En la actual campaña electoral uruguaya de 2019, se perfila un cuadro de descontentos generalizados que desborda claramente los estándares tradicionales de la política del país. Muchos de estos descontentos se articulan con diversos factores que los autores han venido destacando en trabajos anteriores, como señales de una mutación gradual pero efectiva de la política uruguaya. En continuidad con ese abordaje de investigación, en el artículo se indagará acerca de las posibilidades efectivas de que esta mutación política adquiera proporciones realmente (...) significativas en las actuales circunstancias, con la posibilidad de confirmación de "cisnes negros" que parecen atisbarse en la campaña electoral en curso. Para ello, luego de algunos discernimientos teóricos y metodológicos, se trabajará el itinerario de distintos indicadores de opinión pública a nivel nacional durante el período 1995-2017, vinculados con el objeto de estudio planteado. A partir de esos insumos, se realizarán algunas breves consideraciones de proyección analítica. (shrink)

[ES] La creencia es considerada como una especie de expresión, que alcanza un nivel de éxito si es verdadera, un segundo nivel si es competente, y un tercero si es verdadera por ser competente. El conocimiento a un nivel es una creencia apta. La normatividad epistémica que constituye tal conocimiento es, de esta manera, una especie de normatividad de la expresión. Un problema surge para esta explicación del hecho de que la suspensión de la creencia parece caer bajo la misma (...) especie de normatividad epistémica que la creencia misma; aunque suspender es, sin embargo, precisamente no actuar, en todo caso no teniendo como objetivo la verdad. El presente trabajo examina este problema, y propone una solución que distingue varios niveles de normatividad de expresión, incluyendo un primer orden donde la competencia de expresión está en juego, y un segundo orden en que el ejecutante tiene que evaluar el riesgo concomitante con la realización de una expresión de primer orden. Esto introduce un nivel de conocimiento reflexivo que se eleva encima del nivel animal. [EN] Belief is considered a kind of performance, which attains one level of success if it is true, a second level if competent, and a third if true because competent. Knowledge on one level is apt belief. The epistemic normativity constitutive of such knowledge is thus a kind of performance normativity. A problem is posed for this account by the fact that suspension of belief seems to fall under the same sort of epistemic normativity as does belief itself, yet to suspend is of course precisely not to perform, certainly not with the aim of truth. The paper takes up this problem, and proposes a solution that distinguishes levels of performance normativity, including a first order where execution competence is in play, and a second order where the performer must assess the risks attendant on issuing a first-order performance. This imports a level of reflective knowledge that ascends above the animal level. (shrink)

This time Pritchard is on a rescue mission. Veritism is besieged and he rises to defend it. I do agree with much in his Veritism, but I demur when he adds: “So, the goodness of all epistemic goods is understood instrumentally with regard to whether they promote truth”. If Big Brother brainwashes us to believe the full contents of The Encyclopedia Britannica, then even if we suppose those contents to be true without exception, that would not make what they do (...) an unalloyed good thing, not even epistemically. But it does seem to promote truth. What might then diminish Big Brother’s action so much, so as to make it so deplorable epistemically after all, despite how powerfully it does instrumentally promote truth. At a minimum we need to say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, so as to better understand how it is that the epistemic good is made so good by what specific relation to the truth. I lay out a way to understand Veritism so that it can say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, thus enhancing our understanding of epistemic normativity. And in a second part I lay out a solution to Linda Zagzebski’s Swamping problem for reliabilism. I argue that it is a problem for process reliabilism, but not for a virtue epistemology that accepts a kind of reliabilism, but in an agential telic framework, and not in a process framework. So, I lay out one way to be a “veritist”, by defending explicitly its Axiological side, and by implication its Conceptual side as well. I have raised questions for Pritchard’s own defense and have offered in each case an alternative defense that I believe fits the words of his formulations, and is in their spirit as well. (shrink)

Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the intellectual ...

I suppose that 'ravens are black' is an inexact generalization having a degree of truth measured by the proportion of ravens that are black, and a probability measured by its expected degree of truth in different 'possible worlds.' Given this, 'ravens are black' differs in truth, probability, and confirmation from 'non-black things are not ravens', and this suggests a new approach to Hempel's Paradox as well as to other aspects of confirmation. Basic concepts of a formal theory developing this approach (...) are described, and some of its fundamental laws are given, together with sketches of applications. (shrink)

Much has been written about the interpretation of Plato in the last thirty years. Once interpreted as a revolutionary of the left, and a prophet of Socialism, he has lately been interpreted as a revolutionary of the Right and a forerunner of Fascism. In this book Plato appears as himself âe" a revolutionary indeed, and even an authoritarian, but a revolutionary of the pure idea of the Good, and an authoritarian of the pure reason, unattached either to the Right or (...) the Left. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Contextualism Epistemic Justification: Internalism versus Externalism9 Human Knowledge, Animal and Reflective Safety, Bootstrapping, Circularity Coherence Philosophical Skepticism Praxis and Epistemology Epistemic Value.

