Nuestro tiempo es el de la caída en el presente. Es imposible construir nuevos pactos sociales y, por tanto, las oportunidades para imaginar el futuro son pocas. No hay utopías, sólo un pragmatismo que apuesta por lo útil. Nuestra sociedad sufre el desencanto de la democracia, la lógica del mercado y la globalización, incapaz de producir ideas para el porvenir ¿Cuál es la salida? Richard Rorty diría: no es la razón lo que cambia las cosas, sino la imaginación. A partir (...) de este principio, este libro hace un elogio del optimismo desencantado, donde las preguntas son más importantes que las respuestas ¿Cuál es el papel que las palabras juegan en el actual estado del arte? ¿De qué modo están conectados el mundo y la llamada República de las Letras? ¿Qué idea de generación tienen los escritores nacidos a partir de la década de los setenta? ¿Por qué niegan el concepto de colectivo? ¿Cuál es la relación entre política y literatura? ¿En qué momento el crítico se convirtió en redactor de obituarios? ¿La literatura forma parte del espectáculo? Éste es un ensayo sobre el lenguaje, la idea de generaciones y las estéticas de la literatura contemporánea; pero también es una denuncia que señala los mecanismos que han provocado el distanciamiento entre la creación y la acción, la ética y la estética, la literatura y el espacio público. (shrink)

Philosophy is one of the most intimidating and difficult of disciplines, as any of its students can attest. This book is an important entry in a distinctive new series from Routledge: The Great Philosophers . Breaking down obstacles to understanding the ideas of history's greatest thinkers, these brief, accessible, and affordable volumes offer essential introductions to the great philosophers of the Western tradition from Plato to Wittgenstein. In just 64 pages, each author, a specialist on his subject, places the philosopher (...) and his ideas into historical perspective. Each volume explains, in simple terms, the basic concepts, enriching the narrative through the effective use of biographical detail. And instead of attempting to explain the philosopher's entire intellectual history, which can be daunting, this series takes one central theme in each philosopher's work, using it to unfold the philosopher's thoughts. (shrink)

The tale of Gyges' ring narrated by Cicero atDe officiis3.38 is of course originally found, and acknowledged as such by Cicero, in Plato (Resp.359c–360b). I would like in this paper to address two questions about Cicero's handling of the tale – one historical, one philosophical. The purpose of the historical question is to evaluate, with respect to the Gyges narration, Cicero's quality as a reader of Plato. How well does Cicero understand the role of the story in its original Platonic (...) context? The motivation for the question is that, at first blush, Cicero seems to have badly misunderstood it. I shall argue that the appearance is illusory, and that Cicero understands the tale's Platonic provenance perfectly well. Now it should be noted that the question of Cicero's grasp of the tale's purpose in Plato is distinct from the question whether Cicero himself puts the story to the same or a different use than Plato did. I shall suggest that while there are striking points of contact between the two treatments, on one crucial feature – namely the tale's ostentatiously far-fetched nature – Cicero is instructively more explicit than Plato. (shrink)

Les écrits de Kant sur les races humaines, émaillés de caractérisations et de jugements qui heurtent notre sensibilité contemporaine, sont accueillis par un silence gêné des commentateurs. Ceux-ci croient bon de s'abstenir d'analyser ces textes, et d'y voir a priori des opinions mal élaborées, victimes de l'air du temps. Mais en évitant de se confronter à ce tabou, ils jouent aussi un mauvais tour à Kant. Car le lecteur peut avoir l'impression qu'on lui cache quelque chose. Qui plus est, les (...) textes sur les races font preuve d'une cohérence interne et d'une compacité théorique remarquables, et leur puissance explicative est inégalée dans le champ de l'anthropologie physique de son époque - celle de Buffon, de Blumenbach ou de Meiners. Est-ce à dire, comme le craignent d'avance les commentateurs, qu'on trouve chez Kant un authentique racisme théorique? En fait, cette accusation de racisme n'a pas vraiment d'objet à une époque où les modalités d'une pensée non raciste, c'est-à-dire d'une anthropologie non naturaliste, étaient au mieux en cours de constitution. Ce constat nous mène à considérer que seule une analyse dépassionnée des thèses raciologiques de Kant, prises dans toute leur violence, peut rendre justice à la doctrine kantienne. Nous ne cherchons pas à produire une " disculpation théorique " de Kant. Mais inversement, cet ouvrage ne vise pas non plus à formuler des thèses scandaleuses ou à révéler un " Kant non universaliste ". Il entend simplement montrer la tension d'une pensée qui fait de l'histoire un processus de civilisation en principe universel, articulé autour d'un centre de gravité à la fois géographique et spirituel, l'Europe, peuplée d'hommes blancs. Cet ouvrage intéressera les étudiants et chercheurs en philosophie et en histoire des sciences, mais aussi les étudiants et chercheurs en anthropologie. (shrink)

