We may succed in the fulfilment of our desires but still fail to properly own our practical life, perhaps because we acted as addicts, driven by desires that are alien to our will, or as “wantons,” satisfying the desires that we simply happen to have (Frankfurt, 1988 ). May we equally fail to own the outcomes of our epistemic life? If so, how may we attain epistemic ownership over it? This paper explores the structural parallellism between practical and epistemic rationality, (...) building on Williamson’s ( 2002 ) suggestion that we should commence with successful performances as the foundation for both domains, be it action or knowledge. By highlighting the limitations of higher-order regulative approaches in epistemology, exemplified by Sosa ( 2007, 2011, 2015, 2021 ), the paper introduces a form of teleological epistemic constitutivism inspired by Velleman ( 2000, 2009 ). The proposal is that epistemic ownership is not attained in the mere pursuit of truth or knowledge, but requires furthermore a struggle to understand what we know. (shrink)

This paper intends to explore whether and how the quality of participation experiences is associated with political efficacy and the disposition of migrant and non-migrant young people to becoming involved. The sample includes 1010 young people of Portuguese, Angolan and Brazilian origin, aged between 15 and 29 years old. The results reveal that the quality of participation experiences is related to political efficacy and dispositions to becoming involved, but different groups seem to react differently to different forms of political action.

This paper analyses the metaliterary statements that pervade the oeuvre of Ennodius of Pavia (a.d. 474–521) in order to reconstruct his underlying conception of language: its nature, power, function, limitations, and dangers. This new perspective provides a more nuanced insight into the paradoxical poetics of the author as well as his final renunciation to literature after his appointment as bishop of Pavia.

Savulescu and Cameron supported selectively locking down the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic on two grounds: first, that preserving total lockdown would entail levelling down and, second, that levelling down is wrong. Their first assumption has been thoroughly addressed, but more can be said about their wider antiegalitarian point that levelling down is simply wrong. Egalitarians are not defenceless against the levelling-down objection. Even though some consider it the most serious challenge to supporters of equality, egalitarianism possesses sound reasons to (...) assert, not only that something valuable is preserved when we level down, but also that preserving it may be, in certain circumstances, preferable to pursuing other fundamental moral goals. Although troublesome from a well-being maximising standpoint, levelling down ensures that healthcare policy reflects a commitment with the idea that people are equal in moral worth. That commitment is important enough to trump certain improvements in individual well-being. In the case of pandemic lockdowns, not all the interests protected by free movement are as fundamental as to pursue them at the cost of equality. Savulescu and Cameron’s framework is so reliant on the view that levelling down is wrong that it fails to account for the valuable loss that having the elderly suffer alone represents. (shrink)

La inteligencia artificial transforma el derecho. No es solo un modo de facilitar la actividad jurídica. Tiene implicaciones epistemológicas y sociales. El derecho se reduce a datos y a cálculos. Prospera un jurista maquinal. Se empobrece la racionalidad jurídica. Se olvida que la clave del derecho no es el procesamiento de datos sino la creación de sentido.

Le verdict du tribunal de la raison, institué par la critique kantienne, commande la fin de la métaphysique qui se muerait en croyance rationnelle, absolument nécessaire dans le cadre de la raison pratique et de ses exigences d’intelligibilité. Cependant, l’assimilation existentielle de l’impossibilité de la métaphysique par Kleist déclenche non seulement le sentiment de finitude et d’humilité de la raison, mais aussi le refus tragique, désespéré, d’une science strictement phénoménale et d’une solution croyante pour apaiser son besoin de vérité absolue. (...) Ainsi, une catastrophe, comme le tremblement de terre de Lisbonne ou du Chili, convoque des significations contrastées : Kant s’attache à la mécanique naturelle et à la possibilité d’un dessein inscrutable, tandis que Kleist éprouve la vie sous le signe du hasard, « voyage sans but », dont le mouvement offre le dynamisme diasporique du salut impossible. (shrink)

Texto correspondiente a la defensa de la Tesis Doctoral del autor, que lleva por título La escuela jurídica kantiana y la ciencia del derecho en Alemania (1750-1804), en la que se examina el desenvolvimiento coherente del iusnaturalismo inmanentista alemán, a lo largo del periodo ilustrado, en su apelación a la ciencia jurídica (Rechtslehre), por medio de los conceptos a priori de naturaleza e historia.

