El artículo nos presenta una de las formas de acercamiento y puerta de visualización de la cultura japonesa conociendo sus métodos y costumbres. Uno de nuestros objetivos es dar a conocer cómo el Shinto interviene de manera fehaciente y práctica dentro del costumbrismo y cultura en la sociedad japonesa, y cómo este ha trascendido desde sus más remotos orígenes hasta la actualidad más contemporánea en dicha sociedad y cómo se ha extrapolado a otras culturas para alcanzar el conocimiento más profundo (...) sobre las mismas. Nuestro artículo muestra de cómo una religión puede seguirse o adaptarse para quedarse fuera de los límites que son marcados por una sociedad con grandes arraigos en la mitología que los conforman. (shrink)

Positive Youth Development (PYD) is an approach that promotes resilience and focuses on youth strengths rather than their weaknesses as done by the traditional deficit-based perspective. Research in Europe and North America show that developmental assets are associated with school success, psychological well-being, and lower health risks among youth and young adults. However, not much research has been done on these associations in Latin American contexts. The purpose of this research study is to assess the association between substance use behaviors, (...) such as drunkenness and the use of illicit drugs, and mental health, together with the mediating role of developmental assets representing youth strengths (e.g., social competence) and contextual resources (e.g., social support at home or school). Cross-national data was collected from Colombian (n= 210; 70.4% females) and Peruvian(n= 349; 66.5% females) 1st year university students. Results shed light on the protective role of developmental assets regarding substance use behaviors and mental well-being. Specifically, the results showed direct negative associations between developmental assets and substance use behaviors and positive associations of developmental assets with mental health indicators. Internal assets appear to be a stronger predictor of social, emotional, and psychological well-being compared to external assets. We did not find any statistical significance in the association of substance use behavior and mental health. We discuss implications regarding research, policy, and practice. (shrink)

El propósito es explicar cómo la crisis de la institución familiar lleva implícita una crisis en el sujeto humano, que desde la auto­nomía y la libertad se proponía como proyecto de vida conformar una familia. El modelo de análisis está centrado en esa configu­ración de las nuevas formas de familia, mediadas por el influjo de las tecnologías, especialmente, las fotografías digitales o las selfies como formas de expresión cotidiana donde ya no está presente la narración ni la historia, aunque sí (...) está la imagen. La metodología de investigación utilizada en este análisis es la hermenéutica feno­menológica a partir de manifestaciones relacionales mediadas por un generador de significado como es la selfie que se pone presente en este espacio conjunto de realidad y virtualidad. La tarea desde la educación es ser propositivos construyendo con los jóvenes nuevos sentidos de esperanza para que esas nuevas formas de familia sean espacios de amor. (shrink)

Los Estados confederados proyectan la existencia de un doble sistema normativo: federal y local. Esto provoca el surgimiento de colisiones y contradicciones entre ambos sistemas, lo que se pensaría debería ser resuelto por el derecho internacional, atendiendo el principio de subsidiariedad, no obstante, esto no siempre es así, ya sea porque el derecho internacional no regule ese caso concreto o bien, porque el Estado en cuestión no haya otorgado su consentimiento y la respuesta no le sea vinculante. Estas reflexiones invitan (...) a contrastar la naturaleza de las normas del derecho local y del derecho internacional, pues mientras que las primeras son asociativas, dado que no necesariamente requieren ser consentidas para ser vinculantes, las segundas, aparentemente, sí requieren el consentimiento de los Estados para que tengan efectos vinculantes. En este artículo pretendemos postular una posible solución al problema del conflicto entre los distintos órdenes normativos, partiendo desde una postura cuasi-voluntarista. Las obligaciones cuasi-voluntarias son aquellas que no surgen del consentimiento, pero tampoco completamente de los roles que tienen los Estados en el sistema internacional. Estas obligaciones nacen en el núcleo de grupos dominantes, a los que llamaremos grupos autocontenidos en el ámbito internacional, que tienen como rol la creación y socialización de las normas y obligaciones de derecho internacional, logrando que los otros grupos simplemente las sigan como si tuvieran un deber de hacerlo. Para ello, servirá como referencia el análisis del caso de las disimiles normas migratorias entre California y Texas dentro de Estados Unidos. (shrink)

