Assuming that Aristotelian ethical thought is specifically related to the problem of stability and permanency of Polis, this paper researches the relationship between the human soul and the ethical-political order. Ethical life is described as an on-going process whereby we learn how to think and desire, due to the experience of each particular situation. Ethics shows the human life as a progressive assimilation of ethical-political order in which one becomes the man one is. But, on the other hand, it also (...) shows that any order owes itself to the character of men who take part in it. Interiorising of customs – the purpose of ethical process of personal constitution – forms the man (character is built from the communitarian experience). The virtuous man’s soul is the strongest guarantee againstruination that always threatens Polis. The affirmation of a good life as a happy life in virtue – as the permanent and stable activity according to virtue – assures political order’s stability and the permanence of the Polis. This leads to a reflection about how much Politics owes Ethics: the possibility of the most esteemed idea in Aristotelian political discourse (the permanence of Polis) depends on the ethical process of human soul’s construction. The soul belongs to the order just as the order belongs to the soul. Seen as a virtue, Justice is a certain configuration of the soul (of desiring, thinking and even of feeling) of a man. The abandonment of that incarnate old conception of Justice is strictly related to the contemporary crisis of Law, whose weaknesses in legitimacy and efficacy are evident. (shrink)

O presente ensaio parte dos questionamentos construídos por Machado de Assis no artigo “Notícia da atual literatura brasileira: instinto de nacionalidade”, para analisar o lugar que o discurso marginal ocupa na produção literária contemporânea. Nesta perspectiva, utilizando como referência o conceito construído por Machado de Assis, investigo a possibilidade de observarmos a presença de um “Instinto de Marginalidade” na atual literatura brasileira, que não mais se baseia no intuito de formação de uma “literatura nacional”, isto é, unificadora e essencialista, mas (...) como vozes da dissonância e da alteridade. Assim, se o “Instinto de nacionalidade”, detectado por Machado em sua época, serviria a uma busca de independência, não estaríamos igualmente presenciando um ensejo de diferenciação das minorias? E, dessa forma, ainda seguindo os passos do crítico, não correríamos o risco da busca de uma “cor local” que salvaguardaria as fronteiras entre margem e centro? (shrink)

Assuming that Aristotelian ethical thought is specifically related to the problem of stability and permanency of Polis, this paper researches the relationship between the human soul and the ethical-political order. Ethical life is described as an on-going process whereby we learn how to think and desire, due to the experience of each particular situation. Ethics shows the human life as a progressive assimilation of ethical-political order in which one becomes the man one is. But, on the other hand, it also (...) shows that any order owes itself to the character of men who take part in it. Interiorising of customs – the purpose of ethical process of personal constitution – forms the man (character is built from the communitarian experience). The virtuous man’s soul is the strongest guarantee againstruination that always threatens Polis. The affirmation of a good life as a happy life in virtue – as the permanent and stable activity according to virtue – assures political order’s stability and the permanence of the Polis. This leads to a reflection about how much Politics owes Ethics: the possibility of the most esteemed idea in Aristotelian political discourse (the permanence of Polis) depends on the ethical process of human soul’s construction. The soul belongs to the order just as the order belongs to the soul. Seen as a virtue, Justice is a certain configuration of the soul (of desiring, thinking and even of feeling) of a man. The abandonment of that incarnate old conception of Justice is strictly related to the contemporary crisis of Law, whose weaknesses in legitimacy and efficacy are evident. (shrink)

In this article, we present a work developed with palliative patients with the aim of, through art, enabling them to find answers that would help them overcome situations that kept them involved in thoughts, fears, and anxiety that consumed their energy, joy, and will to live. For this purpose, we used a qualitative methodology —research-action— and the attained results revealed how arts can be useful to these patients by providing them, through the work they have developed, with an improvement in (...) self-esteem, disposition, and well-being in disease avoidance and the expression and communication of emotions. (shrink)

