El texto presenta una aproximación analítica a un corpus de comunicaciones emitidas por el expresidente Juan Manuel Santos y por la desmovilizada guerrilla de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP), durante el bienio que precede al proceso de paz llevado a cabo en La Habana, Cuba. A partir de una lectura erística sobre los juegos de veridicción en torno a la idea de unidad, como objeto de discurso, se contraponen los componentes de cada construcción discursiva y (...) se desmontan los mecanismos verbales a través de los cuales los actores sociales en disputa construyeron sentidos particulares sobre la unidad, en ese momento coyuntural del país. El examen en retrospectiva de esa disputa conduce a la interrogación del presente político en Colombia, en el cual la implementación de los acuerdos de paz firmados en 2016 se ha visto obstaculizada por la permanencia de esa lucha en torno a la verdad de los objetos de discurso disputados por los actores políticos. (shrink)

Dentro de la abundante bibliografía disponible en el campo de los estudios argumentativos, el libro del sociólogo y lingüista Cristián Santibáñez ofrece una perspectiva poco transitada en los estudios en español sobre el tema. Por medio de un enfoque evolutivo-cognitivo, Santibáñez responde en extenso a una pregunta esencial: “¿Por qué argumentamos?”. Pese a que el autor augura que responder este interrogante puede llegar a impacientar a los teóricos clásicos de la argumentación, la contribución que realiza en esa área es invaluable, (...) pues abre el campo explicativo hacia investigaciones interdisciplinares que va sugiriendo a lo largo del libro, a propósito de problemáticas difíciles, como las relaciones entre razonamiento y argumentación; las bases filogenéticas y la ontogénesis de la conducta argumentativa; la explicación acerca de las acciones e interacciones no cooperativas en los intercambios sociales; o el desarrollo de una base evaluativa que introduzca los estudios de la metáfora en las teorías de la argumentación, entre otras cuestiones estimulantes. (shrink)

This book is a meticulous study of Aristotle's phronesis and its applications to the fields of personal development or character formation and of ethical ...

The role of narrativity in the constitution of personal identity, a widely discussed topic in recent philosophy, is also an important issue in Robert Musil’s novel “The Man without Qualities.” Apart from a theoretical passage, where the coherence established by life-narratives is explicitly rejected as an illusion, the novel displays various instances of reflection in which characters seek to articulate their identity by narrating parts of their lives. Not all of these self-narratives are presented as flawed; rather, by highlighting the (...) differences between various instances of self-reflection, the novel suggests that a life-narrative has to meet certain standards in order to further self-understanding. The essay seeks to identify these standards by analysing two examples of self-reflection rendered in Musil’s novel. Furthermore, it briefly compares the novel’s dealing with the issue of narrativity and personal identity with recent philosophical approaches, in particular with Charles Taylor’s view that in order to have an identity, human beings have to understand their lives in the form of a narrative that determines their place relative to the good. (shrink)

On the traditional approach to metaethics, theories are expected to be faithful to ordinary normative discourse – or at worst (if we think the ordinary discourse is metaphysically unsound) to deviate from it as little as possible. -/- This paper develops an alternative, “conceptual engineering” approach to metaethical enquiry, which is not in this way restricted by our present discourse. On this approach, we will seek to understand the psychology, semantics, metaphysics and epistemology, not just of our present concepts, but (...) also of other possible normative concepts. The ultimate point of the enquiry is to choose between the available alternatives: to decide what kinds of normative concepts to use, going forward. -/- The paper aims to make this suggestion precise, in a way that a) answers worries about circularity, b) answers worries about “changing the subject”, c) retains metaethics as a truth-seeking enquiry, and d) leads to an independently plausible methodology. (shrink)

This volume deals with the transformation of unchurched religious creativity in the late modern West.