We say that a sentence A is a permissive consequence of a set X of premises whenever, if all the premises of X hold up to some standard, then A holds to some weaker standard. In this paper, we focus on a three-valued version of this notion, which we call strict-to-tolerant consequence, and discuss its fruitfulness toward a unified treatment of the paradoxes of vagueness and self-referential truth. For vagueness, st-consequence supports the principle of tolerance; for truth, it supports the (...) requisite of transparency. Permissive consequence is non-transitive, however, but this feature is argued to be an essential component to the understanding of paradoxical reasoning in cases involving vagueness or self-reference. (shrink)

The Controversy over the Existence of the World (henceforth Controversy) is the magnum opus of Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. Despite the renewed interest for Ingarden’s pioneering ontological work whithin analytic philosophy, little attention has been dedicated to Controversy's main goal, clearly indicated by the very title of the book: finding a solution to the centuries-old philosophical controversy about the ontological status of the external world. -/- There are at least three reasons for this relative indifference. First, even at the time (...) when the book was published, the Controversy was no longer seen as a serious polemical topic, whether it was disqualified as an archaic metaphysical pseudo-problem, or taken to be the last remnant of an antiscientific approach to philosophy culminating in idealism and relativism. Second, Ingarden’s reasoning on the matter is highly complex, at times misleading, and even occasionally faulty. Finally, his analysis is not only incomplete – Controversy being unachieved – but also arguably aporetic. -/- One may wonder, then, why it is still worth excavating this mammoth treatise to study an issue apparently no longer relevant to contemporary philosophy. Aside from historical and exegetical purposes, which are of course very interesting in their own right, Ingarden’s treatment of the Controversy remains one of the most detailed and ambitious ontological undertakings of the twentieth century. Not only does it lay out an incredibly detailed map of possible solutions to the Controversy, but it also tries to show why the latter is a genuine and fundamental problem that owes its hasty disqualification to various oversimplifications over the course of the history of philosophy. -/- In this chapter, I first give an overview of Ingarden’s method, which relies mainly on a combinatorial analysis. Then, I summarize his examination of possible solutions to the Controversy, and determine which ones can be ruled out on ontological grounds. Finally, I explain why this ambitious project ultimately leads to a theoretical impasse, leaving Ingarden unable to come up with a definitive solution to the Controversy – regardless of the fact that the book is unachieved. I argue that his analysis of the problem yields a more modest but nonetheless valuable result. (shrink)

How should political power and influence be allocated in democratic systems? That is, roughly, the core of the boundary problem in democratic theory. As of late, some authors have begun paying increased attention to the methodological aspects of this dispute. This paper attempts to make a twofold contribution to this ‘methodological turn’. On the one hand, it identifies and analyzes five desiderata of a successful principle of democratic inclusion. Any such principle, I argue, must be grounded in a clearly identifiable (...) set of values, must provide a clear standard of inclusion, must specify the relevant modalities of inclusion, must provide sound bridging principles, and must be extensionally adequate. In the first half of the paper, these desiderata are developed and critically scrutinized. On the other hand, I also extract three lessons from the previous discussion. First, that a unique answer to the boundary problem (i.e. one grounded in one single principle) is unlikely. Second, that a satisfactory answer to the boundary problem need not necessarily appeal, as some have argued, to distinctively democratic values. And third, that intuitions about political exclusion (i.e. those requiring or permitting the exclusion of some individuals) should be treated with special caution. (shrink)

