Recently, the pandemic context in which the world finds itself has inspired studies that sought to evaluate to mental health and the way people are relating to the purpose of understanding and promoting improvements psychological health. The epidemiological and public health literature shows that social connection protects and promotes mental health, being an important clinical tool for reducing anxiety, depression, and stress. Thinking in the broad sense of connection, that is, feeling and perceiving oneself connected with the environment, applied to (...) the context of sport, it is suggested that social connection could be related to the interactions in the practice of sport. Although playing sports can promote mental health, there are few findings on the topic in the context of a pandemic and with physical sports and electronic sports players. In this sense, the present study aims to assess the extent to which social connection and mental health indicators are correlated in a sample of sports and e-sports players. The participants were 401 Brazilian physical sports and e-sports players, mostly male and single, who filled in the Social Connectedness Scale, the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale, and demographic questions. The results indicated that social connection was negatively correlated and also predict the anxiety, depression, and stress. When comparing sports and e-sports players, a statistically significant difference was identified in the levels of social connection [t = −3.41; sportsmean = 4.53 ; e-sportsmean = 4.14 ] and depression [t = 2.90; sportsmean = 1.10 ; e-sportsmean = 0.85 ]. These findings can serve as a theoretical basis for the development of intervention programs and promoting discussions that focus on the analysis of aspects promoting psychological health in sports context. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem por objetivo demonstrar como o Estado mínimo proposto por Robert Nozick invariavelmente tenderia a acabar, a menos que seus membros fossem coagidos pelo poder central a contribuir para sua manutenção. E, neste caso, obviamente violaria os direitos e liberdades que o mesmo Estado proposto pelo filósofo teria função de garantir. Analisaremos as falhas no modelo proposto por Nozick através de um viés econômico, demonstrando através da teoria dos jogos e da lógica da ação coletiva, como uma (...) organização provedora de bens públicos não-excludentes é vulnerável à atuação de free- riders, aumentando assim os custos de sua atuação, e diminuindo os incentivos para sua existência. (shrink)

O presente artigo busca fazer uma análise do diálogo inter-religioso entre o judaísmo e o cristianismo, duas religiões monoteístas, com origens semelhantes, mas separadas por questões históricas e algumas divergências doutrinárias. Inicialmente se propõe relatar a importância do diálogo entre as duas religiões, baseando-se nos trabalhos de Alberto Milkewitz, Edwin Arteaga Tobon, e Frederico Laufer. Após isso, procurou-se identificar os aspectos divergentes e convergentes entre o cristianismo e o judaísmo, para verificar a viabilidade do diálogo. Consultou-se para este momento os (...) trabalhos de Josh McDowel e do Instituto Cristão de Pesquisas. Como conclusão do artigo, apresentou-se uma breve síntese visando a aplicabilidade do diálogo inter-religioso para a Igreja Cristã atual. (shrink)

O termo Ecosofia evoca a necessidade de se pensar uma nova relação entre o homem e o meio ambiente a partir de um paradigma pós-cartesiano, uma vez que sob a égide do cartesianismo subscreveu-se uma forma de dominação sobre a natureza onde a última se apresenta como “serva” do homem. Tal expressão remonta ao pensamento do ambientalista norueguês Arne Naess, fundador do movimento conhecido como Deep Ecology, o qual, entre outras características, estabelece que o problema da ecologia está além de (...) um único campo de estudos, envolvendo o esforço coletivo de diferentes áreas, uma vez que se trata de um tema de responsabilidade de todos. Diversos pensadores podem ser incluídos no desenvolvimento daquele conceito, indo de Rousseau a Félix Guattari, a sociólogos como Michel Maffesoli e físicos como Fritjof Capra. Compreendemos, com base nos trabalhos de alguns dos seus principais teóricos, que a Ecosofia abrange uma dimensão metafísica que está além das formas consensuais de combate ao desequilíbrio ambiental, os quais se instrumentalizam através de acordos e metas estabelecidas através de instituições políticas, mas que se promove como uma cosmovisão que tem como princípio transformar a consciência humana para que se acomode aos termos de um novo convívio entre si e com a natureza. Daqui emergem duas tarefas a serem plenamente consolidadas: o reconhecimento da interdependência dos seres vivos entre si, em relação ao meio ambiente e à natureza tomada como origem comum de todos. Este último ponto exprime um conflito com a tradição espiritual do Ocidente de matriz judaico-cristã. (shrink)

