Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page W5-W8.

This chapter develops and defends an account of reason: to reason is to scrutinize one’s attitudes by consulting the perspectives of other persons. The principal attraction of this account is its ability to vindicate the unique of authority of reason. The chapter argues that this conception entails that reasoning is a robustly social endeavor—that it is, in the first instance, something we do with other people. It is further argued that such social endeavors presuppose mutual respect on the part of (...) those participating in them. The account therefore yields a form of Kantian constructivism: we have an unconditional duty of respect for persons because such a duty is implicit in the very nature of reasoning. -/- . (shrink)

My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by (...) its ability to explain some important but otherwise recondite features of aesthetic practice and, more importantly, by allowing us to ground the normativity of aesthetic judgement in the familiar normativity of practice. It also offers a more systematic way of understanding the rivalry between the ideals of aesthetic universality and diversity. (shrink)

Many people find comparisons of the value of persons distasteful, even immoral. But what can be said in support of the claim that persons have incomparable worth? This chapter considers an argument purporting to show that the value of persons is incomparable because it is so great—because it is infinite. The argument rests on two claims: that the value of our capacity for valuing must equal or exceed the value of things valued and that our capacity for valuing is unbounded (...) in a very strong sense. After laying out this argument, I consider its implications for how we should regard each other. In particular, I suggest that it complicates efforts to understand morality as a system of principles. Instead, I propose that an aesthetic attitude, not unlike our experience of the sublime, is an apt response to humanity’s infinite value. -/- . (shrink)

This paper presents a formalism that combines useful properties of both logic and probabilities. Like logic, the formalism admits qualitative sentences and provides symbolic machinery for deriving deductively closed beliefs and, like probability, it permits us to express if-then rules with different levels of firmness and to retract beliefs in response to changing observations. Rules are interpreted as order-of-magnitude approximations of conditional probabilities which impose constraints over the rankings of worlds. Inferences are supported by a unique priority ordering on rules (...) which is syntactically derived from the knowledge base. This ordering accounts for rule interactions, respects specificity considerations and facilitates the construction of coherent states of beliefs. Practical algorithms are developed and analyzed for testing consistency, computing rule ordering, and answering queries. Imprecise observations are incorporated using qualitative versions of Jeffrey's rule and Bayesian updating, with the result that coherent belief revision is embodied naturally and tractably. Finally, causal rules are interpreted as imposing Markovian conditions that further constrain world rankings to reflect the modularity of causal organizations. These constraints are shown to facilitate reasoning about causal projections, explanations, actions and change. (shrink)

Resumen: El propósito de este trabajo es mostrar cómo la propuesta de la nueva retórica de Chaïm Perelman se constituye fundamentalmente en una teoría de la racionalidad práctica en perspectiva argumentativa. Para el desarrollo de esta tesis procedemos de la siguiente manera: primero se describe el giro pragmático que lleva a Perelman a señalar los límites de la lógica formal deductivista para el campo de los valores en algunos de sus textos de juventud; a continuación se muestra la apuesta de (...) Perelman por una nueva retórica como un tipo de aplicación de la racionalidad, desarrollada en su Tratado de la argumentación y algunos textos posteriores a 1958; y finalmente se desarrolla la noción perelmaniana de lo razonable en el marco de la argumentación jurídica, para mostrar cómo, desde esta perspectiva, Perelman se vincula al debate de la segunda mitad del siglo XX conocido como la “doctrina de los casos difíciles en derecho”.: The purpose of this work is to show how Chaïm Perelman’s new rhetoric proposal fundamentally constitutes a theory of practical rationality in an argumentative perspective. To develop this thesis, we proceed as follows: first, we describe the pragmatic turn that leads Perelman to point out the limits of formal deductivist logic in the field of values, in some of his youth texts; then, Perelman’s bet on new rhetoric is presented as a kind of application of rationality, developed in his Treaty of Argumentation and in some texts written after 1958; finally, the Perelmanian notion of reason is developed in the framework of legal argumentation, to show how, from this perspective, Perelman is linked to the debate of the second half of the twentieth century known as the “doctrine of difficult cases in law”. (shrink)