En este artículo llevamos a cabo una extensa revisión de la literatura científica en lo relativo a los vínculos entre materialismo y felicidad, desde un enfoque multidisciplinar que incluye la psicología, la comunicación, la economía y la ética. La línea dominante en la bibliografía insiste en vincular un mayor materialismo con una menor auto-percepción de felicidad y de bienestar, y con una mayor propensión a la depresión. En esta revisión atendemos a los aspectos que así lo evidencian, al rumbo actual (...) de las investigaciones y a los retos aún pendientes de clarificación por parte de la comunidad investigadora. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se construye alrededor de dos ejes centrales: el aprendizaje rizomático y la era posdigital. El aprendizaje rizomático asienta sus principios en la construcción del conocimiento a partir de las aportaciones del alumnado en tiempo real, con la finalidad de entender la comunidad como currículo. Por su parte, la era posdigital se entiende como la coyuntura en que la tecnología digital es una necesidad social impuesta. Partiendo de que la educación, pese a ser pública, no es gratuita, la (...) digitalización aumenta la brecha socioeconómica entre elalumnado con acceso a herramientas digitales y el que no. Así, se propone la posibilidad de contradigitalización:usar la tecnología digital como una herramienta emancipadora más. Esto es, cuando sea posible, utilizarla de manera competente y equitativa. Ahora bien, cuando esta situación no pueda darse debemos contar con una práctica posdigital que comprenda el sistema-mundo con las mismas o similares posibilidades. Para ello,aprendizaje rizomático y era posdigital serán presentados como núcleos inherentes a la producción de la propuesta pedagógica viniente: la posibilidad de establecimiento de una pedagogía posdigital. Como sustento filosófico se presenta una revisión de literatura de los dos ejes mencionados desde la obra de Deleuze y Guattari,exponiéndose un acercamiento rupturista con las posiciones digitalistas de la educación tecnocapitalista actual. (shrink)

Resumo: As elites econômicas intervieram historicamente no sistema educacional chileno e, nos últimos tempos, consolidaram sua posição no quadro da extrema privatização promovida pela reforma neoliberal. O poder corporativo na educação aparece hoje como um poder paraestatal que afeta a organização e os rumos que os sistemas educacionais tomam, no atual contexto de globalização capitalista. No Chile, o princípio constitucional da liberdade de ensino permitiu a organização de um mercado educacional, que finalmente reproduz o poder da elite sobre o próprio (...) sistema. No contexto de apresentação de propostas para uma nova constituição, o poder corporativo se mostra próprio. Quais são os principais elementos que defende nesta conjuntura? Como é possível estabelecer limites? Palavras Chave: Educação Pública; Debate Constitucional; Poder Corporativo; Reforma Educacional Neoliberal. Corporate power in the constitutional educational debate in Chile Abstract: Economic elites have historically intervened in the Chilean education system, and in recent times they have consolidated their position in the framework of extreme privatization promoted by the neoliberal reform. Corporate power in education appears today as a parastatal power that affects the organization and meaning taken by educational systems, in the current context of capitalist globalization. In Chile, the constitutional principle of freedom of education has made it possible to organize an educational market, which ultimately reproduces the power of the elite over the system itself. In the context of presenting proposals for a new constitution, corporate power shows its own. What are the main elements you defend at this juncture? How is it possible to set limits on them? Key Words: Public Education; Constitutional Debate; Corporate Power; Neoliberal Education Reform. El poder corporativo en el debate educativo constitucional en Chile Resumen: Las élites económicas han intervenido históricamente en el sistema educativo chileno, y en el último tiempo han consolidado su posición en el marco de extrema privatización promovida por la reforma neoliberal. El poder corporativo en educación aparece hoy como un poder para-estatal que incide en la organización y sentido que toman los sistemas educativos, en el actual contexto de globalización capitalista. En Chile, el principio constitucional de libertad de enseñanza ha permitido organizar un mercado educativo, el cual finalmente reproduce el poder de la élite sobre el propio sistema. En el contexto de presentación de propuestas para una nueva constitución el poder corporativo muestra las suyas. ¿Cuáles son los principales elementos que defienden en esta coyuntura? ¿Cómo es posible ponerles límites? Palabras clave: Educación Pública; Debate Constitucional; Poder Corporativo; Reforma Educativa Neoliberal. Data de registro: 27/06/2022 Data de aceite: 26/10/2022. (shrink)