The original article, which first appeared in Norwegian, is a detailed study of anamnesis or recollection in Plato and Aristotle. It discusses, first, how recollection is relevant for the understanding of central aspects of the philosophy of Aristotle, and then discusses how the “regained” Platonic-Aristotelian concept of anamnesis can be related to current methodological challenges in modern social research. After having received feedback on the original article from David Bloch, who has recently translated and commented the Aristotelian text “On memory (...) and recollection”, I have decided to rewrite it in English and publish it here. (shrink)

The article discusses relationships and contexts for "reason", "knowledge", and virtue in Aristotle, based on and elaborating some results from Eikeland. It positions Eikeland in relation to Moss but with a side view to Cammick, Kristjansson, and Taylor. These all seem to disagree among themselves but still agree partly in different ways with Eikeland. The text focuses on two questions: 1) the role or tasks of "reason", "knowledge", and "virtue" respectively in setting the end or goal for ethical deliberation, and (...) more generally, 2) the role of dialogue or dialectics in Aristotle's philosophy, including its role concerning question one. The author argues that phrónêsis needs to be interpreted in the context of the totality of Aristotle's philosophy, and explains how this totality is fundamentally dialectical. (shrink)

Myths of the Self is a departure from the standard fare of postmodern thought. In a unique and brilliant turn, Smith argues that the best way of dealing with the topic of the self is a synthesis of a narrative theory of identity, using Ricoeur as a source, along with the constructive "postmodern" metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead. The resulting synthesis is a new and potentially invigorating spin on the genesis of postmodern thought.

In standard decision theory, the probability function ought to be updated in light of evidence, but the utility function generally stays fixed. However, there is nothing in the formal theory that prevents one from instead updating the utility function, while keeping the probability function fixed. Moreover, there are good arguments for updating the utilities and not just the probabilities. Hence, the first puzzle is whether there is anything that justifies updating beliefs, but not desires, in light of evidence. The paper (...) argues that there is not, but that this raises a second puzzle. (shrink)

Bayesian inference is limited in scope because it cannot be applied in idealized contexts where none of the hypotheses under consideration is true and because it is committed to always using the likelihood as a measure of evidential favouring, even when that is inappropriate. The purpose of this article is to study inductive inference in a very general setting where finding the truth is not necessarily the goal and where the measure of evidential favouring is not necessarily the likelihood. I (...) use an accuracy argument to argue for probabilism and I develop a new kind of argument to argue for two general updating rules, both of which are reasonable in different contexts. One of the updating rules has standard Bayesian updating, Bissiri et al.’s general Bayesian updating, Douven’s IBE-based updating, and Vassend’s ]) quasi-Bayesian updating as special cases. The other updating rule is novel. (shrink)

Scientists often study hypotheses that they know to be false. This creates an interpretive problem for Bayesians because the probability assigned to a hypothesis is typically interpreted as the probability that the hypothesis is true. I argue that solving the interpretive problem requires coming up with a new semantics for Bayesian inference. I present and contrast two new semantic frameworks, and I argue that both of them support the claim that there is pervasive pragmatic encroachment on whether a given Bayesian (...) probability assignment is rational. (shrink)

This volume comprises systematic as well as historical essays, including contributions intended to give comprehensive overviews of such areas as genetic phenomenology, transcendental phenomenology, philosophy and history of logic and mathematics, Kant, hermeneutics, Hegel, and philosophy of language. The book is addressed to phenomenologists, particularly those who are interested in some or all of the areas mentioned. In his introduction Joseph J. Kockelmans indicates that these diverse areas enter into dialogue in the work of Thomas M. Seebohm, whom the editors (...) and authors wish to honor, and the systematic papers mirror the state of the art of research in the above-mentioned disciplines. (shrink)

This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.

