In this paper I focus on the historiographical fate of Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Pedro da Fonseca (1528–1599) in two Iberian journals ran by Jesuits and founded in 1945: the Spanish Pensamiento, and the Portuguese Revista portuguesa de filosofia. I endeavor to show that the discussions of Suárez’s and Fonseca’s ideas on these journal is a two-sided case of constructing the legacies of major figures in late scholasticism, and I emphasize how the demand to identify cultural national heroes intertwines with (...) theoretical and ideological elements, especially the peculiar history of the Iberian Peninsula, and to the historical relationships between Spain and Portugal. With regard to Suárez, the Pensamiento group strives to carve out a specific place for Neo-Suarezianism within Neo-Thomism, also via a substantive reassessment of Suárez’s importance in the history of scholasticism and of philosophy in general. Hence, Suárez’s thought undergoes triumphant reevaluation, which even aims at ousting Aquinas as the ultimate reference of scholasticism, to make Suárez’s Thomism the principal authority of contemporary schools. By contrast, Fonseca remains a rather obscure and neglected figure, dug up by his fellow compatriots on the Revista portuguesa de filosofia, also against this attempt at establishing a Suarezian, Spanish hegemony. (shrink)

Suárez’s primary attempt to rethink angelology can be found in the De Angelis. This work is a mighty commentary on the prima pars of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (qq. 50-64) which Suárez left to his colleagues after his years in Coimbra (1597-1607), and which was published posthumously in Lyon in 1620. The composition of the text is somewhat stratified and it includes many references to the Disputationes Metaphysicae, but Suárez most likely already started writing it during his years of teaching in (...) Spain and Italy (1575-1597), before 1597. Because of its Thomistic inspiration, the De angelis is a fundamentally theological and doctrinal work, the metaphysical core of which is independently treated in the DM 35, entitled De immateriali substantia creata. In this passage, which is eminently theoretical, Suárez grapples with the most important quaestiones concerning angels under a metaphysical point of view, therein offering one of the most interesting overviews of early modern angelology. In this paper, I will refer especially to the DM 35, a more synthetic and peculiar work, with some reference to De Angelis as well. I will focus especially on sections 1-3 of DM 35, and try to reconstruct Suárez’s views on the following points: a) the cosmological necessity of angels, their rational demonstrability and the possibility of man’s knowing them (sections 1-2); b) the immaterial essence of angels (section 3). (shrink)

This volume publishes the Proceedings of the 1st International Meeting "Thinking Baroque in Portugal" (26-28 June 2017), which dealt with the metaphysical, ethical and political thought of Francisco Suárez. Counting on the collaboration of some of the greatest international specialists in the work and thought of this famous professor of the University of Coimbra in the 17th century, this volume celebrates the 400th anniversary of his death and marks the productivity of his philosophical-theological legacy.

In this paper, I address Francisco Suárez's solution to the problem of the angelic assumption of artificial bodies, dealing in particular with the discussion in his De Angelis (book 4, chapters 33-39). The peculiarity of Suárez's approach lies, in particular, in the fact that it is one of the last major attempts to reformulate scholastic angelology from the ground up, taking into account the new spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Despite this goal, Suárez consistently discusses these issues taking into account Aquinas' (...) earlier discussions, to which I refer presenting the Uncommon Doctor's ideas. I also provide some final remarks on the notion of the body that Suárez's angelology leaves to 17th-century philosophy. (shrink)

For Christian theology, the survival of the soul after the death of the body is a matter of fact. However, its philosophical explanation is probably the most peculiar issue of Thomas Aquinas’ radically Aristotelianaccount of body-soul. For both Augustine and Avicenna – who, together with Aristotle, can be considered the main sources of thirteenth century philosophy – the certainty of the immaterial soul’s ability to survive independently from the body was so strong that, coining their very own notions of human (...) spiritual substance, they described it as only partially implied in the act of the body’s information. This account was able to mediate between Aristotle’s idea of the soul as a form of the body and the Neoplatonic theory of the soul as an independent substance.... (shrink)

