Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, best known for his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, challenged education plans that contributed to the marginalization of minorities and the poor. Freire believed that education should be used for liberation by helping learners reflect on their experiences historically, giving immediate reality to issues of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of workers. Known as one of the most influential theoretical innovators of the twentieth century, his views have left a significant mark on progressive thinkers about education (...) and liberation. Reinventing Paulo Freire is an homage to him by protégé Antonia Darder. Here, she explores the legacy of Freire, interviews eight former students who studied him-- now teachers themselves, and reflects on the teaching practice as demonstrated by Freire himself. The interviews take the form of first person narratives; the epilogue consists simply of a letter and a poem. (shrink)

Antonia Lolordo presents an original interpretation of John Locke's metaphysics of moral agency, in which to be a moral agent is simply to be free, rational, and a person.

Background Informed consent is often cited as the “cornerstone” of research ethics. Its intent is that participants enter research voluntarily, with an understanding of what their participation entails. Despite agreement on the necessity to obtain informed consent in research, opinions vary on the threshold of disclosure necessary and the best method to obtain consent. We aimed to investigate Australian researchers’ views on, and their experiences with, obtaining informed consent. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 researchers from NSW institutions, working (...) in various fields of research. Interviews were analysed and coded to identify themes. Results Researchers reported that consent involved information disclosure, understanding and a voluntary decision. They emphasised the variability of consent interactions, which were dependent on potential participants’ abilities and interests, study complexity and context. All researchers reported providing written information to potential participants, yet questioned the readability and utility of this information. The majority reported using signed consent forms to ‘operationalise’ consent and reported little awareness of, and lack of support in implementing more dynamic informed consent procedures, such as verbal informed consent, that was fit for the purposes of their studies. Views on Human Research Ethics Committees varied. Some reported inconsistent, arduous inputs on the information form and consent process. Others expressed reliance on HRECs for guidance, viewing them as institutional safeguards. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of transparent relationships, both between researchers and participants, and between researchers and HRECs. Where the relationship with study participants was reported as more robust, researchers felt that they were better able to ensure participants made better, more informed decisions. Where the relationship with HRECs was reported as more robust, researchers were more likely to view them as institutional safeguards, rather than as bureaucratic hindrances. Conscientious and mindful researchers are paramount to ensuring the procedure accommodates individual requirements. This study advocates that when designing ethical informed consent practices, researchers should be integrated as autonomous players with a positive input on the process, rather than, in the worst case, predatory recruiters to be curtailed by information forms and oversight. (shrink)

Just as bodily actions are things you do with your body, mental actions are things you do with your mind. Both are different from things that merely happen to you. Where does the idea of mental action come from? What are mental actions? And why do they matter in philosophy? These are the three main questions answered in this paper. Section 1 introduces mental action through a brief history of the topic in philosophy. Section 2 explains what it is to (...) be a mental action in terms of intentional action. Section 3 argues that the fact that we can perform mental actions has some striking consequences concerning mental content. Section 4 shows how mental action helps to explain some important facts about self-knowledge and the normativity of thought. The conclusion mentions two further fruitful avenues for philosophical research on mental action. (shrink)

Why talk about communism today?* A first point everybody will be agreed upon: the spectre of communism is not haunting Europe, nor for that matter any other region of the world. The only place where ‘communism’ is a positive name for anything is China, where it designates the ruling party of one of the most powerful capitalist nations of the world. In the immediate conjuncture, there are no real forces or conflicts that directly call for a reappraisal of communism. However, (...) certain questions linked to its reappraisal do appear to be at stake in conflicts that are taking place. (shrink)

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

In several early 19th century works, Mary Shepherd articulates a theory of causation that is intended to respond to Humean skepticism. I argue that Shepherd's theory should be read in light of the science of the day and her conception of her place in the British philosophical tradition. Reading Shepherd’s theory in light of her conception of the history of philosophy, including her claim to be the genuine heir of Locke, illuminates the broader significance of her attempt to reinstate reason (...) as the source of scientific knowledge. Reading Shepherd's theory in light of the science of the day helps make plausible her claim that there are robust natural kinds in nature, defined by their causal powers: this is precisely what then-recent advances in chemistry hold. (shrink)

: Malebranche famously objects to Descartes' argument that the nature of the mind is better known than the nature of body as follows: if we had an idea of the mind's nature we would know the possible range of modes of the mind, including the sensory modes, but we do not know those modes and thus can't have an idea of the mind's nature. I argue that Malebranche's objections are readily answerable from within the Cartesian system. This argument involves examining (...) the status of sensations in Descartes, innate ideas, and Malebranche's occasionalism. (shrink)

