The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

In this article we consider certain elements of the normative theory of Jürgen Habermas in the light of the proposals of Bruce Ackerman, with a view to strengthening a concept of deliberative democracy applied to the legitimation of juridical rules. We do not construct a hierarchy of the two positions, but seek to bring together certain elements to achieve a common project. As the starting point for examining the work of the two authors, we take the scheme proposed by Habermas (...) in Faktizität und Geltung. In this connection, through the work of Ackerman, we intend to fill in some of the gaps that Habermas appears to have left in the theory of radical democracy applied to the law. The work of Ackerman can make a significant contribution to deliberative democracy, to the discourse principle that Habermas defines, and to the contractualist theories from a liberal perspective. The study of these contributions makes possible a critical judgment that enables the legitimation of juridical rules carried out by Habermas to acquire greater practicity. In examining the epistemological status of juridical science and law, we attempt to determine the weight and the performance of normative democracy. In Tarr's view, it is a matter for philosophers to examine direct democracy and its desirability. (shrink)

The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in (...) a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter’s decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present. (shrink)

The first segment starts with a definition of two dimensions of the concept of rule of law; related to the notion of sovereignty and as a concept to control arbitrariness on the part of the ruler. The segment proceeds to give a historical account of the notion and the different stages of its epistemological configuration, from the ancient Greek notion of Eunomia and its incompatibility with the popular rule to the current notion, where the rule of law has become fused (...) with democracy and human rights. The first segment also focuses on the relation between the concept of the rule of law and other principles, such as proportionality, neutrality, and effectiveness. The second segment of the paper analyses the phenomenon of juridification of the rule of law in international treaties and domestic constitutions. It pays particular attention to the role that constitutional accommodation plays in the process of rationalization of the rule of law as a prerequisite to its idealization and mystification. It analyses the reason why this principle is an essential feature of the constitutionalism despite the inner plurality of legal systems. The next aspect, analysed in the third segment of this paper, is the messianic use of the concept of the rule of law. The paper performs a critical definition of messianic, covering a theological perspective and the different theories and concepts that go hand in hand with the idea of the Messiah, such as the “coming”, prophetical and apocalyptical messianism, the phenomena of eschatology, expiation and redemption pictured in Judaism. The segment also covers the secular transplantation of the messianic thought. The last segment is a conclusion returning to the themes identified in the paper and summarises how the messianic thought is applied in the realm of the rule of law. (shrink)

Este artículo se ocupa del problema de cuál pueda ser la naturaleza de la creencia y cuál la mejor explicación de su normatividad. Se analizan diversas teorías que desarrollan el modelo ¿estado más contenido¿, y se presenta como alternativa una concepción de filiación wittgensteiniana que entiende la creencia como acción simbólica y expresiva.

La meva intenció en les pàgines següents és analitzar la teoria del llenguatge que es troba en el Cràtil de Plató. D'una banda, s'analitza la concepció del significat de les paraules quePlató sembla defensar en aquest diàleg; de l'altra, s'ocupa del problema dels orígens delllenguatge. Aquestes qüestions s'estudien en relació amb la perspectiva ontològica i epistemològicade Plató: essencialisme, teoria de la reminiscència i les tesis dels sofistes sobre laimpossibilitat de parlar amb falsedat. La conclusió és que en el Cràtil podem (...) trobar ja la preparació de la teoria del llenguatge que Plató necessitarà per a la seva ulterior teoria de les idees. (shrink)

La meva intenció en les pàgines següents és analitzar la teoria del llenguatge que es troba en el Cràtil de Plató. D'una banda, s'analitza la concepció del significat de les paraules quePlató sembla defensar en aquest diàleg; de l'altra, s'ocupa del problema dels orígens delllenguatge. Aquestes qüestions s'estudien en relació amb la perspectiva ontològica i epistemològicade Plató: essencialisme, teoria de la reminiscència i les tesis dels sofistes sobre laimpossibilitat de parlar amb falsedat. La conclusió és que en el Cràtil podem (...) trobar ja la preparació de la teoria del llenguatge que Plató necessitarà per a la seva ulterior teoria de les idees. (shrink)

