A common view is that self-identity is essential to objects if anything is. Itself a substantive metaphysical view, this is a position of some import in wider debates, particularly in connection with such problems as physicalism and personal identity. In this article I challenge the view. I distinguish between two accounts of essence, the modal and the definitional, and argue that self-identity is essential to objects on the former but not on the latter. After laying out my case, I deal (...) with a number of objections. (shrink)

Husserl’s official account of essence is modal. It is also, I submit, incompatible with the role that essence is supposed to play, especially relative to necessity, in his overall philosophy. In the Husserlian framework, essence should rather be treated as a non-modal notion. The point, while not generally acknowledged, has been made before (by Kevin Mulligan for one); yet the arguments given for it, though perhaps sound, are not Husserlian. In this paper I present a thoroughly Husserlian argument for that (...) claim, as well as a Husserlian essentialist account of necessity. I also discuss the role of grounding within the account. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that entities have essences. What are we to make of the view that essences are themselves entities? E.J. Lowe has put forward an infinite regress argument against it. In this paper I challenge that argument. First, drawing on work by J.W. Wieland, I give a general condition for the obtaining of a vicious infinite regress. I then argue that in Lowe’s case the condition is not met. In making my case, I mainly (but not exclusively) consider definitionalist (...) accounts of essence. I make a re￾quirement to which definitionalists such as Lowe are committed and which, I venture, should also be palatable to non-naïve modalists. I call it the Relevance Principle. The defence trades on it, as well as on the distinction, due to K. Fine, between mediate and immediate essence. (shrink)

This paper is about a certain view of intentionality, a problem faced by the view, and two ways in which, it has been proposed, the problem might be solved. The view is that every intentional state has an intentional object. The problem is that the putative intentional objects of some intentional states do not, or even cannot, exist. The two strategies to solve the problem and secure the view are those implemented by Tim Crane in his article “Intentional Objects”. In (...) this paper I argue that both Crane’s implementations and the strategies in general are unsuccessful. By way of overview, I also discuss other ways in which the problem has been addressed. (shrink)

Husserlian Essentialism is the view, maintained byEdmundHusserl throughout his career, that necessary truths obtain because essentialist truths obtain. In this thesis I have two goals. First, to reconstruct and flesh out Husserlian Essentialism and its connections with surrounding areas of Husserl's philosophy in full detail – something which has not been done yet. Second, to assess the theoretical solidity of the view. As regards the second point, after having presented Husserlian Essentialism in the first two chapters, I raise a serious (...) problem for it in Chapter 3. In the remainder of the thesis I endeavour to solve the problem. In order to do so, I propose to amend both Husserl's theory of essence and his theory of predication. The bulk of the emendation consists in working out an account of essence and an account of predication that do not presuppose, or in any way imply, the claims that: 1) for a universal to be in the essence of an object, either the object or one of its parts must instantiate the universal; 2) for a universal to be truly predicated of an object, either the object or one of its parts must instantiate the universal. These claims, notice, apart from being what gets Husserl in trouble, are well entrenched not only in Husserl's, but in most theories of essence and predication. It is thus interesting to see what an alternative option may be – even regardless of the Husserlian setting in which I work it out. (shrink)

Can one hold both that universals exist in the strongest sense (i.e., neither in language nor in thought, nor in their instances) and that they exist contingently—and still make sense? Edmund Husserl thought so. In this paper I present a version of his view regimented in terms of modal logic cum possible-world semantics. Crucial to the picture is the distinction between two accessibility relations with different structural properties. These relations are cashed out in terms of two Husserlian notions of imagination: (...) world-bound and free. After briefly presenting the Husserlian framework—his intentionalism, idealism and how universals figure in them—I set up my modal machinery, model the target view, and show that, depending on the chosen accessibility relation, the necessary or the contingent existence of universals can be derived. Importantly, since for Husserl both relations are bona fide, both derivations are legitimate. In Husserl’s philosophy, then, there is room for both necessary and contingent universals. (shrink)

