Las éticas tradicionales ya no bastan para satisfacer las demandas de los poderes que el ser humano posee mediante la técnica. El desarrollo de la tecnología ha despertado en la humanidad una serie de preocupaciones que demandan reflexiones éticas sobre lo que es realmente valioso: la vida. La humanidad necesita con urgencia sabiduría para emplear responsablemente el poder que viene de la técnica. Kant propone como base de la moralidad la autonomía de la voluntad libre. Con el fin de saber (...) si existe una razón pura capaz por sí sola de determinar la voluntad sin recurrir a la sensibilidad y a la experiencia, formula una ética del deber. La propuesta de una ética de la responsabilidad de Hans Jonas contiene un nuevo imperativo: las características del principio de responsabilidad. Mostrando que el sujeto ético en la civilización tecnológica es aquel que actúa con cuidado y precaución, la ética de la responsabilidad agrega toda la naturaleza, por lo que el principio de responsabilidad consiste en que asumamos la responsabilidad de la precaución y el cuidado con comportamientos éticos que nos hagan virtuosos preocupándonos por la vida y en búsqueda de un vivir mejor. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar algumas possíveis relações entre ruminação e reflexão com sexo, Neuroticismo/ajustamento emocional e bem-estar subjetivo (BES), decorrentes de uma análise crítica da literatura científica da área. O pensamento ruminativo, cujo conteúdo é negativo e desadaptado à ..

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that, given God's just and loving character, it would be most rational for Him to maintain an open-door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with Him. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original paper. The first (...) is an argument from religious luck offered by Russell Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labelled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan. (shrink)

In her recent paper, “A Defense of Substance Causation,” Ann Whittle makes a case for substance causation. In this paper, assuming that causation is a generative or productive relation, I argue that Whittle’s argument is not successful. While substances are causally relevant in causal processes owing to outcomes being counterfactually dependent upon their role in such occurrences, the real productive work in causal processes is accomplished by the causal powers of substances.

Social conventions are those arbitrary rules and norms governing the countless behaviors all of us engage in every day without necessarily thinking about them, from shaking hands when greeting someone to driving on the right side of the road. In this book, Andrei Marmor offers a pathbreaking and comprehensive philosophical analysis of conventions and the roles they play in social life and practical reason, and in doing so challenges the dominant view of social conventions first laid out by David (...) Lewis. Marmor begins by giving a general account of the nature of conventions, explaining the differences between coordinative and constitutive conventions and between deep and surface conventions. He then applies this analysis to explain how conventions work in language, morality, and law. Marmor clearly demonstrates that many important semantic and pragmatic aspects of language assumed by many theorists to be conventional are in fact not, and that the role of conventions in the moral domain is surprisingly complex, playing mostly an auxiliary and supportive role. Importantly, he casts new light on the conventional foundations of law, arguing that the distinction between deep and surface conventions can be used to answer the prevalent objections to legal conventionalism. Social Conventions is a much-needed reappraisal of the nature of the rules that regulate virtually every aspect of human conduct. (shrink)

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as “Lorches have purple feathers” as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence (...) levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties would be more acceptable than generic sentences that were similar but did not have these connotations. In addition to clarifying important aspects of generics’ meaning, these findings are applicable to a range of real-world processes such as stereotyping and political discourse. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of excavation finds and the steady publication of museum collections, the numismatic evidence remains an underutilized historical source. Historians who study Late Antiquity rely on archaeological evidence but tend to ignore coin finds, partly because numismatics developed as an independent field with its own set of specialized tools and research questions. Insufficient dialogue between the disciplines has delayed a proper appreciation of Early Byzantine coins as historical source and the development of a clear methodology for their (...) use in conjunction with the literary and archaeological evidence. In order to overcome such disciplinary divides, this paper proposes several research directions by highlighting the main benefits of integrating the numismatic evidence more fully into the historical narrative. These research directions include a greater emphasis on bronze coinage, the study of the long-distance circulation of people and goods, and distinctions between urban, rural, and fortified contexts. This methodological discussion is followed by a case study from Byzantium’s Lower Danube frontier. (shrink)

