The dominating theologian in Europe between Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent produced a massive Summa of Ordinary Questions as well as fifteen quodlibets during his long tenure at the University of Paris. His work constituted a new synthesis of faith and reason which competed with that of Thomas Aquinas and influenced the history of both philosophy and theology. The first five articles of the Summa, dealing with various issues associated with human knowledge, constitute an adequate introduction (...) to Henry's thought. In them we find his approach to fundamental principles and themes developed in detail in the rest of his corpus. Of the five, only article one has appeared as a whole in English translation. The next four articles reinforce and develop the findings of the first article, providing additional treatments that indicate Henry's principles and orientation. In fact, these four articles alone provide a condensed but remarkably rich portrait of Henry's basic thought, and so are an invaluable resource for beginning and advanced students alike. Articles 2-5 include important positions on knowledge and reality, a conception of humanity's ultimate purpose and the pursuits most conducive to it, and an approach to faith and reason. These four articles are presented here for the first time in English translation with an introduction and notes. Along with the translation, the volume includes the Latin text of the modern critical edition. --Book cover. (shrink)

Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the orthodox view in epistemology analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by deploying analytical tools on capacities and masking to show that the cognitive science of evidence-resistance supports rather than undermines the orthodox view. In doing so, I argue for the claim that belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that p, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on p. Because (...) capacities for evidence-responsiveness are fallible and may be masked, beliefs can be held in the face of counter-evidence. Indeed, I will argue that our best science of belief supports the claim that evidence-resistant beliefs result from masks on evidence-responsiveness capacities. This account of belief not only allows for resistance to evidence, but provides us with a framework for describing and explaining actual cases of evidence-resistance. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

The first sentence in this essay is a lie. There is something odd about saying so, as has been known since ancient times. To see why, remember that all lies are untrue. Is the first sentence true? If it is, then it is a lie, and so it is not true. Conversely, suppose that it is not true. As we (viz., the authors) have said it, presumably with the intention of you believing it when it is not true, it is (...) a lie. But then it is true! (shrink)

The orthodox view in epistemology is that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive. I offer a novel argument for a version of this view, one that appeals to capacities to rationally respond to evidence. I do so by developing the Sellarsian idea that the concept of belief functions to mark the space of reasons in a non-intellectualist and naturalistic direction. The resulting view does justice to the role of belief in social interactions, joint deliberation, and rational persuasion, while including evidence-resistant beliefs and (...) animal beliefs as genuine beliefs. It has a range of further benefits: it helps us account for epistemic normativity, paves the way for better psychological models of belief revision, distinguishes beliefs from imaginings and mere acceptances, and helps us avoid noxious simplistic takes on human irrationality. (shrink)

Delusions are deeply evidence-resistant. Patients with delusions are unmoved by evidence that is in direct conflict with the delusion, often responding to such evidence by offering obvious, and strange, confabulations. As a consequence, the standard view is that delusions are not evidence-responsive. This claim has been used as a key argumentative wedge in debates on the nature of delusions. Some have taken delusions to be beliefs and argued that this implies that belief is not constitutively evidence-responsive. Others hold fixed the (...) evidenceresponsiveness of belief and take this to show that delusions cannot be beliefs. Against this common assumption, I appeal to a large range of empirical evidence to argue that delusions are evidence-responsive in the sense that subjects have the capacity to respond to evidence on their delusion in rationally permissible ways. The extreme evidence-resistance of delusions is a consequence of powerful masking factors on these capacities, such as strange perceptual experiences, motivational factors, and cognitive biases. This view makes room for holding both that belief is constitutively evidence-responsive and that delusions are beliefs, and it has important implications for the study and treatment of delusions. (shrink)

Delusions are standardly defined as attitudes that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. But what evidence do people with delusion have for and against it? Do delusions really go against their total evidence? How are the answers affected by different conceptions of evidence? -/- This chapter focuses on how delusions relate to evidence. I consider what delusions-relevant evidence people with delusions have. I give some reasons to think that people typically have evidence for their delusions, and (...) that the evidence they have against them is often overstated. I draw on this discussion to consider whether delusions are evidentially supported and epistemically rational. Finally, I discuss implications for the nature of delusion, responsibility, and treatment and suggest directions for future research. Throughout, the discussion is sensitive to different conceptions of evidence and rationality in epistemology. -/- A central upshot is that what we should say about the epistemic standing of delusions depends substantively on our positions in epistemology, in particular, on the debate between internalists and externalists about evidence. If we want clarity on the epistemic standing of delusions, we need to incorporate more sophisticated tools from epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Nature: Two Conceptions of Truth Background on Logic and Paradox Nature and Logic And Now Revenge References.