Esse ensaio tem por finalidade discutir a abertura instaurada no debate educacional a partir da introdução do conceito de Duração produzido por Bergson, aproximando-o aos estudos deleuzianos sobre pensamento e aprendizagem. Partindo destes conceitos, procuro captar outros modos de atualização de processos educativos engendrados nos cotidianos escolares. Assim, tomando a prática docente como trabalho com matéria em movimento e não mais como ensino-transmissão de conhecimento, busco, de modo provisório, analisar as práticas de aprendizagem inventivas (Kastrup, 1999/2009) instauradas em meio aos (...) encontros educativos considerando a dimensão intempestiva do conceito de tempo. Argumento que a introdução do tempo duração modificou radicalmente as concepções de desenvolvimento que norteiam as políticas cognitivas vinculadas à recognição, instaurando o tempo intempestivo. Assim, o campo problemático desse ensaio se desenvolve a partir da seguinte questão: Quais as implicações da introdução do conceito de duração no atravessamento do conceito de pensamento proposto por Deleuze para as investigações sobre as práticas educativas, no campo da Educação? Considero que, ao deslizarmos sobre a superfície de aderência nos movimentos introduzidos nos cotidianos escolares no encontro entre os corpos desejantes, é possível captar múltiplas experiências perturbadoras, as quais desestabilizam o modelo de escolarização dominante - momentos fugazes onde os fluxos intensivos criam canais de passagem para as intensidades vitais que emanam nos encontros entre os corpos, produzindo outros modos de aprender. (shrink)

Economics students and economists have—grosso modo—a bad societal reputation. This is, roughly speaking, the provocative result of the majority of empirical studies on economic education. On average, economists and economics students behave in a more self-interested way than others; they are more prone to deviate from the moral good; they tend to free-ride more often and invest less in public goods games; they are more corrupt and less honest in lost letterexperiments, less cooperative in solidarity games, and accept less and (...) keep more in ultimatum bargaining games. In short: they seem to behave more in accordance with the predictions of the rational or self-interest model of standard economics, the Homo oeconomicus model. What might be the reasons that the degree of anti-social and uncooperative behavior is on average significantly more pronounced among economics students compared to other student groups? Can these empirical findings be explained by the self-selection effect and/or the indoctrination effect? What are the implications of these empirical results for economic ethics and economic education? Which roles do the economics curriculum and economic textbooks play? Do they have any effect on everyday behavior? Is the way economics is taught at (business) schools, colleges and universities co-responsible for the considerable behavioral differences? And what can be done in order to reverse these trends and to foster other-regarding preferences and pro-social behavior? The paper analyzes these and other questions with the help of experimental economics, behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. It also draws on recent findings of brain physiology research in general and neuroplasticity in particular. (shrink)

Properly speaking, the corporation, considered as an entity distinct from its members, cannot be morally responsible for wrongful corporate acts. Setting aside (in this abstract) acts brought about through negligence or omissions, we may say that moral responsibility for an act attaches to that agent (or agents) in whom the act "originates" in this sense: (1) the agent formed the (mental) intention or plan to bring about that act (possibly with the help of others) and (2) the act was intentionally (...) brought about through bodily movements over which that agent had direct control (i.e. the kind of direct mental control that I have over the body I refer to as "my" body) and through which the agent carried out his (mental) intention or plan. Corporate acts do not thus originate in some corporate entity distinct from its members because the corporation has neither a mind to form intentions nor a body it directly controls: it lacks the proper mind/body unity. Instead, corporate acts originate in individual autonomous human beings who make up the corporation and who intentionally bring about corporate acts through their own bodily movements. Such human individuals, and not "the corporation," are morally responsible for corporate acts. Moreover, to say that an entity is "morally responsible" for a wrongful act is to say that the entity is liable to blame and punishment. But it is not possible to impose blame and punishment on a corporation without inflicting it on corporate members. Thus, to say that a corporation (as an entity distinct from its members) is "morally responsible" for a wrongful corporate act is to imply that a (possibly innocent) corporate member legitimately may be punished for something for which another entity was morally responsible. This violates the moral principles that underlie blame and punishment. To hold that the corporation can be morally responsible for its acts is to adopt a dangerous organicism. (shrink)