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental (...) action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)

Basic actions are those intentional actions performed not by doing any other kind of thing intentionally. Complex actions involve doing one kind of thing intentionally by doing another kind of thing intentionally. There are both basic and complex mental actions. Some complex mental actions have a striking feature that has not been previously discussed: they have several distinct contents at once. This chapter introduces and explains this feature, here called “content plurality.” This chapter also argues for the philosophical significance of (...) this feature. The existence of content plurality offers a new explanation of transparent self-knowledge and suggests a new theory of inference. It also opens up a new conception of the relation between decisions to act and judgments about what ought to be done. (shrink)

Mainstream psychology has assumed a notion of the self that seems to rest on a substantialist notion of the psyche that became predominant despite important critical theories about the self. Although cultural psychology has recognized the diverse, dialogical, historical, narrative and performative nature of self, as opposed to the idea of self as entity, it is not clear how it accounts for the phenomenological experience of self as a unified image. In this paper, we offer a theoretical contribution to developing (...) the implications of a genetic approach to self in cultural psychology, taking into account an otherwise overlooked dimension: art and aesthetics. We draw on the work of classical authors relevant to cultural psychology, who, although geopolitically and theoretically diverse, are concerted in understanding human psychological life as part of a living process of becoming: James, Mead, Dewey, Vygotsky, Bakhtin and Vološinov. Overall, the hypothesis developed throughout the paper is that self is produced within psychological individuation as an effect of the aesthetic activity involved in everyday discursive life. We deepen the ideas that self is not an entity but a process of open becoming, and that cultural life entails a radical experience of alterity; but we recognize the psychological importance of the sense of unity and closure generated in this process. We argue that self entails not only the process of becoming, but also an aesthetical effect of unity in becoming. Self as an aesthetic effect emphasizes the self as a discursive and technical process of production, involving a product that, despite not being a finished entity, is felt as unitary and as mine by virtue of a specific transformation of experience. We thus propose to define self, on one level, as an epistemological category that points to the paradoxes of identity and agency in psychological individuation; and, on a different level, as a twofold operation that makes possible the subjective experience of a constitutive effort as much as a transient but experienced identity or agency. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential (...) reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. (shrink)

Paulo Friere is considered to be one of the most influential educational philosophers of the twentieth century. Within many progressive circles, he would be considered the most important radical educational philosopher of our times, given his contribution to a revolutionary understanding of education and his certainty and faith that education can function as one of the most significant empowering and democratizing forces in the lives of the disenfranchised. In this deeply personal introduction to the man,and his ideas and their contribution (...) to ideas of progressive schooling, Antonia Darder reflects on her personal memories of time spent with Freire and his influence on her own work. (shrink)

The aesthetic value of an object is fully grounded in the distinctive value of the proper experience of that object.

Research on adolescent-to-parent violence associates specific psychosocial characteristics with adolescents who assault their parents, whether they are within or outside the juvenile justice system, or whether these characteristics are shared by other adolescents convicted of other crimes. The aim of this paper is to compare three groups of adolescents. Those who have been sentenced for APV are compared with adolescents who have committed other crimes, and with a group who have not been involved in the justice system. The sample used (...) consists of 148 male participants between the ages of 14 and 21. A comparison is made regarding type of self-reported behavior, frequency of drug use, academic performance, exposure to violence, self-concept, and parents’ conflict resolution tactics. The results obtained indicate that adolescents with judicial measures, regardless of the crime committed, differ from those who have not been in trouble with the justice system in terms of them having suffered violence in the street, the frequency with which they use drugs and in their academic achievement. Likewise, adolescents convicted of APV differ from the other two groups in the frequency with which they are victims of violence at home, in that their mothers use the tactic of asking somebody else for help as a way of solving marital conflicts, and in having a more negative family self-concept. The results are discussed highlighting the importance of taking into account whether a sample is judicial, clinical, or community, and the specific APV behaviors which are measured. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconstruct Hume's argument in Treatise 1.4.1, 'Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason'.