Le pari de cet ouvrage est d'explorer les facettes multiples à travers lesquelles se donne le soi. Parler de soi plutôt que de moi implique une rupture franche avec les philosophies qui placent le sujet humain en position fondatrice. Le soi est encore moins une « chose » mais un mode d'être ; le soi n'est pas une donnée mais une conquête dont le devenir est en partie indéterminé. C'est donc sous le signe des épreuves qu'il faut penser les variations (...) phénoménologiques et herméneutiques sur le soi. Si la philosophie reste la discipline dominante des réflexions qui parcourent les contributions du volume, l'originalité de cet ouvrage est d'offrir en même temps au lecteur d'autres variations par lesquelles se décline le soi. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose une réinterprétation originale du rôle cognitif du Je pense kantien qui se veut pertinente pour la phénoménologie et pour la philosophie actuelle de l’esprit. L’étude du rapport entre temporalité phénoménale et cognition catégoriale constitue le fil conducteur de cette recherche. Elle mène à la question capitale du statut ultime du Moi, du sens du Je du Je pense. Que désigne-t-il : un épiphénomène contingent, une représentation sui generis, une métareprésentation, un acte indéconstructible, un événement fonctionnel, une forme (...) logique ? Recèle-t-il une véritable unité ou plutôt une multiplicité productrice d’unité ? Représente-t-il une identité réelle ou un changement identifiable, un référent vide ou ‘saturé’ ? La réponse à toutes ces questions dépend notamment de la façon de concevoir l’efficacité du Je, c’est-à-dire de l’articulation entre inconscient cognitif, conscience de soi et conscience de quelque chose en général. En pensant Kant avec la philosophie moderne et contemporaine, l’auteur tente d’élucider l’instabilité inévitable du passage critique à un Cogito postmétaphysique. (shrink)

The causal theory of action is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency -- the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources (...) while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action ; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action -oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues. Contributors: Fred Adams, Jesús H. Aguilar, John Bishop, Andrei A. Buckareff, Randolph Clarke, Jennifer Hornsby, Alicia Juarrero, Alfred R. Mele, Michael S. Moore, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Josef Perner, Johannes Roessler, David-Hillel Ruben, Carolina Sartorio, Michael Smith, Rowland Stout The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

According to robust versions of virtue epistemology, the reason why knowledge is incompatible with certain kinds of luck is that justified true beliefs must be achieved by the agent . In a recent set of papers, Pritchard has challenged these sorts of views, advancing different arguments against them. I confront one of them here, which is constructed upon scenarios affected by environmental luck, such as the fake barn cases. My objection to Pritchard differs from those offered until now by Carter (...) , Jarvis or Littlejohn in that it is based on the claim that cognitive performances may not be properly considered as achievements beyond the scope of the agent’s intentional action—an idea that confers more explanatory power on my argument, and contributes to stregthening links between knowledge and agency. (shrink)

We are witnessing a certain tendency in epistemology to account for the anti-luck intuition in terms of risk. I.e., instead of the traditional anti-luck diagnosis of Gettier cases and fake barn cases, a new anti-risk diagnosis seems to be preferable by many. My goal in this paper is twofold: first, I contribute to motivate that drift; and second, I defend that we ought to partially resist it. An anti-risk diagnosis is valid and preferable for fake barn cases, but we still (...) need an anti-luck diagnosis for classic Gettier cases. The paper thus defends the Solomon-like result that we need both concepts—epistemic luck and epistemic risk—to deal with all the cases where knowledge is undermined. (shrink)