Two formative forces for Greek philosophers remain undertheorized: polytheism as a metaphysical position and myth as a source of intelligibility. Heidegger’s work is perhaps exemplary in this regard: he both runs together Greek Metaphysics and Monotheism as well as fell prey to the power of myths. In this paper I introduce and translate the 1953 essay “Mythology and the Tropic Experience of Being” by the Brazilian philosopher Vicente Ferreira da Silva, where he proposed an openly polytheistic Heideggerian metaphysics and (...) philosophy of mythology. Vicente Ferreira da Silva thereby developed a phenomenological approach to myth that can dialogue fruitfully with ancient philosophy in its fullness and also reflect critically about contemporary myths. (shrink)

Two formative forces for Greek philosophers remain undertheorized: polytheism as a metaphysical position and myth as a source of intelligibility. Heidegger’s work is perhaps exemplary in this regard: he both runs together Greek Metaphysics and Monotheism as well as fell prey to the power of myths. In this paper I introduce and translate the 1953 essay “Mythology and the Tropic Experience of Being” by the Brazilian philosopher Vicente Ferreira da Silva, where he proposed an openly polytheistic Heideggerian metaphysics and (...) philosophy of mythology. Vicente Ferreira da Silva thereby developed a phenomenological approach to myth that can dialogue fruitfully with ancient philosophy in its fullness and also reflect critically about contemporary myths. (shrink)

Part I: Building blocks. 1. Folk convictions -- 2. Doubts about libertarianism -- 3. Nihilism and revisionism -- 4. Building a better theory -- Part II. A theory of moral responsibility. 5. The primacy of reasons -- 6. Justifying the practice -- 7. Responsible agency -- 8. Blame and desert -- 9. History and manipulation --10. Some conclusions.

Constitutive instrumentalism is the view that responsibility practices arise from and are justified by our being prosocial creatures who need responsibility practices to secure specific kinds of social goods. In particular, responsibility practices shape agency in ways that disposes adherence to norms that enable goods of shared cooperative life. The mechanics of everyday responsibility practices operate, in part, via costly signaling about the suitability of agents for coordination and cooperation under conditions of shared cooperative life. So, there are a range (...) of identifiable conditions where the ordinary operation of responsibility practices—and thus, the usual normative force of the practices—is disrupted. Even so, these conditions are not so widespread as to favor a more thoroughgoing abandonment of responsibility practices. (shrink)

Many prominent theories of moral responsibility rely on the notion of “tracing,” the idea that responsibility for an outcome can be located in (i.e., “traced back to”) some prior moment of control, perhaps significantly antecedent to the proximate sources of a considered action. In this article, I show how there is a problem for theories that rely on tracing. The problem is connected to the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. Many prima facie good candidate cases for tracing analyses appear to (...) violate the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. So, either we need to dispense with tracing approaches or we must refine our understanding of the knowledge condition or we are responsible less frequently than we suppose. (shrink)

In mid-twentieth-century Mexican philosophy, there was a peculiar nationalist existentialist project focused on the cultural conditions of agency. This article revisits some of those ideas, including the idea that there is an important but underappreciated experience of one's relationship to norms and social meanings. This experience—something called accidentality—casts new light on various forms of social subordination and socially scaffolded agency, including cultural alienation, biculturality, and double consciousness.

In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have (...) particular sorts of histories, others have argued that no such history is required. Resolution of this contentious issue is connected to a wide range of concerns, including the significance and culpability of different forms of manipulation, the plausibility of important incompatibilist criticisms of compatibilism, and of course, a satisfactory account of moral responsibility. As it turns out, history matters sometimes, but less frequently than we might think. (shrink)

This article summarizes the moderate revisionist position I put forth in Four Views on Free Will and responds to objections to it from Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Michael McKenna. Among the principle topics of the article are (1) motivations for revisionism, what it is, and how it is different from compatibilism and hard incompatibilism, (2) an objection to the distinctiveness of semicompatibilism against conventional forms of compatibilism, and (3) whether moderate revisionism is committed to realism about (...) moral responsibility. (shrink)