Intentionality may be dealt with in two different ways: either ontologically, as an ordinary relation to some extraordinary objects, or epistemologically, as an extraordinary relation to some ordinary objects. This paper endorses the epistemological view in order to provide a model of semiotic intentionality defined as the meaning-and-cognizing process that constitutes to power of the mind to be about something on the basis of a semiotic system. After a short introduction that presents the components of semiotic intentionality (viz. sign, act, (...) content, referent) along with their division into an intending and a fulfilling side (Sect. 1), the first main part of the paper analyzes semiotic intentionality at its primary level (a.k.a. 'concrete intentionality') as a real and subjective relation between meaning-intending and meaning-fulfilling acts grounded in the manipulation of some semiotic system (Sect. 2). Then, building on such concrete intentionality, the second main part of the paper analyzes semiotic intentionality at its secondary level (a.k.a. 'abstract intentionality') as an ideal and objective relation between intentional and fulfillment contents, which in turn: (i) proceed from an abstraction performed on the intending and fulfilling acts, respectively, and (ii) retroactively categorize the intending and fulfilling acts, respectively (Sect. 3). Finally, from this combination of an act-based conception of content with a presentationalist account of intentionality, the conclusion of this paper produces the intended model of semiotic intentionality in such a way that knowledge and truth are then respectively defined in it as the subjective correspondence between the two acts of concrete intentionality and as the objective correspondence between the two contents of abstract intentionality (Sect. 4). (shrink)

In her last known piece of work Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics (1832), Mary Shepherd writes that “mind, may inhere in definite portions of matter […] or of infinite space” (LMSM 699). Shepherd thus suggests that a mind – a “capacity for sensation in general” (e.g., EPEU 16) – may have a spatial location. This is prima facie surprising given that she is committed to the view that the mind is unextended. In this paper, we argue that Shepherd can consistently honor (...) both of these commitments. We argue, first, that even though finite minds, due to their unextendedness cannot, to use Shepherd’s term, ‘occupy’ space as material bodies do, such minds can nonetheless be said to have a spatial location in virtue of what we call their presence, or what Shepherd calls ‘inherence’, in a material body. Second, we argue that, in a similar way, the divine mind is present throughout the whole of space and is thus omnipresent. We then argue that, in contrast to finite minds, the divine mind does not require a body to be present in space. Rather, we contend, God’s omnipresence might be best understood in a ‘holenmerist’ sense, where the divine mind is wholly present in every part of creation. (shrink)

The article is guided by two main research questions: First, do the Equator Principles (EPs), a voluntary CSR-initiative in the project finance sector, and the recently published working paper of the Thun Group of Banks adequately address the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights or do they fall behind the ‘Ruggie framework’? Second, is the demand for human rights due diligence sufficient to classify the EPs as a positive and leverage-based concept of CSR (à la Wettstein and Wood) (...) or is this requirement still a feature of a negative and impact-based concept of CSR? In case it is a negative and impact-based concept of CSR, the question comes up which further steps should be taken by financial institutions to fulfill their positive and leverage-based responsibilities. The article argues that positive and leverage-based responsibilities for multinational companies exist – due to the moral nature of human rights and due to the political authority of multinational companies – and that the current (Ruggie-like) requirements for human rights due diligence are not adequate for a positive and leverage-based concept of CSR. Further measures should be taken by multinational companies – and especially (Equator) banks which possess a high leverage-influence over their clients – to not only ensure the respect for human rights, but also the on-the-ground protection and realization of human rights. (shrink)

The paper deals with the question whether logical truth carry information. On the one hand it seems that we gain new information by drawing inferences or arriving at some theorems. On the other hand the formal accounts of information and information content which are most widely known today say that logical truth carry no information at all. The latter is shown by considering these accounts. Then several ways to deal with the dilemma are distinguished, especially syntactic and ontological solutions. A (...) version of a syntactical solution is favoured. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that only in the section on dialectic in the Critique of Judgment does Kant reach a definitive and conclusive version of deduction, after discovering the concept of the supersensible. In the section on the deduction of pure aesthetic judgments, Kant does not satisfactorily explain the critical distinction between the sensible nature of humanity and the supersensible nature of human reason presupposed in the concept of universal communicability. While the concept of the supersensible illustrates this (...) distinction, it is only through this concept that Kant that can justify the specific possibility of claiming subjective validity in taste. The priority of the solution found in the dialectic is illustrated not only by a comparative analysis of the two sections, but also by a historical reconstruction of the process of the formation of the work, which shows that the first formulation of the concept of validity coincides with the use of the concept of the supersensible. (shrink)