Este artículo se ocupa del problema de cuál pueda ser la naturaleza de la creencia y cuál la mejor explicación de su normatividad. Se analizan diversas teorías que desarrollan el modelo ¿estado más contenido¿, y se presenta como alternativa una concepción de filiación wittgensteiniana que entiende la creencia como acción simbólica y expresiva. This paper is devoted to the question of the nature of belief, and what the best explanation of its normativity is. Several theories based on the model "state (...) plus content" are analysed, and is presented a wittgensteinianan conception which understands belief as symbolic and expressive action. (shrink)

In this paper a non-paradoxical interpretation of Hobbes’s defence of scientific realism of materialistic type is proposed. It attempts to explain how this author was able to defend the truth of materialism and at the same time to deny that it could be demonstrated in a metaphysical way. The key to his position depends on the metaphorical use of the concept of ‘imitation’ and the treatment of the infinite and irresistible power as the philosophically relevant attribute of God. So Hobbes’s (...) intention would consist of saying that the explanation, but not the demonstration, of the truth of materialism depends on the ontological parity and continuity between the world and the human being, in the way in which they are explained by empirical science. In this sense Hobbes’s project, very different to Descartes’s one, would be an attempt to naturalise the epistemology that yet is conscious of the metaphysical limits affecting the naturalistic proposals of philosophy. (shrink)

A key aim in biology and psychology is to identify fundamental principles underpinning the behavior of animals, including humans. Analyses of human language and the behavior of a range of non-human animal species have provided evidence for a common pattern underlying diverse behavioral phenomena: Words follow Zipf's law of brevity (the tendency of more frequently used words to be shorter), and conformity to this general pattern has been seen in the behavior of a number of other animals. It has been (...) argued that the presence of this law is a sign of efficient coding in the information theoretic sense. However, no strong direct connection has been demonstrated between the law and compression, the information theoretic principle of minimizing the expected length of a code. Here, we show that minimizing the expected code length implies that the length of a word cannot increase as its frequency increases. Furthermore, we show that the mean code length or duration is significantly small in human language, and also in the behavior of other species in all cases where agreement with the law of brevity has been found. We argue that compression is a general principle of animal behavior that reflects selection for efficiency of coding. (shrink)

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding. Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of (...) concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. (shrink)

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its physical condition. (...) Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature. (shrink)

Se presentan las ideas centrales y la estructura del libro de Diana I. Pérez y Antoni Gomila Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction (Routledge, 2021).

Abordamos aquí los diferentes comentarios críticos sobre las ideas centrales del libro Social Cognition and the Second Person in Human Interaction. En primer lugar, aclaramos algunos aspectos de la propuesta: la relación entre las interacciones de la segunda persona y las expresiones corporales de los estados psicológicos atribuidos y el papel que éstas tienen en la adquisición de los conceptos psicológicos más básicos. A continuación precisamos el sentido en que las atribuciones de la segunda persona son prácticas y transparentes. Por (...) último, destacamos el papel ubicuo de la normatividad en las interacciones de la segunda persona, enfatizando las asimetrías que existen en estas relaciones y mostramos por qué sostenemos que no hay interacciones desprovistas de normatividad a las que ésta posteriormente se les añade. (shrink)

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, reciprocity, social cohesion, and exchange can be understood as material and immaterial interrelationships between entities of a more than a corporeal world. I argue, then, that to go beyond the mere anthropocentric conceptualisation of sociality (...) in a nature good to think, we need to holistically conceive the interconnected levels of trophic, socio-structural and socio-cosmic relationships and exchanges between human and non-human beings in the ecosystem. (shrink)

