We show that the properties of [relative] semisimplicity and congruence 3-permutability of a [quasi]variety with equationally definable [relative] principal congruences (EDP[R]C) can be characterized syntactically. We prove that a quasivariety with EDPRC is relatively semisimple if and only if it satisfies a finite set of quasi-identities that is effectively constructible from any conjunction of equations defining relative principal congruences in the quasivariety. This in turn allows us to obtain an ‘axiomatization’ of relatively filtral quasivarieties. We also show that a variety (...) is 3-permutable and has EDPC if and only if there is a single pair of quaternary terms satisfying two simple equations, and whose equality defines principal congruences in the variety. Finally, we combine both results to obtain a neat characterization of semisimple, 3-permutable varieties with EDPC, which is applied to solve a problem posed by Blok and Pigozzi in the third paper of their series on varieties with EDPC. (shrink)

Putnam and others have argued that semantic externalism extends to artifactual kind words such as “pencil” or “doorstop”. I first show that, even with natural kinds, externalism applies to words for ground level kinds. The issue then arises of which categories of artifacts should be identified as kinds in the relevant, restricted sense. I argue that, though there are natural taxonomies of artifactual categories at least some of which have well-defined ground levels, even words for such kinds do not appear (...) to have externalist semantics, as they do not support ignorance or error arguments. Some think that membership to any kind is determined by objective features. Against this, I argue that the makers’ productive intentions are often crucial in selecting which pattern of features counts as constitutive of a kind. Though externalists may insist that membership to a kind is ultimately determined by sharing objective features, the resulting version of externalism can hardly be distinguished from internalism. (shrink)

Different notions of analysis have been both theorized and put to use in early analytic philosophy. Two of them stand out: connective analysis and analysis as paraphrase. The latter played a central role in the development of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine and beyond. With the advent of formal semantics of natural language in the 1970s, paraphrase came to be characterizable as translation into a formal “target language”. While I claim that the method cannot achieve its original philosophical aims, (...) I insist that, in spite of them, it is far from being a theoretically empty operation and that it lives on in some contemporary philosophical enterprises. (shrink)

This paper explores the death of God narrative through the lens of kenosis, drawing insights from thinkers such as Marcel, Heidegger, Vattimo, and Girard. It investigates the implications of kenotic thought for contemporary religious and philosophical discourse, exploring various interpretations of kenosis, ranging from Altizer and Žižek’s apocalyptic views to Vattimo’s more hopeful perspective. Through critical engagement with these viewpoints, this paper advocates for a nuanced understanding of kenosis inspired by Hegel, one that bypasses both radical theology and excessive optimism. (...) Methodologically, this study adopts a hermeneutic approach, analyzing key texts and engaging in philosophical dialogue. This paper concludes that rethinking kenotic thought could provide a robust framework for grappling with the death of God in the contemporary context, offering avenues for ethical reflection, social critique, and speculative renewal. (shrink)

There are two prevalent accounts of semantic normativity: the prescriptive account, which can be found in some of Wittgenstein’s remarks, and the regularity account, which may have been Sellars’s view and is nowadays defended by some antinormativists. On the former account, meanings are norms that govern the use of words; on the latter, they are regularities of use which, in themselves, do not engender any prescriptions. I argue that only the prescriptive view can account for certain platitudes about meaning, which (...) motivate the very idea of semantic normativity. After some preliminary clarifications about the form that alleged semantic norms should take in order to be prima facie plausible, I argue—against some antinormativists—that whatever normativity is involved in the meaning of words cannot be brought back to a general norm of truth as distinct from specifically semantic norms, for semantic norms already involve a norm of truth. Next, I examine what I take to be the strongest objection to semantic normativity, namely the identification of meaning with use: as use is just a bunch of facts, it cannot be attributed any normative import. Nowadays, this view has been defended by Paul Horwich. After criticizing Horwich’s claim that meaning, though not normative in itself, has unmediated normative implications, I propose a different view of the relation between use and meaning, on which meaning is not quite identical with use but is grounded on use. I propose as a model the idea of a hyperconformist social system: a system in which customs, and only customs, generate norms. I suggest that language is such a system, and describe two reasons why it is plausible for language to work like that. Finally, I analyze statements of meaning on the model of Ruth Millikan “pushmi-pullyu” representations, i.e. as having both descriptive and normative import. I point out that, however, there are exceptions to meaning’s being grounded on use, as there are cases in which semantic norms are dictated by authorities of several kinds. Lastly, I briefly discuss the suggestion that meaning supervenes on use, showing that, aside from its inherent difficulties, it does not explain why meaning would supervene on use. (shrink)

Christ as symbol in Kant¿s religion -- Hegel's conception of God -- The reality of religion in Hegel's idealist metaphysics -- Hegel's version of the ontological argument for the existence of God -- The trinity and the I -- The death of God and recognition of the self -- Beyond subjectivism -- The relevance of Hegel's philosophy of religion today.

