Ness, John We are now well into the second century since scientific knowledge has advanced such that a belief in a god or gods to explain the universe, life, humans and morality, is entirely unnecessary. It contradicts all evidence and is even patently absurd. Over the last 100 years, most western countries have witnessed a decline in the god belief of around 2-5% per decade from an almost 100% rate in 1900. Nevertheless the belief persists amongst all levels (...) of society although there is some correlation between higher levels of education and a lack of belief in god. There have been various attempts to explain this persistence of belief, ranging from the somewhat discredited discovery of the 'god spot' in the brain through to intergenerational influences, especially mothers on children, to the institutional power of religions and the basic human search for meaning or even religion as opium as Marx unkindly put it. (shrink)

This book analyzes the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory and discusses the most recent applications of sensorimotor theory to human computer interaction, child's play, virtual reality, robotics, and linguistics. -/- Why does a circle look curved and not angular? Why doesn't red sound like a bell? Why, as I interact with the world, is there something it is like to be me? These are simple questions to pose but more difficult to answer. An analytic philosopher might respond to the first (...) by merely observing, ``if we ponder the concept `circle' we find that it is the essence of a circle to be round''; but where does this definition come from? Was it set in stone by the gods, the divine arbiters of circle-ness (red-ness and conscious-ness)? It is a measure of the importance of Kevin O'Regan and Alva Noe's 2001 paper `A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness' that it reveals deep scientific and philosophical insight on these foundational issues of perception. -/- Opening with a chapter from Kevin O'Regan, this collection of new essays continues by presenting fifteen additional essays on as many developments achieved in recent years in this field. It provides readers with a critical review of the sensorimotor theory and in so doing introduces them to a radically new approach in cognitive science. (shrink)

O contraste entre o espaço das razões e o reino da lei ao qual Sellars implicitamente apela não estava disponível antes dos tempos modernos. Os filósofos modernos não sentiram uma tensão entre a ideia de que o conhecimento tem um status normativo e a ideia de um exercício de poderes naturais. Porém, a ascensão da ciência moderna tornou disponível uma concepção de natureza que faz a advertência de uma falácia naturalista na epistemologia inteligível. Por isso o contraste que Sellars traça (...) pode estabelecer uma agenda para a filosofia hoje. Eu quero distinguir duas maneiras de empreender tal projeto. A ideia é a de que a organização do espaço das razões não é, como Sellars sugere, estranha ao tipo de estrutura que a ciência natural descobre no mundo. Pensar e conhecer são parte de nossa maneira de ser animais. Para mostrar isso, vou distinguir entre dois tipos de naturalismo: um naturalismo restritivo e um naturalismo liberal. Quero sugerir que o argumento de Millikan em favor de um naturalismo restritivo ao criticar a semântica fregiana está contaminado pela adesão a um cartesianismo residual. Esse é o resultado de uma troca familiar; o preço de descartar o imaterialismo cartesiano, enquanto se permanece no interior do naturalismo restritivo, é o de que a parte que se escolheu da natureza não é mais especial o suficiente para ser creditada com poderes de pensamento. Vou argumentar que o lugar próprio à ideia de “apreender sentidos” está em descrever padrões em nossas vidas – nossas vidas mentais, nesse caso – que são inteligíveis somente em termos das relações que estruturam o espaço das razões. Essa padronização envolve racionalidade genuína, não apenas “racionalidade mecânica”. O naturalismo liberal não precisa nada mais, para fazer a ideia de “apreender sentidos” não-problemática, do que uma insistência perfeitamente razoável em que tais padrões realmente moldam as nossas vidas. (shrink)

I present considerations surrounding pre-reflective self-consciousness, arising in work I am conducting on a new physicalist, process-based account of [phenomenal] consciousness. The account is called the meta-causal account because it identifies consciousness with a certain type of arrangement of meta-causation. Meta-causation is causation where a cause or effect is itself an instance of causation. The proposed type of arrangement involves a sort of time-spanning, internal reflexivity of the overall meta-causation. I argue that, as a result of the account, any conscious (...) process has PRSC. Hence, PRSC does not need to be taken as a stipulation or argued for on purely phenomenological grounds or as a necessary support for reflective consciousness. I also show how it is natural to the account that PRSC is not an additional, peripheral, sort of consciousness, but is intrinsic to all consciousness, thereby fitting claims about self-intimation and co-constitution by various authors, and also being amenable to an adverbial account. As part of this, consciousness of an external object is just the form that current self-consciousness takes, the meta-causal constitution of it being inextricably modulated by the causal relationship with the object. The article also discusses how MCA helps explore issues of for-me-ness, transparency of perceptual consciousness, and possible immediacy and non-relationality of self-consciousness. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to reexamine the concept of suchness, as discussed in The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, in conversation with Meister Eckhart’s neologisms istic/isticheit. Previous comparative Buddhist-Eckhart studies have typically rendered these neologisms in a strict Aristotelian ontological sense, with English renderings being formulated as the “is-ness” or the “being-ness” of God. These earlier interpretations concerning Eckhart’s thought were prevalent in the mid-twentieth century and put forward by the influential Kyoto School. A 2003 (...) article by Eckhart scholar Alessandra Beccarisi has altered the scholarship concerning these notoriously difficult neologisms.1 Eckhart’s... (shrink)

