Thick terms and concepts, such as honesty and cruelty, are at the heart of a variety of debates in philosophy of language and metaethics. Central to these debates is the question of how the descriptive and evaluative components of thick concepts are related and whether they can be separated from each other. So far, no empirical data on how thick terms are used in ordinary language has been collected to inform these debates. In this paper, we present the first empirical (...) study, designed to investigate whether the evaluative component of thick concepts is communicated as part of the semantic meaning or by means of conversational implicatures. While neither the semantic nor the pragmatic view can fully account for the use of thick terms in ordinary language, our results do favour the semanticist interpretation: the evaluation of a thick concept is only slightly easier to cancel than semantically entailed content. We further discovered a polarity effect, demonstrating that how easily an evaluation can be cancelled depends on whether the thick term is of positive or negative polarity. (shrink)

Is it tautological to call an action "wrongful discrimination?" Some philosophers and political theorists answer this question in the affirmative and claim that the term "discrimination" is intrinsically evaluative. Others agree that "discrimination" usually conveys the action’s moral wrongness but claim that the term can be used in a purely descriptive way. In this paper, we present two corpus studies and two experiments designed to test whether the folk concept of discrimination is evaluative. We demonstrate that the term has undergone (...) a historical development and is nowadays no longer used purely descriptively. Further, we show that this evaluation cannot be cancelled without yielding a contradiction. We conclude that the descriptive use of "discriminatory" is a thing of the past. (shrink)

What is the connection between causation and responsibility? Is there a best way to theorize philosophically about causation? Which factors determine and influence what we judge to be the cause of something? Bringing together interdisciplinary research from experimental philosophy, traditional philosophy and psychology, this collection showcases the most recent developments and approaches to questions about causation. Chapters discuss the diverse theoretical ramifications of empirical findings in experimental philosophy of causation, providing a comprehensive survey of key issues such as the perception (...) and learning of causal relations, omission, normative considerations, mechanism, voluntariness and legal theories of causation. With novel contributions from both experts and rising stars, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Causation demonstrates the value of empirical work and opens new domains of inquiry at the cutting edge of the field. (shrink)

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We (...) will present an experiment to support this claim. (shrink)

No cinema brasileiro recente, o diálogo entre o documentário e a ficção tem merecido destaque, com produções de baixo orçamento e ideias originais. É o caso de Santiago (João Moreira Salles, 2007) e Viajo Porque Preciso, Volto Porque Te Amo (Marcelo Gomes, Karim Aïnouz, 2009), filmes que trabalham esse diálogo de forma sutil e diegética, ressignificando imagens de um arquivo próprio, pessoal.

We introduce a methodology whereby an arbitrary logic system L can be enriched with temporal features to create a new system T(L). The new system is constructed by combining L with a pure propositional temporal logic T (such as linear temporal logic with Since and Until) in a special way. We refer to this method as adding a temporal dimension to L or just temporalising L. We show that the logic system T(L) preserves several properties of the original temporal logic (...) like soundness, completeness, decidability, conservativeness and separation over linear flows of time. We then focus on the temporalisation of first-order logic, and a comparison is make with other first-order approaches to the handling of time. (shrink)

We provide a model in which students must choose whether or not to cheat on a course exam. By assuming that the moral cost of acting dishonestly decreases as the number of other people who behave in the same way increases, our model explains one important channel by which unethical behavior of other individuals can influence observers’ behavior. Through the use of the Global Games approach of equilibrium selection, we build a framework that provides the micro-foundations of peer effects on (...) academic dishonesty and shows how better student technology of cheating and higher disutility of effort make the cheating equilibrium more likely to be selected. By extending the model, we find that the peer effect strength is not affected by the level of homogeneity of the cohort, but decreases in the size of the class. Our approach may be seen as an important step towards reduced-form models of peer effects on dishonest behavior. (shrink)

But never let it be doubted that depression, in its extreme form, is madness. (Styron, 1990, p. 62)There is nothing wrong with our biology or our intelligence; sometimes we are just stuck. (Cvetkov...