This article aims at reassessing a widespread view, according to which Francisco Suárez left behind the scholastic model of truth as adaequatio, founding a new concept of truth based on his metaphysics of objective being. In the first part, I reconstruct the debate on the complex and incomplex truth, focusing especially on the sources of Suárez’s Disputation 8, and presenting the views of Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Hervaeus, Durandus, Capreolus and Fonseca. Especially the latter proposes an eclectic synthesis, blending elements (...) from the Dominican tradition and Henry of Ghent. In the second part, I analyze Suárez’s Disputation 8, showing that his doctrine of truth reprises and mitigates Fonseca’s, thus following most of the Dominican commentators of Aquinas. Here I explain especially the role played by objective being in the constitution of the truth in cognoscendo, also showing that the latter cannot be given without a previous adequation on the level of the truth in significando (the species). In the third part, I discuss three textual passages used by contemporary historiography to legitimate Suárez’s alleged abandonment of adaequatio, pointing out, in the light of the previous reconstruction, some misreadings in these interpretations. (shrink)

This paper deals with Suárez's theory of extension and continuous quantity, as it is discussed in the Metaphysical Disputations and as a possible source for Descartes's concept of res extensa. In a first part of the paper, I analyse Suárez' account of divisibility and extension in a comparison with the Dominicans', Scotus and Fonseca's, and Ockham's. In the light of this analysis, Suárez's most original contribution seems being the claim that material composites have integral parts 'entitatively' extended (partem extra partem) (...) independently from categorial quantity. Such a theory allows Suárez to merge the Dominicans', the Scotists' and the Ockhamists' account, as the integral parts fund the internal but pre-quantitative divisibility of body, which is the source of quantity. In a second part of the paper, I deal with the reception of Suárez’s theory (especially in Rubio, Arriaga, Araujo, Eustachius and Abra de Raçonis), as well as with Descartes’ concept of res extensa. I conclude that Suárez’s account has been mainly criticized by the seventeenth Century Aristotelianism, as well as by Descartes. Despite that, Suárez’s idea of non-quantitatively extended parts had an interesting reception and effect in the debate, and especially in the (dominant) Scotistic context. (shrink)

This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psychology – such as his theories of (...) cognition and truth, angelology, continuous quantity – thereby developing an original inquiry into a crucial moment in the development of Western philosophy. (shrink)

This paper addresses Suárez’s understanding of imagination and phantasy, dealing with it in the general Aristotelian debate on the internal senses. Paragraph 1 sketches Aristotle’s, Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s accounts of imagination, examining especially the boundary between human and animal cognition. Paragraph 2 addresses especially the Jesuits’ understanding of the topology of the internal senses, linking it with the Jesuit strategy for the demonstration of the soul’s immateriality and immortality. Paragraphs 3 and 4 deal with Suárez’s simplification of the internal senses, (...) aimed at establishing a direct opposition between intellection (in men) and a general lower cognitive activity founded in the use of sensory representations (shared by men and animals). Paragraphs 5 and 6 focus on the role of phantasy in Suárez’s account of the illumination of phantasms, on Suárez’s use of Scotus’ concepts of ‘sympathy’, and ‘concomitance’ and the relevance of such a model in the demonstration of the soul’s immortality. (shrink)

A widespread historiographical portrayal represented Descartes' dualism as constituted in direct contrast with Aquinas' concept of soul-form. In the wake of the many studies that have opposed this prejudice in recent decades, this book reconstructs the fifteenth and seventeenth-century debate on psychology, focusing primarily on the Jesuit context and on the intersection between Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Augustinianism in early modern France. Beginning with a rigorous investigation of the theories of the separated soul, particular attention is then given to the indirect (...) derivation of the Cartesian cogito and innatism from angelological themes of the time. Indeed, in the years in which Descartes elaborates his metaphysics, the immediate proximity between souls and angels is somehow a matter of fact, in the light of which many of the argumentative choices of the Meditations, and even the relationship that closely joins the "thinking substance" with the body-machine, appear clear. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I reconstruct and discuss Antonio Rubio (1546-1615)’s theory of the composition of the continuum, as set out in his Tractatus de compositione continui, a part of his influential commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, published in 1605 but rewritten in 1606. Here I attempt especially to show that Rubio’s is a significant case of Scholastic overlapping between Aristotle’s theory of infinitely divisible parts and indivisibilism or ‘Zenonism’, i.e. the theory that allows for indivisibles, extensionless points, lines, and surfaces, which (...) are supposed to take part in the composition of the continuum. Even if such a syncretic tendency was, in many different ways, already developing in the medieval period and then at the end of the sixteenth century, Rubio’s position is indeed peculiar. He maintains that indivisibles are real and actual, infinite in act, really distinct from each other, and that, although they indwell in substance, indivisibles do not contribute directly to the constitution of the continuum. In this reconstruction, I emphasize notably Rubio’s usage of mereological notions like those of part, whole, completeness and incompleteness. (shrink)