This paper explores the intricate relationship between the concept of “savage knowledge,” its significance during the ninteenth and twentieth centuries, and the emerging field of ethnoscience. It specifically focuses on the Amazon region as a pivotal area in the development of ethnoscience, examining the contributions of renowned naturalists Carl von Martius, Richard Spruce, and Richard Schultes, who each conducted scientific expeditions to the Amazon during this era. Their works are crucial in reevaluating the dynamic interplay between the Western perception of (...) the “savage,” the scientific principles that underpin it, and the geopolitics of knowledge exchange between countries in the global north and south. I argue that the contextual conditions which made possible the emergence of ethnoscience, including imperial assimilation, extraction, and coloniality, continue to exert influence on twentieth century political discourses concerning the integration of indigenous cultures into global politics. This influence is evident through the analysis of a UNESCO document in the second part of the paper. The study concludes that the incorporation of indigenous knowledge, systematised by ethnoscience, has often served as a pretext for controlling geographical areas historically regarded as “natural resources,” ultimately transforming them into reservoirs of indigenous epistemologies. (shrink)

P. M. Asaro: What should We Want from a Robot Ethic? G. Tamburrini: Robot Ethics: A View from the Philosophy of Science B. Becker: Social Robots - Emotional Agents: Some Remarks on Naturalizing Man-machine Interaction E. Datteri, G. Tamburrini: Ethical Reflections on Health Care Robotics P. Lin, G. Bekey, K. Abney: Robots in War: Issues of Risk and Ethics J. Altmann: Preventive Arms Control for Uninhabited Military Vehicles J. Weber: Robotic warfare, Human Rights & The Rhetorics of Ethical Machines T. (...) Nishida: Towards Robots with Good Will R. Capurro: Ethics and Robotics. (shrink)

This book is an enquiry into the concept of the 'self', transcending the barriers of 'non-self' and realizing the non-dual Consciousness within and without.

This chapter examines how the borderline cases pointed out by English naturalists and philosophers in the second half of the seventeenth-century call into doubt the common notion of life as a vegetative power. In the first part of this chapter, I focus on Nehemiah Grew’s notions of life and living beings by comparing his plant anatomy, in which he examines the cases of sponges and corals, with his physico-theology. In the second part, I confront Grew’s views on life to those (...) of John Ray and Ralph Cudworth. My aim is threefold. First, I want to show that there was then no agreement on what a “vital phenomenon” is. Second, I want to emphasize the fact that what we would classify today as physical phenomena, such as gravitation, were then regarded as living phenomena. Third, and accordingly, I would like to challenge the view that the English naturalists and philosophers who then developed a physico-theology simply used empirical vital phenomena in order to refute Descartes’ metaphysics. In my view, there were no such things as “empirical vital phenomena.” Indeed, the very identification and description of the phenomena considered as “vital” was a matter of interpretation, and those different authors did not share the same set of assumptions regarding what kinds of beings are alive. At the very least, they do not share the set of assumptions that define what we regard as “vital.”. (shrink)

This book introduces the student to active philosophical thinking about political ideas, offering a more stimulating approach to the subject than traditional chronological surveys. The first edition was hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as 'the best introduction to political philosophy for a long time'. This thoroughly revised second edition brings its coverage up-to-date for the 1990s, with material reorganised to be fully accessible for the beginner.

In recent years, the scientific study of meditation and psychedelic drugs has seen remarkable developments. The increased focus on meditation in cognitive neuroscience has led to a cross-cultural classification of standard meditation styles validated by functional and structural neuroanatomical data. Meanwhile, the renaissance of psychedelic research has shed light on the neurophysiology of altered states of consciousness induced by classical psychedelics, such as psilocybin and LSD, whose effects are mainly mediated by agonism of serotonin receptors. Few attempts have been made (...) at bridging these two domains of inquiry, despite intriguing evidence of overlap between the phenomenology and neurophysiology of meditation practice and psychedelic states. In particular, many contemplative traditions explicitly aim at dissolving the sense of self by eliciting altered states of consciousness through meditation, while classical psychedelics are known to produce significant disruptions of self-consciousness, a phenomenon known as drug-induced ego dissolution. In this article, we discuss available evidence regarding convergences and differences between phenomenological and neurophysiological data on meditation practice and psychedelic drug-induced states, with a particular emphasis on alterations of self-experience. While both meditation and psychedelics may disrupt self-consciousness and underlying neural processes, we emphasize that neither meditation nor psychedelic states can be conceived as simple, uniform categories. Moreover, we suggest that there are important phenomenological differences even between conscious states described as experiences of self-loss. As a result, we propose that self-consciousness may be best construed as a multidimensional construct, and that “self-loss,” far from being an unequivocal phenomenon, can take several forms. Indeed, various aspects of self-consciousness, including narrative aspects linked to autobiographical memory, self-related thoughts and mental time travel, and embodied aspects rooted in multisensory processes, may be differently affected by psychedelics and meditation practices. Finally, we consider long-term outcomes of experiences of self-loss induced by meditation and psychedelics on individual traits and prosocial behavior. We call for caution regarding the problematic conflation of temporary states of self-loss with “selflessness” as a behavioral or social trait, although there is preliminary evidence that correlations between short-term experiences of self-loss and long-term trait alterations may exist. (shrink)