The logics of formal inconsistency (LFIs, for short) are paraconsistent logics (that is, logics containing contradictory but non-trivial theories) having a consistency connective which allows to recover the ex falso quodlibet principle in a controlled way. The aim of this paper is considering a novel semantical approach to first-order LFIs based on Tarskian structures defined over swap structures, a special class of multialgebras. The proposed semantical framework generalizes previous aproaches to quantified LFIs presented in the literature. The case of QmbC, (...) the simpler quantified LFI expanding classical logic, will be analyzed in detail. An axiomatic extension of QmbC called QLFI1o is also studied, which is equivalent to the quantified version of da Costa and D'Ottaviano 3-valued logic J3. The semantical structures for this logic turn out to be Tarkian structures based on twist structures. The expansion of QmbC and QLFI1o with a standard equality predicate is also considered. (shrink)

From the early to mid-1970s, Michel Foucault posited that power consists of a relation rather than a substance and that this relation is comprised of unequal forces engaged in a warlike struggle against each other, resulting invariably in the domination of some forces over others. This understanding of power, which he retrospectively dubbed `Nietzsche's hypothesis' and `the model of war', underpinned his well-known analyses of disciplinary power. Yet, Foucault in his Collège de France course from the academic year 1975-6, `Society (...) Must Be Defended', suddenly began to call into question this understanding and his doubts about it did not abate well into the late 1970s. In this article, we suggest that his militant politics in the early 1970s sustained his adherence to the war model and that his more cautious political attitude later in the decade underpinned his suspicions about this model. Key Words: biopolitics • Henri de Boulainvilliers • Michel Foucault • Thomas Hobbes • militancy • F. W. Nietzsche • politics • power • race • war. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that normative considerations play an important role in causal cognition. For instance, when an agent violates a moral rule and thereby produces a negative outcome, she will be judged to be much more of a cause of the outcome, compared to someone who performed the same action but did not violate a norm. While there is a substantial amount of evidence reporting these effects, it is still a matter of debate how this evidence is to (...) be interpreted. In this paper, we engage with the three most influential classes of explanations, namely, (a) the Norm‐Sensitive Cognitive Process View, (b) the Normative Concept View, and (c) the Pragmatics View. We will outline how these theories explain the empirical results and in what ways they differ. We conclude with a reflection on how well these strategies do overall and what questions they still leave unanswered. (shrink)

In 1988, J. Ivlev proposed some (non-normal) modal systems which are semantically characterized by four-valued non-deterministic matrices in the sense of A. Avron and I. Lev. Swap structures are multialgebras (a.k.a. hyperalgebras) of a special kind, which were introduced in 2016 by W. Carnielli and M. Coniglio in order to give a non-deterministic semantical account for several paraconsistent logics known as logics of formal inconsistency, which are not algebraizable by means of the standard techniques. Each swap structure induces naturally a (...) non-deterministic matrix. The aim of this paper is to obtain a swap structures semantics for some Ivlev-like modal systems proposed in 2015 by M. Coniglio, L. Fariñas del Cerro and N. Peron. Completeness results will be stated by means of the notion of Lindenbaum–Tarski swap structures, which constitute a natural generalization to multialgebras of the concept of Lindenbaum–Tarski algebras. (shrink)

In 1986, Mikenberg et al. introduced the semantic notion of quasi-truth defined by means of partial structures. In such structures, the predicates are seen as triples of pairwise disjoint sets: the set of tuples which satisfies, does not satisfy and can satisfy or not the predicate, respectively. The syntactical counterpart of the logic of partial truth is a rather complicated first-order modal logic. In the present article, the notion of predicates as triples is recursively extended, in a natural way, to (...) any complex formula of the first-order object language. From this, a new definition of quasi-truth is obtained. The proof-theoretic counterpart of the new semantics is a first-order paraconsistent logic whose propositional base is a 3-valued logic belonging to hierarchy of paraconsistent logics known as Logics of Formal Inconsistency, which was proposed by Carnielli and Marcos in 2002. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to introduce the logics of evidence and truth $$LET_{K}^+$$ and $$LET_{F}^+$$ together with sound, complete, and decidable six-valued deterministic semantics for them. These logics extend the logics $$LET_{K}$$ and $$LET_{F}^-$$ with rules of propagation of classicality, which are inferences that express how the classicality operator $${\circ }$$ is transmitted from less complex to more complex sentences, and vice-versa. The six-valued semantics here proposed extends the 4 values of Belnap-Dunn logic with 2 more values (...) that intend to represent (positive and negative) reliable information. A six-valued non-deterministic semantics for $$LET_{K}$$ is obtained by means of Nmatrices based on swap structures, and the six-valued semantics for $$LET_{K}^+$$ is then obtained by imposing restrictions on the semantics of $$LET_{K}$$. These restrictions correspond exactly to the rules of propagation of classicality that extend $$LET_{K}$$. The logic $$LET_{F}^+$$ is obtained as the implication-free fragment of $$LET_{K}^+$$. We also show that the 6 values of $$LET_{K}^+$$ and $$LET_{F}^+$$ define a lattice structure that extends the lattice L4 defined by the Belnap-Dunn four-valued logic with the 2 additional values mentioned above, intuitively interpreted as positive and negative reliable information. Finally, we also show that $$LET_{K}^+$$ is Blok-Pigozzi algebraizable and that its implication-free fragment $$LET_{F}^+$$ coincides with the degree-preserving logic of the involutive Stone algebras. (shrink)