In this paper I reconstruct and discuss Antonio Rubio (1546-1615)’s theory of the composition of the continuum, as set out in his Tractatus de compositione continui, a part of his influential commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, published in 1605 but rewritten in 1606. Here I attempt especially to show that Rubio’s is a significant case of Scholastic overlapping between Aristotle’s theory of infinitely divisible parts and indivisibilism or ‘Zenonism’, i.e. the theory that allows for indivisibles, extensionless points, lines, and surfaces, which (...) are supposed to take part in the composition of the continuum. Even if such a syncretic tendency was, in many different ways, already developing in the medieval period and then at the end of the sixteenth century, Rubio’s position is indeed peculiar. He maintains that indivisibles are real and actual, infinite in act, really distinct from each other, and that, although they indwell in substance, indivisibles do not contribute directly to the constitution of the continuum. In this reconstruction I emphasize notably Rubio’s usage of mereological notions like those of part, whole, completeness and incompleteness. (shrink)

Twenty years before Suárez’s Metaphysicae disputationes, Pedro da Fonseca offered one of the most impressive modern attempts to reorder Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In the present chapter, I will endeavour to show how insightful Fonseca’s effort truly was, by dealing with his ousiology. I will focus especially on the Jesuit’s account of three pivotal concepts in the scholastic theory of substance, i.e. Divine Substance, created substance and prime substance, or supposit. These notions are primarily metaphysical, but — according to a long-standing scholastic (...) framework — are also deeply indebted to Patristic Trinitarianism. As I shall argue, this is especially true for Fonseca, who welcomes and defends the idea of a conceptual unity between ontology, ousiology and Trinitarism he received from a centuries-long tradition. (shrink)

This article addresses some Late Scholastic accounts (Suárez, Abra de Raçonis, Gamaches, Ysambert, Arriaga), of the “problem of transduction” in angels, as a possible source for the genesis of early modern occasionalism, particularly La Forge’s and Cordemoy’s. Indeed, if the “problem of transduction” is a structural issue of all the Aristotelian gnoseology, the impossibility of interaction between immaterial and material substance concerns, more generally, all spiritual substances, posing the issue about the principle of "transduction" already at the level of angels, (...) entirely immaterial creatures, unable to any relationship with the bodies. In order to answer to this peculiar version of the 'problem of transduction' Late Scholastic elaborate doctrines that are direct antecedents of occasionalist ones, and which likely directly influenced early modern occasionalism. To follow this investigative path, I will intersect three complementary argumentative lines. First, I will focus on Late Scholastic angelology, to point out how the need to solve the 'problem of transduction' in this peculiar context pushes the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Schools to a proto-occasionalist conception of angelic innatism. Secondly, I will identify in the debate on the angelic locutio of the key places for the elaboration of a model that sees God as the only efficient cause and the only guarantor of the mind's communications and contents. Thirdly, I will stress how the Late Scholastic angelological debates could be an important source for early modern dualism and the seventeenth-century occasionalism, notably for La Forge and Cordemoy. -/- . (shrink)

Themed Section of Bruniana & Campanelliana 2022/1, pp. 85-198 -/- - Simone Guidi, Introduction; - Andrew W. Arlig, Part-Whole Interdependence and the Presence of Form in Matter According to Some Fifteenth-Century Platonists; - Jean-Pascal Anfray, Aux limites de la métaphysique: parties, indivisibles et contact chez Suárez; - Simone Guidi, Indivisibles, Parts, and Wholes in Rubio’s Treatise on the Composition of Continuum (1605); - Dana Jalobeanu, Dissecting Nature ad vivum: Parts and Wholes in Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy; - Carla Rita Palmerino, (...) From Active Matter to Inertia, from Celerity to Slowness: the Motion of Atoms and of Compound Bodies in Gassendi’s Physics. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the question of the specific truth granted to the human intellect’s concepts qua concepts (simplex apprehensio), as it is presented and discussed in Sebastião do Couto’s commentary on On Interpretation, included in his general commentary on Aristotle’s Dialectics (1606), the final volume of the famous and influential Cursus Conimbricensis (1592–1606). Such a topic finds it roots in a large medieval debate that runs through many authors and especially Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, and Ockham, reaching in the (...) Jesuit early modern context, with Pedro da Fonseca and Francisco Suárez, a complete and eclectic account that paved the way for the modern understanding of “mind.” . (shrink)