A new etiological model is proposed for schizophrenia that combines variability‐enhancing nonspecific factors acting during development with more specific risk factors. This model is better suited than the current etiological models of schizophrenia, based on the risk factors paradigm, for predicting and/or explaining several important findings about schizophrenia: high co‐morbidity rates, low specificity of many risk factors, and persistence in the population of the associated genetic polymorphisms. Compared with similar models, e.g., de‐canalization, common psychopathology factor, sexual‐selection, or differential sensitivity to (...) the environment, this proposal is more general and integrative. Recently developed research methods have proven the existence of genetic and environmental factors that enhance developmental variability. Applying such methods to newly collected or already available data can allow for testing the hypotheses upon which this model is built. If validated, this model may change the understanding of the etiology of schizophrenia, the research models, and preventionbrk paradigms. (shrink)

In Philosophy of Law, Andrei Marmor provides a comprehensive analysis of contemporary debates about the fundamental nature of law—an issue that has been at the heart of legal philosophy for centuries. What the law is seems to be a matter of fact, but this fact has normative significance: it tells people what they ought to do. Marmor argues that the myriad questions raised by the factual and normative features of law actually depend on the possibility of reduction—whether the legal (...) domain can be explained in terms of something else, more foundational in nature. In addition to exploring the major issues in contemporary legal thought, Philosophy of Law provides a critical analysis of the people and ideas that have dominated the field in past centuries. It will be essential reading for anyone curious about the nature of law. (shrink)

We propose that human reasoning relies on an inherence heuristic, an implicit cognitive process that leads people to explain observed patterns (e.g., girls wear pink) in terms of the inherent features of their constituents (e.g., pink is an inherently feminine color). We then demonstrate how this proposed heuristic can provide a unified account for a broad set of findings spanning areas of research that might at first appear unrelated (e.g., system justification, nominal realism, is–ought errors in moral reasoning). By revealing (...) the deep commonalities among the diverse phenomena that fall under its scope, our account is able to generate new insights into these phenomena, as well as new empirical predictions. A second main goal of this paper, aside from introducing the inherence heuristic, is to articulate the proposal that the heuristic serves as a foundation for the development of psychological essentialism. More specifically, we propose that essentialism—which is the common belief that natural and social categories are underlain by hidden, causally powerful “essences”—emerges over the first few years of life as an elaboration of the earlier, and more open-ended, intuitions supplied by the inherence heuristic. In the final part of the paper, we distinguish our proposal from competing accounts (e.g., Strevens' K-laws) and clarify the relationship between the inherence heuristic and related cognitive tendencies (e.g., the correspondence bias). In sum, this paper illuminates a basic cognitive process that emerges early in life and is likely to have profound effects on many aspects of human psychology. (shrink)

Mainstream political liberals hold that state coercion is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Critics argue that this public justification principle is self-defeating, because it depends on moral justifications that not all may reasonably be expected to accept. To rebut the self-defeat objection, I elaborate on the following disjunction: one either agrees or disagrees that it is wrong to impose one’s morality on others by the coercive power (...) of the state. Those who disagree reject PJP, they understand politics as war. Those who agree accept PJP, they understand politics as competition. Political competitors abide by PJP to avoid politics as war, by enforcing PJP on political combatants they engage in a war that is unavoidable. In both cases their exercise of political power has a justification that is reasonably acceptable to all. (shrink)

