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)

Este trabalho tem por objetivo a compreensão da ação em Aristóteles. Para este fim será utilizado o livro III da Ética a Nicômaco, passando antes por uma breve definição da virtude, tal como aparece no livro II, a qual, pode-se dizer ser o bem para a ação, na medida em que é aquilo que se deve alcançar com ela. No campo específico da ação será visto como ela pode ser distinguida entre voluntária, involuntária e não-voluntária. Neste espectro insere-se igualmente a (...) discussão sobre o que significa agir por e na ignorância. Além disso, se abordará também a questão relacionada à deliberação e à escolha.: This study aims to understand the action in Aristotle. For this purpose, we will use the book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, after doing a brief definition of virtue, as it appears in the Book II, which can be said to be the good for the action, as that is what should be reached by her. In the specific field of action, it will be seen how she can be distinguished between voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary. This spectrum is also part of the discussion about what it means to act by and in the ignorance. In addition, the study will also address the issue related to deliberation and choice. Keywords: Deliberation, Choice, Action, Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

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.

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)

This article deals with empty spacetime and the question of its physical reality. By “empty spacetime” we mean a collection of bare spacetime points, the remains of ridding spacetime of all matter and fields. We ask whether these geometric objects—themselves intrinsic to the concept of field—might be observable through some physical test. By taking quantum-mechanical notions into account, we challenge the negative conclusion drawn from the diffeomorphism invariance postulate of general relativity, and we propose new foundational ideas regarding the possible (...) observation—as well as conceptual overthrow—of this geometric ether. (shrink)

Sextus Empiricus associates the skeptical stance with the activity of inquiry or investigation. My purpose in this paper is to examine the Pyrrhonist's involvement in that activity because getting an accurate understanding of the nature and purpose of skeptical inquiry makes it possible to delineate some of the distinctive traits of Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy. I defend the minority view among specialists according to which (i) Sextus describes both the prospective Pyrrhonist and the full-fledged Pyrrhonist as inquirers into (...) truth, and (ii) the full-fledged Pyrrhonist can, without inconsistency, engage in truth-directed inquiry. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonian skeptic’s stance, as described by Sextus Empiricus, is in good part defined by his suspending judgment or belief about all the matters he has so far investigated. Most interpreters of Pyrrhonism maintain that it is a mistake to understand this form of skepticism in terms of doubt because suspension as conceived of by the Pyrrhonist is markedly different from the state of doubt. In this article, I expound the reasons that have been offered in support of that prevailing (...) view and assess their strength. (shrink)

Populism is on the rise throughout the world and it poses a challenge to democratic theory. Conventional political thought has not dealt seriously with this challenge throughout most of its history. The article takes the challenge seriously, underscoring the rise of Donald Trump as an example of populism. I argue that dominant paradigms in the study of the history of political thought and in normative, Rawlsian approaches do not elucidate populism. I argue that we need to look beyond the mainstream (...) and to comparative political thought in particular. The Latin American political theory tradition, which has been in conversation with European ideas since the dawn of the modern age, provides a model of ‘princely performative populism’ that is more useful. Drawing on a Machiavellian conception of the prince’s aesthetic relationship to the people and the centrality of populist experiences in Latin America, my model provides a novel definition of pop... (shrink)

O presente artigo tem por finalidade avaliar o problema intuicionista com as provas não construtivas na matemática. Para esta posição construtivista o princípio do terceiro excluído, da lógica clássica, não deve operar sobre demonstrações matemáticas. As provas não construtivas não são aceitas, sendo as provas construtivas as únicas com caráter positivo. Após uma breve introdução ao intuicionismo e seu idealizador, o artigo abordará a relação entre o princípio do terceiro excluído e as provas na matemática, para assim falar sobre o (...) problema das provas não construtivas e da consequência em não aceitá-las. Ao tomar a matemática unicamente como um empreendimento de construção mental, o intuicionismo quebra com o realismo platônico dominante e estabelece um debate frutífero sobre os fundamentos da matemática. (shrink)