There is converging evidence that high doses of hallucinogenic drugs can produce significant alterations of self-experience, described as the dissolution of the sense of self and the loss of boundaries between self and world. This article discusses the relevance of this phenomenon, known as “drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED)”, for cognitive neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of mind. Data from self-report questionnaires suggest that three neuropharmacological classes of drugs can induce ego dissolution: classical psychedelics, dissociative anesthetics and agonists of the kappa opioid (...) receptor (KOR). While these substances act on different neurotransmitter receptors, they all produce strong subjective effects that can be compared to the symptoms of acute psychosis, including ego dissolution. It has been suggested that neuroimaging of DIED can indirectly shed light on the neural correlates of the self. While this line of inquiry is promising, its results must be interpreted with caution. First, neural correlates of ego dissolution might reveal the necessary neurophysiological conditions for the maintenance of the sense of self, but it is more doubtful that this method can reveal its minimally sufficient conditions. Second, it is necessary to define the relevant notion of self at play in the phenomenon of DIED. This article suggests that DIED consists in the disruption of subpersonal processes underlying the “minimal” or “embodied” self, i.e., the basic experience of being a self rooted in multimodal integration of self-related stimuli. This hypothesis is consistent with Bayesian models of phenomenal selfhood, according to which the subjective structure of conscious experience ultimately results from the optimization of predictions in perception and action. Finally, it is argued that DIED is also of particular interest for philosophy of mind. On the one hand, it challenges theories according to which consciousness always involves self-awareness. On the other hand, it suggests that ordinary conscious experience might involve a minimal kind of self-awareness rooted in multisensory processing, which is what appears to fade away during DIED. (shrink)

Der kommunikative Vernunftbegriff von Jürgen Habermas ist mit spezifischen sozio-ökonomischen Problemen behaftet, die eine gesellschaftstheoretische Flankierung notwendig machen.

A historically-informed account of the lasting importance of embodied thought in the intellectual trajectory of René Descartes, still remembered today as the founding father of dualism.

This study discusses second generation scientific ontological categories: substance-tradition from Aristotle to Kant, Gödel, Quine, Strawson and others, Being-thinking from Aristotle to Heidegger, and system-building from Plato to Whitehead. The resulting ontology is termed Einaic Ontology for maximalist, mutually collusive, categorial reasons.

Brief, accessible, and affordable, these pocket-sized volumes offer the essential introductions to the great philosophers of the Western tradition-from Plato to Wittgenstein.

“But surely if it's not irrational, it can’t be OCD!” my friend exclaimed, when I told them about the paper Carolina Flores and Brent Kious provided their excellent comments for. In all fairness, my friend is not working in philosophy, or psychiatry, or in psychology. Still, I take their sentiment to be expressive of a widely held view: if you have a certain mental illness, then you must be irrational. Conversely, rationality guarantees mental health; the sane life is the rational (...) life. -/- In my paper, I attempted to complicate this picture. My main line of thought was that if the sane life is the rational life, we do not have a good conception of rationality yet. For, our best theories of rationality fail to capture what is going wrong in some cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Addressing the criticisms raised by my commentators will allow me to clear up some misunderstandings and sketch avenues for further work. (shrink)

Many authors argue that conscious experience involves a sense of self or self-consciousness. According to the strongest version of this claim, there can be no selfless states of consciousness, namely states of consciousness that lack self-consciousness altogether. Disagreements about this claim are likely to remain merely verbal as long as the target notion of self-consciousness is not adequately specified. After distinguishing six notions of self-consciousness commonly discussed in the literature, I argue that none of the corresponding features is necessary for (...) consciousness, because there are states of consciousness in which each of them is plausibly missing. Such states can be said to be at least partially selfless, since they lack at least one of the ways in which one could be self-conscious. Furthermore, I argue that there is also preliminary empirical evidence that some states of consciousness lack all of these six putative forms of self-consciousness. Such states might be totally selfless, insofar as they lack all the ways in which one could be self-conscious. I conclude by addressing four objections to the possibility and reportability of totally selfless states of consciousness. (shrink)