According to a widespread but implicit thesis in Bayesian confirmation theory, two confirmation measures are considered equivalent if they are ordinally equivalent—call this the “ordinal equivalence thesis” (OET). I argue that adopting OET has significant costs. First, adopting OET renders one incapable of determining whether a piece of evidence substantially favors one hypothesis over another. Second, OET must be rejected if merely ordinal conclusions are to be drawn from the expected value of a confirmation measure. Furthermore, several arguments and applications (...) of confirmation measures given in the literature already rely on a rejection of OET. I also contrast OET with stronger equivalence theses and show that they do not have the same costs as OET. On the other hand, adopting a thesis stronger than OET has costs of its own, since a rejection of OET ostensibly implies that people’s epistemic states have a very fine-grained quantitative structure. However, I suggest that the normative upshot of the paper in fact has a conditional form, and that other Bayesian norms can also fruitfully be construed as having a similar conditional form. (shrink)

Jan-Olav Henriksen reconstructs and analyzes Christianity as a cluster of practices that manifest a distinct historically and contextually shaped mode of being in the world. Henriksen suggests that these practices imply a complicated relationship between the tradition in which they originate, the community that emerges from and is constituted by that tradition, and the individuals who appropriate the tradition that these communities mediate through their practices. Thus, to think of Christianity simply in terms of belief is misleading and represents an (...) underdetermination of its distinct character. Henriksen further argues this relationship needs to be described primarily as practices aimed at orientation and transformation. His analysis points to Christianity's similarity to other religions in regard to the functional or pragmatic dimensions it displays. Examining facets such as prayer, the use of scripture, preaching and doctrine, Henriksen emphasizes that the element that makes a practice distinctively Christian is how it relates to and is informed by the Jesus story. (shrink)

Charles Stein discovered a paradox in 1955 that many statisticians think is of fundamental importance. Here we explore its philosophical implications. We outline the nature of Stein’s result and of subsequent work on shrinkage estimators; then we describe how these results are related to Bayesianism and to model selection criteria like AIC. We also discuss their bearing on scientific realism and instrumentalism. We argue that results concerning shrinkage estimators underwrite a surprising form of holistic pragmatism.

According to a widespread but implicit thesis in Bayesian confirmation theory, two confirmation measures are considered equivalent if they are ordinally equivalent—call this the “ordinal equivalence thesis”. I argue that adopting OET has significant costs. First, adopting OET renders one incapable of determining whether a piece of evidence substantially favors one hypothesis over another. Second, OET must be rejected if merely ordinal conclusions are to be drawn from the expected value of a confirmation measure. Furthermore, several arguments and applications of (...) confirmation measures given in the literature already rely on a rejection of OET. I also contrast OET with stronger equivalence theses and show that they do not have the same costs as OET. On the other hand, adopting a thesis stronger than OET has costs of its own, since a rejection of OET ostensibly implies that people’s epistemic states have a very fine-grained quantitative structure. However, I suggest that the normative upshot of the paper in fact has a conditional form, and that other Bayesian norms can also fruitfully be construed as having a similar conditional form. (shrink)

Cappelen and Dever have recently defended the view that indexicals are not essential: They do not signify anything philosophically deep and we do not need indexicals for any important philosophical work. This paper contests their view from the point of view of an account of intentional agency. It argues that we need indexicals essentially when accounting for what it is do something intentionally and, as a consequence, intentional action, and defends a view of intentional action as a possible conclusion of (...) practical reasoning where the indexical is essential for the content of such a conclusion. (shrink)

One of the main goals of Bayesian epistemology is to justify the rational norms credence functions ought to obey. Accuracy arguments attempt to justify these norms from the assumption that the source of value for credences relevant to their epistemic status is their accuracy. This assumption and some standard decision-theoretic principles are used to argue for norms like Probabilism, the thesis that an agent’s credence function is rational only if it obeys the probability axioms. We introduce an example that shows (...) that the accuracy arguments for Probabilism given by Joyce and Pettigrew fail, and that Probabilism in fact turns out to be false given Pettigrew’s way of conceiving of the goal of having accurate credences. Finally, we use our discussion of Pettigrew’s framework to draw an important general lesson about normative theorizing that relies on the positing of ideal agents. (shrink)

Stanley Stevens draws a useful distinction among ordinal scales, interval scales, and ratio scales. Most recent discussions of confirmation measures have proceeded on the ordinal level of analysis. In this article, I give a more quantitative analysis. In particular, I show that the requirement that our desired confirmation measure be at least an interval measure naturally yields necessary conditions that jointly entail the log-likelihood measure. Thus, I conclude that the log-likelihood measure is the only good candidate interval measure.