My paper is a reply to Mr. Seungbae Park’s article, “Defence of Cultural Relativism” (Park, 2011), which holds that no culture is better than another. In response,my paper challenges the author’s method, fairly popular amongst some postmodern thinkers, that tends to equate cultural relativism and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Firstly, I question the general rationale of establishing an analogy between relativity and relativism. In my opinion, the analogy fails to take into accountthe very large generic distance between physics and ethics. (...) Secondly, I try to demonstrate that the analogy can be construed in two opposite ways, so that, on theone hand, it might support relativism, while on the other, it might reinforce cultural absolutism. Therefore, one would rather dispense with so equivocal an analogy. Finally, I suggest that besides cultural absolutism and cultural relativism there is also another way of assessing different cultures – I used to call it intrinsic comparison – which is based on the second options of groups and individuals rather than on their first options. The issue of how to successfully compare cultures by avoiding both absolutism and relativism was extensively dealt with by me elsewhere. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to observe how technologies of communication, especially the Internet - allow extensive and intensive connections between several global territories and how they begin to influence the formation of demands and the organization and participation of individuals/citizens around local and global causes. For this, the below article uses Wikileaks and the cypherpunk philosophy to exemplify how information can be both used and abused in the common space of the internet, allowing new citizenship developments as well (...) as government control strategies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to show that general jurisprudence is in no need of reinvention. The sentiment shared by many contemporary legal philosophers that theories about the nature of law...

Biases affect much of our epistemic lives. Do they affect how we understand things? For Linda Zagzebski, we only understand something when we manifest intellectual virtues or skills. Relying on how widespread biases are, J. Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard raise a skeptical objection to understanding so conceived. It runs as follows: most of us seem to understand many things. We genuinely understand only when we manifest intellectual virtues or skills, and are cognitively responsible for so doing. Yet much of (...) what we seem to understand consists in conceptions whose formation could have easily been due to biases instead, and the work of biases is opaque to reflection. If conceptions constituting how we understand things could have easily been due to biases, then we are not cognitively responsible for them because we cannot reflectively appraise what we understand. So, we are mistaken in thinking we genuinely understand most of the time. I will defend the grounding of understanding in intellectual virtues and skills from Carter and Pritchard’s objection. We are cognitively responsible for understanding when we manifest our expertise. We can do so, I will argue, without being required to reflectively appraise what we understand. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Defending the distinction between believing and accepting a proposition, I argue that cases where agents allegedly exercise direct voluntary control over their beliefs are instances of agents exercising direct voluntary control over accepting a proposition. The upshot is that any decision to believe a proposition cannot result directly in one’s acquiring the belief. Accepting is an instrumental mental action the agent performs that may trigger belief. A model of the relationship between acceptance and belief is sketched and defended. The (...) consequences of the distinction between belief and acceptance, and the model of belief control sketched are then applied to the recent case made by Carl Ginet in defense of the conceptual and psychological possibility of agents exercising direct voluntary control over their beliefs. n. (shrink)

This Element focuses on some core conceptual and ontological issues related to pantheistic conceptions of God by engaging with recent work in analytic philosophy of religion on this topic. The conceptual and ontological commitments of pantheism are contrasted with those of other conceptions of God. The concept of God assumed by pantheism is clarified and the question about what type of unity the universe must exhibit in order to be identical with God receives the most attention. It is argued that (...) the sort of unity the universe must display is the sort of unity characteristic of conscious cognitive systems. Some alternative ontological frameworks for grounding such cognitive unity are considered. Further, the question of whether God can be understood as personal on pantheism is explored. (shrink)

The article analyzes the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence. The article considers the subjectivity of artificial intelligence, determines its necessity for solving intellectual problems depending on the possibility of representing the real world as a deterministic system. Methodological limitations of artificial intelligence, which is based on the use of big data technologies, are stated. These limitations cause the impossibility of forming a holistic representation of the objects of cognition and the world as a whole. As a tool for deterministic (...) description of the universe it is proposed to use empirical-metaphysical general theory of systems, which is an extension of existing general theories of systems due to ontological justification of the phenomenon of isomorphism and definition of a limited set of laws, rules, patterns and primitives of forms and relations of objects in the universe. The distinction of natural (human) and artificial intelligence is considered, including the realization of multisystem integration of intelligence in physical, biological, social and spiritual systems. A philosophically grounded approach to ensuring the evolutionary properties of artificial intelligence is formulated, based on the inclusion of non-equilibrium mechanisms through which stability is realized. (shrink)