Many authors claim that being conscious constitutively involves being self-conscious, or conscious of oneself. This claim appears to be threatened by reports of `selfless' episodes, or conscious episodes lacking self-consciousness, recently described in a number of pathological and nonpathological conditions. However, the credibility of these reports has in turn been challenged on the following grounds: remembering and reporting a past conscious episode as an episode that one went through is only possible if one was conscious of oneself while undergoing it. (...) Call this the Memory Challenge. This paper argues that the Memory Challenge fails to undermine the credibility to reports of selfless episodes, because it rests on problematic assumptions about episodic memory. The paper further argues that we should distinguish between several kinds of self-representation that may be involved in the process of episodic remembering, and that once we do so, it is no longer mysterious how one could accurately remember and report a selfless episode as an episode that one went through. Thus, we should take reports of this kind seriously, and view them as credible counter-examples to the claim that consciousness constitutively involves self-consciousness. (shrink)

All spaces are assumed to be separable and metrizable. We show that, assuming the Axiom of Determinacy, every zero-dimensional homogeneous space is strongly homogeneous (i.e. all its non-empty clopen subspaces are homeomorphic), with the trivial exception of locally compact spaces. In fact, we obtain a more general result on the uniqueness of zero-dimensional homogeneous spaces which generate a given Wadge class. This extends work of van Engelen (who obtained the corresponding results for Borel spaces), complements a result of van Douwen, (...) and gives partial answers to questions of Terada and Medvedev. (shrink)

This special issue is about something most of us might find very hard to conceive: states of consciousness in which self-consciousness is radically disrupted or altogether missing.

D. D. Raphael examines the moral philosophy of Adam Smith (1723-90), best known for his famous work on economics, The Wealth of Nations, and shows that his thought still has much to offer philosophers today. Raphael gives particular attention to Smith's original theory of conscience, with its emphasis on the role of 'sympathy' (shared feelings).

The main purpose of these introductory remarks is to give the reader a sense of Philip Rossi’s philosophical project and its importance. I will then advance an interpretation of what motivates Kant’s commitment to community, and, on its basis, object to Rossi’s views on radical evil –a point which affects how one should conceive the moral vocation of humanity and the role that politics and religion play within it. My reconstruction concludes with a sketch of how the five contributions to (...) this Symposium fit together and deepen our understanding of Rossi’s overall project. (shrink)

In this new and enlarged edition of a standard introduction to moral philosophy, Raphael shows in clear and simple language the connections between abstract ethics and practical problems in law, government, medicine, and the social sciences in general. Moral Philosophy deals with six main areas. First, it looks at the two opposed traditions of naturalism and rationalism, and considers more recent discussion in terms of logic and language. Next, it explores the attractions and defects of Utilitarianism, and then turns (...) to its main rival, Kantian ethics, which Raphael favors in a modified form. The third section shows how different moral views are related to different theories about justice and liberty. The fourth examines the problem of free will and determinism in the context of the presuppositions of science, especially in the social sciences. This second edition enlarges the relation of moral philosophy to other concerns, with two new chapters: one on ethics and evolution, the other on medical ethics. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Barrio, Tajer and Rosenblatt establish a correspondence between metainferences holding in the strict-tolerant logic of transparent truth ST+ and inferences holding in the logic of paradox LP+. They argue that LP+ is ST+’s external logic and they question whether ST+’s solution to the semantic paradoxes is fundamentally different from LP+’s. Here we establish that by parity of reasoning, ST+ can be related to LP+’s dual logic K3+. We clarify the distinction between internal and external logic and (...) argue that while ST+’s nonclassicality can be granted, its self-dual character does not tie it to LP+ more closely than to K3+. (shrink)

"Raphaël Debailiac est diplômé de la Sorbonne en philosophie et histoire.