Despite recent efforts, little research has been done concerning the issue of medical ethics in Georges Canguilhem’s work. This is mainly due to the critical position the author takes regarding the humanistic medicine practices that began to proliferate after World War II. However, we hold that the medical philosopher´s insights do contribute to the field of medical ethics, since they rescue the patients’ individuality, which is highly valued in today´s person centered medicine: over the “objectifying” rationality of modern medicine. We (...) also propose that Canguilhem poses an “interactive” understanding of human life that goes beyond a reductionistic vision of life and which allows the development of an ethical subject capable of producing new norms. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende resaltar la lectura que Michel Foucault realiza de lamedicina grecolatina en el mundo antiguo. Más que caracterizarse por susrasgos terapéuticos, tal discurso médico buscaba la producción de una éticade la existencia. A partir de diferentes textos prescriptivos desarrolladospor filósofos, moralistas y médicos, se muestra la importancia que losantiguos otorgaban a la salud como elemento esencial dentro del ejerciciode la libertad. El uso general del cuerpo, involucrando la alimentación,así como la práctica de los placeres sexuales, se convertía en (...) un objetode inquietud permanente para quien deseara “estilizar su ser”. Destacarestas características de la medicina antigua occidental permite delinearuna genealogía de los valores morales actuales vinculados al autocuidado,práctica importante para los dispositivos de seguridad de las racionalidadespolíticas contemporáneas. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider an evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) that purports to undermine the epistemic justification of the belief in the reliability of our belief-forming processes, and an evolutionary vindicating argument (EVA) that seeks to establish that such a belief is epistemically justified. Whereas the EDA in question seems to fall prey to crippling self-defeat, the EVA under consideration seems to fall prey to vicious circularity. My interest in those arguments and the problems they face lies in what they (...) might tell us about the possibly aporetic nature of reason. For, if we take the EDA and the EVA in question to consist of true or plausible premises and valid inferences at which we arrive through a meticulous use of reason, then their falling victim to either crippling self-defeat or vicious circularity might be regarded as a sign that, when we push rational reflection on the reliability, or lack thereof, of our belief-forming capacities to the limit, we end up in a situation of aporia from which there seems to be no escape. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that one of the key differences between ancient skepticism and modern and contemporary skepticism is that the ancient skeptic does not call into question the existence of the external world, but only our ability to know the properties or qualities of external objects. In this paper, I argue that in Sextus Empiricus's attack on the Epicurean criterion of truth one finds evidence that the ancient Pyrrhonist also suspends judgment about the existence of external objects.

Several scholars familiar with Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrhonism who have attentively read his Against the Ethicists have gotten the impression that something strange is going on in this book. For, at variance with the ‘official’ Pyrrhonian attitude of universal suspension of judgment, a number of passages of Against the Ethicists seem to ascribe to the Pyrrhonist both a type of negative dogmatism and a form of realism, which together amount to what may be called ‘moderate ethical realism’. The purpose of this (...) paper is to determine whether Sextus does embrace such a position in Against the Ethicists. (shrink)

This paper assesses both the practical and the epistemic value of Pyrrhonism as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant writings. It first explores whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment and undisturbedness make us behave in a moral or immoral way, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possible to live well. It then examines whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment makes it possible to reach the epistemic goals of attaining truth and avoiding (...) error. It finally considers whether the results of the previous analyses show that Pyrrhonism is of no philosophical interest to a contemporary audience. (shrink)

In a recent article, Mario Attie-Picker maintains that a number of experimental studies provide evidence against Sextus Empiricus’s empirical claims about both the connection between belief and anxiety and the connection between suspension of judgement and undisturbedness. In this article, I argue that Sextus escapes unharmed from the challenge raised by the studies in question for the simple reason that he does not make the claims ascribed to him. In other words, I argue that Attie-Picker is attacking a straw man.

Understanding evolution beyond a gene-centered vision is a fertile ground for new questions and approaches. However, in this systemic perspective, we take issue with the necessity of the concept of information. Through the example of brain and language evolution, we propose the autonomous systems theory as a more biologically relevant framework for the evolutionary perspective offered by Jablonka & Lamb (J&L).

La digitalización ha revolucionado la manera en que las imágenes son producidas y puestas en circulación. Los signos visuales son añadidos instantáneamente a la órbita de Internet, donde son alterados y reproducidos hasta la saciedad, perdiendo en muchas ocasiones su significado original y generando nuevas formas e interpretaciones indeseadas. Como muestra el análisis visual y mediológico de un célebre caso, la imagen del matrimonio Obama con Rodríguez Zapatero y familia en el Metropolitan Museum of Art de Nueva York, el género (...) del retrato político no ha permanecido ni mucho menos ajeno a esta situación. El conflicto sociocultural derivado de la confluencia de diferentes regímenes representacionales dentro de aquella instantánea continúa alimentando hoy, diez años después de su aparición, la reflexión sobre las múltiples y estrechas conexiones existentes entre estética y política. (shrink)