A paradox is usually described as an apparently false statement supported by an apparently good argument which departs from premises that most people would find trivially true. This survey article presents a brief overview of three different contemporary perspectives on paradoxes. According to the epistemic view, paradoxes play a crucial role in the progress of science and cannot be regarded as sound proofs of a false statement. According to the dialetheist view, the conclusion of some paradoxical reasonings is both, true (...) and false, what means that there must be some true contradictions. Finally, the mystic view understands recalcitrant paradoxes as unsolvable problems which show the limits of human thought and cognition. The last section of this paper focuses on the paradoxes of self-reference, a family of paradoxes which have had a deep impact in the development of science during the twentieth century. Keywords: paradox, veridic paradox, falsidic paradox, antinomy, dialetheism, selfreference, circularity, inclosure schema. (shrink)

In this article, I will outline an assessment model that allows instructors to continuing assigning term papers and argumentative papers without compromising the authenticity of student assessment. This path forward relies upon a pseudo flipped classroom model in which students will complete a scaffolded term paper through a series of in-class assessments that build upon previously completed components. The final steps of completing this assignment will require producing a draft and final version of a traditional term paper outside of the (...) classroom but only after the instructor ensures they have critically thought through the preceding components independently. The intention is to maintain the nuance, critical thinking, engagement with primary and secondary sources, and depth of content comprehension that a thoughtful paper requires, while also ensuring that students are completing the work themselves and not merely outsourcing bits and pieces of it to LLMs. (shrink)

Material Engagement Theory is currently driving a conceptual change in the archaeology of mind. Drawing upon the dictates of enactivism and active externalism, it specifically calls for a radical reconceptualization of mind and material culture. Unpersuaded by the common assumption that cognition is brain-bound, Malafouris argues in favour of a process ontology that situates thinking in action. In granting ontological primacy to material engagement, MET seeks to illuminate the emergence of human ways of thinking through the practical effects of the (...) material world. Considering that this is a characteristic example of a pragmatic take on cognition, this contemporary theoretical platform appears to share a lot with pragmatism. As of late, scholars working at the intersection of philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science have made important steps towards the rapprochement between pragmatism and externalism. Looking to contribute to this growing corpus of work, the present paper focuses on MET’s relation to the pragmatism of Peirce, Dewey, and Mead. Having elsewhere recognized the overlap and complementarity between Malafouris’ and Peirce’s theories in particular, I developed a pragmatic and enactive theory of cognitive semiotics that is suitably geared to trace the nature, emergence, and evolution of material signs. Therefore, besides noting some obvious historical connections, I hereby aim to establish the theoretical backdrop upon which this composite theory is supposed to function, while also exploring new potential avenues. Given that this cognitive semiotic framework can be seen as a pragmatic extension of Malafouris’ enactivist approach to archaeology, the current paper delves into MET’s theoretical underpinnings, seeking to complement its working hypotheses and concepts with philosophical notions and ideas advanced long ago. This synthesis ultimately concludes with a call for the reconceptualization of ‘representation’ as a heuristic concept. (shrink)

Currently, testimony is studied extensively in Anglo-American philosophy. However, most of this work is done from a justificationist perspective in which philosophers try to justify our reliance on testimony in some way. I agree with Popper that justificationism is radically mistaken. Thus, I construct an account of how we respond to testimony that in no way attempts to justify our reliance on it. This account is not a straightforward exegesis of Popper, as he never tackled testimony systematically. It makes use, (...) however, of several of Popper's key insights and incorporates them into a viable theory of testimony. Key Words: testimony • anti-justificationism • social epistemology • situational analysis • defeasibility. (shrink)

Bartley’s pancritical rationalism is seen by some as being a refinement of Popper’s critical rationalism. I contest this view and argue that pancritical rationalism is obtained from critical rationalism by removing some of its most important and useful features. The remainder consists of a restatement of some of Popper’s key ideas and an interpretation of others that I attempt to show is not entirely faithful to what Popper says.