Dispositions ground the of‐ness and about‐ness of thought. What a thought is about can depend on the world, but a thought's trajectory is internally fixed. ‘Swampman’ is exhibited as a counter‐example to radically externalist accounts of intentionality and Kripke's Wittgenstein's attack on dispositions as bases for rules is defused.

Of all the sciences, philosophy is the most concrete and comprehensive. The sense of cold, remote spaces which it is apt to generate in us is the result of this very width and concreteness. The philosopher has to condense the many-sided variety of human life and express it through the symbols of a common language. The symbols are at best only semi-transparent.ness descends upon him the moment they become opaque. Philosophy, in fact, is useless to us unless we can (...) see through it. If we cannot, the fault may be ours. If it is the philosopher's, then his failure is a failure to be wide enough or concrete enough. He needs above all to be sympathetically sensitive to the wide range of human interests, because it is this as a whole that he is bidden to systematize. He must give a single answer, and for that he must formulate a single question. Therefore his first problem is to discover the unity of problems. (shrink)

Of all the sciences, philosophy is the most concrete and comprehensive. The sense of cold, remote spaces which it is apt to generate in us is the result of this very width and concreteness. The philosopher has to condense the many-sided variety of human life and express it through the symbols of a common language. The symbols are at best only semi-transparent.ness descends upon him the moment they become opaque. Philosophy, in fact, is useless to us unless we can (...) see through it. If we cannot, the fault may be ours. If it is the philosopher's, then his failure is a failure to be wide enough or concrete enough. He needs above all to be sympathetically sensitive to the wide range of human interests, because it is this as a whole that he is bidden to systematize. He must give a single answer, and for that he must formulate a single question. Therefore his first problem is to discover the unity of problems. (shrink)

O contraste entre o espaço das razões e o reino da lei ao qual Sellars implicitamente apela não estava disponível antes dos tempos modernos. Os filósofos modernos não sentiram uma tensão entre a ideia de que o conhecimento tem um status normativo e a ideia de um exercício de poderes naturais. Porém, a ascensão da ciência moderna tornou disponível uma concepção de natureza que faz a advertência de uma falácia naturalista na epistemologia inteligível. Por isso o contraste que Sellars traça (...) pode estabelecer uma agenda para a filosofia hoje. Eu quero distinguir duas maneiras de empreender tal projeto. A ideia é a de que a organização do espaço das razões não é, como Sellars sugere, estranha ao tipo de estrutura que a ciência natural descobre no mundo. Pensar e conhecer são parte de nossa maneira de ser animais. Para mostrar isso, vou distinguir entre dois tipos de naturalismo: um naturalismo restritivo e um naturalismo liberal. Quero sugerir que o argumento de Millikan em favor de um naturalismo restritivo ao criticar a semântica fregiana está contaminado pela adesão a um cartesianismo residual. Esse é o resultado de uma troca familiar; o preço de descartar o imaterialismo cartesiano, enquanto se permanece no interior do naturalismo restritivo, é o de que a parte que se escolheu da natureza não é mais especial o suficiente para ser creditada com poderes de pensamento. Vou argumentar que o lugar próprio à ideia de “apreender sentidos” está em descrever padrões em nossas vidas – nossas vidas mentais, nesse caso – que são inteligíveis somente em termos das relações que estruturam o espaço das razões. Essa padronização envolve racionalidade genuína, não apenas “racionalidade mecânica”. O naturalismo liberal não precisa nada mais, para fazer a ideia de “apreender sentidos” não-problemática, do que uma insistência perfeitamente razoável em que tais padrões realmente moldam as nossas vidas. (shrink)

Entendida em sentido amplo, como reconstrução autotranscendente, a aprendizagem requer, para potencializar a razão crítico-discursiva, uma dimensão intersubjetiva e uma relação assimétrica entre professor e estudante. No ciberespaço, âmbito linguístico específico que ocasiona processos de socialização e de individualização, o entendimento do que constitui aprendizagem válida passa, necessariamente, pelo diálogo entre educadores. A partir de interrogações de índole epistemológica, o artigo insere-se nesse diálogo. Depois de caracterizar a hipermídia como a linguagem do ciberespaço e identificar diferentes perfis de leitores de (...) hipermídia, duas afirmações são ensaiadas: (i) as tecnologias digitais possuem potencial para amplificar a aprendizagem; e (ii) as tecnologias digitais não minimizam a importância da mediação docente na forma escolar da aprendizagem. (shrink)