We present a quantum mechanical analysis of Bell’s approach to quantum foundations based on his hidden-variable model. We claim and try to justify that the Bell model contradicts to the Heinsenberg’s uncertainty and Bohr’s complementarity principles. The aim of this note is to point to the physical seed of the aforementioned principles. This is the Bohr’s quantum postulate: the existence of indivisible quantum of action given by the Planck constant h. By contradicting these basic principles of QM, Bell’s model implies (...) rejection of this postulate as well. Thus, this hidden-variable model contradicts not only the QM-formalism, but also the fundamental feature of the quantum world discovered by Planck. (shrink)

The book provides a novel account of the ontological foundations of institutional facts, and argues that there are some important epistemic and methodological implications that follow from this ontology. The first part of the book offers a detailed reductive account of institutional facts by way of metaphysical grounding. It shows that an ontology of institutional facts requires an ontology of social rules, and the latter depends on a reductive account of collective attitudes. The book offers a grounding-reductive account of collective (...) attitudes that comports with methodological individualism. It argues for a functional explanation of the constitutive relations between rules and practices, challenging John Searle’s influential distinction between constitutive and regulative rules. The second part of the book aims to show that there are a number of important epistemic and methodological conclusions that follow from the ontology of institutional facts. First, that there are certain types of widespread errors about the socially constructed aspects of reality that are not metaphysically possible. The second methodological argument is that a metaphysical account of institutional reality does not have to provide an explanation of the relevant social practices in terms that would rationalize the practice for the participants themselves. Finally, the last chapter explains the idea of hierarchical practices, arguing that basic social power-structuring rules function to transform brute power into an elaborate normative framework, constituting authoritative institutions that are central to our institutional reality. (shrink)

We examine Sophie Gibb’s emergent property-dualist theory of mental causation as double-prevention. Her account builds on a commitment to a version of causal realism based on a powers metaphysic. We consider three objections to her account. We show, by drawing out the implications of the ontological commitments of Gibb’s theory of mental causation, that the first two objections fail. But, we argue, owing to worries about cases where there is no double-preventive role to be played by mental properties, her account, (...) which solely affords mental properties a double-preventive role, is incomplete and vulnerable to a causal exclusion objection. We propose a friendly modification to her theory of mental causation that is consistent with her theory’s ontological commitments. Specifically, we sketch an account on which mental properties have a more pronounced causal-structuring role that is not exhausted by the role Gibb assigns them as double-preventers. The result is a novel emergentist theory of mental causation. (shrink)

I review the present status of the problem of initial conditions for inflation and describe several ways to solve this problem for many popular inflationary models, including the recent generation of the models with plateau potentials favored by cosmological observations.

In this note we demonstrate that the results of observations in the EPR–Bohm–Bell experiment can be described within the classical probabilistic framework. However, the “quantum probabilities” have to be interpreted as conditional probabilities, where conditioning is with respect to fixed experimental settings. Our approach is based on the complete account of randomness involved in the experiment. The crucial point is that randomness of selections of experimental settings has to be taken into account within one consistent framework covering all events related (...) to the experiment. This approach can be applied to any complex experiment in which statistical data are collected for various experimental settings. (shrink)