Currently, the most used method to measure brain activity under a non-invasive procedure is the electroencephalogram (EEG). This is because of its high temporal resolution, ease of use, and safety. These signals can be used under a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) framework, which can be implemented to provide a new communication channel to people that are unable to speak due to motor disabilities or other neurological diseases. Nevertheless, EEG-based BCI systems have presented challenges to be implemented in real life situations (...) for imagined speech recognition due to the difficulty to interpret EEG signals because of their low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). As consequence, in order to help the researcher make a wise decision when approaching this problem, we offer a review article that sums the main findings of the most relevant studies on this subject since 2009. This review focuses mainly on the pre-processing, feature extraction, and classification techniques used by several authors, as well as the target vocabulary. Furthermore, we propose ideas that may be useful for future work in order to achieve a practical application of EEG-based BCI systems toward imagined speech decoding. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the French philosopher Michel Foucault's contributions regarding his analysis of power. In this sense, the text proposes a conceptual transition around the ideas that could have interested the author within a digital context, integrating some notes and examples from the 2019 Chilean mobilizations.The article has an initial section that exposes genealogy as a way of approaching social reality. Then, it shows the social behaviors anticipation possibilities and their relationship with the information available on the web. (...) Later, it renders an account of the algorithmic governmentality notion as a key to reading it in both normative structure and a political possibility to final state reflections. (shrink)

Air pollution is a current concern of people and government entities. Therefore, in urban scenarios, its monitoring and subsequent analysis is a remarkable and challenging issue due mainly to the variability of polluting-related factors. For this reason, the present work shows the development of a wireless sensor network that, through machine learning techniques, can be classified into three different types of environments: high pollution levels, medium pollution and no noticeable contamination into the Ibarra City. To achieve this goal, signal smoothing (...) stages, prototype selection, feature analysis and a comparison of classification algorithms are performed. As relevant results, there is a classification performance of 95% with a significant noisy data reduction. (shrink)

This paper presents an experience in developing professional ethics by an approach that integrates knowledge, teaching methodologies and assessment coherently. It has been implemented for students in both the Software Engineering and Computer Engineering degree programs of the Technical University of Madrid, in which professional ethics is studied as a part of a required course. Our contribution of this paper is a model for formative assessment that clarifies the learning goals, enhances the results, simplifies the scoring and can be replicated (...) in other contexts. A quasi-experimental study that involves many of the students of the required course has been developed. To test the effectiveness of the teaching process, the analysis of ethical dilemmas and the use of deontological codes have been integrated, and a scoring rubric has been designed. Currently, this model is also being used to develop skills related to social responsibility and sustainability for undergraduate and postgraduate students of diverse academic context. (shrink)