George Berkeley is one of the greatest and most influential modern philosophers. In defending the immaterialism for which he is most famous, he redirected modern thinking about the nature of objectivity and the mind's capacity to come to terms with it. Along the way, he made striking and influential proposals concerning the psychology of the senses, the workings of language, the aims of science, and the scope of mathematics. In this Companion volume a team of distinguished authors not only examines (...) Berkeley's achievements but also his neglected contributions to moral and political philosophy, his writings on economics and development, and his defense of religious commitment and religious life. The volume places Berkeley's achievements in the context of the many social and intellectual traditions - philosophical, scientific, ethical, and religious - to which he fashioned a distinctive response. (shrink)

The young Hegel was entranced by the notion of intellectual intuition, and this notion continues to entrance many of Hegel’ commentators. I argue that Kant provided three distinct conceptions of an intuitive intellect, that none of these involve aconceptual intuitionism, and that they differ markedly from Fichte’s and Schelling’s conceptions of intellectual intuition. I further argue that by 1804 Hegel recognized that appealing to an aconceptual model, or to Schelling’s model, or to his own early model of intellectual intuition generates (...) inevitable and insoluble problems of question-begging. By incorporating several important points from Kant’s Transcendental Ideal into his reinterpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and Refutation of Idealism, Hegel’s mature discursive and conceptual account of ‘absolute knowing’ performs some of the functions Kant assigned to the intuitive intellect, though without invoking any such intuitive intellect. I discuss several of these functions. (shrink)

_Grounds of Pragmatic Realism_ shows Hegel is a major epistemologist, who disentangled Kant’s critique of judgment, across the Critical corpus, from transcendental idealism, and augmented its enormous evaluative and justificatory significance for commonsense knowledge, the natural sciences and freedom of action.

The uncertainty concerning the genre of the Ḥorvat ʿUza ostracon 1 is problematized through the lens of linguistic anthropology. Although a denotative approach to the linguistic forms in this Hebrew ostracon is well attested, less attention has been paid to the indexical meaning of specific stylistic features and their semi- otic register implications. Several linguistic-ideological concepts are drawn upon to examine how the act of inscription and specialized linguistic forms align the discursive genre of the ostracon with prophecy. I seek (...) to determine what salient discourse forms in the ostracon index the employment of habitual utterance styles of prophecy that construct context, genre, and social identity. (shrink)

Après avoir erré quelques années, étudiant férocement studieux mais aussi très anarchiste, après avoir déambulé le long des docks du port de Glasgow, alors du dernier stade de la révolution industrielle, entouré d'une drôle de musique où les accents de Rimbaud («Je me crois en enfer») et de Hölderlin («Ce que tu veux, c'est un monde») se mêlaient aux phrasés grinçants de L'Opéra de quat'sous de Bertolt Brecht, je me posais la question : que faire? Que faire de fondamental? D'abord (...) pour donner un fondement et un mouvement à une existence individuelle, mais aussi pour tenter de changer le cours des choses, sur les plans culturel, civilisationnel et sociopolitique. Pendant le XIXe et le XXe siècle on a cru, malgré tout, que l'Histoire était synonyme de Progrès. Qu'elle menait quelque part : à un grand Etat, au communisme universel, à un Supermarché du bonheur. Personne n'a plus confiance dans l'Histoire. D'où un grand vide existentiel et culturel. Sans utopisme, sans réenchantement facile, Kenneth White entreprend une navigation hauturière dans un espace de vie et de pensée, qui a toujours existé au large de l'Histoire. Les escales de ce voyage sont au nombre de cinq : une analyse socio-politique de la fin de la modernité ; une investigation qui remonte aux origines de la culture ; l'examen de diverses tentatives de refondation sociale à travers le monde ; la question, posée encore trop timidement par l'écologie, de l'habitation de la Terre ; et enfin, une critique de la situation contemporaine de l'art. (shrink)