At present, educational discourses on innovative methodologies make up an enthusiastic panorama that is not exempt from criticism. The aim of this paper is to understand the real possibilities of success for new methodological proposals in a case study focused on the Geography and History classes of a teacher–researcher. The results obtained allow us to identify a central category of analysis, “methodological ineffectiveness”, and two subcategories, “methodological supply” and “methodological demand”. This confirms the importance of exploring the impact of new (...) methodologies based on the factors and voices specific to each educational context. (shrink)

L’œuvre de Galien est d’une grande valeur non seulement pour la connaissance de la médecine ancienne, mais aussi en ce qui concerne la philosophie. Le présent volume contient cinq traités qui abordent différentes questions et dont la transmission varie considérablement. L’importance des trois premiers, traduits par P. Pellegrin, réside dans le fait qu’ils nous permettent de connaître la richesse et la subtilité des positions des écoles médicales de l’époque de Galien – dogmatique, empirique e...

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in evolutionary debunking arguments directed against certain types of belief, particularly moral and religious beliefs. According to those arguments, the evolutionary origins of the cognitive mechanisms that produce the targeted beliefs render these beliefs epistemically unjustified. The reason is that natural selection cares for reproduction and survival rather than truth, and false beliefs can in principle be as evolutionarily advantageous as true beliefs. The present volume brings together fourteen essays that examine evolutionary (...) debunking arguments not only in ethics and philosophy of religion, but also in philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The essays move forward research on those arguments by shedding fresh light on old problems and proposing new lines of inquiry. The book will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in the possible skeptical implications of evolutionary theory in any of the above domains. (shrink)

Este capítulo ofrece un panorama del escepticismo acerca de las creencias religiosas tal como el mismo es entendido dentro de la tradición de la filosofía analítica. Su estructura es la siguiente. La Sección 2 propone una posible taxonomía del escepticismo religioso. Las tres secciones subsecuentes examinan tres argumentos que pretenden ofrecer razones para sostener o bien (i) que las creencias religiosas son falsas, o bien (ii) que las mismas carecen, per se o al menos por el momento, de justificación epistémica. (...) Los argumentos a considerar son: el argumento del desacuerdo y, en relación con éste, el argumento del ocultamiento divino (Sección 3); el argumento evolutivo (Sección 4); y el argumento del mal y, en relación con éste, el contraargumento del teísmo escéptico (Sección 5). La Sección 6 analiza si, y cómo, un escéptico acerca de la religión puede de todas formas ser religioso. Con relación a este tema, son discutidos el fideísmo, el conservadurismo religioso y el ficcionalismo religioso. La Sección 7 ofrece algunas consideraciones finales. (shrink)

The relevance of the Planck scale to a theory of quantum gravity has become a worryingly little examined assumption that goes unchallenged in the majority of research in this area. However, in all scientific honesty, the significance of Planck’s natural units in a future physical theory of spacetime is only a plausible, yet by no means certain, assumption. The purpose of this article is to clearly separate fact from belief in this connection.

El sistema filosófico de Spinoza no puede ser considerado en rigor como panteísta, sino panenteísta. Este artículo intenta reforzar esta tesis analizando los conceptos de Natura naturans y Natura naturata, a veces confundidos en la obra de Spinoza. Se establece además una comparación de ambos conceptos en Spinoza y en David Nieto, autor de una obra titulada De la divina providencia, o sea naturaleza universal o natura naturante, al tiempo que se señalan las diferencias entre las concepciones inmanentes de (...) la divinidad de ambos autores. (shrink)