El presente artículo muestra en qué consiste realmente la irrupción de las Logische Untersuchungen según el pensamiento fenomenológico de Jean-Luc Marion. Partiremos de las interpretaciones heideggeriana y derridiana acerca de esta irrupción. No se trata de confrontarlas como dos lecturas opuestas, sino, más bien, conciliarlas de un modo más sutil y mostrar que la gran aportación doctrinal de las Logische Untersuchungen no reside en haber ampliado la intuición, ni en haber afirmado la autonomía de la significación, sino en haber establecido (...) la primordialidad de la correlación entre el aparecer y lo que aparece como tal, esto es, la primacía de la donación del fenómeno. (shrink)

Many prominent accounts of free will and moral responsibility make use of the idea that agents can be responsive to reasons. Call such theories Reasons accounts. In what follows, I consider the tenability of Reasons accounts in light of situationist social psychology and, to a lesser extent, the automaticity literature. In the first half of this chapter, I argue that Reasons accounts are genuinely threatened by contemporary psychology. In the second half of the paper I consider whether such threats can (...) be met, and at what cost. Ultimately, I argue that Reasons accounts can abandon some familiar assumptions, and that doing so permits us to build a more empirically plausible picture of our agency. (shrink)

This article aims to enhance social technology as a resource that induces education and well-being in maternal and child health, more specifically in contexts of social vulnerability. This is an action research, with social technology characteristics, developed between July/2022 and December/2023, with 17 women (pregnant and postpartum women) from a vulnerable community in the central region of Rio Grande do Sul. Based on education in health and in an interprofessional approach, the social technology developed and called “Endowing lives” is the (...) result of demands previously identified, discussed and implemented with the research participants and local health professionals. The social technology developed expanded interprofessional possibilities, promoted preventive health measures and contributed to the empowerment of pregnant and postpartum women in decision-making. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of who should be trusted as an expert and when, particularly in the context of public deliberation. Trust in experts is crucial in making decisions about public policies that involve complex information beyond the expertise of most people. However, fruitful deliberation also requires being able to resist misinformation campaigns, no matter how widespread these might be; being able, in general, to evaluate the evidence at our disposal and form our own opinions. The purpose of this (...) paper is to reflect on this apparent tension between epistemic deference and epistemic independence. The paper has two goals. First, it aims at providing a more nuanced understanding of the question of who should be trusted as an expert by examining cases in which seemingly factual claims are made in public settings by experts. Second, it emphasizes the need to pay attention to the conditions under which we actually trust each other. We suggest that fostering trust in science may be better approached by modifying the conditions under which scientific dialogue takes place, rather than trying to convince the public to trust experts, or blaming them for not doing so. (shrink)

In our dealings with our pets, and larger animals in general, at least most of us see them as conscious beings. We say “the cat feels pain” ascribing sensation. We notice “My cat wants to get in the kitchen because she thinks there is some cheese left” ascribing beliefs and desires. Explanations likes these can be employed on a variety of occasions, and usually we are content with what they say. We seem to understand why our cat is doing what (...) she does. On the other hand the employment of human categories to animals seems to be problematic. Reflecting on the details of human beliefs, for example, casts serious doubt on whether the cat is able to believe anything at all. Clever as they are none of my cats has the concept of kitchen , because a kitchen is – roughly – a functional part of an artificial dwelling (a house). Since cats do not built houses and do not prepare their food, the place the cat is walking into cannot be conceptualized by the cat as kitchen . Even the concept of cheese in its generality (made out of goat or cow milk, or camel milk …) is beyond the cat. So when we say what our cat believes and wishes we use our concept, in fact express a belief that a human being might have in a similar situation. What, then, does the cat have? Does a cat have beliefs? Or at least something like beliefs? (shrink)

