundamental, positive (...) grounding—in Foucault’s work, the piece shows how this aspect has been largely misunderstood—including by Žižek himself. Furthermore, it demonstrates how this agonistic ontology of human experience can serve to shed light on Žižek’s notion of the incompleteness of the subject by bringing it into the realm of politics. (shrink)

El Padre en el Antiguo TestamentoVivir la experiencia de ser Padre en la historia de la humanidad ha sido siempre un gran desafió. A través de los testimonios de diversas culturas es posible rescatar los significados y características del ser padre, desde ser administrador de los conocimientos ancestrales y la comunicación con la divinidad, los ciclos de la tierra, los tiempos de siembra y cosecha, los tiempos de las artes y los tiempos de la guerra. Así reconocemos las aracterísticas del (...) .. (shrink)

Vol. presents a method for critically evaluating relevance in arguments based on case studies & a new relevance theory incorporating techniques of argumentation theory, logic & artificiaI intelligence. For scholars/students in argumentation & rhetoric.

Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize political action, influence the public, and market products. This book presents a new and systematic way of thinking about the influence of mass media in our lives, showing the intersection of media sources with argumentation theory, informal logic, computational theory, and theories of persuasion. Using a variety of case studies that represent arguments that typically occur in the mass (...) media, Douglas Walton demonstrates how tools recently developed in argumentation theory can be usefully applied to the identification, analysis, and evaluation of media arguments. (shrink)

A "slippery slope argument" is a type of argument in which a first step is taken and a series of inextricable consequences follow, ultimately leading to a disastrous outcome. Many textbooks on informal logic and critical thinking treat the slippery slope argument as a fallacy. Walton argues that used correctly in some cases, they can be a reasonable type of argument to shift a burden of proof in a critical discussion, while in other cases they are used incorrectly. Walton identifies (...) and analyzes four types of slippery slope argument. Walton presents guidelines that show how each type of slippery slope argument can be used correctly or incorrectly, using over fifty case studies of argumentation on controversial issues. These include abortion, medical research on human embryos, euthanasia, the decriminalization of marijuana, pornography, and censorship, and banning of American flag burning. (shrink)

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation presents the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners. The book teaches by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed. Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton shows how arguments can be reasonable under the right dialogue conditions (...) by using critical questions to evaluate them. The book teaches by example, both in the text itself and in exercises, but it is based on methods that have been developed through the author's thirty years of research in argumentation studies. (shrink)

Second edition of the introductory guidebook to the basic principles of constructing sound arguments and criticising bad ones. Non-technical in approach, it is based on 186 examples, which Douglas Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic, discusses and evaluates in clear, illustrative detail. Walton explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical responses. This edition takes into (...) account many developments in the field of argumentation study that have occurred since 1989, many created by the author. Drawing on these developments, Walton includes and analyzes 36 new topical examples and also brings in work on argumentation schemes. Ideally suited for use in courses in informal logic and introduction to philosophy, this book will also be valuable to students of pragmatics, rhetoric, and speech communication. (shrink)

Argumentation, which can be abstractly defined as the interaction of different arguments for and against some conclusion, is an important skill to learn for everyday life, law, science, politics and business. The best way to learn it is to try it out on real instances of arguments found in everyday conversational exchanges and legal argumentation. The introductory chapter of this book gives a clear general idea of what the methods of argumentation are and how they work as tools that can (...) be used to analyze arguments. Each subsequent chapter then applies these methods to a leading problem of argumentation. Today the field of computing has embraced argumentation as a paradigm for research in artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. Another purpose of this book is to present and refine tools and techniques from computing as components of the methods that can be handily used by scholars in other fields. (shrink)

Recent work in artificial intelligence has increasingly turned to argumentation as a rich, interdisciplinary area of research that can provide new methods related to evidence and reasoning in the area of law. Douglas Walton provides an introduction to basic concepts, tools and methods in argumentation theory and artificial intelligence as applied to the analysis and evaluation of witness testimony. He shows how witness testimony is by its nature inherently fallible and sometimes subject to disastrous failures. At the same time (...) such testimony can provide evidence that is not only necessary but inherently reasonable for logically guiding legal experts to accept or reject a claim. Walton shows how to overcome the traditional disdain for witness testimony as a type of evidence shown by logical positivists, and the views of trial sceptics who doubt that trial rules deal with witness testimony in a way that yields a rational decision-making process. (shrink)