This paper develops the concept of ‘creative attention’. Against classical theories that understand attention as a spotlight that brings objects into focus, I will argue that attention is a complex phenomenon structured in different layers. The most basic layer is perceptual, passive and pre-predicative: at this level, attention is creative – and this is the central claim of this paper – because it institutes meanings and rules for our behaviour.

We agree with Smrdu that pain cannot be reduced to a neurophysiological event and we welcome a (micro-)phenomenological investigation of pain experience. However, we do not think such an investigation can provide sufficient support for either a 5E theory of pain, or (just) an enactive one. A 5E theory of pain would require a clarification of how the 5Es fit together. An enactive account would require a “circulation” between first- and third-person data.

La recepción durante el siglo XX se preguntó si la filosofía nietzscheana era a-, im- o anti-política, es decir, si podía ser asimilada por la democracia, o si era antimoderna, elitista y reaccionaria. El italiano Roberto Esposito ha propuesto leerla como formando e informando el paradigma de la biopolítica. Se discuten cuatro lecturas de esa biopolítica: como formadora del paradigma de la inmunidad, como tanatopolítica, como liberal y neoliberal, y como biopolítica afirmativa. Twentieth-century readers wondered if Nietzschean philosophy was apolitical, (...) impolitic, or anti-political; that is, if it could be assimilated by democracy or if it was antimodern, elitist, and reactionary. The Italian philosopher Robert Esposito has proposed reading Nietzsche's philosophy as forming and informing the biopolitical paradigm. Four readings of these biopolitics are discussed: as part of the paradigm of immunity, as thanatopolitics, as liberal and neoliberal, and as affirmative biopolitics. (shrink)

Se pretende reconstruir los argumentos de la exposición metafísica de la Crítica de la razón pura, según los cuales nuestras representaciones de espacio y tiempo deben ser consideradas como intuiciones y no como conceptos. Para cumplir con este objetivo, en primer lugar, se determina un criterio de la intuición (singularidad e inmediatez) y, en segundo lugar, se demuestra que las representaciones de espacio y de tiempo cumplen con ese criterio.

Se pretende reconstruir los argumentos de la exposición metafísica de la Crítica de la razón pura, según los cuales nuestras representaciones de espacio y tiempo deben ser consideradas como intuiciones y no como conceptos. Para cumplir con este objetivo, en primer lugar, se determina un criterio de la intuición y, en segundo lugar, se demuestra que las representaciones de espacio y de tiempo cumplen con ese criterio. The paper reconstructs the arguments of the metaphysical presentation of the Critique of Pure (...) Reason, according to which our representations of space and time should be considered as intuitions and not as concepts. To this effect, a criterion for intuition is established in the first place, and then it is demonstrated that the representations of space and time do in fact fulfill that criterion. (shrink)

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human life whose skeptical implications have been emphasized particularly by the ancient Pyrrhonists and by contemporary moral skeptics. Although the connection between disagreement and skepticism is also a focus of analysis in the emerging and burgeoning area of epistemology concerned with the significance of controversy, it has arguably not received the full attention it deserves. The present volume explores for the first time the possible skeptical consequences of disagreement in different areas and from different (...) perspectives, with an emphasis in the current debate over the epistemic impact of disagreement. The thirteen new essays collected here examine the Pyrrhonian approach to disagreement and its relevance to the present epistemological discussions of the topic; the relationship between disagreement and moral realism and antirealism; disagreement-based skeptical arguments in contemporary epistemology; and disagreement and the possibility of philosophical knowledge and justified belief. Given the ever-growing interest in both the significance of disagreement and the challenge of skepticism, this volume makes a new contribution by conjugating two important trends in current philosophical research. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically engage with Casey Perin's interpretation of Sextan Pyrrhonism in his book, The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. From an approach that is both exegetical and systematic, I explore a number of issues concerning the Pyrrhonist's inquiry into truth, his alleged commitment to the canons of rationality, and his response to the apraxia objection.