When public opinion gets polarized, the population’s beliefs can experience two different changes: they can become more extreme in their contents or they can be held with greater confidence. These two possibilities point to two different understandings of the rupture that characterizes political polarization: extremism and radicalism. In this article, I show that from the close examination of the best available evidence regarding how we get polarized, it follows that the pernicious type of political polarization has more to do with (...) radicalism than with extremism. Reinforcing the confidence in the core beliefs of the group we identify with makes our beliefs immune to the reasons coming from the other political side. Finally, I also suggest that the rise of political polarization is not necessarily the result of an irrational process. (shrink)

This article examines Nietzsche’s analysis of the phenomenology of agent causation. Sense of agent causation, our sense of self-efficacy, is tenacious because it originates, according to Nietzsche’s hypothesis, in the embodied and situated experience of effort in overcoming resistances. It arises at the level of the organism and is sustained by higher-order cognitive functions. Based on this hypothesis, Nietzsche regards the sense of self as emerging from a homeostatic system of drives and affects that unify such as to maintain self-efficacy (...) levels. He relies on the same hypothesis to explain the emergence of an ascetic moral system and its specific, interpretive-affective ‘mechanism of willing’. The article aligns Nietzsche’s account of agent causation with Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy studies and Antonio Damasio’s recent account of self-systems as homeostatic systems. (shrink)

As a multi-layered theory of the foundations of “‘mathematicizing’ logic”, Husserlian pure logic is stratified on three levels (sub-theoretical, theoretical, meta-theoretical), which are then themselves transversally split in two sides (apophantic and ontological). This paper investigates how symbolic knowledge works in this framework—viz. in terms of ‘How can the subjective operating with symbols be justified in the process of obtaining objective contents of knowledge?’ To do so, it innovates in showing how Husserl’s theory of semiotic intentionality provides the epistemological-transcendental foundation (...) for the syntactic-semantic correspondence of the meaning relationship that is operative at the kernel of pure logic—i.e. on the theoretical level, between systems of axioms and formal manifolds. And thereby, it bridges the gap between the two volumes of the first edition of the Logical Investigations (namely, the Prolegomena and the six Investigations). (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on Berkeley's reasons for accepting the ‘resemblance thesis’ which entails that for one thing to represent another those two things must resemble one another. The resemblance thesis is a crucial premise in Berkeley's argument from the ‘likeness principle’ in §8 of the Principles. Yet, like the ‘likeness principle’, the resemblance thesis remains unargued for and is never explicitly defended. This has led several commentators to provide explanations as to why Berkeley accepts the resemblance thesis and (...) why he also takes his opponents to do so too. We provide a contextual answer to this question, focusing on epistemological discussions concerning resemblance and representation in Early Modern Irish Philosophy. We argue that the resemblance thesis is implicit in early responses to William Molyneux's famous example of the ‘man born blind made to see’ and trace the ‘Molyneux man’ thought experiment as it is employed by Irish thinkers such as William King and Berkeley himself. Ultimately, we conclude that Berkeley's acceptance of the resemblance thesis can be explained by the Irish intellectual climate in which he was writing. (shrink)

Both legal and moral theorists have offered broadly “communicative” theories of criminal and moral responsibility. According to such accounts, we can understand the nature of responsibility by appealing to the idea that responsibility practices are in some fundamental sense expressive, discursive, or communicative. In this essay, I consider a variety of issues in connections with this family of views, including its relationship to free will, the theory of exemptions, and potential alternatives to the communicative model. Focusing on Michael McKenna’s Conversation (...) and Responsibility, I argue that communicative accounts, and the conversational model in particular, direct our attention to important and under-appreciated elements of our responsibility practices. However, rather than focusing on a model of conversation-as-address, as McKenna does, we do better to regard gossip as the paradigmatic conversational form that captures the main features of moral responsibility. (shrink)