What does Descartes's embryology look, if related to the Scholastic theories of his time? In order to reply to this question, the present chapter aims at sketching a portrait of the embryological epigenetics Descartes could find in his recognized Scholastic sources (the Commentaries on Aristotle by Toledo, the Coimbra Jesuits, Suárez, and Rubio, as well as the Summae by Eustachius a Sancto Paulo and Abra de Raçonis), a tradition that received and incorporated in the Aristotelian-Galenic body many novelties from Renaissance (...) medicine, especially Fernel, Paré, and Vallès. It being impossible to deal extensively with the whole of the contents of these works, I picked up three issues in particular, corresponding to the first three paragraphs of this paper: 1) the nature of the semen, and the action of the vis formativa, as well as its relationship with vital heat and temperaments; 2) the problem of the real and/or rational distinction(s) between the generative, the nutritive, and the augmentative powers; 3) the epigenetic order of generation of vital organs, i.e. the right sequence over which the fundamental organs of a living body are generated and then ensouled. In the last paragraph I integrate these reconstructions with some conclusions about Descartes' own theory. (shrink)

As of the early seventeenth century, the collapse of the hylomorphic conception of nature offers the opportunity for an association - which was unthinkable in the Aristotelo-scholastic context - between the notions of 'body' and matter. In this paper, I endeavor to show that Descartes is among the emblematic cases of this conceptual switch, dwelling on his sources, as well as on the metaphysical and physical correlates of this option.

This article addresses the Aristotelian debate in the 17th century on the incorporeality of light and its extension, focusing especially on the Iberian and Italian contexts. The aim of the essay is to show that, while late Aristotelianism unitedly rejected light’s corporeity, many differences arose regarding the way in which this incorporeality should be understood. Relevant perspectives in all of their discussions were Scotus’ teaching of the intentional nature of light, and the Neoplatonics’ claim of its metaphysical provenance. In the (...) Iberian environment, Jesuit scholars/theologians (the school of Toledo, the Conimbricenses, Francisco Suárez, and Antonio Rubio) were especially characterized by their attempt to save Aristotle’s original explanation in De Anima, although theoretical discrepancies on many significant points divide them. Italian intellectuals such as Zabarella, Dandini, Lagalla and Liceti were instead more willing to seek a reconciliation between Aristotle’s statement and the explanation of light posited by Scotus and the Neoplatonists, and more receptive to the need for a new theory of matter. (shrink)

This volume is the first collection of essays in English devoted to Pedro da Fonseca SJ (1527-1599), his intellectual endeavour, and thought. The book brings together some of today's leading specialists in early modern scholasticism, Portuguese Aristotelianism, and the history of the Society of Jesus, in order to present a reliable portrait of Fonseca's institutional role, to reconstruct his thought on many important aspects of scholastic metaphysics, and to discuss the reception of his work in the early modern age. -/- (...) . (shrink)

Second Scholasticism greatly developed the medieval theory of continuous quantity as the Aristotelian notion for thematizing spatial extension, paving the way for the idea of space as extension in early modern natural philosophy. The article analyzes the section related to the category of continuous quantity in the Coimbra commentary on the Dialectics (1606), showing that it is indebted to the novel theory of Francisco Suárez on quantity as bestowing extension to a body in a particular sense, something which had been (...) overlooked by previous research. The scholarly debate on quantity was brought to China, and here the Chinese translation is examined of the section on quantity in the fourth volume of the Mingli Tan, published in China in 1636-­1639. (shrink)

This work traces, departing from the method of structures of thought, the influence of the doctrines of Duns Scotus and Ockham in 19 th Century dogmatics. Milestones of this transformation are Windscheid’s doctrine on legal rights and Jellinek’s doctrines on public legal rights and the self-limitation of the state, as well as Laband’s distinction between the material sense of law and the formal. This multiplication of formal distinctions dissolves the modern subject in the system. Only a radical approach enables us (...) to understand the sense of legal modernity: the separation made by Scotus and nominalism between object and subject is what in the final instance explains liberal (possessive) individualism and its legal consequences. (shrink)