This paper advances new theses about the relationship between luck and risk, using recent work by Duncan Pritchard (2014, 2015, 2016) as its foil. Once Pritchard’s views are introduced in section 1, the rest of the paper completes two different tasks, one critical and one constructive. By focussing on some epistemological cases that Pritchard’s model would fail to identify, section 2 shows that it relies on a difference that is in fact inessential: the one between the occurrence and the non‐occurrence (...) of an event. Section 3 sketches and defends an alternative account of the luck/risk distinction, based on the consideration of situations (instead of events) from different temporal perspectives: luck assessments track a situation’s past, considering it the actual outcome of some previous event, whereas risk assessments look at the situation’s future, regarding it as the initial condition of some unsettled event. (shrink)

We are witnessing a certain tendency in epistemology to account for the anti-luck intuition in terms of risk. I.e., instead of the traditional anti-luck diagnosis of Gettier cases and fake barn cases, a new anti-risk diagnosis seems to be preferable by many. My goal in this paper is twofold: first, I contribute to motivate that drift; and second, I defend that we ought to partially resist it. An anti-risk diagnosis is valid and preferable for fake barn cases, but we still (...) need an anti-luck diagnosis for classic Gettier cases. The paper thus defends the Solomon-like result that we need both concepts—epistemic luck and epistemic risk—to deal with all the cases where knowledge is undermined. (shrink)

Grit, which is originally conceptualized as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, has been associated with optimal performance. Although previous meta-analytic and systematic reviews summarized how grit relates to performance outcomes, they possess considerable shortcomings, such as (a) absence of summary on the association of grit with well-being outcomes; (b) absence of discussion on social, psychological, and emotional mechanisms linking grit to well-being; and (c) lack of elaboration on how alternative models can resolve fundamental problems in the grit construct. This (...) integrative review provides a comprehensive summary on the link of grit to performance and well-being outcomes. Importantly, it elaborates how alternative models can potentially address flaws in the existing grit theory. Future research directions are discussed on how to move forward the science of grit. (shrink)

Speech Acts, Criteria and Intentions What makes a speech act a speech act? Which are its necessary and sufficient conditions? I claim in this paper that we cannot find an answer to those questions in Austin's doctrine of the infelicities, since some infelicities take place in fully committing speech acts, whereas others prevent the utterance from being considered as a speech act at all. With this qualification in mind, I argue against the idea that intentions—considered as mental states accomplishing a (...) causal role in the performance of the act—should be considered among the necessary conditions of speech acts. I would thus like to deny a merely ‘symptomatic’ account of intentions, according to which we could never make anything but fallible hypotheses about the effective occurrence of any speech act. I propose an alternative ‘criterial’ account of the role of intentions in speech acts theory, and analyse Austin's and Searle's approaches in the light of this Wittgensteinian concept. Whether we consider, with Austin, that speech acts ‘imply’ mental states or, with Searle, that they ‘express’ them, we could only make sense of this idea if we considered utterances as criteria for intentions, and not as alleged behavioural effects of hidden mental causes. (shrink)

In their recent book Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic minds without content, Dan Hutto and Erik Myin make two important criticisms of what they call autopoietic enactivism. These two criticisms are that AE harbours tacit representationalists commitments and that it has too liberal a conception of cognition. Taking the latter claim as its main focus, this paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of AE in order to tease out how it might respond to H&M. In so doing it uncovers some reasons which not (...) only appear to warrant H&M’s initial claims but also seem to point to further uneasy tensions within the AE framework. The paper goes beyond H&M by tracing the roots of these criticisms and apparent tensions to phenomenology and the role it plays in AE’s distinctive conception of strong life-mind continuity. It is highlighted that this phenomenological dimension of AE contains certain unexamined anthropomorphic and anthropogenic leanings which do not sit comfortably within its wider commitment to life-mind continuity. In light of this analysis it is suggested that AE will do well to rethink this role or ultimately run the risk of remaining theoretically unstable. The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing theoretical development of AE by highlighting potential internal tensions within its framework which need to be addressed in order for it to continue to evolve as a coherent paradigm. (shrink)