Este artigo investigou os discursos sobre masculinidades proferidos por homens cisgêneros e heterossexuais na plataforma _youtube_. Para tanto, realizou uma busca, a partir das palavras-chave “ser homem” e “masculinidade”, dos vídeos mais visualizados, sendo os achados organizados em quatro categorias: orientação religiosa, afirmação da masculinidade tradicional com base no darwinismo social, desconstrução da masculinidade tradicional e crítica cultural. Os dados apontam maior público em vídeos voltados ao padrão tradicional de masculinidade e uma relação entre tal conteúdo e instituições religiosas ou (...) de mercantilização de modelos de comportamento. Já vídeos sobre novos modelos de masculinidade aparecem mais ligados a produtos culturais. Todos os vídeos foram produzidos pela sociedade civil e alguns vídeos sobre masculinidade tradicional usam distorções relevantes de conhecimentos científicos. Conclui-se pelo impacto social dos discursos sobre masculinidade no contexto digital, sendo esse um campo de pesquisa relevante, bem como pela necessidade de se abordar relações de gênero em políticas públicas de campos como saúde, educação e justiça. (shrink)

The emergency of aesthetics -- Measurable contemplations -- Indifferent beauty -- Emergency through art -- Social paradoxes -- Urban discharges -- Environmental calls -- Historical accounts -- Emergency aesthetics -- Anarchic interpretations -- Existential interventions.

This project uses machine learning and computer vision techniques and a novel interactive visualization tool to provide street-level characterization of urban spaces such as safety and maintenance in urban neighborhoods. This is achieved by collecting and annotating street-view images, extracting objective metrics through computer vision techniques, and using crowdsourcing to statistically model the perception of subjective metrics such as safety and maintenance. For modeling human perception and scaling it up with a predictive algorithm, we evaluate perception predictions across two points (...) in time separated by economic changes in the urban core of Raleigh, North Carolina, in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession. We hypothesize specific socioeconomic processes can be substantially reflected in the built environment of cities and, thus, render themselves visible at the street level. This paper describes the process of incorporating subjective visual ratings across two datasets of temporally separated street-view images, an algorithm, and a visualization tool. This work serves as a case study for utilizing AI and visualization techniques in a richer characterization of urban spaces that includes both objective metrics such as income (that operates at a broader scale) and subjective metrics such as perception of individuals (that operates at a narrower scale at specific locations). We outline an interdisciplinary methodology to test this hypothesis in streetscape data from Raleigh, NC, from 2008 to 2020. We describe the results of training algorithms that utilized image features with crowdsourced human perception ratings. We provide a comparison of the results with income data. The analysis and interpretation of this comparison provide insight into the challenges and opportunities for using AI technology in characterizing changes in urban environments. One challenge is the ability of human domain experts to interpret the output of algorithms through manipulation and to integrate these results into their workflow. This is addressed with a novel interface designed for interactive analysis and visualization. We conclude with a discussion of some of the benefits and limitations of integrating AI models in the human expert’s decision-making process in the presence of both subjective and objective metrics. (shrink)

In this volume, Douglas Yoder uses the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and biblical criticism to elucidate the epistemology of the Tanakh, the collection of writings that comprise the Hebrew Bible. Despite the conceptual sophistication of the Tanakh, its epistemology has been overlooked in both religious and secular hermeneutics. The concept of revelation, the genre of apocalypse, and critiques of ideology and theory are all found within or derive from epistemic texts of the Tanakh. Yoder examines how philosophers (...) such as Spinoza, Hume, and Kant interacted with such matters. He also explores how the motifs of writing, reading, interpretation, image, and animals, topics that figure prominently in the work of Derrida, Foucault, and Nietzsche, appear also in the Tanakh. An understanding of Tanakh epistemology, he concludes, can lead to new appraisals of religious and secular life throughout the modern world. (shrink)