Suppose that a team of neurosurgeons and bioengineers were able to remove your brain from your body, suspend it in a life-sustaining vat of liquid nutrients, and connect its neurons and nerve terminals by wires to a supercomputer that would stimulate it with electrical impulses exactly like those it normally receives when embodied. According to this brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, your envatted brain and your embodied brain would have subjectively indistinguishable mental lives. For all you know—so one argument goes—you could be (...) such a brain in a vat right now.1 Daniel Dennett calls this sort of philosophical thought experiment an “intuition pump” (Dennett 1995). An intuition pump is designed to elicit certain intuitive convictions, but is not itself a proper argument: “intuition pumps are fine if they’re used correctly, but they can also be misused. They’re not arguments, they’re stories. Instead of having a conclusion, they pump an intuition. They get you to say ‘Aha! Oh, I get it!’ (Dennett 1995, p. 182). Philosophers have used the brain-in-a-vat story mainly to raise the problem of radical skepticism and to elicit various intuitions about meaning and knowledge (Putnam 1981). The basic intuition the story tries to pump is that the envatted brain, though fully conscious, has systematically false beliefs about the world, including itself. Some philosophers reject this intuition. They propose that the envatted brain’s beliefs are really about its artificial environment or that it.. (shrink)

En este paper ofrezco una lectura global de _De Anima _III 4 de Aristóteles, en la que pretendo develar la rigu­rosa estructura argumentativa del capítulo. Así, mues­tro que el capítulo exhibe el típico patrón aristotélico de investigación filosófica: el estableci­mien­to de los pro­blemas básicos que han de ser resueltos, el camino dia­léctico para la postulación de una hipótesis, la deri­va­ción, a partir de ella, de las características indivi­dua­li­zantes relevantes del objeto (algunas de las cuales son ya manifiestas y explicadas _como_ (...) derivables de la hipó­tesis), y la emergencia de _aporiai_ que _prima_ _facie_ pare­cen invalidar la hipótesis pero que finalmente po­si­bili­tan una comprensión más profunda de ella. Pro­curo cla­rificar la progresión especulativa del capí­tu­lo al consi­derar incialmente el _Principio de Actuali­dad_ como sub­yacente a su _Modelo de Asimilación_ de la cog­nición (S conoce F _si y solo si_ el principio cognitivo de S deviene F debido a un objeto conocido O que es F en acto). Aristóteles, además, deriva la no-mezcla a partir de la carencia de límites (_Asunción de Ilimita__­ción_), que es una carac­terística manifiesta del _nous_. De la no-mezcla deriva la _Separabilidad_ (estas im­plica­cio­nes se clarifican en la primera _aporia_), de la Se­pa­rabi­li­dad deriva la _Espontaneidad_ y de la Esponta­neidad la _Autointelección_ del _nous_ (clarificada en la segunda _aporia_). Aunque examino el capítulo completo, me en­foco específicamente en el valor teórico y meto­doló­gico de la introducción y discusión de las dos _aporiai_. (shrink)

Current biological sciences standardly ascribe proper functions to biological parts, traits and mechanisms. In addition, realism about proper functions has an important space within the ongoing debate in philosophy of biology. Functional ascriptions are often conceived of as tracking objective, observer-independent higher-level features of the inquired object, rather than merely depending on a methodological, descriptive or epistemic attitude. In this paper, I argue for a realist account of proper bio-functions based on standard causal explanations of an organism’s behaviour: such explanations (...) are most intelligible if the autonomy of special sciences rests on the ontological and causal autonomy of their respective objects. I take into consideration the Aristotelian theoretical framework on teleological causation and reconstruct his arguments against his reductionist rivals. Finally, I consider the recent revival of Emergentism and try to establish to what extent the Neo-emergentist framework fits with the Aristotelian model, which I show to be partially valid also within an evolutionist view. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Pyrrhonism among both philosophers and historians of philosophy. This skeptical tradition is complex and multifaceted, since the Pyrrhonian arguments have been put into the service of different enterprises or been approached in relation to interests which are quite distinct. The diversity of conceptions and uses of Pyrrhonism accounts for the diversity of the challenges it is deemed to pose and of the attempts to meet them. The present volume brings together twelve (...) essays by leading specialists which explore the history and philosophical significance of this form of skepticism: they discuss some thorny questions concerning ancient Pyrrhonism, explore its influence on certain modern thinkers, and examine it in relation to contemporary analytic philosophy. The essays combine historical and exegetical analysis with an assessment of the philosophical merits of the Pyrrhonian outlook, with the aim of understanding it both in its historical context and in connection with contemporary concerns. This volume, the first entirely devoted to a detailed study of the Pyrrhonian tradition, is intended to open up new exegetical and philosophical perspectives on Pyrrhonism and to motivate further examination of certain difficult issues. It will be a valuable resource for scholars of ancient philosophy, historians of modern philosophy, and epistemologists, as well as for graduate students interested in skepticism. (shrink)