This article reports on an empirical qualitative study on applying a Philosophy for Children (P4C) modeled science story to support the teaching of basic science process skills of classification, observation, and inference to a group of fifth-grade science students. The science story was written to model the skills for the children. From individual interviews with a focus group of 10 students, the findings show that the story modeled the understanding of classification, observation, and inference skills for the children as well (...) as encouraged reflection on the meaning of inference. The majority of the students identified with the fictional characters, particularly regarding traits such as cleverness and inquisitiveness, and with the learning context of the story. Implications for the theory and practice of P4C are discussed. (shrink)

There are two standard theoretical responses to putative errors in ordinary thinking about some given target property: eliminativism or revisionism. Roughly, eliminativism is the denial that the target property exists, and revisionism is the view that the property exists, but that people tend to have false beliefs about it. Recently, Shaun Nichols has proposed a third option: discretionism. Discretionism is the idea that some terms have multiple reference conventions, so that it may be true to say with eliminativists that the (...) property does not exist, and true to say with revisionists that the property does exist. This article explores the viability of discretionism, and argues that it faces serious difficulties. Even if the difficulties faced by discretionism can be overcome, it is unclear that discretionism secures anything beyond what is already available to standard revisionist views. The article concludes with some reflections about Nichols’ account of the bare retributive norm. (shrink)

This thesis aims to study the origins of interiority from an externalist perspective. The process by which self-knowledge is formed is considered in relation to the development of the first-person perspective. From a first-person perspective, one is capable of self-referring and knowing one's own mental and physical states. Self-consciousness and self-knowledge are discussed in relation to Descartes' idea of first-person authority. The Cartesian idea contends that the first-person perspective has privileged and non-empirical access to one's own mental state. On the (...) contrary, externalism's central thesis contends that the content of one's own mental state originates from interactions with the environment, thus, there is no privileged access of one's own mental state. Thus, the externalist's thesis puts into question the Cartesian idea of privileged epistemic access of the first person. The perceptual externalism of Davidson, for example, proposes a triadic solution to the origins of self-knowledge. Davidson's thesis is presented as reconciling self-knowledge and the basic externalist ideas. Two externalist models on the origins of self-knowledge are further discussed: 1) ecological models proposing a development of a sense of self as a function of interactions with the environment; 2) the psychological model of Winnicott proposing that the developing sense of self arises from the triadic relation between self, others, and transitional object(s). We defend the thesis that Winnicott's model is the most apt at describing the Davidsonian externalist model of the origins of self-knowledge. (shrink)

We welcome the proposal to use forward models to understand predictive processes in language processing. However, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) miss the opportunity to provide a strong framework for future work. Forward models need to be pursued in the context of learning. This naturally leads to questions about what prediction error these models aim to minimize.

We present a new functional interpretation, based on a novel assignment of formulas. In contrast with Gödel’s functional “Dialectica” interpretation, the new interpretation does not care for precise witnesses of existential statements, but only for bounds for them. New principles are supported by our interpretation, including the FAN theorem, weak König’s lemma and the lesser limited principle of omniscience. Conspicuous among these principles are also refutations of some laws of classical logic. Notwithstanding, we end up discussing some applications of the (...) new interpretation to theories of classical arithmetic and analysis. (shrink)

The Luck Problem has existed in one form or another since David Hume, at least. It is perhaps as old as Stoic objections to the Epicurean swerve. Although the general issue admits of different formulations with subtly different emphases, the characterization of it that will serve as my target focuses on “cross-worlds” luck, a kind of luck that arises when the decision-making of agents is indeterministic.