Im zweiten Buch seiner rechtstheologischen Summe De legibus ac Deo legislatore aus dem Jahre 1612 entwickelt Francisco Suárez seine Theorie des Naturrechts. Dabei gelingt Suárez die kritische Überarbeitung der lex-naturalis-Theorien des Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin und damit eine kritische Kontinuität mittelalterlicher Rechtstheologie. Suárez formuliert aber darüber hinaus eine für das frühe 17. Jahrhundert eigenständige Konzeption, die als innovatives Modell von Naturrecht mit den Entwürfen Hugo Grotius’ und Thomas Hobbes’ zu konkurrieren vermag. Die Einflüsse dieses genuin politisch-theologischen Naturrechtskonzepts reichen bis (...) zu Pufendorf und Wolff. Der Band erschließt diesen Schlüsseltext des frühneuzeitlichen Naturrechts im Sinne eine kooperativen Kommentars. Mit Beiträgen von Oliver Bach, Nobert Brieskorn, Simon Eultgen, Holger Glinka, Frank Grunert, Dominik Recknagel, Stefan Schweighöfer, Kurt Seelmann und Gideon Stiening. (shrink)

"What is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and are to recover their vitality? Into wrestling with that question, Simone Weil put the very substance of her mind and temperament. The apparently solid edifices of our prepossessions fall down before her onslaught like ninepins, and she is as fertile and forthright in her positive suggestions . . . she can be relied upon to toss aside the superficial and to come to grips with the (...) essential and the profound." -- Time Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a defining figure of the twentieth century; a philosopher, Christian, resistance fighter, anarchist, feminist, labor activist and teacher. She was described by T. S. Eliot as "a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints," and by Albert Camus as "the only great spirit of our time." Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. (...) Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing a unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality. (shrink)

Gravity and Grace was the first ever publication by the remarkable thinker and activist, Simone Weil. In it Gustave Thibon, the priest to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals.

This thesis defends egalitarianism about knowledge and belief, on which neither is understood in terms of the other, from what I call the abductive argument. This argument is meant to favour views opposed to egalitarianism: doxasticism, on which knowledge is understood in terms of belief, and epistemicism, on which belief is understood in terms of knowledge. The abductive argument turns on the idea that doxasticism and epistemicism, by contrast with egalitarianism, explain certain data about knowledge and belief. I argue, however, (...) that no versions of doxasticism and epistemicism currently on offer are preferable to egalitarianism on abductive grounds. As part of my argument, I also defend the claim that knowledge, by contrast with belief, is an attitude to a fact and explore the implications of this claim for doxasticism and epistemicism. (shrink)

La técnica no es un fenómeno más de nuestra época, sino que ha llegado a convertirse en la figura metafísica que la define. El estudio analiza el alcance de esta tesis planteada por Jaspers y Heidegger. Para ello ofrecemos, en un primer momento, una tematización del elemento innovador que caracteriza a la técnica moderna respecto de épocas anteriores, atendiendo especialmente a su carácter totalizador y a la inversión antropológica que supone. A continuación, discutiremos algunas de las consecuencias antropológicas del estatuto (...) ontológico de la técnica. Un fenómeno sin precedentes en la historia de la humanidad, por cuanto la técnica ha dejado de ser un medio o instrumento al servicio de las necesidades y fines humanos para convertirse en un fenómeno capaz de producirlos, estableciendo posibilidades de sentido. Una inversión onto-antropológica que provoca una alienación de la existencia misma. (shrink)

Simone Weil is one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century. Her writings encompass an extraordinary breadth of subjects, including philosophy, religion, sociology, and politics. A political activist and resistance fighter, her accomplishments are even more astonishing in light of her death in 1943 at the age of thirty-four. Whilst Weil was concerned with deep philosophical questions - the nature of human thought and human faculties, the limits of language, and thought's contact with reality through mediation, science and (...) beauty - the full significance of her work has frequently been obscured by her categorization as a purely religious writer or Christian mystic. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an expertly edited anthology of her most important writings, presenting Weil's philosophy as it relates to politics, the nature of work, human nature in its duality, necessity, beauty and goodness. D. K. Levy and Marina Barabas have translated all the extracts anew, including translations of important notes and references missing from existing English language editions of Weil's work. Following an extensive introduction by D. K. Levy which places Weil's life and thought in context, each section opens with a short introduction situating the chosen passages within Weil's oeuvre. Simone Weil: Basic Writings is an outstanding starting point for anyone seeking an introduction to Weil's philosophy, and also essential reading for students and scholars of Weil's thought in related disciplines. (shrink)

In Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks , Simone Weil discusses precursors to Christian religious ideas which can be found in ancient Greek mythology, literature and philosophy. She looks at evidence of "Christian" feelings in Greek literature, notably in Electra, Orestes, and Antigone , and in the Iliad , going on to examine God in Plato, and divine love in creation, as seen by the ancient Greeks.