On September 1, 2023, Texas made important revisions to it its decades‐old statute granting legal safe harbor immunity to physicians who withhold or withdraw life‐sustaining treatment over the objection of critically ill patients’ surrogate decision‐makers. However, lawmakers left untouched glaring flaws in a key safeguard for patients—the transfer option. The transfer option is ethically important because, when no hospital is willing to accept the patient in transfer, that fact is taken as strong evidence that the surrogates’ treatment requests fall outside (...) accepted medical practice. But there are serious shortcomings in how the transfer option is carried out in Texas and many other states, which undermines the ethical usefulness of the process. We identify these shortcomings and recommend revisions to state statutes and professional guidelines to overcome them. (shrink)

First collected in Italy in 1985, _Art's Claim to Truth_ is considered by many philosophers to be one of Gianni Vattimo's most important works. Newly revised for English readers, the book begins with a challenge to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, who viewed art as a metaphysical aspect of reality rather than a futuristic anticipation of it. Following Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the history of philosophy, Vattimo outlines the existential ontological conditions of aesthetics, paying particular attention to the works of (...) Kandinsky, which reaffirm the ontological implications of art. Vattimo then builds on Hans-Georg Gadamer's theory of aesthetics and provides an alternative to a rationalistic-positivistic criticism of art. This is the heart of Vattimo's argument, and with it he demonstrates how hermeneutical philosophy reaffirms art's ontological status and makes clear the importance of hermeneutics for aesthetic studies. In the book's final section, Vattimo articulates the consequences of reclaiming the ontological status of aesthetics without its metaphysical implications, holding Aristotle's concept of beauty responsible for the dissolution of metaphysics itself. In its direct engagement with the works of Gadamer, Heidegger, and Luigi Pareyson, _Art's Claim to Truth_ offers a better understanding of the work of Vattimo and a deeper knowledge of ontology, hermeneutics, and the philosophical examination of truth. (shrink)

Partindo da Introdução geral à crítica da economia política de Marx, Deleuze e Guattari afirmam, em O anti-Édipo, que só há história universal das contingências. O que está em jogo nessa valorização do aspecto contingente da história universal segundo a leitura deleuzo-guattariana de Marx? Nossa hipótese é a de que uma boa via para compreender o sentido desta valorização da contingência é através de um exame de alguns comentários de Althusser e Balibar à obra de Marx, em que defendem que (...) os encontros contingentes são mais importantes do que a lógica da necessidade histórica no materialismo marxista. (shrink)

Wie gelangen wir in einen Zustand des Strafrechts, den viele Spezialisten mit guten Grunden fur unmoglich halten? Das Buch <I>Zur Moglichkeit des unmoglichen Strafrechts beschaftigt sich mit dieser Frage und versucht auf sie anhand einer vergleichenden Analyse eine Antwort zu geben: Die Krisis des Strafrechts aus der Perspektive der sogenannten Frankfurter Schule des Strafrechts steht dabei der Kritischen Theorie gegenuber. Ausgewahlte Beispiele aus der deutschen sowie der brasilianischen Geschichte, wie Sklaverei, Diktatur, Imperialismus und Nationalsozialismus, sprechen dafur, dass Wissenschaft und Barbarei (...) oft Hand in Hand gehen konnen. Die ublichen Erklarungen uber diesen Zustand verdeutlichen die Notwendigkeit einer radikalen Selbstkritik.". (shrink)

The dynamics and fusion of multiple media into one space has been thoroughly studied by Frederick J. Kiesler. His investigations into a multi-dimensional, space are in fact the beginnings of what would become a radically new concept of form and content appropriately called ‘Endless Space’. In the 1930s entitled the ‘Correalist Theory’ believes that the essence of reality is not in the ‘thing’ itself, but in the way it correlates and orders itself to its environment, to its spatial dynamics and (...) to its atmosphere. Kiesler also deemed that it was essential to disregard the boundaries that separate the different arts and media. These boundaries needed to be dissolved and proclaimed that painters, sculptors and designers, driven away by functionalism, would return from exile to be welcomed by architecture. Since his death in 1965, his notion of Endless Space and his studies ‘On correalism and biotechnique’ in particular, have resurfaced in recent art discourse. New technologies have emerged that are now provoking different questions regarding the techno-ethics of integrated biotech and post-digital tectonic potentials that withhold the concept of an ubiquitous and synaesthetic space. (shrink)