How evaluative are legal texts? Do legal scholars and jurists speak a more descriptive or perhaps a more evaluative language? In this paper, we present the results of a corpus study in which we examined the use of evaluative language in both the legal domain as well as public discourse. For this purpose, we created two corpora. Our legal professional corpus is based on court opinions from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We compared this professional corpus to a public corpus, (...) which is based on blog discussions on the internet forum Reddit. While many linguistic phenomena can give insights into evaluativity, we investigated the use of a wide selection of evaluative adjectives (more specifically, thick adjectives) to gain a more comprehensive picture of the degree of evaluativity in the legal domain. Our analysis shows that legal professionals use thick terms less evaluatively than laypeople, which suggests that legal texts are less evaluative than ordinary discussions. This result, more generally, supports the philosophical idea that thick concepts may vary in their evaluative intensity. (shrink)

Multialgebras have been much studied in mathematics and in computer science. In 2016 Carnielli and Coniglio introduced a class of multialgebras called swap structures, as a semantic framework for dealing with several Logics of Formal Inconsistency that cannot be semantically characterized by a single finite matrix. In particular, these LFIs are not algebraizable by the standard tools of abstract algebraic logic. In this paper, the first steps towards a theory of non-deterministic algebraization of logics by swap structures are given. Specifically, (...) a formal study of swap structures for LFIs is developed, by adapting concepts of universal algebra to multialgebras in a suitable way. A decomposition theorem similar to Birkhoff’s representation theorem is obtained for each class of swap structures. Moreover, when applied to the 3-valued algebraizable logics J3 and Ciore, their classes of algebraic models are retrieved, and the swap structures semantics become twist structures semantics. This fact, together with the existence of a functor from the category of Boolean algebras to the category of swap structures for each LFI, suggests that swap structures can be seen as non-deterministic twist structures. This opens new avenues for dealing with non-algebraizable logics by the more general methodology of multialgebraic semantics. (shrink)

Moral philosophers draw an important distinction between two kinds of moral responsibility. An agent can be directly morally responsible, or they can be derivatively morally responsible. Direct moral responsibility, so many believe, presupposes that the agent could have behaved differently. However, in some situations, we hold agents responsible even though they could not have behaved differently, such as when they recklessly cause an accident or do not take adequate precautions to avoid harmful consequences. Moral philosophers typically argue that what we (...) ascribe in these cases is derivative moral responsibility. In this paper, I apply this conceptual distinction to the experimental debate about so-called folk-compatibilism. I argue that experimental philosophers have failed to consider this distinction when designing experiments and interpreting their results. I demonstrate that while compatibilism requires judgments of direct moral responsibility, participants in some of the most influential studies ascribed derivative moral responsibility. For this reason, these studies do not speak in favour of compatibilism at all. (shrink)

A ideia de uma crise do rádio consolidou-se no imaginário coletivo nas últimas décadas, a despeito de não haver ancoragem na realidade. Se muitas rádios tradicionais AM e FM saem do ar, vendidas a igrejas eletrônicas ou novos grupos empresariais, multiplica-se a oferta de conteúdos no contexto de um rádio expandido, que transborda para novas plataformas e é consumido nos mais diversos dispositivos. O rádio vai bem, obrigado, embora algumas emissoras de rádio em ondas hertzianas estejam mal das pernas, lamentando-se (...) da concorrência com serviços on-line e da erosão dos habituais índices de audiência, antes medidos em centenas de milhares de ouvintes por minuto. (shrink)

Despite being fairly powerful, finite non-deterministic matrices are unable to characterize some logics of formal inconsistency, such as those found between mbCcl and Cila. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose here restricted non-deterministic matrices (in short, RNmatrices), which are non-deterministic algebras together with a subset of the set of valuations. This allows us to characterize not only mbCcl and Cila (which is equivalent, up to language, to da Costa's logic C_1) but the whole hierarchy of da Costa's calculi (...) C_n. This produces a novel decision procedure for these logics. Moreover, we show that the RNmatrix semantics proposed here induces naturally a labelled tableau system for each C_n, which constitutes another decision procedure for these logics. This new semantics allows us to conceive da Costa's hierarchy of C-systems as a family of (non deterministically) (n+2)-valued logics, where n is the number of "inconsistently true" truth-values and 2 is the number of "classical" or "consistent" truth-values, for every C_n. (shrink)

Kant, los sábados por la tarde -- ¿Andaría en algo Sócrates? -- El álef de "El Aleph" -- La angustia ya no se lleva -- El tango de la muerte -- Los ilotas y la juventud maravillosa -- Los jóvenes en Flores -- El filósofo y la princesa.