When young children first come to school they bring with them a depth of being; the authors suggest that the educational community should respond to children with a pedagogy that is capable of nurturing this depth. The authors of this paper are teachers of many years’ experience. Their own work in classrooms has shown them that, paradoxically, depth in pedagogy is most surely to be found when teachers follow the light in the eyes of children. The authors draw upon a (...) selection of vignettes and narratives taken from classroom experiences to describe how this is done. They also show how children and teachers can approach the complex learning that requires transcendence of the known. Notions of relational consciousness (), as well as ethical and spiritual sensibility () are developed through reference to a range of educators including Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Stanley Cavell, Maxine Greene, Nell Noddings, Vivan Paley and Arthur Vogel. The broader educational community is reminded that school experiences should balance the measurable and the immeasurable. The authors question some aspects of the, sharing their concern that it may focus teachers’ attention too tightly on ‘that which is formed from without’. The authors suggest that the weight of this legislation may result in the neglect of some very important aspects of learning. The broader educational community is invited to consider the implications of a pedagogy of depth, to become more aware of the skill of transcending known limitations through coming to shared understanding, and to find ways to reconcile the potential violence of legislated structures with the being‐in‐the‐world of children in schools. (shrink)

No processo de reconstrução da filosofia, está colocado para John Dewey o desafio da articulação entre filosofia e ciência e, como consequência disso, a mudança no método de operar da primeira. Dewey desenvolveu um programa doutrinário que visa mostrar como o conhecimento se funda na experiência. Essa é a dimensão científico-naturalista da sua obra, cuja influência advém do naturalismo darwinista. Nesse sentido, o seu projeto consiste numa rigorosa argumentação contra as explicações em que a experiência e a natureza são (...) apresentadas com base em distinções arbitrárias. Na obra Reconstruction in Philosophy, Dewey desenvolveu seu projeto metafísico de dimensão historicista, propondo uma reconstrução para a filosofia. Essa perspectiva é de inspiração hegeliana, considerando a história como “fluxo dos acontecimentos”. Sua argumentação consiste em reivindicar uma filosofia da experiência, na medida em que se apropria do método científico. Dewey tenta pensar um sistema desenvolvido a partir da aplicação do método científico à filosofia, mas tendo como base uma concepção filosófica da experiência. As concepções de Dewey acerca do conhecimento, do uso inteligente da razão e da natureza social da filosofia concorrem para a constituição de sua concepção de ciência. O objetivo do filósofo é desenvolver um projeto científico e metodológico que exigirá outra forma de fazer filosofia, que ele caracteriza como uma filosofia empírica. Embora Dewey defenda uma filosofia com uma visada científica, isso não significa que ele subordine a filosofia à ciência. Ocorre que Dewey se opõe à forma pela qual o problema epistemológico foi formulado pela tradição, ou seja, desconsiderando o processo de conexão entre as coisas e entre o conhecedor e as coisas. No presente artigo apresentamos este projeto filosófico denominado por nós de metafísica empírica. Iniciamos, argumentando a partir de Dewey, com a necessidade da constituição e formação de uma mentalidade científica tendo em vista os fins sociais. Esta reivindicação decorre do fato de Dewey considerar que ciência e democracia compartilham não apenas o mesmo padrão de investigação, o “método da inteligência”, mas também as mesmas virtudes morais: uma disposição para questionar, para procurar clareza e evidência, para ouvir e respeitar as opiniões dos outros, para considerar alternativas de forma imparcial, para mudar de ponto de vista em virtude da investigação e da comunicação. Por fim, discutiremos a teoria pragmatista da existência, cujo objetivo é a constituição de uma nova metafísica que consiste em administrar, no domínio temporal, o finito e o humano em sua relação com o eterno e o infinito, ou seja, visa apreender a realidade enquanto produto dos seus condicionantes. Em sua crítica à metafísica tradicional, Dewey deixa subentendido que o que se tem em termos dessas metafísicas não passa de técnicas intelectuais refinadas, derivadas das ideias rudimentares da fé popular acerca do sobrenatural e do natural, do divino e do humano. (shrink)