En el artículo se ofrece un análisis crítico de la misión como inculturación del Evangelio, desde una perspectiva filosófico-teológica. Para comenzar, se exponen las deficiencias de la evangelización colonizadora en América. Posteriormente, se proponen dos posibles sentidos de la plantatio ecclesiae como meta de la misión. En tercer lugar, se esclarece la manera en la que se entiende la relación entre Evangelio y cultura en la Nueva Evangelización. La tesis por demostrar es que el principal problema al que está expuesta (...) la inculturación del Evangelio es la idolatría. (shrink)

自史蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking) 的暢銷科普著作《時間簡史》(以下簡稱《簡史》) 在上世紀八十年代末問世以來，至今天二十一世紀，華人基督教界就他宇宙無起點的論述仍有相當之評論，但可惜對評論未有綜合分析。評論者因寫作目的，也甚少交代霍金宇宙學的來龍去脈。故本文嘗試略述霍金宇宙學的歷史 背景及發展經過，繼而舉出華人基督教界的評論，帶出其獨特性，並提出商確的地方，以反省未來可行路向。.

This article provides a state of the art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions, and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics, and of the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is (...) finally urged that the most promising approaches - and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments - are deflationary. In particular, a defence is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation. (shrink)

This article provides a state-of-the-art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics and the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is finally urged that the (...) most promising approaches—and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments—are deflationary. In particular, a defense is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation. (shrink)

Muslim migrants are the counter-figures through whom the modern Western identity is shaped. In Islamophobic discourses, they are constructed as inherently sexist and homophobic. In this ideological context, queer migrants coming from Muslim countries occupy an intersectional social location between Islamophobia and homophobia. In this paper we analyze the cinematic representation of queer migrants living in Europe coming from Muslim backgrounds. The aim of the paper is to analyze whether the films reproduce or subvert the Western “gay narrative”. The corpus (...) of analysis is made up of 19 films which were studied through a process of categorization of the relevant fragments in a matrix. The films are classified in three categories according to their approach. The first gathers those films that hold an assimilationist discourse, according to which queer migrants should embrace the Western “gay narrative” and abandon the values of the communities of origin. In the second category, the films propose a hybrid perspective in which characters merge elements from both the country of residence and the cultural background of origin in the exploration of their sexuality and gender. The films in the third category revolve around a metaphorical relationship between a queer migrant and a native person, promoting a reflection on the possibilities of transformative encounters that break the boundaries between supposedly opposed social groups. (shrink)

The state members of the European Union have witnessed the emergence of equality policies which target discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. These are usually based on the single issue model focusing exclusively on discrimination suffered by LGBT people, however there are other approaches to this issue which take into account the interaction of different axes of inequality, namely, the multiple and intersectional discrimination models. This article analyses the implications of these three models from a theoretical (...) and empirical perspective, pointing out their respective advantages and disadvantages. (shrink)

Is the brain really a computer? In particular, is our intelligence a computational achievement: is it because our brains are computers that we get on in the world as well as we do? In this paper I will evaluate an ambitious new argument to the contrary, developed in Landgrebe and Smith (2021a, 2022). Landgrebe and Smith begin with the fact that many dynamical systems in the world are difficult or impossible to model accurately (inter alia, because it is intractable to (...) find exact solutions to the differential equations that describe them—meaning we have to approximate—but at the same time they are such that small differences in starting conditions lead to big differences in final conditions, thwarting accurate approximation). Yet we manage to survive and thrive in a world full of such systems. Landgrebe and Smith argue from these premises that it is not because our brains are computers that we get on as well as we do: instead it is because of the various ways that we dynamically couple with such systems, these couplings themselves impossible to model well enough to emulate in silico. Landgrebe and Smith thus defend a dynamical systems model in the lineage of Gibson (1979), Van Gelder (1995), and Thompson (2007), though their focus is on decisively refuting the computationalist alternatives rather than developing the positive account. Here I will defend the claim that human intelligence is genuinely computational (and that whole brain emulation and others forms of AGI may be possible) against this argument. (shrink)