Imagine a scenario where you are cooking and suddenly, the contents of the pot start to come out, and the oven bell rings. You would have to stop what you are doing and start responding to the changing demands, switching between different objects, operations and mental sets. This ability is known as cognitive flexibility. Now, add to this scenario a strong emotional atmosphere that invades you as you spontaneously recall a difficult situation you had that morning. How would you behave? (...) Recent studies suggest that emotional states do modulate cognitive flexibility, but these findings are still controversial. Moreover, there is a lack of evidence regarding the underlying brain processes. The purpose of the present study was, therefore, to examine such interaction while monitoring changes in ongoing cortical activity using EEG. In order to answer this question, we used two musical stimuli to induce emotional states (positive/high arousal/open stance and negative/high arousal/closed stance). Twenty-nine participants performed two blocks of the Madrid Card Sorting Task (MCST) in a neutral silence condition and then four blocks while listening to the counterbalanced musical stimuli. To explore this interaction, we used a combination of first-person (micro-phenomenological interview) and third-person (behavior and EEG) approaches. Our results show that compared to the positive stimuli and silence condition, negative stimuli decrease reaction times (RTs) for the shift signal. Our data show that the valance of the first emotional block is determinant in the RTs of the subsequent blocks. Additionally, the analysis of the micro-phenomenological interview and the integration of first- and third-person data show that the emotional disposition generated by the music could facilitate task performance for some participants or hamper it for others, independently of its emotional valence. When the emotional disposition hampered task execution, RTs were slower, and the P300 potential showed a reduced amplitude compared to the facilitated condition. These findings show that the interaction between emotion and cognitive flexibility is more complex than previously thought and points to a new way of understanding the underlying mechanisms by incorporating an in-depth analysis of individual subjective experience. (shrink)

This study analyses the performance and market timing of US socially responsible (SR) mutual funds in relation to business cycle regime shifts and different grouping criteria: Ethical strategy focus, SR attributes scores and Morningstar category. Different methodologies are applied and results highlight the importance of considering specific benchmarks related to the investment style in evaluating the SR fund performance. Our results show that, in aggregate, the abnormal performance of SR funds is negative and significant in expansion periods, but no significant (...) differences are found in recession periods. When specific benchmarks are considered, performance improves in recession periods, particularly for environmental funds, those with high SR attributes scores, and funds from the nine Morningstar style box categories. Market timing of SR funds takes positive values and is partially significant. Previous evidence of negative timing after a recent financial crisis vanishes when specific benchmarks are considered. For comparative purposes the performance of conventional US mutual funds is also analysed. There are no significant differences between the performance of SR and conventional mutual funds when a fair comparison is made within the same style categories. When all the SR funds are considered, they underperform conventional funds in expansion sub‐periods, but in recession sub‐periods they perform better, although the differences observed are not significant. (shrink)

Brain monitoring combined with automatic analysis of EEGs provides a clinical decision support tool that can reduce time to diagnosis and assist clinicians in real-time monitoring applications (e.g., neurological intensive care units). Clinicians have indicated that a sensitivity of 95% with specificity below 5% was the minimum requirement for clinical acceptance. In this study, a high-performance automated EEG analysis system based on principles of machine learning and big data is proposed. This hybrid architecture integrates hidden Markov models (HMMs) for sequential (...) decoding of EEG events with deep learning-based postprocessing that incorporates temporal and spatial context. These algorithms are trained and evaluated using the Temple University Hospital EEG, which is the largest publicly available corpus of clinical EEG recordings in the world. This system automatically processes EEG records and classifies three patterns of clinical interest in brain activity that might be useful in diagnosing brain disorders: (1) spike and/or sharp waves, (2) generalized periodic epileptiform discharges, (3) periodic lateralized epileptiform discharges. It also classifies three patterns used to model the background EEG activity: (1) eye movement, (2) artifacts and (3) background. Our approach delivers a sensitivity above 90% while maintaining a specificity below 5%. We also demonstrate that this system delivers a low false alarm rate, which is critical for any spike detection application. (shrink)