Wigmore thought that there was a science of proof underlying legal reasoning that could be displayed in any given case as a graphic sequence of argumentation from the evidence in the case leading to the ultimate probandum. Argumentation technology has now vindicated this approach by providing useful qualitative methods that can be applied to identifying, analyzing, and evaluating the pro and con arguments put forward by both sides in a trial. In this chapter, it is shown how to apply argumentation (...) schemes, such as argument from witness testimony, using argument diagrams applied to typical sequences of evidence-based legal reasoning in which there is a successive refinement of arguments displayed as the evidence comes into a case. It is shown how argument from applying rules to cases, teleological, argument from expert witness testimony, and abductive reasoning are centrally important for this purpose. (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. (...) This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

In _Basic Concepts_, Heidegger claims that "Being is the most worn-out" and yet also that Being "remains constantly available." Santiago Zabala radicalizes the consequences of these little known but significant affirmations. Revisiting the work of Jacques Derrida, Reiner Schürmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Tugendhat, and Gianni Vattimo, he finds these remains of Being within which ontological thought can still operate. Being is an event, Zabala argues, a kind of generosity and gift that generates astonishment in those who experience (...) it. This sense of wonder has fueled questions of meaning for centuries-from Plato to the present day. Postmetaphysical accounts of Being, as exemplified by the thinkers of Zabala's analysis, as well as by Nietzsche, Dewey, and others he encounters, don't abandon Being. Rather, they reject rigid, determined modes of essentialist thought in favor of more fluid, malleable, and adaptable conceptions, redefining the pursuit and meaning of philosophy itself. (shrink)

Meaning of place is usually approached as slow social cognitive construction. However, grounded on the theory of affordances, it may also stem from direct perception-action processes, which enable the formation of immediate perceived functional, social or symbolic meaning of place (Raymond, Kyttä, & Stedman, 2017). In the present study, affordances of places, which are perceived by a specific perceiver in a specific place, were mapped using a web-map survey. Each place offers opportunities for interaction, behavior, use, feeling or meaning, which (...) is directly perceived and actualized there. This paper aims at identifying the degree of youth-friendliness of urban neighborhoods using the hypothetical intertwined model of independent mobility and actualized affordances (Kyttä, 2004) combined with place use and meaning (Broberg, Kyttä, & Fagerholm, 2013). SoftGISchildren methodology (Broberg, Kyttä, et al., 2013) was adopted to carry out a cross-sectional research, involving 145 sixth to ninth graders of the Great Lisbon area. SoftGIS integrates Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), enabling collection and place mapping of daily subjective environmental experiences in the physical environment, consequently allowing for individuals to be actively engaged in public processes of participation (Brown & Kyttä,2014). A place based web survey called “Ideal City: a game of graphic imagination” was adopted. Participants were asked to map their home place, select and mark social, functional, leisure and emotional place transactions, and report actual and ideal mobility to these places. Findings on mobility showed that shorter distances to meaningful affordances of places promote active and independent travel; ideally, youths would like to be more frequently active and more frequently autonomous. As for meaningful places, a total of 1632 affordances were localized, with a higher number on social category. Neighborhood area (500 meters around home place) was assessed as youth-friendly, where active and independent travel occurred more frequently, and social affordances were the most expressive type. Relational and affectional experience in the neighborhood places was meaningful for youth. Municipalities should consider these features when planning, designing and managing residential areas aiming for the well-being and health of young citizens; and include youths as specialists of space (spatialists) in planning participatory processes (PPGIS). (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. (...) This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