The idea of moral responsibility is central to a wide range of our moral, social, and legal practices, and it underpins our basic notion of culpability. Yet the idea of moral responsibility is increasingly viewed with skepticism by researchers and scholars in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the law. Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility responds to these challenges, offering a new account of the justification of our practices and judgments of moral responsibility. Three distinctive ideas shape the account. (...) The first is the agency cultivation model, which holds that a system of responsibility practices can derive its justification from the way it supports our agency. The second idea, circumstantialism, is a new way of thinking about agential capacities. This is the view that the capacities required for moral responsibility are functions of agents in circumstances, rather than basic features of agents considered in themselves. The third idea is revisionism, or the idea that a satisfactory theory of moral responsibility will conflict with some aspects of ordinary commitments about freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

It is well known that Frege's system in the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is formally inconsistent. Frege's instantiation rule for the second-order universal quantifier makes his system, except for minor differences, full (i.e., with unrestricted comprehension) second-order logic, augmented by an abstraction operator that abides to Frege's basic law V. A few years ago, Richard Heck proved the consistency of the fragment of Frege's theory obtained by restricting the comprehension schema to predicative formulae. He further conjectured that the more encompassing Δ₁¹-comprehension (...) schema would already be inconsistent. In the present paper, we show that this is not the case. (shrink)

Focusing on the recent work of Michael Bratman as emblematic of several important developments in the philosophy of action, I raise four questions that engage with a set of interlocking concerns about systemic functionalism in the philosophy of action. These questions are: (i) Are individual and institutional intentions the same kind of thing? (ii) Can the risk of proliferation of systemic functional explanations be managed? (iii) Is there an appealing basis for the apparent methodological individualism in our theories of action (...) and agency? and (iv) Why not, instead, pursue a methodologically anti-individualist and ecological approach to action and agency? The latter alternative, I suggest, offers a promising way to retain many of the core insights of the Bratmanian project while avoiding the difficulties inherent to some of the methodological presumptions of some strands of contemporary philosophy of action. (shrink)

A satisfactory construal of the subject matter of free will debates must allow for disagreements along two axes. First, it must allow for the possibility of higher order disagreements, or disagreements about what concepts, phenomena, or practices an account of free will is supposed to capture or explain. Second, it must allow for the fact of variation in the extent to which theories are bound by antecedent pre-philosophical thought, talk, and practices. A promising way of accommodating these two thoughts is (...) to treat free will in broadly functionalist terms. On the account proposed here, free will is a power that makes sense of everyday responsibility practices. This construal is not widely shared, but it allows for the possibility that we might have false beliefs about the nature of free will, while still making sense of central philosophical debates about free will. (shrink)

Resumen Los enfoques tradicionales en el estudio de la comunión fática han examinado el concepto en términos de la función social, la función del lenguaje así como su ocurrencia en las etapas iniciales y de cierre de una interacción. Intentos por clasificar la comunión fática en términos universalistas predeterminados corrieron el riesgo de alejarse del concepto de entendimientos cotidianos donde interactuantes emplean el uso del lenguaje dinámico para lograr los objetivos de comunicación específicos en contextos particulares. Los enfoques contemporáneos tratan (...) de redefinir la comunión fática en términos interpersonales. La investigación sobre el uso del lenguaje fático en América Latina ha sido muy limitada, con contadas excepciones. Con la finalidad de investigar el tema en el contexto mexicano, donde todavía se considera en términos convencionales, examinamos un corpus formado por 92 instancias de comunión fática, recabadas en Guadalajara, México. Sostenemos que en el corpus antes aludido se emplea la comunión fática a fin de expresar y destacar la cortesía positiva en maneras poco convencionales, dado que el término tiene un alcance muy amplio en el que abarca: la anticortesía, el uso del lenguaje creativo, los juegos lingüísticos, la ironía, y los anglicismos. (shrink)

It is well known that Frege's system in the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is formally inconsistent. Frege's instantiation rule for the second-order universal quantifier makes his system, except for minor differences, full (i.e., with unrestricted comprehension) second-order logic, augmented by an abstraction operator that abides to Frege's basic law V. A few years ago, Richard Heck proved the consistency of the fragment of Frege's theory obtained by restricting the comprehension schema to predicative formulae. He further conjectured that the more encompassing Δ11-comprehension (...) schema would already be inconsistent. In the present paper, we show that this is not the case. (shrink)

This paper presents two formation tracking control strategies for a combined set of single and double integrator agents with an arbitrary undirected communication topology. The first approach is based on the design of distance-based potential functions with interagent collision avoidance using local information about the distance and orientation between agents and the desired trajectory. The second approach adds signed area constraints to the desired formation specification and a control strategy that uses distance as well as area terms is designed to (...) achieve tracking convergence. Numerical simulations show the performance from both control laws. (shrink)

This paper outlines one way of thinking about the problem of free will, some general reasons for dissatisfactions with traditional approaches to solving it, and some considerations in favor of pursuing a broadly revisionist solution to it. If you are looking for a student-friendly introduction to revisionist theorizing about free will, this is probably the thing to look at.