This volume features essays that detail the distinctive ways authors and researchers in Spanish speaking countries express their thoughts on contemporary philosophy of technology. Written in English but fully capturing a Spanish perspective, the essays bring the views and ideas of pioneer authors and many new ones to an international readership. Coverage explores key topics in the philosophy of technology, the ontological and epistemological aspects of technology, development and innovation, and new technological frontiers like nanotechnology and cloud computing. In addition, (...) the book features case studies on philosophical queries. Readers will discover such voices as Miguel Ángel Quintanilla and Javier Echeverría, who are main references in the current landscape of philosophy of technology both in Spain and Spanish speaking countries; José Luis Luján, who is a leading Spanish author in research about technological risk; and Emilio Muñoz, former head of the Spanish National Research Council and an authority on Spanish science policy. The volume also covers thinkers in American Spanish speaking countries, such as Jorge Linares, an influential researcher in ethical issues; Judith Sutz, who has a very recognized work on social issues concerning innovation; Carlos Osorio, who focuses his work on technological determinism and the social appropriation of technology; and Diego Lawler, an important researcher in the ontological aspects of technology. (shrink)

This volume includes the critical edition of five apologias in which Erasmus defended his New Testament translation and commentary against Diego López de Zúñiga and Sancho Carranza. The edition is partly based on manuscript sources never used before.

This volume includes the critical edition of five apologias (1522-1529) in which Erasmus defended his New Testament translation and commentary (1516)against Diego López de Zúñiga and Sancho Carranza. The edition is partly based on manuscript sources never used before.

This volume includes the critical edition of five apologias in which Erasmus defended his New Testament translation and commentary against Diego López de Zúñiga and Sancho Carranza. The edition is partly based on manuscript sources never used before.

How were various strata of local history—Classical, Christian, and Muslim—incorporated into the building of imperial Seville (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), and what was the impact of the critical approach to evidence developed in Renaissance Italy on actual urban projects? Three case-studies—of a noble palace, the Casa de Pilatos; of a public park, the Alameda de Hércules; and of a carpentry treatise by master builder Diego López de Arenas—reveal the malleable role of historical evidence in monumental construction projects based (...) on classical and Christian ideals and demonstrate a more methodical use of evidence among artisans practicing traditional medieval craftsmanship. (shrink)

Diana López Barroso (a,b), Antoni Rodríguez Fornells (a,b,c), Ruth de Diego Balaguer (a,b,c) (a) Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group [Bellvitge … Read More →.

Ruth de Diego-Balaguer y Diana López-Barroso Unidad de Cognición y Plasticidad Cerebral, IDIBELL, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, España … Read More →.

Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present is an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the entire history of skepticism. Divided chronologically into ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary periods, and featuring 50 specially-commissioned chapters from leading philosophers, this comprehensive volume is the first of its kind.

Tesis doctoral presentada en el departament de Lògica Història i Filosofia de la Ciencia de la Universitat de Barcelona per optar al títol de Doctor en Filosofia.

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)

This paper argues for the following three claims. First, the Agrippan mode from disagreement does not play a secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment. Second, the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Five Modes of Agrippa, which nonetheless does not prevent him from non-doxastically assenting to them. And third, some recent objections to Agrippan Pyrrhonism raised by analytic epistemologists and experimental philosophers fail to appreciate the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem style of argumentation and the real (...) challenge posed by the mode from disagreement. (shrink)

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness (...) of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

Pyrrhonism was one of the two main ancient skeptical traditions. In this second paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present and discuss some of the issues on Pyrrhonian skepticism which have been the focus of much attention in the recent literature. The topics to be addressed concern the outlooks of Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, and Sextus Empiricus.

Deep learning is a kind of machine learning which happens in a certain type of artificial neural networks called deep networks. Artificial deep networks, which exhibit many similarities with biological ones, have consistently shown human-like performance in many intelligent tasks. This poses the question whether this performance is caused by such similarities. After reviewing the structure and learning processes of artificial and biological neural networks, we outline two important reasons for the success of deep learning, namely the extraction of successively (...) higher level features and the multiple layer structure, which are closely related to each other. Then some indications about the framing of this heated debate are given. After that, an assessment of the value of artificial deep networks as models of the human brain is given from the similarity perspective of model representation. Finally, a new version of computational functionalism is proposed which addresses the specificity of deep neural computation better than classic, program based computational functionalism. (shrink)