Any contextualist approach to knowledge has to provide a plausible definition of the concept of context and spell out the mechanisms of context changes. Since it is the dynamics of context change that carry the main weight of the contextualist position, not every mechanism will be capable of filling that role. In particular, I argue that one class of mechanisms that is most popularly held to account for context changes, namely those that arise out of shifts of conversational parameters in (...) discourses involving knowledge claims, are not suited to the job because they cannot account for the genuinely epistemic nature of the context shift. A form of epistemic contextualism that defines the context through the structure of our epistemic projects is suggested. Context changes in this account are linked to changes in the background assumptions operative in our epistemic projects and the methods used to carry out our inquiries. (shrink)

In his fascinating new book Games: Agency as Art, Nguyen endorses an experiential requirement on aesthetic judgment: apt aesthetic judgment requires phenomenal experience. His own aesthetics of agency captures three phenomenally manifest and aesthetically significant harmonies (and corresponding disharmonies). But his view can be significantly extended to capture much more of the rich texture of human agency. In this discussion, I argue that emotions of agency, patterns of attention, and affordances all can be phenomenally experienced as aspects of agency, and (...) that each has genuine aesthetic significance. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas asked the essential philosophical question which continues to resound to the modern day: what constitutes a human being? This volume looks at Aquinas's views on bodily and spiritual identity through a lens of theological concerns, pagan and Arabic authoritative sources, and contemporary polemic with dualist heresy.

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in the early nineteenth century Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd. This Element is intended to provide an overview of Shepherd's system, including her views on the following wide range of topics: causation, induction, knowledge of the external world, matter, life, animal cognition, the relationship between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, miracles, and the nature of divine creation. The author also provides an overview of relevant secondary literature (...) and argues for their own interpretation of Shepherd's metaphysics. (shrink)

The scene takes place in O'Higgins Park, in Santiago, Chile, on 1 October 1995. Some women have just taken their place on the stage and the enthusiastic audience is applauding, the women have started singing accompanied by a guitar, but they cannot be heard, for the audience is still applauding. One of the women gets up. Like the others, she is wearing a white blouse and a long black skirt, she is old and her hair is grey. She moves to (...) the front of the stage, chooses her place and stops, her eyes search the horizon but do not wander aimlessly, her eyes are fixed somewhere between the here and the hereafter. When she finds what she is looking for, she raises her right hand to wave a white handkerchief, and the dance begins. The audience, suddenly attentive, watches. And what do they see? Not the woman alone on the stage, but the empty space which she traces. The empty space disturbs us, as Chilean spectators, because the cueca, the national folklore dance, is danced by two people, or it is not danced at all. The invisible other is invoked by this woman's every gesture and we do not smile when faced with the absence of her man because we have a premonition that she is not pretending, we have a premonition that she can see him. The image of women dancing alone has become one of the symbols of the struggle of the families of the disappeared under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. The families are commemorating, on 1 October 1995, the twentieth anniversary of their organization into an association in 1975. The term “the disappeared” has progressively become accepted to indicate the victims of a novel, coercive practice in Chile, since the coup d’état on 11 September 1973. The forced disappearance of people differs from political assassination, as Amnesty International never ceases to indicate in the various reports which it commissions on them. In the Chilean case, this speciality is in part due to the security system which has taken on the responsibility of destroying all organized opposition to the military dictatorship: the DINA, the intelligence service created by the military junta, which is only answerable for its actions to the junta. More fundamentally, the special character of disappearance is due to the invisibility of the victim's body and to the doubt that this invisibility arouses within the victim's family circle: the disappeared is not identified as dead because his death is never certified, on the other hand his sudden and unexplained absence indicates that he is a person in danger and that this danger extends to all those who notice his absence. (shrink)

Locke claims that we have sensitive knowledge of the external world, in virtue of the fact that simple ideas are real, true, and adequate. However, despite his dismissive remarks about Cartesian external-world skepticism, Locke gives us little to go on as to how knowledge of the external world survives the fact of perceptual error, or even how perceptual error is possible. I argue that Locke has an in-principle problem explaining perceptual error.

These are my comments on Ken Winkler's account of Locke's philosophy of language.

Statements to the effect that philosophy will enhance democracy and human rights are not incantations that if repeated enough will magic these results into existence. Teaching more philosophy in schools may well not have dramatic effects in opening people’s minds and promoting intercultural dialogue, and will certainly not have immediate ones.

This is the first modern edition of an important work by a previously neglected early 19th century woman philosopher, Mary Shepherd. Shepherd develops a distinctive philosophical system that can be seen as a competitor to Kant's Transcendental Idealism. The edition is aimed at researchers in early modern philosophy and is also intended to be used in graduate and undergraduate courses. It contains a concise introduction as guide for the reader.