Se indagó sobre el desarrollo de la Investigación Acción Participativa en Psicología. Se observó que en América y Europa, esta metodología se utiliza en una variedad de áreas disciplinares, principalmente en la Psicología Comunitaria. Aborda fundamentalmente problemáticas sociales, comunitarias y ps..

ExcerptAt its core, the concept of biopolitics refers to the constitution of the life of a population as the object and objective of politics. Of course, Michel Foucault pioneered this concept in his analyses from the late 1970s, first in his Collège de France course from the academic year 1975–76, “Society Must Be Defended”, and subsequently in the first volume of The History of Sexuality, published in the fall of 1976.1 Taking as his cue the analysis in the latter publication, (...) Giorgio Agamben, in a few highly schematic but rich and provocative passages from the introduction to his now seminal…. (shrink)

Entrevista com o professor Mauro Rêgo Sá Costa para o dossiê Rádio nas Bordas.

The doxastic zoo contains many animals: belief, acceptance, belief in, belief that, certainty, conjecture, guess, conviction, denial, disbelief in, disbelief that, judgment, commitment, etc. It also contains belief’s “strange bedfellows”: credences, partial beliefs, tacit beliefs, subdoxastic states, creedal feelings, feelings of knowing, in-between believings, pathological beliefs, phobias, aliefs, delusions, biases, besires. How to order the zoo? I propose to distinguish doxastic attitudes from non-doxastic epistemic attitudes. The criterion is the existence of correctness conditions. Most bedfellows do not have such normative (...) conditions. So they should not be allowed in the Doxastic Club. (shrink)

Michel Foucault is one of the most preeminent theorists of power, yet the relationship between his militant activities and his analysis of power remains unclear. The book explores this relationship to explain the development of Foucault's thinking about power. Using newly translated and unpublished materials, it examines what led Foucault to take on the question of power in the early 1970s and subsequently refine his thinking, working through different models (war and government) and modalities (sovereign, disciplinary, biopolitical, pastoral and governmental). (...) Looking at Foucault's political trajectory, from his involvement with the prisoner support movement and Solidarity to his controversial engagement with the Iranian revolution, the book shows the militant underpinning of his interest in the question of power and its various shifts and mutations. This thorough account, which includes the first translation of a report edited by Foucault on prison conditions, will provide students in contemporary political theory with a better understanding of Foucault's thinking about power and of the interplay between political activities and theoretical productions. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to analyze the expressive power of the square operator of Łukasiewicz logic: ∗x=x⊙x⁠, where ⊙ is the strong Łukasiewicz conjunction. In particular, we aim at understanding and characterizing those cases in which the square operator is enough to construct a finite MV-chain from a finite totally ordered set endowed with an involutive negation. The first of our main results shows that, indeed, the whole structure of MV-chain can be reconstructed from the involution and the (...) Łukasiewicz square operator if and only if the obtained structure has only trivial subalgebras and, equivalently, if and only if the cardinality of the starting chain is of the form n+1 where n belongs to a class of prime numbers that we fully characterize. Secondly, we axiomatize the algebraizable matrix logic whose semantics is given by the variety generated by a finite totally ordered set endowed with an involutive negation and Łukasiewicz square operator. Finally, we propose an alternative way to account for Łukasiewicz square operator on involutive Gödel chains. In this setting, we show that such an operator can be captured by a rather intuitive set of equations. (shrink)

Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up meeting? and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell (...) out this difference by investigating laypeople’s conceptualisation of absences of actions in four experiments. In languages such as German, French, Italian, or Polish, people consider a friend’s not coming an omission. Any other person’s not coming, in contrast, is not considered an omission at all, but just a mere nothing. This use of the term omission differs from the usage in English, where ‘omission’ refers to all kinds of absences. In addition, ‘omission’ is not even an everyday term, but invented by philosophers for the sake of philosophical investigation. In other languages, ‘omission’ is part of an everyday vocabulary. Finally, I will discuss how this folk concept of omission could be made fruitful for philosophical questions. (shrink)