This article examines the development of empirical social research in Portugal over about a century and its relation to the early institutionalization of sociology at the tail end of that period. Relying on new empirical data, coupled with a critical reading of the main sources on the topic, it brings to light some epistemic invariants in a disparate body of research, acknowledging the initial persistence of Le Play-inspired as well as properly Le Playsian research methods. Furthermore, it identifies the general (...) continuation of a substantial concern with the (physical and then moral) condition of rural and industrial workers, leading to a disclosure of the political-economic and governmental roots of the social research in question. From a historical sociology perspective, the article explores the relation between state governmentalization and authoritarian rule, on the one hand, and the development of the social sciences, on the other. From a history of science perspective, it acknowledges the continuous use of the same research methods to carry out seemingly incommensurable social research programmes and the later pursuit of a properly sociological research programme that fell back on conflicting methodological and theoretical approaches. In broader terms, the article aims to put forward a historical sociology of theoretical approaches, research methods, and scientific concepts that will hopefully contribute to a clearer understanding of their respective fields of application. (shrink)

Develops a logical analysis of dialogue in which two or more parties attempt to advance their own interests. It includes a classification of the major types of dialogues and a discussion of several important informal fallacies.

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

Argumentos evolutivos debunking (AEDs), de maneira geral, têm o objetivo de danificar o status epistêmico de um domínio de crenças ao se apelar para suas origens evolutivas. No horizonte da metaética, AEDs normalmente são direcionados a teses realistas da moralidade e consistem essencialmente em afirmar que se nossas crenças morais sofreram influência significativa de pressões seletivas durante nossa história evolutiva, então se segue algum tipo de ceticismo moral. Um dos argumentos paradigmáticos articulados nessa direção é o Dilema Darwiniano de Sharon (...) Street. Nossa proposta no artigo presente é colocarmos o argumento evolutivo contra o naturalismo (AECN) de Alvin Plantinga – um AED oriundo da filosofia analítica da religião – como possível resposta ao problema do ceticismo moral proposto por Street. Dessa forma, Plantinga pontua que considerações evolutivas tomadas dentro do framework do naturalismo ontológico acarretam em um conflito epistêmico para o sujeito que deseja manter em seu sistema doxástico tanto a crença na teoria contemporânea da evolução, quanto a crença no naturalismo ontológico. Argumentamos, a partir dessa questão, que o Dilema Darwiniano sofre de um problema estrutural por causa do seu comprometimento com a ontologia naturalista, o que faz com que o dilema se generalize em seu escopo e afete, de maneira nociva, crenças não-morais, se tornando autorreferencialmente incoerente. Palavras-chave: realismo moral. Naturalismo. Crenças. (shrink)

First published in 1984, Cultural Analysis is a systematic examination of the theories of culture contained in the writings of four contemporary social theorists: Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. This study of their work clarifies their contributions to the analysis of culture and shows the converging assumptions that the authors believe are laying the foundation for a new approach to the study of culture. The focus is specifically on culture, a concept that remains subject (...) to ambiguities of treatment, and concentrates on questions concerning the definition and content of culture, its construction, its relations with social conditions, and the manner in which it may be changing. The books demonstrates how these writers have made strides towards defining culture as an objective element of social interaction which can be subjected to critical investigation. (shrink)

This book identifies 25 argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning and matches a set of critical questions to each.