Casi todo lo que nos rodea implica riesgos de algún tipo, aunque no obstante es la cultura del riesgo la que ha coadyuvado al progreso y el desarrollo de la sociedad. El principio de precaución que no es ajeno a esta realidad, responde a la incertidumbre del riesgo, sin limitarse a expresar una actitud subjetiva del miedo. Es, un medio eficaz para la protección, en todo momento y de manera oportuna, de los recursos naturales, para así alcanzar el fin de (...) las normas ambientales. Este libro colectivo constituye a través de una juiciosa recopilación de experiencias de derecho comparado, y de un diálogo en torno a las tensiones que se dan, un llamado de atención para repensar el principio de precaución. El tratamiento de estas cuestiones por parte de los autores, tuvo por norte el equilibrio entre el desarrollo de la sociedad y la salvaguarda de los derechos que podrían afectarse por una situación de riesgo inminente; siempre de cara a la rigurosidad exigida por la ciencia. Esta obra permite al lector contar con valiosas herramientas para realizar una evaluación amplia del alcance actual del principio de precaución, tema que debe tener continuidad en pro de un mejor entendimiento de la gestión del riesgo y de las complejas circunstancias de la invocación y aplicación del principio que debe estar presente en la formulación de las políticas ambientales, dado que las autoridades y los particulares ante la falta de certeza científica absoluta, para impedir la degradación ambiental, deberán darle aplicación cuando exista peligro de daño grave e irreversible como lo establece la legislación colombiana (artículo 1 Ley 99 de 1993). (shrink)

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

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

CADERNOS DE FILOSOFIA EXTRAVAGANTE - ANTÓNIO TELMO Vários Autores Um dos sinais do Quinto Império é que ainda há andorinhas O provérbio diz que uma andorinha não faz a Primavera Mas eu acho que faz Enquanto houver um homem onde resida a espiritualidade há sempre um princípio do Quinto Império António Telmo Este terceiro volume dos Cadernos de Filosofia Extravagante é o primeiro que se publica após a partida de António Telmo, que os imaginou, concebeu e fundou Constitui por isso, (...) na íntegra, um preito de homenagem ao autor da História Secreta de Portugal, nele se inserindo, bem a propósito, as actas do Colóquio A Obra e o Pensamento de António Telmo, realizado em 14 e 15 de Fevereiro de 2011, no Palácio da Independência, em Lisboa, por iniciativa do Instituto de Filosofia Luso-Brasileira, documento a que acrescem alguns testemunhos de amigos que, por uma ou outra razão, não puderam participar naquela comemoração, e duas entrevistas, uma das quais se encontrava por publicar, pelo filósofo concedidas na última década Por outro lado, nestas páginas o leitor poderá ainda encontrar dois escritos do autor de O Bateleur – um poema e um conto – nunca antes dados ao papel em letra de forma E, o que talvez seja mais, uma série significativa de correspondência epistolar até agora mantida inédita, tendo o filósofo por destinatário São missivas de Álvaro Ribeiro, José Marinho, Agostinho da Silva, Dalila Pereira da Costa e António Quadros, definindo um arco temporal que vai da publicação de Arte Poética, em 1963, à de Filosofia e Kabbalah, em 1990 Quase trinta anos de uma vida filosófica singular em que, a cada passo, são bem notórias a admiração e a amizade que mestres e condiscípulos lhe dedicam Autores- António Telmo, Pedro Martins, Renato Epifânio, Américo Rodrigues, Helena Estriga, António Braz Teixeira, Joaquim Domingues, Abel de Lacerda Botelho, Roque N Brás de Oliveira, M N Vieira, Luís Paixão, António Carlos Carvalho, Cynthia Guimarães Taveira, Rui Lopo, António Quadros Ferro, Carlos Aurélio, António Cândido Franco, Rodrigo Sobral Cunha, Carlos Vargas, Manuel Ferreira Patrício, Pedro Sinde, Paulo Santos, Pedro Paquim Ribeiro, Maurícia Teles da Silva, J Pinharanda Gomes, António Quadros, Avelino de Sousa, Elísio Gala, José Paulo Ribeiro Albuquerque, Helder Cortes, Eduardo Aroso, Isabel Xavier, Jesus Carlos, Álvaro Ribeiro, José Marinho, Agostinho da Silva, Dalila Pereira da Costa. (shrink)