South Africa shared with the world the warning of a new strain of SARS-CoV2, Omicron, in November 2021. As a result, many high-income countries (HICs) instituted complete travel bans on persons leaving South Africa and other neighbouring countries. These bans were unnecessary from a scientific standpoint, and they ran counter to the International Health Regulations. In short, South Africa was penalized for sharing data. Data sharing during pandemics is commonly justified by appeals to solidarity. In this paper, we argue that (...) solidarity is, at best, an aspirational ideal to work toward but that it cannot ground an obligation to share data. Instead, low-and-middle income countries (LIMCs) should be guided by the principle of reciprocity, which states that we ought to return good for good received. Reciprocity is necessarily a conditional principle. LMICs, we argue, should only share data during future pandemics on the condition that HICs provide enforceable assurances that the benefits of data sharing will be equitably distributed and that LMICs won’t be penalized for sharing information. (shrink)

Diego Marconi; VIII*—On the Structure of Lexical Competence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 131–150, https://do.

Some authors have called into question the normativity of logic, using as an argument that the bridge principles for logical normativity (MacFarlane, In what sense (in any) is logic normative for thought, 2004 )? are just by-products of general epistemic principles for belief. In this paper, I discuss that suggestion from a formal point of view. I show that some important bridge principles can be derived from usual norms for belief. I also describe some possible ways to block this derivation (...) by modifying the epistemic norms or weakening the bridge principles. Finally, I discuss different philosophical interpretations of these results. (shrink)

According to methodological anti-exceptionalism, logic follows a scientific methodology. There has been some discussion about which methodology logic has. Authors such as Priest, Hjortland and Williamson have argued that logic can be characterized by an abductive methodology. We choose the logical theory that behaves better under a set of epistemic criteria. In this paper, I analyze some important discussions in the philosophy of logic, and I show that they presuppose different methodologies, involving different notions of evidence and different epistemic values. (...) I argue that, rather than having a specific methodology such as abductivism, logic can be characterized by methodological pluralism. This position can also be seen as the application of scientific pluralism to the realm of logic. (shrink)

What's the relation between being a P and being called 'P', for example, between being a cat and being called 'cat'? Surely something might be a cat without being called 'cat'; indeed, cats as such might not be called 'cats'. If the word 'cat' disappeared from the language, the event would not entail the disappearence of cats. What about the converse implication? Does being called 'cat' entail being a cat? It would seem so. For suppose 'cat' refers to certain objects, (...) and let Moon be one such object. Consider the statement that Moon is a cat. The statement is true just in case Moon is one of the objects that 'cat' refers to, which she is. Hence, the statement is true, therefore Moon is a cat. Being among the objects that 'cat' refers to entails being a cat. However, it is one thing to say that 'cat' refers to certain objects, and (possibly) a different thing to say that certain objects are called 'cats'. Spiders are often called 'insects', yet 'insect' does not refer to spiders: it is not correct to call spiders 'insects'. "Being called" is often intended as a descriptive notion: whether something is, or is not called 'P' is just a fact that can be stated in terms of people's behavior or patterns of behavior. Reference, on the other hand, may not be descriptive in this sense. Philosophers have often been trying to characterize the quasi-technical notion of reference by suitably restricting or qualifying the everyday, descriptive notion of "being called". Success in such an enterprise would amount to showing that being called* 'P' -a suitably modified version of being called 'P'- entails being P. Whether the enterprise is bound to fail is not the topic of this article. Here, I would like to show that one such attempt did fail, whereas another, more recent attempt that would seem to be bound to fail for analogous reasons does not fail; or not for such reasons, anyway. A few decades ago, some philosophers believed that being called 'P' was (with some qualifications) a sufficient condition for being a P.. (shrink)

This article suggests that humanism is a decisionism in contemporary critical political theory. Despite obvious and multiple differences, leading critical theorists like Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Eric Santner, and Jürgen Habermas, among others, share an investment in stabilizing the human being as a ground of the political. This stabilization of the human should concern political theorists, as this article argues, because it uncritically reproduces conceptual affinities between the notion of the human being and sovereign authority. By investing in the stability (...) and centrality of the human being, these theorists perform what will be called, paraphrasing an often neglected argument by Carl Schmitt, a decision to be human. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that Schmitt’s decisionism is not merely circumscribed to sovereignty’s juridico-political dimension, but that it also includes a peculiar commitment to God’s decision to become human in Christ. Against this decisionism as humanism, the article draws on Walter Benjamin, Roberto Esposito, and Jacques Derrida to propose an alternative politics that destabilizes humanity and sovereignty through the emergence of the animal, or what will be called melancholic lycanthropy. (shrink)