David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical and literary classic of the highest order. It is also an extremely relevant work because of its engagement with issues as alive today as in Hume's time: the design argument for a deity, the problem of evil, the dangers of superstition and fanaticism, the psychological roots and social consequences of religion. In this outstanding and unorthodox collection, an international team of scholars engage with Hume's classic work. The chapters include state-of-the-art contributions (...) on the central interpretive questions posed by the Dialogues as well as major contributions relating it to contemporary issues in philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, moral psychology, and social philosophy. Additional contributions tackle the historical and philosophical background of the Dialogues, relating it to Hume's own systematic philosophy, to the work of other key seventeenth and eighteenth-century figures - Locke, Clarke, Bayle, Cudworth, Malebranche, Spinoza, Lord Bolingbroke, and Voltaire, among others - to early modern neo-Epicureanism in the life sciences, and, notably, to what Darwin missed by thinking too much like William Paley and not enough like Hume's Philo. Overall, this volume provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It is essential reading for students and scholars of Hume, the history of modern philosophy, philosophy of religion and the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

For Hume, one task of logic is “to explain the principles and operations of our reasoning faculties”; this chapter is a study of his logic of inductive reasoning, as presented in Book I of his Treatise and in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Like other early modern logics—especially those composed, as Hume’s was, under the influence of Locke—Hume’s logic is descriptive, explanatory, and normative. It also aspires to be revelatory. It is descriptive in documenting how our reasoning actually proceeds, explanatory (...) in telling us why it so proceeds, normative in telling us how it should proceed, and revelatory in using those findings to arrive at larger truths about human nature and human life. Hume formulates rules of inductive reasoning and ranks inductive arguments as better and worse. He also advocates the reform of intellectual disciplines. Yet his logic, it is argued, is at the same time deeply skeptical. (shrink)

We defend the moral and legal right to secede in accordance with plebiscitary theory. Our paper has three main goals. First, by offering a schematic characterization of plebiscitary theory, the main arguments in its favour (and the main objections to them), we contribute to clarify the structure of this complex debate. Second, we stress the point that, if the moral right to secede is established, the resistance for its inclusion into positive law is unjustified. Finally, by addressing old and new (...) objections to plebiscitary theory, we hope to make a compelling case for a wider recognition of secessionist rights. (shrink)

Schiller says that “it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” Here I attempt to defend a claim in the same spirit as Schiller’s but by different means. My thesis is that a person’s autonomous agency depends on their adopting an aesthetic identity. To act, we need to don contingent features of agency, things that structure our practical thought and explain what we do in very general terms but are neither universal nor necessary features of agency (...) as such. Without these things, the question of what to do for any individual would be underdetermined. The problem is that adopting such a contingent form of agency amounts to a restriction on what we can do, and so it is a prima facie threat to our autonomy. I will argue that one way, and indeed the only way, of meeting this challenge lies in aesthetic experience. Granting our capacity for aesthetic pleasure the authority to determine the particularities of our agency is compatible with autonomy because doing so means identifying with one’s capacity for pleasure in free and creative activity. Doing this allows us to be both particular sorts of agents and creatures regulated by the universalizing demands of reason. (shrink)

La tesis o hipótesis que se sostiene en el artículo es que la puesta en relación de formas explícitas e implícitas de vida compartida en las sociedades contemporáneas conlleva el auge de identidades híbridas, múltiples o complejas. Entendiendo por identidades híbridas la confluencia de múltiples identificaciones en la biografía personal. Siendo la globalización y la pluralización cultural las formas fundamentales de la sociedad contemporánea, la movilidad se convierte en su principal ingrediente. Se describe la presencia de distintos elementos culturales conformadores (...) de identidad en Chiapas. Internet, la emigración a Estados Unidos o el Tratado de Libre Comercio entre México, Estados Unidos y Canadá se hibrida con la heterogeneidad identitaria (religiosa, étnica, lingüística) existente en el territorio. Se discute el carácter híbrido de las sociedades contemporáneas y las consecuencias sociales y políticas que conlleva. (shrink)

The identity is an arduous and complex topic that includes practically all the aspects of the life of a human being. The identity, mediated narrative, plays a role aimed at the personal direction of ours lives and sociocultural function linked to the quest for recognition of the rights of social groups to which one feels attached . Between economic globalization and pluralization of the life forms, identity is the result of a double disorientation. At the individual level, the insecurity work, (...) the flexibility of human relations, the rise in divorces or international migrations require rethinking, constantly, the circumstances on which our lives are developed. At the collective level, the new transnational agents like ONU or OTAN and local agents like nationalism, ethnic or immigrant groups forced to rethink the space of groups, collectives and communities between the global homogenization and local heterogeneity. (shrink)