La obra de Lévinas propone asumir la ética como Filosofía Primera. Allí convergen dos fuentes de inspiración filosófica, el pensamiento judío y la fenomenología, y la experiencia histórica de persecución, violencia y desconocimiento del otro que exigió a Lévinas criticar el totalitarismo ontológico griego con el propósito de hacer justicia a la Alteridad y dar primacía así a la Responsabilidad para con el Otro sobre la Libertad autónoma del Yo. Luego, el autor retorna la crítica de Lévinas a la fenomenología (...) de la conciencia y a la ontología hermenéutica de Heidegger, con la que Occidente lleva a término su limitada opción por el conocimiento y la manifestación del Ser. Rubio y Lévinas, en tercer lugar, señalan hacia una hermenéutica encarnada de nuestras relaciones con el Otro, a una reivindicación de la antropología filosófica que recupere el Sentido desde el Otro. Finalmente, el autor se refiere al terna de la muerte en Lévinas, y subraya, en relación con la desaparición del maestro Rubio que, nuestro adiós a él, significa el 'ante Dios' de todas nuestras relaciones no tematizables con el Otro y antes que todo. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize libertarianism and skepticism about free will. The criticism of libertarianism takes some steps towards filling in an argument that is often mentioned but seldom developed in any detail, the argument that libertarianism is a scientifically implausible view. I say "take some steps" because I think the considerations I muster (at most) favor a less ambitious relative of that argument. The less ambitious claim I hope to motivate is that there is little reason to believe that (...) extant libertarian accounts satisfy a standard of naturalistic plausibility, even if they do satisfy a standard of naturalistic compatibility. The argument against skepticism about free will tries to show (1) perhaps the most prominent form of skeptical argument against the existence of free will does not work, and (2) there is a good general argument against skepticism about free will. (shrink)

Human–robot interactions are often affected by error situations that are caused by either the robot or the human. Therefore, robots would profit from the ability to recognize when error situations occur. We investigated the verbal and non-verbal social signals that humans show when error situations occur in human–robot interaction experiments. For that, we analyzed 201 videos of five human–robot interaction user studies with varying tasks from four independent projects. The analysis shows that there are two types of error situations: social (...) norm violations and technical failures. Social norm violations are situations in which the robot does not adhere to the underlying social script of the interaction. Technical failures are caused by technical shortcomings of the robot. The results of the video analysis show that the study participants use many head movements and very few gestures, but they often smile, when in an error situation with the robot. The results suggest that participants do not see the robot as a social interaction partner with comparable communication skills. Our findings have implications for builders and evaluators of human–robot interaction systems. The builders need to consider including modules for recognition and classification of head movements to the robot input channels. The evaluators need to make sure that the presence of an experimenter does not skew the results of their user studies. (shrink)

No âmbito dos principals trabalhos de Delfim Santos bem que, na totalidade da suamensagem, contextuamos a nossa reflexão em três proposições: "A pedagogia — o educando: ser essencial-existencial"; "A educação: fundamento e sentido da pedagogia"; "O espírito: fundamento e sentido da educação e dapedagogia". Deste modo, na primeira proposição, posicionamos o homem, no contexto pedagógico-educacional. Na segunda, movemo-nos na ambiguidade ontológica-metafísica e sistemáticatrans-sistemática; e, assim, se começámos por evidenciar, no processo educative os momentos essencial e existencial, concluímos pelos respectivos intervenientes. (...) Na terceira, conotamos a realidade e o espírito, como domínio metafísico da educação e da pedagogia. Na tríade das proposições, sobrelevamos, na primeira, o homem como termo de mediação, na segunda, aeducação e na terceira, o espírito, concluindo por este último, como termo médio fundamental e, assim, metafísico, da educação e da pedagogia, em Delfim Santos. (shrink)

Recent debates on linguistic diversity inevitably raise questions about the value of languages. This paper deals with two descriptions of language’s value that play a prominent role in those debates: language considered as a means of communication and a cultural heritage. Its purpose is explanatory, providing an account of how languages are assessed in each of these descriptions. Moreover, the paper will also pay attention to the rhetorical uses of such value descriptions in the discourses on linguistic diversity, considering the (...) intrinsic value given to language as a cultural heritage. (shrink)