Contemporary philosophers—analytic as well as continental—tend to feel uneasy about Ernst Tugendhat, who, though he positions himself in the analytic field, poses questions in the Heideggerian style. Tugendhat was one of Martin Heidegger's last pupils and his least obedient, pursuing a new and controversial critical technique. Tugendhat took Heidegger's destruction of Being as presence and developed it in analytic philosophy, more specifically in semantics. Only formal semantics, according to Tugendhat, could answer the questions left open by Heidegger. Yet in doing (...) this, Tugendhat discovered the latent "hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy"—its post-metaphysical dimension—in which "there are no facts, but only true propositions." What Tugendhat seeks to answer is this: What is the meaning of thought following the linguistic turn? Because of the rift between analytic and continental philosophers, very few studies have been written on Tugendhat, and he has been omitted altogether from several histories of philosophy. Now that these two schools have begun to reconcile, Tugendhat has become an example of a philosopher who, in the words of Richard Rorty, "built bridges between continents and between centuries." Tugendhat is known more for his philosophical turn than for his phenomenological studies or for his position within analytic philosophy, and this creates some confusion regarding his philosophical propensities. Is Tugendhat analytic or continental? Is he a follower of Wittgenstein or Heidegger? Does he belong in the culture of analysis or in that of tradition? Santiago Zabala presents Tugendhat as an example of merged horizons, promoting a philosophical historiography that is concerned more with dialogue and less with classification. In doing so, he places us squarely within a dialogic culture of the future and proves that any such labels impoverish philosophical research. (shrink)

First collected in Italy in 1985, _Art's Claim to Truth_ is considered by many philosophers to be one of Gianni Vattimo's most important works. Newly revised for English readers, the book begins with a challenge to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, who viewed art as a metaphysical aspect of reality rather than a futuristic anticipation of it. Following Martin Heidegger's interpretation of the history of philosophy, Vattimo outlines the existential ontological conditions of aesthetics, paying particular attention to the works of (...) Kandinsky, which reaffirm the ontological implications of art. Vattimo then builds on Hans-Georg Gadamer's theory of aesthetics and provides an alternative to a rationalistic-positivistic criticism of art. This is the heart of Vattimo's argument, and with it he demonstrates how hermeneutical philosophy reaffirms art's ontological status and makes clear the importance of hermeneutics for aesthetic studies. In the book's final section, Vattimo articulates the consequences of reclaiming the ontological status of aesthetics without its metaphysical implications, holding Aristotle's concept of beauty responsible for the dissolution of metaphysics itself. In its direct engagement with the works of Gadamer, Heidegger, and Luigi Pareyson, _Art's Claim to Truth_ offers a better understanding of the work of Vattimo and a deeper knowledge of ontology, hermeneutics, and the philosophical examination of truth. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational -- it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure -- any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority -- whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism -- emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue for an instrumental form of existence, inspired by Hilbert’s method of ideal elements. As a case study, we consider the existence of contradictory objects in models of non-classical set theories. Based on this discussion, we argue for a very liberal notion of existence in mathematics.

The essays in Weakening Philosophy, from leading figures such as Umberto Eco and Charles Taylor, introduce his ideas to a wider audience.

This article presents a critical bibliographic review of the central characteristics of Hume's Theory of Passions and Emotions, which conceived the philosophy of human nature as an analytical and experimental science. This view is contrary to the ancient and medieval ideas that passions were movements of the lower parts of the soul. For Hume, passions in general are among the perceptions of the mind, although they also serve as motivations to act and even to reason. The apparent dichotomy that existed (...) between passions and reason was abandoned and reason was treated as a calm passion. Hence, Hume dethroned reason from its sovereign position in knowledge. For him, passions are neither subordinate nor independent of reason; it is the reason that is subordinate to passions. (shrink)

Desmond and Moore point out that the key to understanding Darwin’s The Descent of Man is his abolitionist motivation and his advocacy that races constitute subspecies. Roberta Millstein raises some doubts about the importance of this motivation. She points out that the inclusion of the extensive section devoted to non-human animals is not justified by Darwin’s treatment of humans per se, because his explanation of the origin of races is peculiar. In this sense, she argues that Darwin’s specific explanation of (...) the origin of races does not confirm the central importance that Desmond and Moore give to Darwin’s abolitionism. In this paper I have two different aims. On the one hand, to show that the human case actually is based on the treatment of nonhuman animals, and consequently, Darwin’s argument is not as poor as Millstein believes. My second goal, taking Millstein’s challenge seriously, is to show that Darwin’s explanation of the origin of races does confirm the Desmond and Moore thesis in a deeper sense than the one they propose themselves. For the anti-slavery motivation could not only explain the fact that Darwin sees all humans as forming the same species, but the specific explanation he gives for the origin of races. (shrink)