Frost's article advocates for universal models of reading and critiques recent models that concentrate in what has been described as “cracking the orthographic code.” Although the challenge to develop models that can account for word recognition beyond Indo-European languages is welcomed, we argue that reading models should also be constrained by general principles of visual processing and object recognition.

Supervaluationism is a well known theory of vagueness. Subvaluationism is a less well known theory of vagueness. But these theories cannot be taken apart, for they are in a relation of duality that can be made precise. This paper provides an introduction to the subvaluationist theory of vagueness in connection to its dual, supervaluationism. A survey on the supervaluationist theory can be found in the Compass paper of Keefe (2008); our presentation of the theory in this paper will be short (...) to get rapidly into the logical issues. This paper is relatively self-contained. A modest background on propositional modal logic is, though not strictly necessary, advisable. The reader might find useful the Compass papers Kracht (2011) and Negri (2011) (though these papers cover issues of more complexity than what is demanded to follow this paper). (shrink)

Michel Janssen and Harvey Brown have driven a prominent recent debate concerning the direction of an alleged arrow of explanation between Minkowski spacetime and Lorentz invariance of dynamical laws in special relativity. In this article, I critically assess this controversy with the aim of clarifying the explanatory foundations of the theory. First, I show that two assumptions shared by the parties—that the dispute is independent of issues concerning spacetime ontology, and that there is an urgent need for a constructive interpretation (...) of special relativity—are problematic and negatively affect the debate. Second, I argue that the whole discussion relies on a misleading conception of the link between Minkowski spacetime structure and Lorentz invari-ance, a misconception that in turn sheds more shadows than light on our understand-ing of the explanatory nature and power of Einstein’s theory. I state that the arrow connecting Lorentz invariance and Minkowski spacetime is not explanatory and uni-directional, but analytic and bidirectional, and that this analytic arrow grounds the chronogeometric explanations of physical phenomena that special relativity offers. (shrink)

To what degree can language be acquired from linguistic input alone? This question has vexed scholars for millennia and is still a major focus of debate in the cognitive science of language. The complexity of human language has hampered progress because studies of language–especially those involving computational modeling–have only been able to deal with small fragments of our linguistic skills. We suggest that the most recent generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) might finally provide the computational tools to determine empirically (...) how much of the human language ability can be acquired from linguistic experience. LLMs are sophisticated deep learning architectures trained on vast amounts of natural language data, enabling them to perform an impressive range of linguistic tasks. We argue that, despite their clear semantic and pragmatic limitations, LLMs have already demonstrated that human-like grammatical language can be acquired without the need for a built-in grammar. Thus, while there is still much to learn about how humans acquire and use language, LLMs provide full-fledged computational models for cognitive scientists to empirically evaluate just how far statistical learning might take us in explaining the full complexity of human language. (shrink)

Ao introduzir o estudo da substância em Metafísica Z1, Aristóteles apresenta um argumento cujo ponto inicial corresponde a uma questão acerca do estatuto ontológico de certos itens não-substanciais. Normalmente, entende-se que o objetivo desse argumento é estabelecer a compreensão da substância como ser primeiro. Pretende-se, aqui, propor uma interpretação alternativa para tal argumento. A questão acerca do estatuto ontológico de certos itens não-substanciais não teria o papel de estabelecer a compreensão da substância como ser primeiro, mas dirigir a investigação para (...) a razão pela qual a substância é tomada como ser primeiro. (shrink)

In a previous paper (see ‘Tolerant, Classical, Strict’, henceforth TCS) we investigated a semantic framework to deal with the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, namely that small changes do not affect the applicability of a vague predicate even if large changes do. Our approach there rests on two main ideas. First, given a classical extension of a predicate, we can define a strict and a tolerant extension depending on an indifference relation associated to that predicate. Second, we can use (...) these notions of satisfaction to define mixed consequence relations that capture non-transitive tolerant reasoning. Although we gave some empirical motivation for the use of strict and tolerant extensions, making use of them commits us to the view that sentences of the form ‘ p∨¬p ’ and ‘ p∧¬p ’ are not automatically valid or unsatisfiable, respectively. Some philosophers might take this commitment as a negative outcome of our previous proposal. We think, however, that the general ideas underlying our previous approach to vagueness can be implemented in a variety of ways. This paper explores the possibility of defining mixed notions of consequence in the more classical super/sub-valuationist setting and examines to what extent any of these notions captures non-transitive tolerant reasoning. (shrink)