In this work, a new intelligent control strategy based on neural networks is proposed to cope with some external disturbances that can affect quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles dynamics. Specifically, the variation of the system mass during logistic tasks and the influence of the wind are considered. An adaptive neuromass estimator and an adaptive neural disturbance estimator complement the action of a set of PID controllers, stabilizing the UAV and improving the system performance. The control strategy has been extensively tested with (...) different trajectories: linear, helical, circular, and even a lemniscate one. During the experiments, the mass of the UAV is triplicated and winds of 6 and 9 in Beaufort’s scale are introduced. Simulation results show how the online learning of the estimator increases the robustness of the controller, reducing the effects of the changes in the mass and of the wind on the quadrotor. (shrink)

O'Brien et al. reported that readers generated elaborative inferences only when a text contained characteristics that made it easy to predict the specific inference that a reader would draw, and virtually eliminated the possibility of the inference being discon-firmed. Garrod et al., however, offered two qualifications to these conclusions. First, the two text characteristics manipulated may have produced different types of elaborative inferencing: a biasing context results in a passive form of elaborative inferencing, involving setting up a context of interpretation, (...) whereas the presence of a demand sentence invites the reader to actively predict a subsequent expression. Secondly, clear evidence for either type of inference will be apparent only with truly anaphoric materials. This work describes how a passive form of elaborative inferencing, reported by Garrod et al, may be implemented in a connectionist manner. We take the connectionist model proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde in order to represent a text in the form of a network. Next we analyze and discuss how an attentional focus could operate with the proposed reasoner system in order to deal with inference control and anaphora resolution, during text understanding. Our own suggestion is that the system proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde could be extended by incorporating focus in order to apply it to some open problems related to text processing. However, this extension presents implementational problems due to its local character. Distributed models seem to be in a better position to deal with the shift of the attentional states, given that these systems can learn. Particularly, the model proposed by Sun is close to our aims, and so we will discuss its implications in order to design a cognitive architecture for text comprehension. (shrink)

Taking into account the difficulties that all attempts at a solution of the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion have experienced, we analyze in this paper the chances that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination, a line of attack that has scarcely been explored. Our conclusion is that claiming that behaviors are causally overdetermined cannot solve the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion. The reason is the problem of massive coincidence, that can only be avoided by establishing a relation between mind and body; (...) that is, by denying overdetermination. The only way to defend that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination would be by denying any modal force whatever to the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and this is a claim we would not like to reject. (shrink)

Taking into account the difficulties that all attempts at a solution of the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion have experienced, we analyze in this paper the chances that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination, a line of attack that has scarcely been explored. Our conclusion is that claiming that behaviors are causally overdetermined cannot solve the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion. The reason is the problem of massive coincidence, that can only be avoided by establishing a relation between mind and body; (...) that is, by denying overdetermination. The only way to defend that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination would be by denying any modal force whatever to the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and this is a claim we would not like to reject. (shrink)