No presente artigo, o itinerário filosófico de Anselmo de Cantuária é descrito em quatro tópicos: o primeiro, sobre a sua vida de monge, suas obras e a sua habilidade dialéctica; o segundo, sobre a Ontologia e a teoria dos universais; o terceiro, sobre a teoria da verdade e da significação; o quarto, sobre a Ética ou a fundamentação do agir humano. Além desses quatro tópicos, o seu itinerário filosófico também é descrito levando-se em conta: a) os autores dos quais se (...) serviu (particularmente Platão e Aristóteles); b) a sua mestria na Escolástica (sobretudo por ter indicado as estratégias dialéctica e retórica adequadas ao exercício da racionalidade cristã). /// The present article attempts to describe Anselm of Canterbury's philosophical itinerary in accordance with the following four points: 1) his life as a monk, his works and his dialectical skills; 2) his ontology and theory of universais; 3) his theory of truth and of meaning; 4) his ethical theory and foundation of human action. The article also pays attention to the authors used by Anselm, especially Plato and Aristotle, as well as to his mastery of the scholastic method, whereby special attention is given to the dialectic and rhetoric strategy he found most suitable to the practice of Christian rationality. (shrink)

The potential development of self-driving cars (also known as autonomous vehicles or AVs – particularly Level 5 AVs) has called the attention of different interested parties. Yet, there are still only a few relevant international regulations on them, no emergency patterns accepted by communities and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and no publicly accepted solutions to some of their pending ethical problems. Thus, this paper aims to provide some possible answers to these moral and practical dilemmas. In particular, we focus on (...) what AVs should do in no-win scenarios and on who should be held responsible for these types of decisions. A naturalistic perspective on ethics informs our proposal, which, we argue, could represent a pragmatic and realistic solution to the regulation of AVs. We discuss the proposals already set out in the current literature regarding both policy-making strategies and theoretical accounts. In fact, we consider and reject descriptive approaches to the problem as well as the option of using either a strict deontological view or a solely utilitarian one to set AVs’ ethical choices. Instead, to provide concrete answers to AVs’ ethical problems, we examine three hierarchical levels of decision-making processes: country-wide regulations, OEM policies, and buyers’ moral attitudes. By appropriately distributing ethical decisions and considering their practical implications, we maintain that our proposal based on ethical naturalism recognizes the importance of all stakeholders and allows the most able of them to take actions (the OEMs and buyers) to reflect on the moral leeway and weight of their options. (shrink)

Taste as Experience puts the pleasure of food at the center of human experience. It shows how the sense of taste informs our preferences for and relationship to nature, pushes us toward ethical practices of consumption, and impresses upon us the importance of aesthetics. Eating is often dismissed as a necessary aspect of survival, and our personal enjoyment of food is considered a quirk. Nicola Perullo sees food as the only portion of the world we take in on a (...) daily basis, constituting our first and most significant encounter with the earth. Perullo has long observed people's food practices and has listened to their food experiences. He draws on years of research to explain the complex meanings behind our food choices and the thinking that accompanies our gustatory actions. He also considers our indifference toward food as a force influencing us as much as engagement. For Perullo, taste is value and wisdom. It cannot be reduced to mere chemical or cultural factors but embodies the quality and quantity of our earthly experience. (shrink)