Background Euthanasia is a controversial practice in many countries. Since Spain’s Euthanasia Law came into effect on March 24, 2021, healthcare providers have faced a new challenge since they must inform patients, provide care, accompany them, and implement the law. It also represents a new stumbling block at universities, which must adapt to regulatory changes and educate future professionals accordingly. Little is known about the attitude of nursing students in Spain toward euthanasia since this law was implemented. Objective This study (...) aims to answer the following research questions: What is the attitude of nursing students toward euthanasia? What factors influence this attitude? Research design A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online questionnaire. Participants and research context The study population comprised all nursing students at a public university in Barcelona ( n = 444), Spain, during the 2022–2023 academic year. The validated Spanish version of the Euthanasia Attitude Scale was employed. A bivariate analysis was performed. Ethical considerations The university Ethics Committee (CEEAH 6247) approved this study. All participating students signed an informed consent form. Participation was voluntary, and data anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed. Results Two hundred and forty-four nursing students responded to the questionnaire. The mean total score was 79.64. Participants with religious beliefs presented lower scores, indicating a more negative attitude toward euthanasia. Participants in their second, third, or fourth year of the nursing degree scored higher, demonstrating a more positive attitude. Conclusions The attitude of nursing students toward euthanasia was remarkably positive. Working on ethical content during the degree course and clinical practice are factors that help to develop a more positive attitude. In addition, nursing education should encourage professional aspects to prevail over religious beliefs in euthanasia situations. (shrink)

This is a review of Stephen Gaukroger's book Descartes's System of Natural Philosophy.

Where was he active, and where did his surroundings act upon him? In addition to these questions, Antonia Landois deals with the relevance of status of birth and 'acquired' scholarship.

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la revue E-rea [En ligne], 13.1 | 2015. Nous remercions Antonia Rigaud et la revue E-rea de nous avoir autorisé à en reproduire le début ici. Représentant une journée dans la vie d'une ville, Manhatta oscille entre un traitement narratif nous invitant à suivre le quotidien de la ville et un traitement beaucoup plus abstrait, cherchant à capter une atmosphère beaucoup plus qu'à produire un document exact. Tourné en 1921, le film est resté (...) dans l'histoire comme le premier film - Cinéma, animation et vidéo – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic plunged economies into recessions and advancements in artificial intelligence create widespread automation of job tasks. A debate around how to address these challenges has moved the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI) center stage. However, existing UBI research mainly focuses on economic aspects and normative arguments but lacks an individual perspective that goes beyond examining the association between socio-demographic characteristics and UBI support. We add to this literature by investigating not only socio-demographic but also psychological predictors (...) of UBI acceptance in a multivariate analysis using a representative sample of the German working population collected in 2020 (N = 1986). Our results indicate that being more supportive of a UBI went along with being comparably younger, of East-German origin, and more in favor of equal living standards, as well as perceiving one’s economic situation to be worse and the threat of the corona-pandemic to be higher. (shrink)

This is about the tension between Epicurean and Galilean accounts of motion in Gassendi. For my more recent thoughts on this, see http://philpapers.org/rec/LOLCEG.

This paper gives three arguments for why Lockean persons must be modes rather than substances.

Antonia LoLordo - Malebranche - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.1 124-125 Andrew Pyle. Malebranche. London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xiii + 289. Cloth, $80.00. Despite Malebranche's widely recognized importance, no comprehensive overview of his system was available before Pyle's excellent and wide-ranging study. Pyle agrees with scholarly consensus that occasionalism and the vision in God are Malebranche's two most significant doctrines, but his scope extends well beyond those to matters of theology, (...) physics and biology. In the first half of the book, Pyle lays out Malebranche's two key doctrines as responses to tensions within the Cartesian accounts of causation and of ideas. He details how Malebranche's theory of ideas is involved.. (shrink)

Antonia Darder closely examines Freire's ideas as they are articulated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, beginning with a historical discussion of his life and a systematic discussion of the central philosophical traditions that informed his revolutionary ideas. Darder explores Freire's fundamental themes and ideas, including issues of humanization, teacher/student relationship, reflection, dialogue, praxis, and his larger emancipatory vision. The book also includes a chapter-by-chapter close reading of the text with sample questions to prompt discussion and engagement with Freire's ideas, (...) as well as a new interview with Freire's widow, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, and a preface by Donaldo Macedo. -- from back cover. (shrink)

This is a review of Roger Woolhouse's biography of Locke.