El artículo examina la idea popperiana del Mundo 3 como un caso de verdad práctica. El hecho de que Popper hable del conocimiento como de una habilidad práctica da pie a analizar su propuesta en los términos de la filosofía práctica de la ciencia, tal y como ha sido desarrollada por Alfredo Marcos. Este enfoque ofrece una visión más coherente del pensamiento popperiano en el que no cabría distinguir dos etapas incoherentes, una crítica y otra ontológica, sino un mismo pensamiento (...) en el que la relación entre sujeto y objeto de conocimiento no es tan simple como suponen el psicologismo subjetivista ni el objetivismo esencialista (extremos que Popper pretendió evitar siempre). (shrink)

Beyond the techniques and instruments it employs, medicine has an intrinsic value that enables it to be interpretative, dramatic, and above all, real. In this essay, the aesthetic that emerges through the medical examination is thoroughly discussed. The piece deconstructs the qualities of the medical examination in a manner that facilitates medical practice to be perceived as an art form. The signifiers found in a medical diagnosis and its aesthetic consequences are reviewed. The nature of the diagnosis positions medical practice (...) as a dramatic art. (shrink)

En las páginas que siguen trato de acercarme a estos dos grandes pensadores para ver qué es lo que tienen que decirnos acerca del hombre y de su historia. Marx confía en el progreso histórico y cree que finalmente los hombres pasarán del reino de la necesidad al de la libertad. Vico, en cambio, nunca creyó que el progreso fuese una necesidad que tenía que producirse inevitablemente, ni mucho menos que fuese irreversible, pues la barbarie está siempre acechando y toda (...) conquista es siempre precaria.I take this paper to be an approach to these two great thinkers in order to find out what they have to say about man and his history. Marx, unlike Vico, relies heavily in the historical progress and seems to be firmly convinced that men would eventually step into the kingdom of freedom once they have abandoned that of necessity. Vico, on the other hand, never believed that progress was bound inevitably to occur, let alone that it were an unavoidable process, since barbarism is always lying in wait and all conquer appears to be meager. (shrink)

The vertebrate body is organized in segments, easily visible in the consecutive vertebrae of the skeleton. These are first defined in the embryo by the formation of somites. Somites are generated at regular intervals from the presomitic mesoderm by a combination of oscillating signals, known as the segmentation clock, which establish the pace at which new somites are formed, and signaling gradients that set the location of new intersomitic borders. Using a microarray approach, Dequéant et al.1 have now shown that (...) the segmentation clock is more complex than previously thought and includes oscillating expression of genes from at least three signaling pathways organized in coordinated networks. BioEssays 29:412–415, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Os sites institucionais das universidades são ferramentas importantes para que os estudantes acessem as informações referentes à instituição. Espera-se que as informações distribuídas nos sites sejam de fácil acesso e contemplem informações completas. Considera-se o cuidado com a saúde mental discente um assunto muito importante, mas pouco explorado e/ou investido. Esse estudo tem por objetivo problematizar e discutir sobre os serviços de saúde mental discente encontrados através das informações apresentadas nos sites institucionais das universidades e avaliar a facilidade de acesso (...) às informações. Foram escolhidas 11 universidades federais da região sul do Brasil por amostra de conveniência, sendo uma pesquisa qualitativa onde foi utilizado o método descritivo e interpretativo com o auxílio da etnografia virtual para construção dos dados. Ao longo da pesquisa, percebeu-se uma dificuldade em encontrar informações sobre suporte à saúde mental e informações completas sobre os serviços estudados. Durante o estudo houve o questionamento sobre a necessidade de pensar a saúde mental discente além do viés biomédico centralizado em dificuldades cognitivas e/ou possíveis adoecimentos no meio acadêmico. Existe uma urgência de criar propostas de prevenção e promoção à saúde mental universitária ampliando os campos de atuação do psicólogo escolar. (shrink)

The Systematicity Arguments is the only book-length treatment of the systematicity and productivity arguments.