Suszko's Thesis maintains that many-valued logics do not exist at all. In order to support it, R. Suszko offered a method for providing any structural abstract logic with a complete set of bivaluations. G. Malinowski challenged Suszko's Thesis by constructing a new class of logics (called q-logics by him) for which Suszko's method fails. He argued that the key for logical two-valuedness was the "bivalent" partition of the Lindenbaum bundle associated with all structural abstract logics, while his q-logics were generated (...) by "trivalent" matrices. This paper will show that contrary to these intuitions, logical two-valuedness has more to do with the geometrical properties of the deduction relation of a logical structure than with the algebraic properties embedded on it. (shrink)

Between 9th and 11th centuries, the geometrical transformations gave to the mathematicians a method more and more fertile, leading them to modify their modes of apprehension of the geometrical figures. This article aims to highlight al-Sijzī’s contribution to this change by setting two tasks: first, to precisely understand what al-Sijzī means by transformation ; and secondly, to give an account of his research on geometrical invariants, obtained by a variation of some elements of a figure. The use of transformations and (...) the search for invariants seem to be the two faces of the same tendency, that to break with an Euclidean manner to consider the figures in a way isolated and static for better exploiting the common properties which can link them. The article is completed by the edition and the translation of a small treatise devoted to invariants. Résumé En offrant une méthode de plus en plus féconde, les transformations géométriques conduisent les mathématiciens, entre les ix e et xi e siècles, à modifier leurs modes d’appréhension des figures géométriques. Le présent article voudrait mettre en évidence la contribution d’al-Sijzī à cette mutation en se fixant deux tâches: en premier lieu, comprendre précisément ce qu’al-Sijzī entend par transformation ; et en second lieu, rendre compte de ses recherches sur les invariants géométriques, obtenus en faisant varier certains éléments d’une figure. L’usage des transformations et la recherche d’invariants apparaissent comme les deux volets d’une même tendance, celle de rompre avec une manière euclidienne de considérer les figures de façon isolée et statique pour mieux exploiter les propriétés communes qui peuvent les unir. L’article s’achève par l’édition et la traduction d’un petit traité consacré à la mise en évidence d’invariants. (shrink)

Presents spiritual reflections, thoughts, stories, and ideas intended to inspire readers to realize the immeasurable value of every moment of life, and to encourage them to conduct their lives accordingly.

Acts that are considered undesirable standardly violate our expectations. In contrast, acts that count as morally desirable can either meet our expectations or exceed them. The zone in which an act can be morally desirable yet not exceed our expectations is what we call the zone of moral indifference, and it has so far been neglected. In this paper, we show that people can use positive terms in a deflated manner to refer to actions in the zone of moral indifference, (...) whereas negative terms cannot be so interpreted. (shrink)

Anger and disgust may have distinct roles in sexual morality; here, we tested hypotheses regarding the distinct foci, appraisals, and motivations of anger and disgust within the context of sexual offenses. We conducted four experiments in which we manipulated whether mutual consent (Studies 1–3) or desire (Study 4) was present or absent within a counter-normative sexual act. We found that anger is focused on the injustice of non-consensual sexual acts, and the transgressor of the injustice (Studies 1 and 3). Furthermore, (...) the sexual nature of the act was not critical for the elicitation of anger—as anger also responded to unjust acts of violence (Study 3). By contrast, we hypothesised and found that disgust is focused on whether or not a person voluntarily engaged in, desired or consented to a counter-normative sexual act (Studies 2–4). Appraisals of abnormality and degradation were the primary appraisals of disgust, and the sexual nature of the act was a critical elicitor of disgust (Study 3). A final study ruled out victimisation as the mechanism of the effect of consent on disgust and indicated that the consenter's sexual desire was the mechanism (Study 4). Our results reveal that anger and disgust have differential roles in consent-related sexual offenses due to the distinct appraisals and foci of these emotions. (shrink)

"I know of no religious writer more pertinent to our time."—T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Pensees Intended to prove that religion is not contrary to reason, Pascal's Pensees rank among the liveliest and most eloquent defenses of Christianity. Motivated by the seventeenth-century view of the supremacy of human reason, Pascal (1623–1662) had intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity in which he argued the inability of reason to address metaphysical problems. His untimely death prevented the work's completion, (...) but the fragments published posthumously in 1670 as Pensees remain a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. W. F. Trotter translation. Introduction by T. S. Eliot. (shrink)