Antes da Filosofia, a Sabedoria era a que continha o "saber" humano haurido da experiéncia vivida. E, portanto, Sabedoria expressava mais ou menos o que hoje concebemos como Cultura. Ora, a Filosofia construiu-se mediante a operacionalização de uma passagem: do contexto da Cultura (a qual se expressava mediante um sistema simbolico próprio do mito, da religião e da literatura heróica) para o contexto da Ciencia (a qual se expressou, na dependència do antigo, através de um novo sistema simbólico conceitual, pelo (...) exercicio de uma determinada competência). Do contexto de uma Sabedoria experimental, organizada no tempo da experiência da vida, construiu-se uma habilidade de tipo próprio: a de elaborar considerações sábias ou a de formular máximas mediante observações precisas. Tales representa, nos primórdios da descoberta do pensamento racional, orientando-a, não tanto para o governo da vida ou do viver, mas para o governo da Natureza, pela observação dos seus fenómenos. É sobre a instauração desta nova atitude (inferida do exercicio prático e não de discurso teórico feito por Tales) que se detém este artigo. Ele versa, num primeiro momento, sobre a sua figura de Sábio; sobre a sua necessidade de viajar, como forma de estudo e de instrução; sobre o seu envolvimento com a Geometria (uma ciência de feição especulativa, mas de carácter empírico); enfim, sobre a sua habilidade teórica e prática (mediante relatos de Platão e de Aristóteles). Num segundo momento, e finalmente, aborda a sua explicação racional da "physis". /// Avant la Philosophie, la sagesse détenait le "savoir" humain extrait de l'expérience vécue. La sagesse s'approchait done de ce que nous comprenons aujourd'hui comme culture. La Philosophic est le fruit du passage du contexte de la Culture (celle qui s'exprimait par un système symbolique propre au mythe, à la religion, à la littérature héroïque) à celui de la Science (qui s'est exprimée, pour la dépendance du système ancien, par le biais d'un nouveau système symbolique conceptuel moyennant l'exercice d'une compétence détérminée). C'est à partir de la Sagesse experimentale, organisée pendant l'expérience de la vie, que s'est construite une capacité propre: celle qui consiste à élaborer des considérations sages ou à formuler des maximes moyennant des observations précises. Aux origines de la découverte de la pensée rationnelle, Thalès fut un jalon dans ce mouvement de la sagesse: il a marqué le début d'une nouvelle activité du sage, par l'exercice spécifique de la recherche ou de l'élévation rationnelle, en l'orientant, non seulement pour la conduite de la vic (ou du vivre), mais encore pour la connaissance de la nature, grace à l'observation de ses phénomenes. Le thème de cet article aborde l'instauration de cette nouvelle attitude (induite de l'exercice pratique et non du discours théorique fait par Thalès). II traite, en un premier moment, de Thalès comme Savant; de ses voyages comme forme d'etude et d'instruction, de son introduction à la Géométrie (une science de nature spéculative mais de caractère empirique); enfin, de son habileté théorique et pratique (en utilisant des récits de Platon et d'Aristote). En un second moment, il traite de son explication rationnelle de la "Physis". /// Before Philosophy, Wisdom included much of human "knowledge" learned through the experience of life. Wisdom was thus approximately what we nowadays call Culture. Philosophy was built up by way of a passage: from the context of Culture (wheh espresses itself by means of a symbolic system peculiar to myth, religion and epic literature) to the context of Science (which although still dependent from the ancient tradition expresses itself through a new conceptual symbolic system by means of the exercise of a specific competence). Out of the context of an experimental Wisdom, a specific skill developed organized on the basis of experience of life: to elaborate wise considerations, or to formulate propositions based upon precise observations. In the early days of the discovery of rational thought, Thales represents a landmark in his sapiential movement: the inauguration of a new activity of Scholars, through the specific exercise either of research or of rational speculation, directed mainly not to the rule of life, but to the rule of Nature through the observations of its phenomena. This paper deals with the instauration of this new activity (inferred from Thales 1 practice and not from his theoretical discourse). First, Thales personality of a Scholar is analysed: his need to travel as a way of study and instruction; his interest for Geometry (a science of speculative kind, but of empirical character); his theoretical and practical skill (according to the reports of both Plato and Aristotle). In a second part, Thales' rational explanation of "physis" is examined. (shrink)

Embora Aristóteles considere a fórmula ontológica de Parménides ὠς (ȍπως) ἒστƖνcomo primitiva e incomplete faz dela, todavia, o fundamento de todo o discurso verdadeiro e sensato. Interessado, sobretudo, em rever a teoria das Ideias de Platão, é bem provável, inclusive, que ele tenha encontrado na fórmula de Parménides, além de motivacao para o seu próprio empenho, o fundamento sintático-semântico do discurso ontológico, mais precisamente, dos modos ou categorias pelos quais podemos expressar-nos gramatical e fllosoflcamente. /// Aristotles' Treatment of Parmenides 1 (...) Ontological Thesis. Aristotle considers Parmenides' thesis about being, expressed in the formula ὠς (ȍπως) ἒστƖν as primitive and incomplete, but he neverthelesses employs it as the foundation of true and sensible discourse. Concerned in revising Plato's theory of forms, he found in Parmenides' formula, not only a motivation for his own viewpoint, but indeed the basis for the semantico-syntactic structure of ontological discourse, of the categories and modes in terms of which we can express ourselves grammatically and philosophically. (shrink)

Quantum physics, which offers an explanation of the world on the smallest scale, has fundamental implications that pose a serious challenge to ordinary logic. Particularly counterintuitive is the notion of entanglement, which has been explored for the past 30 years and posits an ubiquitous randomness capable of manifesting itself simultaneously in more than one place. This amazing 'non-locality' is more than just an abstract curiosity or paradox: it has entirely down-to-earth applications in cryptography, serving for example to protect financial information; (...) it also has enabled the demonstration of 'quantum teleportation', whose infinite possibilities even science-fiction writers can scarcely imagine. This delightful and concise exposition does not avoid the deep logical difficulties of quantum physics, but gives the reader the insights needed to appreciate them. From 'Bell's Theorem' to experiments in quantum entanglement, the reader will gain a solid understanding of one of the most fascinating areas of contemporary physics. (shrink)