The affinities between John Henry Newman and Bernard Lonergan have often been remarked, particularly the seminal influence of Newman's Grammar on the early Lonergan. Although Newman was only one tributary flowing into the mainstream, and so the 'chain of dependence' should not be over-estimated, Lonergan did remain in a two-fold debt to Newman: for his doctrine of assent and for his commitment to history. The manner in which Newman and Lonergan respectively tackle the vexed issue of the development of (...) Christian doctrine is especially illustrative of this and illuminates many other subtle internal relations between them. The author briefly compares Newmans treatment of doctrine in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine with that of Lonergan in Method in Theology. He then demonstrates that despite the significant differences, Newman and Lonergan actually inhabit genetically related horizons ('what Newman describes, Lonergan explains'). Their theologies of divine revelation are complimentary and they make a common commitment, each in their own way, to critical realism. /// O artigo toma como ponto de partida a constatação de que é já quase um lugar comum assumir a existência de afinidades entre o pensamento de John Henry Newman e de Bernard Lonergan, particularmente no que se refere à influência matricial da obra Grammar of Assent de Newman no primeiro Lonergan. Contudo, apesar de Newman não ser mais do que uma corrente secundária a desembocar no processo global, de tal modo que de forma alguma se deve enfatizar em demasia a eventual "cadeia de dependência", a verdade é que Lonergan permaneceu numa dupla relação de dívida para com Newman, nomeadamente, em relação à sua doutrina do assentimento e ao seu compromisso com a história. Particularmente ilustrativo disto mesmo é o modo com que Newman e Lonergan, respectivamente, tomam nas mãos o difícil problema do desenvolvimento da doutrina cristã, o qual serve de modo especial para iluminar as relações intrínsecas existentes entre os dois pensadores. Nesse sentido, o autor do artigo compara sucintamente o tratamento que Newman dá à questão da doutrina no seu Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine com aquele que ao mesmo tema dá Lonergan em Method in Theology. Desta forma se demonstra que apesar de diferenças significativas, Newman e Lonergan habitam na realidade horizontes geneticamente relacionados, segundo a máxima de que aquilo que Newman descreve, Lonergan explica. Mais ainda, mostra-se também de que modo as suas respectivas teologias da revelação divina são complementares e representam um comum compromisso, cada um à sua maneira, com o realismo crítico. (shrink)

I offer here an interpretation and defense of John Stuart Mill's qualitative hedonism. One of the results of Mill's well-known mental crisis was a concept of utility substantially different from the orthodox Benthamite quantitative hedonism which Mill came to regard as being fraught with difficulties. He saw Bentham's concept as being excessively narrow, and he sought to overcome its limitations by enlarging his own concept of utility. He did this by including the quality of pleasures along with the quantity (...) in the estimation of their worth. At the same time, Mill was highly critical of the intuitionist ethical theories of his day, and propounded utilitarianism as the rational, objective, and scientific alternative. So if Mill is to succeed in his enterprise of countering intuitionism while avoiding the pitfalls of Benthamite utilitarianism, he must retain the objectivity of Benthamism while repudiating its narrowness. Mill's critics have argued that when he opened up his concept of utility to include quality, he modified his theory so radically that he can no longer be called a hedonistic utilitarian, and that he relinquished the consis- tency and objectivity of Benthamite utilitarianism along with its weak- nesses. I argue here that Mill abandons neither hedonism nor utilitarianism, and that the objectivity and consistency of his theory are not undermined. (shrink)

Objectivo do presente artigo é mostrar de que modo John Locke, sobretudo nas obras An Essay concerning Human Understanding e Two Treatises of Government, se revela um dos principais pensadores do liberalismo, especialmente no que se refere às raízes antropológicas do mesmo. Com efeito, partindo do nominalismo, o qual Ihe permite fazer a distinção entre essências reais e essências nominais, Locke faz do seu Ensaio urna grandiosa tentativa de descrever a natureza humana, processo esse em que sobressai não só (...) o significado de urna existência persistentemente mantida nos mais distintos tempos e lugares, mas também, ou sobretudo, a ideia de que o elemento mais profundo da identidade humana se encontra precisamente na liberdade. Além disso, o artigo mostra também de que modo Locke reconhece na razão a faculdade que permite ao ser humano aceder ao conjunto das leis naturais, bem assim aos correspondentes direitos, entre os quais se destaca o direito à propriedade privada, direitos e deveres esses que compete, antes de mais, à sociedade civil, ou seja, à política, servir e preservar. Nesse sentido, o artigo evidencia também de que modo, sobretudo de acordo com os Treatises, e dado que os seres humanos, por si sós, se revelam incapazes de garantir a vigência das leis da natureza que à sua convivência se aplicam, e para melhor as poder salvaguardar, os indivíduos, de forma voluntária, se constituem em Estado. Mostra-se ainda de que modo, para Locke, a sociedade deve ser governada de acordo com a lei da maioria, e o que por esta se entende. Finalmente, o artigo chama ainda a nossa atenção para o facto de, segundo John Locke, a expressão máxima da vontade da sociedade política se encontrar no poder legislativo, poder esse que, dotado como está da missão de salvaguardar a propriedade privada, tem sobretudo a responsabilidade de eleger o poder executivo, nele delegando a tarefa executar, ou fazer cumprir, as leis que dele próprio possam emanar. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how John Locke, chiefly in his works An Essay concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government, reveals himself one of the major thinkers of liberalism, especially concerning its anthropological roots. In fact, starting from nominalism, which allows himself to distinguish between real essences and nominal essences, Locke makes in his Essay a grand attempt at descnbing human nature, a process in which stands out not only the meaning of an existence persistently maintained in the most distinguished times and places, but also, and chiefly, the idea that the most profound element of human identity resides in its freedom. The article also demonstrates how Locke recognizes reason as the capacity which permits human being to accede to the set of natural laws, and to the corresponding rights, among which the right to private property stands out; and it belongs, before anything else, to the civil society, that is, to politics, to serve and preserve those rights and duties. In this way, and considering that human beings, by themselves, are incapable of guaranteeing the validity of natural laws which are applied to living in society, the article, mainly following the Two Treatises, also makes evident how individuals voluntaríly constitute the State, precisely in order to safeguard those laws. Moreover, the author also demonstrates how, according to Locke, society should be governed by the law of majority and how this law is properly understood. Finally, the article also calls our attention to the fact that, according to Locke, the utmost expression of the will of political society is to be found in the legislative power, the one that, endowed as it is with the mission of protecting prívate property, has the major responsibility of electing the executive power and delegating in it the task of executing the laws eventually issued by itself. (shrink)