In order to understand what we are talking about when we talk about joint attention, I will scrutinize how the mainstream view that builds on representational and intentionalist theories of mind is constituted. My aim is to show that much of the theory of joint attention is quite narrowly constructed and comes with tacit disciplinary biases that exclude much of what is existentially important in our practices of sharing our perceptions and guiding others to attend to the world in novel (...) ways. By using the frameworks of classical phenomenology and enactivist theories of mind, I aim to show how we, in our interactions, share our perceptions even with beings that are distinctly different from us. And, that this _difference_ in our personal worldview, our cognitive capacities, and our sensory modalities should be seen as a constitutive aspect of our practices of shared attention. I will articulate attention as a revelatory practice that aids us in discovering a shared world through the plurality, rather than similarity, of our perceptual actions. Attention is, in this sense, not solely driven by subjective intentions; it is also formed and co-constituted by my being addressed by the other. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper I reassess the place of Plato’s Laws in the history of legal thought. The Laws has been traditionally considered to present a natural law theory of law. I argue instead that it presents a positivist account of the nature of law. Through analysis of some key passages of the Laws I argue that in that dialogue law is identified with conclusions of enkratic civic reason that may systematically conflict with precepts of substantive moral reason. I also argue (...) that in the Laws the rule of law is a precondition of a legal system but lacks inherent moral significance. For the rule of law to obtain there needs to be some compromise between the political interests of rulers and subjects which is grounded on political pragmatism and not on moral considerations. (shrink)

Here we study polysemy as a potential learning bias in vocabulary learning in children. Words of low polysemy could be preferred as they reduce the disambiguation effort for the listener. However, such preference could be a side-effect of another bias: the preference of children for nouns in combination with the lower polysemy of nouns with respect to other part-of-speech categories. Our results show that mean polysemy in children increases over time in two phases, i.e. a fast growth till the 31st (...) month followed by a slower tendency towards adult speech. In contrast, this evolution is not found in adults interacting with children. This suggests that children have a preference for non-polysemous words in their early stages of vocabulary acquisition. Interestingly, the evolutionary pattern described above weakens when controlling for syntactic category (noun, verb, adjective or adverb) but it does not disappear completely, suggesting that it could result from a combination of a standalone bias for low polysemy and a preference for nouns. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response 2: “Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will”Antonis BalasopoulosLet me begin with a few words on my title, which was chosen as reflecting the nature of the orientation of my work in the field of utopian studies and therefore also of my orientation toward the theme of this roundtable. As Francesca Antonini puts it in a recent essay, the phrase, which became associated with the work of (...) Antonio Gramsci though it originates in Romain Rolland, describes “the (seemingly contradictory) coexistence of a realistic description of the status quo, on the one hand, and a genuine commitment to the possibility of transforming reality, on the other.”1Anyone who has read Thomas More’s Utopia knows that Rolland’s and Gramsci’s formula very much describes that book’s bifurcation between a voice of relentless critique of what exists in Europe—and particularly in England—in More’s time (in Book 1) and a voice preoccupied with the description of an alternative, and arguably better, world (in Book 2). This bifurcation, it is equally well known, is part of the genetic material More’s book bequeathed to its successors, so that one calls a “utopia” a (mostly, though not always) literary text, where the “realistic description of the status quo” coexists with a vision arising out of a “commitment to the possibility of transforming reality”—admittedly in different admixtures and proportions of [End Page 544] the critical or negative and the anticipatory, projective or prefigurative elements. Though Ernst Bloch’s distinction between “cold” and warm” streams within Marxism is not identical to this first binary, it is certainly related to it, so that the “cold” stream is one that privileges the rational and analytical element (usually, I would propose, in relation to the part of the Marxist tradition we know as “critique of political economy”), while the “warm stream” is one that rather foregrounds that which relates to affect, to desire, hope, or fidelity to the transformative project (these are frequently correlated to those elements of Marxism that correspond to its also being a political and philosophically imbued creed).2 What follows here, then, explores the implications of the dialectical interplay between these two sets of oppositions—and hopefully justifies such insistence on dialectic itself.3To the extent that I can see, the basic themes and areas of concentration in my colleagues’ essays involve decolonizing utopian studies as a project; addressing, in that connection, the heterogeneity of utopianisms that emerge out of a number of marginalized subjectivities; the provenance of the questions of ecology, sustainability, animal life for the present and future of utopian studies (and to some degree, for utopianism’s past); and finally, the question of utopian forms of social activism and therefore also the search for spaces beyond the walls of academic insularity. These are important and largely interconnected questions, but I am afraid I will only have the space to touch on them briefly and sketchily here.In her cogent and multifaceted intervention, Caroline Edwards begins her reflections on the task of decolonizing utopian studies by noting the high investment of fin-de-siècle utopian fiction in notions of industrial progress, noting that such notions have involved “lasting damage” for “Black writers, artists, and thinkers.” Within this framework, she evokes Joseph R. Winters’s argument that “modern notions of progress and freedom are inherently flawed,” since they are founded on the oppressive traditions of capitalism and colonialism. In turn, this leads to an argument against the teleological futurism of most nineteenth-century utopias and in support of the deconstruction of “the idea of historical progress unfolding in Hegelian dialectical stages.” What is to replace this is a hauntological (after Derrida) conception of the relation between the present and the past, for which “the present is always a site of potential breaks and ruptures that can signify both dislocation and pain as well as novelty and possibility.” In a similar vein, Heather Alberro questions the teleological futurism of an earlier tradition of utopia, evoking Laurence Davis’s observation on the importance of [End Page 545] “neglected or suppressed possibilities for qualitatively better forms of life” within the “Now.” The desideratum is, again... (shrink)