This book analyses contemporary gay "pig" masculinities, which have emerged alongside antiretroviral therapies, online porn, and new sexualised patterns of recreational drug use, examining how they trouble modern European understandings of the male body, their ethics, and their political underpinnings. This is the first book to reflect on an increasingly visible new form of sexualised gay masculinity, and the first monograph to move debates on condomless sex amongst gay men beyond discourses of HIV and/or AIDS. It contributes to existing critical (...) histories of sexuality, pornography and other sex media at a crucial juncture in the history of gay male sex cultures and the HIV epidemic. The book draws from fieldwork, interviews, archival research, visual analysis, philosophy, queer theory, and cultural studies, using empirical, critical, and speculative methodologies to better think gay "pig" masculinities across their material, affective, ethical and political dimensions, in a future-oriented, politically-inflected, reflection on what queer bodies may become. Spanning historical context to empirical and theoretical study, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures will be of key interest to academics and students in sexuality studies, film, media, visual culture, cultural studies, and porn studies concerned with masculinities, sex and sexualities and their circulation across an array of media. (shrink)

Epistemic agents interact with evidence in different ways. This can cause trouble for mutual understanding and for our ability to rationally engage with others. Indeed, it can compromise democratic practices of deliberation. This paper explains these differences by appeal to a new notion: epistemic styles. Epistemic styles are ways of interacting with evidence that express unified sets of epistemic values, preferences, goals, and interests. The paper introduces the notion of epistemic styles and develops a systematic account of their nature. It (...) then discusses the implications of epistemic styles for central questions in epistemology, in particular, for issues surrounding rational engagement and for the debate between virtue epistemologists and epistemic situationists. (shrink)

Structured time (hyle) and its relationship to other elements of physics: matter, energy, space, etc.

"Como pensar hoje na escrita da história? Como enfrentar a página em branco que não se apresenta como um espaço neutro, mas um espaço onde quem escreve - o historiador - deixa rastros do passado e também os seus próprios rastros? Essas são algumas das questões colocadas pelos ensaios que compõem "Arte e pensamento: operações historiográficas". Num primeiro momento, são fornecidos o ritmo, o tom e os compassos por meio de discussões e reflexões sobre uma teoria da experiência para a (...) escrita da história, sobre a historicidade do artístico, sobre o inespecífico do contemporâneo, sobre o pensamento na fronteira, sobre a nomeação dos anônimos em Machado de Assis. A partir dessas harmonizações dissonantes e consoantes, iniciam-se 3 operações que delineiam o segundo momento do livro, cuja intenção maior é fazer operar a escrita da história na imbricada conjunção história-arte-pensamento."--Contratapa. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of the dispute between the competing theses of intentionality and physicalism, as discussed by A. Marras in his paper “Intentionality and Physicalism: a Resolvable Dispute“. Although as originally conceived neither thesis is viable, it is apparent that a physicalist account of human behavior must take into consideration the intentionality of human behavior. This paper reviews a recent attempt to give a physicalist reconstruction of intentionality and shows that such an approach succeeds in providing scientifically acceptable (...) explanations of human behavior without needing to answer the metaphysical questions that this dispute implies. (shrink)

English summary: Criticism is often levelled at Hegel's philosophy of the absolute spirit for its being conceived at the expense of the world. In view of this, Hegel's regular reference to a world in the Phenomenology of Spirit is somewhat puzzling. How then are we to understand the presence of the world, or even numerous worlds? Tereza Matejckova contends that at every stage of its journey, consciousness designs a new world-model, each built on central concepts of the respective form of (...) consciousness. Consciousness thus finds itself in a world of contradiction, of life, of struggle, or one of unhappy diremption. The point of absolute knowledge is not that the world is now derived from consciousness itself, but rather that it conceives a world-model that corresponds with reality, as whose reflection it itself now grasps. German description: Oft wird gegen Hegel der Vorwurf erhoben, seine Philosophie des absoluten Geistes sei auf Kosten der Welt konzipiert. Umso auffallender ist, dass Hegel in der Phanomenologie des Geistes nahezu auf jeder Ebene auf eine Welt zu sprechen kommt. Wie ist diese Gegenwart der Welt, sogar einer Mehrzahl von Welten zu deuten? Tereza Matejckova behauptet, dass das Bewusstsein auf jeder Ebene seiner Genese ein Weltmodell entwirft, in dessen Zentrum Schlusselbegriffe der einschlagigen Bewusstseinsgestalt stehen. Das Bewusstsein findet sich somit in einer Welt des Widerspruchs, des Lebens, des Kampfes oder der unglucklichen Entzweiung wieder. Pointe des absoluten Wissens ist nicht, dass das Bewusstsein nun die Welt aus sich selbst ableitet, sondern dass es ein der Wirklichkeit entsprechendes Weltmodell konzipiert, als dessen Widerschein es sich selbst erfasst. (shrink)