Contrary to popular opinion, non-natural realism can explain both why normative properties supervene on descriptive properties, and why this pattern is analytic. The explanation proceeds by positing a subtle polysemy in normative predicates like “good”. Such predicates express slightly different senses when they are applied to particulars (like Florence Nightingale) and to kinds (like altruism). The former sense, “goodPAR”, can be defined in terms of the latter, “goodKIN”, as follows: x is goodPAR iff there is a kind K such that (...) x is a token of K, and K is goodKIN. Now if x and y are descriptively exactly similar, then they are tokens of exactly the same kinds, so x is a token of a goodKIN kind if and only if y is. Therefore, by the definition, x is goodPAR if and only if y is. Supervenience just falls out of the definition of “goodPAR”. (shrink)

Bayesianism and likelihoodism are two of the most important frameworks philosophers of science use to analyse scientific methodology. However, both frameworks face a serious objection: much scientific inquiry takes place in highly idealized frameworks where all the hypotheses are known to be false. Yet, both Bayesianism and likelihoodism seem to be based on the assumption that the goal of scientific inquiry is always truth rather than closeness to the truth. Here, I argue in favour of a verisimilitude framework for inductive (...) inference. In the verisimilitude framework, scientific inquiry is conceived of, in part, as a process where inference methods ought to be calibrated to appropriate measures of closeness to the truth. To illustrate the verisimilitude framework, I offer a reconstruction of parsimony evaluations of scientific theories, and I give a reconstruction and extended analysis of the use of parsimony inference in phylogenetics. By recasting phylogenetic inference in the verisimilitude framework, it becomes possible to both raise and address objections to phylogenetic methods that rely on parsimony. 1Introduction2Problems with the Law of Likelihood3Introducing Verisimilitude-Based Inference4Examples of Verisimilitude-Based Inference Procedures4.1Parsimony inference over theories4.2Parsimony inference in phylogenetics5Conclusion. (shrink)

I argue that information is a goal-relative concept for Bayesians. More precisely, I argue that how much information is provided by a piece of evidence depends on whether the goal is to learn the truth or to rank actions by their expected utility, and that different confirmation measures should therefore be used in different contexts. I then show how information measures may reasonably be derived from confirmation measures, and I show how to derive goal-relative non-informative and informative priors given background (...) information. Finally, I argue that my arguments have important implications for both objective and subjective Bayesianism. In particular, the Uniqueness Thesis is either false or must be modified. Moreover, objective Bayesians must concede that pragmatic factors systematically influence which priors are rational, and subjective Bayesians must concede that pragmatic factors sometimes partly determine which prior distribution most accurately represents an agent’s epistemic state. (shrink)

The article defends a mild form of pessimism about moral deference, by arguing that deference is incompatible with authentic interaction, that is, acting in a way that communicates our own normative judgment. The point of such interaction is ultimately that it allows us to get to know and engage one another. This vindication of our intuitive resistance to moral deference is upheld, in a certain range of cases, against David Enoch’s recent objection to views that motivate pessimism by appealing to (...) moral autonomy or understanding. Enoch is right to point out that the value of autonomy or understanding cannot provide reason not to defer, if deferring would reduce the risk of treating others wrongly. But in the kind of case where we would want other people to act authentically towards us, even at the cost of a greater risk of wrongdoing, we should do the same towards them. (shrink)