O projeto de John Dewey sobre a filosofia social não tem sido considerado como uma peça importante de seu pensamento. Entretanto, seus textos sobre esse tópico constituem um notável esforço para articular diversos novos conceitos e ideias, os quais não podem ser encontrados em outra parte de sua extensa obra filosófica. Inserida nesse contexto, a nova edição de suas “Palestras em filosofia política e social” – série de palestras que Dewey apresentou quando esteve na China – fornece um material (...) único para revisar seu ponto de vista social. Levando-se em consideração que o pragmatista introduz uma “figura normativa” e que ele identifica um conjunto de necessidades humanas básicas de maneira a compreender plenamente esse critério normativo. Como hipótese, considero que a filosofia social está principalmente associada com juízos práticos e que é plausível interpretar essas necessidades humanas básicas como valores. Para sustentar essas afirmações, primeiro, reconstruo a proposta de Dewey sobre um terceiro tipo de pensamento social. Segundo, examino sua posição sobre valores e normas. Terceiro, analiso a “figura normativa” e considero a “leitura antropológica” apresentada por Roberto Frega. Por fim, ofereço uma análise complementar, argumentando que é possível explicar o padrão normativo de Dewey de maneira coerente com respeito aos propósitos do seu pensamento social – e, além disso, que é possível evitar qualquer compromisso essencialista. (shrink)

Um dos maiores expoentes da filosofia analítica, John L. Austin deu uma contribuição de grande relevância para a filosofia da mente contemporânea com seu artigo Outras Mentes . A questão central que norteia o artigo é: o que significa dizer que há a ‘mente’ ou, mais especificamente, ‘outras mentes’? Em sua argumentação, Austin conclui que tal problema não pertence ao nível ontológico , mas sim ao nível linguístico e, assim sendo, uma análise aprofundada da linguagem ordinária pode fazer com (...) que as implicações metafísicas provenientes do problema sobre a natureza da mente sejam resolvidas. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar a argumentação proposta por Austin e ver como é possível entender o ‘problema de outras mentes’ sob a perspectiva proposta pelo filósofo. (shrink)

I offer two potential diagnoses of the behavioral norms governing post‐truth politics by comparing the view of language, communication, and truth‐telling put forward by David Lewis (extended by game theorists), and John Searle. My first goal is to specify the different ways in which Lewis, and game theorists more generally, in contrast to Searle (in the company of Paul Grice and Jurgen Habermas), go about explaining the normativity of truthfulness within a linguistic community. The main difference is that for (...) Lewis and game theorists, “truthful” signaling follows from an align- ment of interests, and deception follows from mixed motives leading to the calculation that sending false information is better for oneself. Following in the Enlightenment tradition, Searle argues that practical reasoning, which involves mastery of at least one language, requires that actors intend to communicate. This intention includes constraining the content of statements to uphold veracity conditions. After distinguishing between these two accounts, I will artic- ulate the implications for explaining, and even informing actions, constitutive of post‐truth politics. I argue that the strategic view of communication is suffi- cient neither to model everyday conversation nor to reflect a public sphere useful for democratic govern- ment. Both the pedagogy of strategic communication as cheap talk, and its concordance with new digital information technologies, challenge norms of truthful- ness that underlie modern institutions essential to an effective public sphere. (shrink)