Consequence is at the heart of logic; an account of consequence, of what follows from what, offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. Since philosophy itself proceeds by way of argument and inference, a clear view of what logical consequence amounts to is of central importance to the whole discipline. In this book JC Beall and Greg Restall present and defend what thay call logical pluralism, the view that there is more than one genuine deductive consequence relation, a (...) position which has profound implications for many linguists as well as for philosophers. We should not search for one true logic, since there are many. (shrink)

La materia de este estudio, es la misma que preocupo a la humanidad desde sus albores, siendo abordada por grandes pensadores que van desde Aristoteles hasta Teilhard de Chardin. El presente ensayo propone una solucion cientifica a la coexistencia del libre albedrio humano inmerso en un mundo donde las leyes que rigen la causa-efecto no dejan margen al fenomeno de libertad. Como consecuencia primordial explica el mecanismo natural que sustenta la existencia de un alma inmortal y la existencia de un (...) creador. (shrink)

An instrument of wealth accumulation and racial segregation in housing markets, the intersections between zoning and labor are often overlooked. Extending theories of space, race, and class, and drawing on historical and archival evidence, I elaborate three ways that American land-use zoning emerged to shape labor markets in the early 20th century: (1) zoning constrained households from engaging in subsistence and direct market activity, acting as a regulatory source of labor commodification; (2) zoning first emerged as a xenophobic tool for (...) regulating labor competition; and (3) zoning introduced racialized boundaries distinguishing formal work from a sphere of economic informality. I illustrate these theoretical-historical propositions with a study of the frontier origins of American land-use zoning laws in late-19th -century Los Angeles. This first and influential approach to residential zoning emerged amid racial dynamics of western settlement and the class politics of a national “free” labor market. I demonstrate how efforts to regulate the settlement and labor practices of poor urban households and Chinese immigrants on in Los Angeles became the direct legal basis for the dichotomous categories of “residential” and “industrial” districts that the city first defended before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1915. By theorizing the intersections of land-use zoning and labor markets, this paper provides a theoretical framework and historical genealogy for future work to consider entanglements of housing and labor politics amid the concurrent flexibilization of work and land use in the present. (shrink)

The fundamental problem of Christology is the apparent contradiction of Christ as recorded at Chalcedon. Christ is human and Christ is divine. Being divine entails being immutable. Being human entails being mutable. Were Christ two different persons there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were Christ only partly human or only partly divine there’d be no apparent contradiction. But Chalcedon rules as much out. Were the very meaning of ‘mutable’ and/or ‘immutable’ other than what they are, (...) there’d be no apparent contradiction. But the meaning is what it is, and changing the meaning of our terms to avoid the apparent contradiction of Christ is an apparent flight from reality. What, in the end, is the explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ? Theologians and philosophers have long advanced many consistency-seeking answers, all of which increase the metaphysical or semantical complexity of the otherwise strikingly simple but radical core of Christianity’s GodMan. In this paper, I put the simplest explanation on the theological table: namely, Christ appears to be contradictory because Christ is contradictory. This explanation may sound complicated to the many who are steeped in the mainstream account of logic according to which logic precludes the possibility of true contradictions. But the mainstream account of logic can and should be rejected. Ridding theology of the dogma of mainstream logic illuminates the simple though striking explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ — namely, that Christ is a contradictory being. Just as the simplest explanation to the apparent roundness of the earth has earned due acceptance, so too should the simplest explanation of the apparent contradiction of Christ. (shrink)

Consequence is at the heart of logic; an account of consequence, of what follows from what, offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. Since philosophy itself proceeds by way of argument and inference, a clear view of what logical consequence amounts to is of central importance to the whole discipline. In this book JC Beall and Greg Restall present and defend what thay call logical pluralism, the view that there is more than one genuine deductive consequence relation, a (...) position which has profound implications for many linguists as well as for philosophers. We should not search for one true logic, since there are many. (shrink)