In his Pyrrhonian Outlines , Sextus Empiricus employs an argument based upon the possibility of disagreement in order to show that one should not assent to a Dogmatic claim to which at present one cannot oppose a rival claim. The use of this argument seems to be at variance with the Pyrrhonian stance, both because it does not seem to accord with the definition of Skepticism and because the argument appears to entail that the search for truth is doomed to (...) failure. In the present paper, I examine the passages in which Sextus utilizes the argument from possible disagreement and offer an interpretation that makes the use of this argument compatible with the Pyrrhonian outlook. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, to examine what beliefs, if any, underlie (a) the Pyrrhonist’s desire for ataraxia and his account of how this state may be attained, and (b) his philanthropic therapy, which seeks to induce, by argument, ejpochv and ataraxia in the Dogmatists. Second, to determine whether the Pyrrhonist’s philanthropy and his search for and attainment of ataraxia are, as scholars have generally believed, essential aspects of his stance.

In this introductory chapter, I first offer an overview of the two themes addressed in the present collection - namely, disagreement and skepticism - and their connection, then present the purpose and content of the volume.

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.

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, (...) and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons. (shrink)

In this article, I revise the normative account of sport that I proposed in ‘William J. Morgan’s “conventionalist internalism” approach. Furthering internalism? A critical hermeneutical response.’ I first present Habermas’ discursive ethics, placing emphasis on his interpretation of the relationship between moral (Kantian) and ethical (Hegelian/hermeneutical) principles. Then, I provide a reformulation of my account by both drawing on Habermas and going beyond him—as I go beyond Habermas, I will refer to the account as ‘discourse-ethics based.’ To further explore the (...) normative potential of the account, I connect its main tenets to the three main normative theories of sport (formalism, broad internalism, and deep conventionalism) and illustrate it with examples from anti-doping governance. (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)

The question of whether the Pyrrhonist adheres to certain logical principles, criteria of justification, and inference rules is of central importance for the study of Pyrrhonism. Its significance lies in that, whereas the Pyrrhonist describes his philosophical stance and argues against the Dogmatists by means of what may be considered a rational discourse, adherence to any such principles, criteria, and rules does not seem compatible with the radical character of his skepticism. Hence, if the Pyrrhonist does endorse them, one must (...) conclude that he is inconsistent in his outlook. Despite its import, the question under consideration has not received, in the vast literature on Pyrrhonism of the past three decades, all the attention it deserves. In the present paper, I do not propose to provide a full examination of the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards rationality, but to focus on the question of whether he endorses the law of non-contradiction (LNC). However, I will also briefly tackle the question of the Pyrrhonist’s outlook on both the canons of rational justification at work in the so-called Five Modes of Agrippa and the logical rules of inference. In addition, given that the LNC is deemed a fundamental principle of rationality, determining the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards it will allow us to understand his general attitude towards rationality. (shrink)

This paper approaches the current epistemological debate on peer disagreement from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, thus adopting a form of skepticism which is more radical than those discussed in the literature. It makes use of argumentative strategies found in ancient Pyrrhonism both to show that such a debate rests on problematic assumptions and to block some maneuvers intended to offer an efficacious way of settling a considerable number of peer disputes. The essay takes issue with three views held in the peer (...) disagreement debate: there is an objective fact of the matter about at least most controversial questions; we possess theory-neutral evidence bearing on those questions which grants us access to the truth of the matter; and many peer controversies are resolved by attending to which disputant has correctly evaluated the objective evidence. With respect to the first two views, it is argued that the belief in both objective facts and theory-neutral evidence is subject to fierce dispute, and should not therefore be taken for granted in the discussion of peer disagreement. As for the third view, it is argued that from either a first- or a third-person perspective, there seems to be epistemic symmetry between the disputants which makes it necessary to suspend judgment. (shrink)