The ways in which we exercise intentional agency are varied. I take the domain of intentional agency to include all that we intentionally do versus what merely happens to us. So the scope of our intentional agency is not limited to intentional action. One can also exercise some intentional agency in omitting to act and, importantly, in producing the intentional outcome of an intentional action. So, for instance, when an agent is dieting, there is an exercise of agency both with (...) respect to the agent’s actions and omissions that constitute her dieting behavior and in achieving the intended outcome of losing weight. In our mental lives we exercise intentional agency both in performing mental actions and when we intentionally produce certain outcomes at which our mental actions are aimed. The nature and scope of our intentional agency in our mental lives with respect to controlling the acquisition of mental states such as belief, desire, and intention is a topic that is of interest in its own right. In this essay, I will focus solely on our control over coming to believe. Understanding what sort of control we have our beliefs has far-reaching implications. For instance, theorizing about self-deception and wishful thinking is aided by theorizing about what if any intentional agency we can exercise with respect to acquiring beliefs. Another often mentioned concern that motivates thinking about doxastic agency comes from religion (when conversion requires a change of belief). We also hold persons morally and epistemically responsible for beliefs they have or fail to have. Finally, some deontological theories of epistemic justification require that agents be able to exercise a robust form of doxastic control. Fruitful work on any of these problems requires that we have an account of our intentional agency in acquiring beliefs. There are at least three loci of doxastic control. The first is over acquiring beliefs. The second is over maintaining beliefs. The third is over how we use our beliefs. I am chiefly concerned with the first locus of doxastic control in this essay, but I will say something about the second locus along the way. Also, I will only consider one way we might exercise control over acquiring beliefs. Specifically, I will present an argument against direct doxastic voluntarism (DDV). By “DDV” I mean to refer to the thesis that it is conceptually possible for agents to consciously exercise the same sort of direct voluntary control over coming to acquire a doxastic attitude—such as belief, suspension of belief, and disbelief—that they exercise over uncontroversial basic actions. If DDV is correct, then coming to believe can be a basic action-type. DDV, or something very close to it, was Bernard Williams’ target in his 1973 paper, “Deciding to Believe.” Williams’s argument is widely regarded as having been a failure. But I think that Williams was on to something in his paper. Hence, in this paper, while I do not attempt to resurrect Williams’s argument, I develop and defend a revised argument for a thesis that is quite close to Williams’s. I will proceed as follows. First, I will discuss Bernard Williams’ (1973) failed attempt at showing that DDV is conceptually impossible. This will be followed by a discussion of some constraints on our belief-forming activities. I will then clarify my target a bit more than Williams does in his original paper. Finally, I will present my own argument against the conceptual possibility of DDV. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of consciousness within the framework of the information concept. The paper proposes a definition of consciousness as an informational environment in which an extended model of reality is realized. The process of realization of this extended model is defined as thinking. The result of thinking is information objects that form a system in the form of information environment. Information objects are reflections of the real world properties, not directly, but by (...) means of translation through a special object – a carrier of consciousness. In the case of human consciousness, such a carrier is a human being (represented in the form of his nervous system). As a result, consciousness can be qualified as a simulacrum of reality, i.e., a model of a model: an information model of the carrier of consciousness, which in turn is a means of physical modeling of the real "big" world. Possible mechanisms mediating thinking are considered. For this purpose, two new concepts are introduced: neural circuit and neurophysical pattern. An approach to the study of self-consciousness based on the localization of the consciousness carrier in the multidimensional space of states of initial real objects, as well as their reflections in the form of information objects is proposed. This localization is ensured by the presence of feedbacks. Summarizing the results of the study, the article states the following connection between consciousness, self-consciousness and subjectness: under certain conditions (when consciousness is localized in the state space of the carrier of consciousness), consciousness acquires the property of self-consciousness, a special case of which (when the initiator of changes determining localization is the carrier of consciousness) is self-consciousness endowed with subjectness. (shrink)

The following study presents some considerations on different subjects regarding the field of art, from the art of using sounds in theatre and the importance of the Greek tragedy to the subtle differences between opera and theatre. The sound experiment is to be approached knowing that the audience is, in some way, deaf. The renewal of the sounds, even of those coming forth from the remote ages, is part of the author’s lust for a theater that celebrates real contact and (...) real feeling, with a unique expression of force, of intense colors and sharp energies. The main goal is to discover the actor’s or the opera singer’s work with the sounds, with the vibration of the words in his body, thus investigating the “meanings” of the pure sound. (shrink)