Heidegger accuses ontotheologies of reducing God to a mere object of intelligibility, and thereby falsifying them, and in doing so distracting attention from or forgetting the ground of Being as unconcealment in the Lichtung. Conventional theistic responses to Heidegger’s ontotheological challenges proceed by offering analogy, speech-act theorising or negative theology as solutions. Yet these conventional solutions, however suitable as responses to Heidegger’s Die ontotheologische Verfassung der Metaphysik version of the ontotheological problem, still fall foul of Heidegger’s more profound characterisation of (...) ontotheology in his treatise Seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus. Therein Heidegger characterises ontotheology as a metaphysics that posits a first-causal ground of Being combining together an essentia and an existentia. This article presents an alternative family of metaphysical schemes that instead develop their metaphysical ‘theology’ in a non-naive epistemological context, and indeed maintain that God cannot be cognised by us because we cannot reconcile the whatness and the that-ness of God in one coherent thought. God is thus unintelligible, and though able to be signified, cannot be reduced thereby to an object of cognition, and is not posited at the expense of considering the ground of Being as the encounter in Lichtung with Being. The two examples of such disrupted cognition accounts of a non-ontheological metaphysics are from the medieval Franciscan John Duns Scotus and the British Idealist Francis Herbert Bradley. The paper ends with a discussion of the characteristic ‘disrupted cognition’ as a movement between two concepts that are unreconcilable within thought, without being contradictories or contraries, and explores the differences between theological and philosophical employments of ‘disrupted cognition’. (shrink)

Dewey desenvolveu um programa doutrinário que visa mostrar como o conhecimento se funda na experiência. Essa é a dimensão científico-naturalista da sua obra. Nesse sentido, o seu projeto consiste numa rigorosa argumentação contra as explicações em que a experiência e a natureza são apresentadas com base em distinções arbitrárias. Na obra, Reconstruction in Philosophy [Reconstrução em Filosofia], Dewey desenvolveu seu projeto metafísico de dimensão historicista, propondo uma reconstrução para a filosofia. Em Experience and Nature [Experiência e Natureza], ele apresentou uma (...) visada científica para a metafísica. Nessa obra, Dewey tenta pensar um sistema desenvolvido a partir da aplicação do método científico à filosofia tendo como base uma concepção filosófica da experiência. As concepções de Dewey acerca do conhecimento, do uso inteligente da razão e da natureza social da filosofia concorrem para a constituição de sua concepção de ciência. Nas duas obras fica evidente a sua crítica à noção tradicional de conhecimento como representação da realidade. Contra isso, Dewey passa a designar o conhecimento como um conjunto de “crenças” e “proposições” tomadas como garantias de usos ou assertividade garantida. Dewey se opõe à forma pela qual o problema epistemológico é formulado pela tradição, ou seja, a partir de uma posição realista ingênua no qual o conhecimento é visto como representação, desconsiderando o processo de conexão entre as coisas e entre o conhecedor e as coisas. (shrink)

O principal objetivo de Micheal Sandel, no livro Liberalismo e os limites da justiça, foi atacar o conceito de deontologia de John Rawls. Nesse artigo, pretende-se argumentar que Sandel interpretou o conceito de deontologia de um modo equivocado. Há uma diferença entre a forma como Rawls definiu este conceito e a maneira como foi interpretado por Sandel. Dado isso, na primeira parte desse artigo, será analisado o modo como Sandel interpretou o conceito de deontologia na filosofia de Rawls. A (...) segunda parte apresenta uma avaliação do confronto entre os dois autores à luz da diferença no modo como ambos compreendem o significado da deontologia no liberalismo político. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 347-352 [Access article in PDF] Idem, Ipse, and Loss of the Self Gerrit Glas The case histories of Dr. Wells and the comments on them require first of all more conceptual clarity. In this article I will first introduce, with Paul Ricoeur, a distinction between idem identity and ipse identity. Then, I will discuss the merits and pitfalls of applying narrative theory to (...) pathologies of the self. Behind the discussion on the breakdown of narrative unity, deep questions loom, most notably about conceivability and meaning of the notion of breakdown of self-relatedness as such; and about the moral basis for clinical action given the lack of a self to treat. These questions amount to the acknowledgment of a normative component in the concept of self and personhood, which can not be accounted for by idem identity solely. Individual and Structural Identity Let us begin with identity. When I identify a tree, at least two aspects, are implied in the act of identification. The first aspect concerns the recognition of the tree as member of a certain class (or family) of living things. In the tree we recognize certain features, or aspects, that are typical for this particular class (or family) of trees. This recognition is based on similarity or sameness. The second aspect in the act of identification consists of the recognition of the tree as this individual tree. We are dealing here with a basic, rather mysterious capacity: the capacity to distinguish one individual entity from the other; or: the capacity to know individuals.Both aspects, the recognition of similarity and of individuality, are interwoven in everyday acts of identification. So, we discern the specific features of a particular tree against the background of an overall (or general) image of trees. At the same time we recognize these general features given our capacity to distinguish one tree from the other. There are, accordingly, two sides in the concept of identity: structural identity and individual identity. Individual identity refers to the uniqueness of a thing and structural identity to the properties a thing shares with others things.This distinction can be applied to human beings, but only in a certain way and to a certain extent. So, John is a human being, and as a human being he has both distinctive and general features. However with regard to John himself, that is, the particular person I aim at when I speak about John, the picture is slightly different. Individuality and similarity (universality) refer here to one and the same person. The uniqueness of John is now commonly referred to as numerical identity. There is only one singular John. Even if there were a John with the same birth date, fingerprint and DNA profile, this would be another John, John 2 so to say. This uniqueness is sometimes articulated in terms of the position John 1 and John 2 occupy in the space-time continuum. Because John 1 and John 2 cannot occupy the same spatiotemporal position, [End Page 347] they must be separate, two distinct entities. This is of course a limited view on uniqueness of persons; so, we will have to say more about this in a moment.The structural (or general) characteristics of John, the John-ness of John so to say, is commonly called qualitative identity. Qualitative identity consists of the sum of all those enduring properties which could serve as criterion to distinguish John from other persons in the world. Qualitative identity, however, does not completely coincide with structural identity, mentioned earlier. This is obvious from the fact that the John-ness of John refers to those structural (enduring, general) properties for which only this particular John qualifies, whereas the human being-ness of John refers to the properties John shares with all other human beings. So, in those cases in which the structural dimension of identity refers to only one entity, for instance in the case of the John-ness of John, the emphasis is not on intersubject similarity but on intrasubject similarity. This intrasubject similarity refers to continuity in time and to... (shrink)