In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy (...) concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how psychedelic therapies shape and are shaped by different values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this article opens the black box of the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic therapy as an emergent form of life. To bring this form of life out in fuller relief, we conclude by comparing and contrasting it with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism. (shrink)

The recognition of taboo words – i.e. socially inappropriate words – has been repeatedly associated to semantic interference phenomena, with detrimental effects on the performance in the ongoing task. In the present study, we investigated taboo interference in the context of reading aloud, a task configuration which prompts the overt violation of conventional sociolinguistic norms by requiring the explicit utterance of taboo items. We assessed whether this form of semantic interference is handled by habituative or cognitive control processes. In addition (...) to the reading aloud task, participants performed a vocal Stroop task featuring different conditions to dissociate semantic, task, and response conflict. Taboo words were read slower than non-taboo words, but this effect was subject to a quick habituation, with a decreasing interference over the course of trials, which allowed participants to selectively attend to goal-relevant information. In the Stroop task, only semantic conflict was significantly reduced by habituation. These findings suggest that semantic properties can be quickly and flexibly weighed on the basis of contextual appropriateness, thus characterising semantic processing as a flexible and goal-directed component of reading aloud. (shrink)

This chapter deals with one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, inappropriate appeal to authority (IAA). IAA has many different facets. At its core, it is a fallacy that assumes that because someone is an authority, we should listen to that person. The problem with IAA is that it ignores content in favor of credentials and power. There are a few different ways in which IAA can occur. IAA seems to be the result of a flaw in human thinking. (...) Social cognitive theory, a theory that helps explain human action, notes that humans tend to act like each other. The tendency to listen to authorities who are not authorities explains why celebrities are able to sell us stuff. The important thing to remember about IAA is that it is not just a fallacy that comes up in arguments that do not matter. (shrink)

For decades, liberal democracy has been extolled as the best system of governance to have emerged out of the long experience of history. Today, such a confident assertion is far from self-evident. Democracy, in crisis across the West, must prove itself. This highly timely volume is both a conceptual and practical guide of impressive scope to the challenges of good governance as the world continues to undergo profound transformation in the coming decades.

A sample of Yukatek Maya children was tested on their capacity to attribute false beliefs to a variety of stimuli, both natural and non-natural. Children's capacity to correctly infer that humans have limited perceptual access, and are, therefore, not likely to know what is inside a container if the contents have been surreptitiously replaced, is shown to have significant consequences. Children who passed the test with the human stimulus showed a nuanced capacity to attribute similar or dissimilar knowledge to other (...) natural and non-natural entities, consistently with these entities' cultural representations. In contrast, those who failed the test with the human stimulus tended to attribute similar beliefs to all natural and non-natural entity stimuli. (shrink)

The Mansouri-Sexl and Sjödin point of view on clock synchronization in special relativity is maintained against various criticisms, taking into account also the recent point of view of stochastic electrodynamics. Light speed invariance is also discussed in an intuitive way.

Kaum ein anderes semantisches Feld durchzieht Platons Werk von den ersten Dialogen an bis zum Spätwerk so prägend und zugleich so spannungsreich wie das der Mimesis. Von der Sprachphilosophie über die Ästhetik und Moralpsychologie bis hin zur Metaphysik, Kosmologie und Theologie: in erstaunlich vielen Themenbereichen gewinnt die Semantik der Mimesis bei Platon hohe Relevanz. Der Tagungsband „Platonic Mimesis Revisited“ bietet eine umfassende und kontextsensible Neubetrachtung der Mimesis in allen einschlägigen Dialogen. Anders als frühere monographische Behandlungen des Themas vereint er eine (...) bedeutende Auswahl wissenschaftlicher Perspektiven aus Philosophie und Philologie und gibt so einen breiten Einblick in moderne Forschungsansätze.Mit Beiträgen vonMichele Abbate, Alexandra V. Alván Leon, Laura Candiotto, Andrea Capra, Elenio Cicchini, Michael Erler, Francesco Fronterotta, José Antonio Giménez Salinas, Stephen Halliwell, Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Lidia Palumbo, Anna Pavani, Julia Pfefferkorn, Antonino Spinelli, Benedikt Strobel und Justin Vlasits. (shrink)

Methexiology is not a particular theory, but rather a general philosophical orientation. Therefore, in Methexiology: Philosophical Theology and Theological Philosophy for the Deification of Humanity, Nicolas Laos elucidates the significance of methexiology for the study of ontology, epistemology, ethics, philosophical psychology, theory of justice, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion. Laos argues that, faced with the modern and the postmodern crises of meaning, we need a new myth, a new spiritual formula, for the resacralization of humanity and the cosmos, (...) without restoring defunct totems, without using tales as "cheap" substitutes for the lack of a life-giving myth, and without negating history. In his Methexiology, Laos studies the "genealogy" of the modern and the postmodern crises of meaning, and, based on his new interpretation of classical Greek philosophy and Hesychasm, proposes methexiology as a way of overcoming the crises of meaning and as a way of resacralizing humanity and the cosmos through a new metaphysically grounded humanism. (shrink)