One way in which we might approach the challenge posed by the Sorites Paradox is considering that Sorites-susceptible predicates have several candidate extensions, or several ways in which these expressions can be made precise. For example, a candidate extension for the predicate ‘is a baby’ is the set of humans of less than two years, but also the set of those less than two years and one second, and of those less than two years and two seconds. In this chapter (...) we present and discuss two theories for vague predicates based on this idea: supervaluationism and subvaluationism. The chapter is structured in three parts. The first presents the super- and subvaluationist theories: their similarities and differences in the semantics, the resulting logics with their most characteristic features. The second reviews the super- and subvaluationist solutions to the Sorites Paradox and provides discussion on several controversies surrounding these theories. The third part introduces proof procedures for s’valuationist logics. (shrink)

Mit dem Begriff des Subjekts soll ein logisch nicht hintergehbares Erkenntnissubjekt bezeichnet werden. Der Sinn dieses Unternehmens liegt darin, ein Emanzipationspotential für eine Kritische Gesellschaftstheorie auszuweisen. Dazu muss freilich gezeigt werden können, dass das Subjekt mehr ist als reine Theorie. Es muss über einen Gesellschaftsbezug verfügen können. "Die Politik des Subjekts“ versucht diesen Bezug auszuweisen und gleichzeitig auszuloten, welche normativen Grundlagen eine Theorie des Politischen für eine Kritische Theorie anbieten kann.

Das zentrale Thema des vorliegenden Buches ist die Subjektphilosophie. Angelegt ist das Buch dabei sowohl historisch als auch systematisch. Es behandelt einerseits die Subjektphilosophie seit der klassischen Aufklärung. Andererseits werden die zu diesem Zweck zugrunde gelegten philosophischen Erkenntnistheorien mit soziologischen Gesellschaftstheorien konfrontiert. Dabei zeigt sich ein Spannungsverhältnis im Denken über das Subjekt, das mit den Polen aktives und passives Subjekt umrissen wird. Um den Blick auf das Subjekt zu ergänzen, werden zudem mögliche praktische Bezüge des Subjekts mittels eines Streifzuges durch (...) die politische Philosophie, die Moralphilosophie und die Wirtschaftstheorie (wiederum seit der Aufklärung) ausgelotet. Wie im Untertitel angedeutet, geht es dabei letztlich immer um die Frage der Emanzipation, die, so eine Hauptthese, argumentationslogisch mit einem starken – mithin: cartesianisch-kantischem – Subjektbegriff verbunden ist. Da mit der Erkenntnistheorie, der Gesellschaftstheorie, der politischen Philosophie, der Moralphilosophie und der Wirtschaftstheorie ein bereits Spektrum wissenschaftlich-philosophischer Themenfelder behandelt wird, eignet sich das Buch auch als Überblicks- bzw. Studienbuch. (shrink)

A partir da pergunta que dá título a este artigo, pretendemos posicionar o pensamento de Michel Foucault em relação ao materialismo através de uma análise que contemple as três fases de seu pensamento, a saber, a arqueologia, a genealogia e a ética. Mediante esta análise, concluímos não só pela filiação do pensamento de Michel Foucault no campo mais amplo e plural dos materialismos, mas também pela radicalidade que o filósofo assume em relação ao materialismo em todas as fases de seu (...) pensamento. Do ponto de vista da arqueologia, argumentamos que a tomada do discurso não em seu caráter representativo, significativo ou teleológico, mas na concretude e singularidade de seu aparecimento, reforça de forma significativa o materialismo; em relação à genealogia, mostramos como a microfísica do poder, ao voltar-se contra os efeitos de hegemonia que produzem a abstração dos Grandes Conceitos e das Grandes Coisas, revelam a materialidade de um jogo de forças sujeitado pelas formas oficiais do saber e do poder; por fim, do ponto de vista da ética, esclarecemos que o âmbito da análise da relação de si consigo não consiste no domínio da interioridade, refúgio último do imaterialismo, mas justamente no âmbito da produção de subjetividade determinada por uma relação com a exterioridade, a alteridade e o fora. Dessa forma, consideramos a noção de Materialismo Radical pertinente para compreendermos, de forma mais rigorosa, tanto certas características próprias ao pensamento de Michel Foucault, quanto sua indubitável filiação ao materialismo. (shrink)