Differences in Common engages in the ongoing debate on ‘community’ focusing on its philosophical and political aspects through a gendered perspective. It explores the subversive and enriching potential of the concept of community, as seen from the perspective of heterogeneity and distance, and not from homogeneity and fused adhesions. This theoretical reflection is, in most of the essays included here, based on the analysis of literary and filmic texts, which, due to their irreducible singularity, teach us to think without being (...) tied, or needing to resort, to commonplaces. Philosophers such as Arendt, Blanchot, Foucault, Agamben or Derrida have made seminal reflections on community, often inspired by contemporary historical events and sometimes questioning the term itself. More recently, thinkers like Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak or Rada Ivekovic—included in this volume are essays by all three—have emphasized the gender bias in the debate, also problematizing the notion of community. Most of the essays gathered in Differences in Common conceive community not as the affirmation of several properties which would unite us to other similar individuals, but as the “expropriation” of ourselves (Esposito), in an intimate diaspora. Community does not fill the gap between subjects but places itself in this gap or void. This conception stresses the subject’s vulnerability, a topic which is also central to this volume. The body of community is thus opened by a “wound” (Cixous) which exposes us to the contagion of otherness. The essays collected here reflect on different topics related to these issues, such as: gender and nation; nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism; nationalism’s naturalization of citizenship and the exclusion of women from citizenship; the violent consequences of a gendered nation on women’s bodies; gendering community; preservation of difference(s) within the community; bodily vulnerability and new politics; community and mourning; community and the politics of memory; fiction, historical truth and (fake) documentary; love, relationality and community; interpretive communities and virtual communities on the Web, among others. Joana Sabadell-Nieto is Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature (Gender and Feminist Studies) at Hamilton College (USA) and Researcher at the Center for Women and Literature at the University of Barcelona. Marta Segarra is Professor of French and Francophone literature and Gender Studies at the University of Barcelona (Spain), Director of the UNESCO Chair Women, Development and Cultures and co-founder and director of the Center for Women and Literature (2003-2012). (shrink)

Different theoretical models have proposed cognitive and affective components in empathy and moral judgments encompassing compassion. Furthermore, gender differences in psychological and neural functions involving empathic and moral processing, as well as compassionate experiences, have been reported. However, the neurobiological function regarding affective and cognitive integration underlying compassion and gender-associated differences has not been investigated. In this study, we aimed to examine the interaction between cognitive and emotional components through functional connectivity analyzes and to explore gender differences for the recruitment (...) and interaction of these components. Thirty-six healthy participants were exposed to social images in an fMRI session to judge whether the stimuli elicited compassion. The results showed a different connectivity pattern for women and men of the insular cortex, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the cingulate cortex. The integration of affective and cognitive components follows a complex functional connectivity pattern that is different for both genders. These differences may indicate that men largely make compassionate judgments based on contextual information, while women tend to notably take internal and introspective processes into account. Women and men can use different affective and cognitive routes that could converge in similar learning of moral values, empathic experiences and compassionate acts. (shrink)

Partimos de unas reflexiones sobre el Racionalismo y el Historicismo como dos enfoques con perfiles epistemológicos claramente diferenciados, que llevan a quien en ellos se sitúe a muy diversos planteamientos respecto a cualquier cuestión de carácter social. Examinamos el alcance y potencial de ambos en su argumentación cuando pretenden dar cuenta del origen de la sociedad política y todo lo que ello representa, instituciones, valores… Esbozada esta cuestión se recala en el análisis jovellanista de la mujer. Jovellanos conoce bien ambos (...) enfoques, sus lecturas de los autores aquí citados están plenamente contrastadas y no son objeto de este trabajo; apuesta por el enfoque historicista inglés para comprender el rol femenino, para situar a las instituciones que le niegan su ingreso en su decurso histórico, y curiosamente convierte el modelo historicista en una vía de análisis y acceso a propuestas de una extraordinaria modernidad. Analizamos desde estos enfoques los planes de estudio en los que estamos inmersos. (shrink)

A lo largo de este artículo se va a tratar de analizar la concepción del Romanticismo propuesta por Flaubert. En ella, a raíz del viaje a Oriente entre 1849 y 1851, se produce un cambio que hace constituir a la tarea del literato, artista o filósofo romántico en una tarea en la que la cuestión fundamental de la Estética y del Arte debe mezclarse con la tarea Ética y de pensamiento de la Política para la sociedad del futuro.  .

Ethical banking, microfinance institutions or certain credit cooperatives, among others, grant socially responsible loans. This paper presents a credit score system for them. The model evaluates social and financial aspects of the borrower. The financial aspects are evaluated under the conventional banking framework, by analysing accounting statements and financial projections. The social aspects try to quantify the loan impact on the achievement of Millennium Development Goals such as employment, education, environment, health or community impact. The social credit score model should (...) incorporate the lender’s know-how and should also be coherent with its mission. This is done using Multi-Criteria Decision Making. The paper illustrates a real case: a loan application by a social entrepreneur presented to a socially responsible lender. The decision support system not only produces a score, but also reveals strengths and weaknesses of the application. (shrink)