The notion of multiple location plays an important role in the characterization of endurantism. Several authors have recently offered cases intended to demonstrate the incoherence of multiple location. I argue that these cases do not succeed in making multiple location problematic. Along the way, several crucial issues about multiple location and its use by endurantists are clarified.

In the 1960s and 1970s, scuba technology, underwater cameras, and documentarians revealed a long-hidden underwater world to the public. At this time oceanographic science was growing exponentially. Historians of the marine sciences have focused their studies of the period on institutional and military partnerships, and on the scientist-administrators who shaped oceanographic research institutions (such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the British National Institute of Oceanography). Underwater habitat development during the 1960s and 1970s, however, (...) deserves greater attention than it has yet received, as it highlights a peculiar confluence of military, scientific, and popular interest, characteristic of the period, in the colonization of the seafloor. Existing accounts have focused on American habitats, notably Sealab and Tektite, since these were the largest and best funded. But this approach overemphasizes a Cold War narrative in which the sole protagonists of the habitat programs were the United States and the Soviet Union. At least 65 habitats were built between 1962 and 1991. Some were state-sponsored, with significant programs run by French, German, Japanese, and Canadian teams. This essay takes as a case study the Canadian Sublimnos habitat as well as the underwater exploration programs it helped launch in Newfoundland (Lora-I) and in the Arctic (Sub-Igloo). The Canadian case demonstrates that technological expertise and public enthusiasm for underwater exploration should not be solely understood with reference to Cold War interests of the two superpowers. Rather, the international range of habitat programs of the 1960s and 1970s reveals an expanding interest in the vertical underwater dimension that was fueled by numerous national scientific aims and territorial claims. (shrink)

I argue that any broadly dispositional analysis of probability will either fail to give an adequate explication of probability, or else will fail to provide an explication that can be gainfully employed elsewhere (for instance, in empirical science or in the regulation of credence). The diversity and number of arguments suggests that there is little prospect of any successful analysis along these lines.

Recently, many philosophers have been interested in using locative relations to clarify and pursue debates in the metaphysics of material objects. Most begin with the relation of exact location. But what if we begin instead with the relation known as weak location – the relation an object x bears to any region not completely bereft of x? I explore some of the consequences of pursuing this route for issues including coincidence, extended simples, and endurance, with an eye to evaluating the (...) prospects for taking weak location as our fundamental locative relation. (shrink)