John Rawls é um dos filósofos políticos mais proeminentes do século XX. A partir da publicação em 1971 da obra Uma Teoria da Justiça, o filósofo estadunidense se tornou mundialmente famoso nos meios políticos e acadêmicos. Contudo, um ponto que sempre suscitou um enorme debate é naquilo que dizia respeito aos regimes econômicos apoiados e defendidos pelo autor. Esse ponto só foi esclarecido quando Rawls publicou em 2001, portanto 30 anos depois de sua principal obra, o livro Justiça como (...) equidade: uma reformulação. Na obra de 2001, Rawls se coloca abertamente contrário ao estado de bem-estar social e defensor da democracia de cidadãos-proprietários e do socialismo (democrático) liberal. Nesse trabalho, além de apresentar o modo pelo qual Rawls chega aos regimes econômicos consonantes com a justiça como equidade, deseja-se investigar a relação da democracia no local de trabalho com os regimes econômicos rawlsianos. Assim, argumenta-se que Rawls não pode ser visto como exigindo a democracia no local de trabalho, apesar de que seus regimes podem ser consonantes com tal prática. (shrink)

Nesse trabalho se investigará as críticas apresentadas por Gerald Allan Cohen ao princípio da diferença afirmado pelo filósofo estadunidense John Rawls. Cohen alega que o princípio da diferença permite desigualdades exorbitantes e que essas desigualdades minariam o ethos de solidariedade pressuposto por Rawls. Contra as críticas de Cohen, se salientará o fato de que os princípios de justiça como equidade devem ser lidos em conjunto (leitura holística) e, portanto, as desigualdades permitidas pelo princípio da diferença são muito menores do (...) que acreditava Cohen, uma vez que se precisa também assegurar a igual liberdade, a igualdade equitativa de oportunidades e o valor equitativo das liberdades políticas. Assim, para se assegurar o funcionamento dos princípios em conjunto, se argumentará que o escopo do princípio é muito mais restrito do que julgava Cohen. Sublinha-se que no pensamento rawlsiano não é necessário um crescimento econômico constante, sendo que o princípio da diferença não deve ser visto como um princípio mercadológico, sobre o qual seu objetivo não é ser um mero princípio de reparação, mas um princípio que afirme a reciprocidade entre os concidadãos de uma sociedade democrática. (shrink)

Nesse artigo temos como objetivo analisar a representação do conceito de liberdade na primeira temporada da série “Merli”, veiculada no canal de streaming Netflix. Nela, pretendemos verificar como o professor de Filosofia Merli Bergeron trabalha conceitos libertários e suscita reflexões críticas em seus alunos sobre os padrões de convívio socialmente impostos pelas instituições primárias e secundárias. Ao mesmo tempo, pretendemos abordar a personalidade do professor, discutindo sobre o convívio que ele mantém com os colegas de trabalho e seus alunos, assim (...) como em sua vida particular, para visualizarmos se, de fato, ele pratica aquilo que discursa aos estudantes durante suas aulas. Haverá um foco maior na relação dele com o aluno Ivan Basco, que sofre com agorafobia e recebe aulas particulares de Merli para superar sua situação de isolamento. Em um primeiro momento, com caráter introdutório, iremos discutir sobre a importância da discussão de liberdade na contemporaneidade. A seguir, exporemos conceitos formulados por diversos pensadores acerca do que é a liberdade e sua importância para a emancipação humana. A partir disso, serão abordadas informações básicas sobre a produção da série, como os diretores, veiculadores e atores envolvidos para, por fim, executarmos a análise dos capítulos do seriado e apresentarmos nossas considerações finais. Diversos teóricos pertinentes a esse trabalho serão utilizados na revisão bibliográfica. Como metodologias de análise fílmica usaremos, para verificação estrutural do filme, a metodologia de análise fílmica de Manuela Penafria e, para visualização das formas simbólicas, a Hermenêutica de Profundidade, proposta por John Thompson em “Ideologia e Cultura Moderna”. (shrink)