The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science. Reliance on belief in understanding and predicting behavior is widespread. Examples can be found, inter alia, in the placebo, attribution theory, theory of mind, and comparative psychological literatures. Research on belief also provides evidence for robust generalizations, including about how we fix, store, and change our beliefs. Evidence supports the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation: one that is automatic (...) and independent of belief rejection. Independent research supports the existence of a system of fragmented belief storage: one that relies on large numbers of causally isolated, context-sensitive stores of belief in memory. Finally, empirical and observational data support at least two systems of belief change. One system adheres, mostly, to epistemological norms of updating; the other, the psychological immune system, functions to guard our most centrally held beliefs from potential inconsistency with newly formed beliefs. Refining our under- standing of these systems can shed light on pressing real-world issues, such as how fake news, propaganda, and brainwashing exploit our psychology of belief, and how best to construct our modern informational world. (shrink)

In recent years much research has been undertaken regarding the feasibility of the human uterine transplant as a treatment for absolute uterine factor infertility. Should it reach clinical application this procedure would allow such individuals what is often a much-desired opportunity to become not only social mothers, or genetic and social mothers but mothers in a social, genetic and gestational sense. Like many experimental transplantation procedures such as face, hand, corneal and larynx transplants, UTx as a therapeutic option falls firmly (...) into the camp of the quality of life transplant, undertaken with the aim, not to save a life, but to enrich one. However, unlike most of these novel procedures – where one would be unlikely to find a willing living donor or an ethics committee that would sanction such a donation – the organs to be transplanted in UTx are potentially available from both living and deceased donors. In this article, in the light of the recent nine-case research trial in Sweden which used uteri obtained from living donors, and the assertions on the part of a number of other research teams currently preparing trials that they will only be using deceased donors, I explore the question of whether, in the case of UTx, there exist compelling moral reasons to prefer the use of deceased donors despite the benefits that may be associated with the use of organs obtained from the living. (shrink)

1. L'oeuvre musicale et son écoute -- 2. Le monde-musique et son solfège -- 3. Le musicien et son intellectualité musicale -- 4. Les raisonances du monde-musique ; postlude d'Alain Badiou.

Trente et un penseurs, parmi lesquels Jacques Derrida, Françoise Héritier, Edgar Morin, Jean-Luc Nancy, Michel Onfray ou encore Jacques Rancière, pour comprendre les errements et les raisons d'espérer d'une planète convulsée. Dix-neuf entretiens et débats avec les intellectuels les plus engagés dans la réflexion sur le temps présent dressent un état des lieux des questions qui taraudent notre modernité. Issu du Théâtre des idées, cycle de rencontres intellectuelles du Festival d'Avignon (2004-2012), ces dialogues singuliers s'attachent à faire vivre l'esprit critique, (...) cette faculté de juger, de soumettre la réalité sociale, artistique ou politique au tamis du jugement argumenté, qu'il soit sérieux ou ironique, virulent ou tempéré. De très actuelles "résistances intellectuelles" qui esquissent ce que pourrait être un service public des idées, c'est-à-dire un accès direct, libre et partagé à l'intellectualité. (shrink)

Blaise Pascal est le penseur radical des limites et des contradictions de l'homme, ni ange ni bête. Contrairement à ce qu'en prétend l'orgueil de toute une modernité, la raison ne peut pas tout ; mais contrairement au désespoir du fanatisme, la raison n'est pas sans force. Jusqu'où alors peut-elle s'exercer? Pour Pascal, la philosophie ne saurait faire l'économie de la question de Dieu, Elle doit donc croiser la théologie. Mais comment vont se nouer l'ordre de l'esprit et celui de la (...) charité? Pascal produit ainsi une analyse critique de la philosophie comme telle, de ses capacités et de ses limites, que le présent ouvrage se donne pour tâche de clarifier. Que peut la philosophie? Mais qui décide de ce qu'elle peut, et surtout de ce qu'elle ne peut pas? Comment s'établissent alors ses rapports avec la théologie? Ce que Pascal nous invite ainsi à penser, c'est toujours à la fois la misère et la grandeur de la philosophie. (shrink)