Research in cognitive science has often assumed the existence of a privileged level that unifies theoretical explanations arising from different disciplines. Philosophical accounts differ about the locus of those intertheory relations. In this paper, four different views are analyzed: classical, connectionist, pragmatist, and reductionist, as exemplified in the works of von Eckardt, Horgan and Tienson, Hardcastle, and Bickle, respectively. Their divergences are characterized in terms of the possibility of such a privileged level. The classical view favors a privileged computational level. (...) The connectionist revision tries to draw biological intuitions into computational models to provide a link between neurons and computations. The pragmatist approach rejects the idea of a privileged level and offers a more eclectic view of cognitive theory building. The reductionist account pursues theoretical unification by means of the reduction of higher level theories to basic level ones. /// La investigatión en ciencia cognitiva suele asumir la existencia de un nivel privilegiado que unifica las explicaciones teóricas provenientes de distintas disciplinas. Las interpretaciones filósoficas difieren respecto al locus de tales relaciones interteóricas. En este artículo se analizan cuatro concepciones: clásica, conexionista, pragmática y reduccionista, ejemplificadas respectivamente en las obras de von Eckardt, Horgan y Tienson, Hardcastle y Bickle. Sus divergencias se caracterizan en términos de la posible existencia del nivel privilegiado. El enfoque clásico propugna un nivel privilegiado computacional. La revisión conexionista importa intuiciones de la biología a los modelos computacionales, con la intentión de vincular lo neuronal con lo computacional. El enfoque pragmático rechaza la idea de un nivel privilegiado y ofrece una visión más ecléctica de la teorización cognitiva. La conceptión reduccionista promueve la unificatión teórica mediante la reductión de teorías de alto nivel a teorías de nivel básico. (shrink)

Classical approaches such as frames, scripts,... have been unable to deal with the kind of inferences necessary in natural language processing situations such as text comprehension. Shastri & Ajjanagadde (1993), proposed a local connectionist model for the sort of reasoning requiring such a fast inference. The problem with this system is that it controls only the adequacy of argument- fillers, leaving untouched the activation control issue, namely, why we perform certain inferences, and not others, in a given situation. The aim (...) of this paper is to examine how a focus, in the sense of Grosz (1981). could operate as a theoretic constraint with the above reasoner system to handle two aspects: inference control and anaphora resolution (i.e., antecedent activation), during text understanding. (shrink)

O trabalho trata da experiência do autor em estudos de aspectos da relação estabelecida entre Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel e Karl Heinrich Marx, notadamente aqueles de caráter metodológico. O texto passa também em revista uma produção europeia recente, principalmente italiana, que reivindica competentemente um estudo genético da referida temática. Nosso texto tem portanto a intenção de expor para o leitor brasileiro dimensões da interpretação internacional diretamente relacionada com as citadas teorias desenvolvidas por Hegel e Marx. Parte significativa do argumento final (...) do trabalho está preocupada com a demonstração do conteúdo cognitivo da teoria de Hegel, retomada por Marx, que corrobora elementos de uma lógica modal, fortemente apoiada naquilo que Hegel denomina determinações-da-reflexão, um importante mergulho feito pela Filosofia na investigação científica acerca da coesão interna de objetos apreendidos pela capacidade humana de abstração, onde coexistem orientações vinculadas ao espelhamento mental de entes exteriores à consciência, sempre ressignificados a partir das modalidades singularidade, particularidade e universalidade. Essa absorção metódica distingue objetividades produzidas pela atividade humana da realidade exterior natural. (shrink)

In this paper, an attempt is made to solve various problems posed to current theories of verisimilitude: the problem of linguistic variance; the problem of which are the best scientific methods for getting the most verisimilar theories; and the question of the ontological commitment in scientific theories. As a result of my solution to these problems, and with the help of other considerations of epistemological character, I conclude that the notion of 'Tarskian truth' is dispensable in a rational interpretation of (...) the scientific enterprise. As a logical result, however, falsificationism will be vindicated. (shrink)

I develop a connection between racial identity and Heidegger’s early phenomenological perspective from Being and Time. This effort offsets the critique that Heidegger is too abstract in his use of Dasein to have any practical application to racial identity. I examine how the underlying issue of racial identity is rooted in the composition of an “existentiell,” where one grows up in a variety of ways to be, compelling one to choose and neglect them. I then examine Mariana Ortega’s critique of (...) Heidegger’s idea and how she describes it as a limiting concept that is too abstract to deal with everyday issues of race. By recovering the concept of Dasein from the “abstraction critique” via re-imagining an existentiell, I show how everyday discourses about racial identity are part of the phenomenological world Dasein grows up in, necessitating analyses about how to be in the world through racial, ethnic, and cultural dimensions. (shrink)