Since the seventeenth century, Western society has had a turbulent relationship with Reason. Descartes set out to reorganize all his opinions in the light of Reason, allowing, as Pascal bitterly reproached him, nothing else. In the course of the centuries which followed, the relationship with Reason became the object of a vigorous, often passionate debate. David Hume declared Reason to be impotent; Immanuel Kant observed that men suffered from "misology" as the result of their disappointed expectations of Reason; G. W. (...) F. Hegel declared that the main insight of philosophy consisted of the realization that reason masterminded and guided all history. The debate has not remained restricted to philosophy. Max Weber, the most influential modern sociologist, was obsessed with the distinctive role of Reason in Western society, and the part it played in engendering industrialism. Social anthropologists have been preoccupied both with the universality and the diversity of conceptual thought. Emile Durkheim taught them to ask why all men were rational, whilst Max Weber taught sociologists to ask why some men were more rational than others. This book brings together the philosophical, historical and sociological discussions of rationality and strives to make clear the underlying issues and the continuity of the debate under the various idioms. (shrink)

Written by an assembly of leading researchers in the field, this volume provides an innovative and non-technical introduction to cognitive science, and the key issues that animate the field.

This paper lays out and rebuts methodological objections to philosophers’ reliance on intuitions in pursuit of metaphysical analysis.

This paper is a response to the four critics of A Virtue Epistemology. It responds to Claudia Lorena García, Miguel Ángel Fernández, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Ram Neta, in that order. Este artículo es una respuesta a los cuatro críticos de A Virtue Epistemology. Ofrece respuestas a Claudia Lorena García, Miguel Ángel Fernández, Jonathan Kvanvig, y Ram Neta, en ese orden.

A complete environmental ethic must include a theory of motivation to assure that the demands of that ethic are within the capacity of human beings. J. Baird Callicott has argued that these requisite sentiments may be found in the moral psychology of David Hume, enriched by the insights of Charles Darwin. I reply that, on the contrary, Humean moral sentiments are more likely to incline one toanthropocentrism than to Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which is defended by Callicott. This mismatch becomes (...) more evident as Callicott attempts to enlist Humean moral sentiments in support of the Leopoldian “land community.” The disanalogies between human and natural communities, I argue, are too great to permit this application. The motivation we need to meet our duties as “citizens of the land community” must be of a nonmoral kind. I suggest that the necessary sentiments may be found in a genetically based “affirmation of nature” that has evolved out of our natural history as a species, shaped by the very forces and contexts that are now put in peril by our technology. (shrink)

This paper considers well known results of psychological researchinto the fallibility of human reason, and philosophical conclusionsthat some have drawn from these results. Close attention to theexact content of the results casts doubt on the reasoning that leadsto those conclusions.

The first paragraph of the article reads: "Classical analysis is concerned neither with cataloguing usage nor with intellectual therapy (except of course by aiming to satisfy curiosity and remove puzzlement). Of recent sorts of analysis, it's the attempt to find the "logical structure of the world" or the "logical form" of various facts that chiefly claims our attention. But philosophers in every period have been absorbed by such analysis. Think of the Greek search for real definitions. Or think of metaphysical (...) appearance/reality distinctions, and attempted reductions of appearance to reality: to monads, to spirits and ideas, or to atomic facts.". (shrink)

Alan Carter correctly argues that Thomas Schwartz's 'future persons paradox' applies with equal force to utilitarianism, rights theory and Aristotelian ethics. His criticism of Rawls's 'justice between generations' is less successful, because of his failure (and perhaps Rawls's as well) to fully appreciate the hypothetical nature of the 'original position'. Carter's attempt to refute Schwartz's argument by focusing on the individuality of moral action fails, since it evades the essential point of Schwartz's argument. The best response to Schwartz is to (...) concede the essential validity of his argument and then to turn that argument into an ad absurdum refutation of his central premise,'the person affecting principle'. (shrink)