Eu creio que devemos agradecer a Heidegger por nos ter claramente colocado, diante de nossos olhos, o verdadeiro “acontecimento” filosófico, que se consuma na fundamentação da filosofia de Kant, de modo que tal acontecimento torna-se visível na totalidade de sua força interna e em seu ímpeto. Mas, me parece que ele não percorreu a totalidade da esfera da problemática do “idealismo transcendental”.

The theme of the other (autrui) in Deleuze is confused with the double task of articulating a new perspective of the sense while questioning the traditional image of thought. This opens up ground from which to analyze this theme in the work of Deleuze which although is systematically visible in Différence et répétition (1968) and Logique du sens (1969) some elements of are discernable in Proust et les signes (1964). This study addresses the idea that the territory of the other (...) is the sense as identified in these three texts. Further ideas will also be introduced that center on the face and the manner in which it reformulates ties to sense. As suggested in Deleuze, a type of thinking is installed in the opening to the other, however not necessarily entering into the registry of morality nor of knowledge. (shrink)

Résumé La récente installation du siège principal de la Commission Léonine à Paris, en juin 2003, a été saluée par une série de conférences données à l’Université de Paris IV, au mois de décembre de la même année. Ces conférences ont donné lieu aux quatre articles ici présentés.

This article aims to examine the notion of pleasure as a telos of the happy life in Epicurus. Understood as the first good and inherent to the human being, pleasure is presented as the beginning and the ultimate end of a happy life. Indeed, it should be noted that it is not the pleasures of the common people that Epicurus considers as the telos of a happy life, but the pleasure that is the absence of suffering in body and soul, (...) which is named by Epicurus of katastematic pleasure or static/at rest pleasure. In this sense, two concerns guide the present work: i) that of presenting pleasure as a telos of a happy life; ii) to expose the strict meaning that the concept of pleasure assumes in Epicurean philosophy, paying attention to the distinction between pleasure in movement and pleasure at rest. The present study is based mainly on passages from the epistle to Meneceus, in some Main Maxims and Vatican Sentences, texts in which Epicurus exposes the foundations of his hedonism, as well as in the testimonies of later disciples, such as Tito Lucrécio Caro, Diogenes Laertius and Diogenes de Enoanda. (shrink)

Consider the following claim: “If an agent comes to be bad through a process that entirely bypasses her ability to appreciate and to respond to reasons, including moral reasons, she is not a responsible agent at all” (Levy 2007). Psychopathy is a wonderful example here, since there’s reason to think it has a strong genetic component. But why should we accept this claim that we have to absolve those who are born irrevocably bad?

I examine the extent to which Dennett’s account in Freedom Evolves might be construed as revisionist about free will or should instead be understood as a more traditional kind of compatibilism. I also consider Dennett’s views about philosophical work on free agency and its relationship to scientific inquiry, and I argue that extant philosophical work is more relevant to scientific inquiry than Dennett’s remarks may suggest.

Proponents of the philosophy of liberation generally counsel that various forms of liberation in at least the Americas requires that we should fight Eurocentrism and resist the ontology and conceptual framework of Europe. However, most of the work done in this tradition relies heavily on the terminology and theoretical apparatus of various strands of European philosophy. The apparent disconnect between the aims and methods (or if you like, the theory and practice) has given rise to a criticism I call The (...) Eurocentrism Problem. I argue that the Eurocentrism Problem has not received an adequate reply, and that it reflects a number of underlying flaws in the philosophical program of the philosophy of liberation. These problems can largely be avoided if we significantly recast the philosophy of liberation, eliminating its reliance on the conceptual foundations provided by Levinas, Heidegger, and so on. (shrink)