To understand the evolution of imaginative culture, we need to understand its unique affective power. The purpose of this article is to explain our enjoyment of imaginative culture from the standpoint of a distinctive theoretical approach to understanding affect in terms of the dynamic and energetic features of consciousness. This approach builds upon John Dewey’s view of enjoyment as the enrichment of experience, adding perspectives from studies of the dynamics of consciousness and from ecological psychology. Its main thesis is (...) that positive affect is determined by the causal enrichment of experience, which is defined as the differentiated-ness of conscious states. This approach suggests that the affective power of imaginative culture lies in the way it affords experiences of enriched meaning, as exemplified by our enjoyment of highly nuanced emotion in music. (shrink)

The article considers John Greco's conception of testimonial knowledge that aims to overthrow three sceptical arguments against religious knowledge. Prof. Greco presupposes that a religious community already possesses a true religious belief and its reliability is justified exclusively by means of the reliability of transmission. The author puts this conception into question and presents some sceptical arguments regarding the initial origination of a religious belief and verifying the truth-ness of a religious belief in front of epistemic disagreement problem. (...) In particular, he draws an attention on three moments: 1) difference between inside and outside position as to any religious community, 2) lack of inductive verifying evidence in support of religious knowledge, and 3) difference between origination a belief in a community for the first time and transmission of beliefs already given in a community. The author takes a perspective of an outsider who doesn't belong to any religious community (on the assumption that there are secular communities different from religious ones). Firstly, he suggests another from Greco's version of the “luck argument", which concerns the luck in origination of a belief, not the accidence in spreading it. John Greco solves a problem that arises from argument of luck as far as it regards transmission of beliefs inside a community. The author argues that the genuine problem is to establish an originating source of a religious belief, and taking that into consideration, testimonial evidence cannot eliminate this kind of luck. Secondly, he observes the problem of disagreement among different religious communities. He shows that an outsider doesn't have any epistemic reason to prefer one of the conflicting religious beliefs of different communities, for he doesn't belong to any of them. Thus, the problem of “epistemic peers" still remains unsolved. (shrink)

Este trabalho parte de algumas considerações das perspectivas antropológicas de Paulo Freire e John Dewey, tomando o primeiro autor como um leitor do segundo, pelo menos por via indireta através de Anísio Teixeira, focalizando basicamente duas noções fundamentais: o inacabamento freiriano e o crescimento deweyano. Discutindo detalhes e consequências teóricas desses conceitos para a educação, utilizamos as críticas dos autores em relação à educação bancária e/ou tradicional para apresentar os argumentos que foram elaborados em favor de uma nova educação. (...) Foi nesse contexto de discussão que as implicações pedagógicas para a infância foram consideradas. This paper presents some considerations from the anthropological perspectives of Paulo Freire and John Dewey, taking the first author as a reader of the second one, at least by indirect means of Anísio Teixeira, and it focuses basically two fundamental notions: Freire’s incompleteness and Dewey’s growth. Discussing details and consequences of these theoretical concepts for education, we considered the criticisms of the authors in relation to banking education and / or traditional education in order to present the arguments that were drawn up in favor of a new education. It was in this context of discussion that the pedagogical implications for children were considered. (shrink)

Peter Hare published two books about philosophy, both co-authored with his colleague Edward Madden. The first was Evil and the Problem of God, while the second was titled Causing, Perceiving and Believing: An Examination of the Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel), published in 97 . Hare's choice of Ducasse for extended study tells us a great deal about Hare's own interests. Ducasse was a confessedly analytic philosopher who advocated several views extending classical American themes. From metaphysics (...) and epistemology to ethics and aesthetics, Ducasse struck Hare as a philosopher worthy of promotion and preservation.Hare and Madden had an interest in Ducasse for some years.1 However, there .. (shrink)

According to the cognitive penetrability hypothesis, our beliefs, desires, and possibly our emotions literally affect how we see the world. This book elucidates the nature of the cognitive penetrability and impenetrability hypotheses, assesses their plausibility, and explores their philosophical consequences. It connects the topic's multiple strands (the psychological findings, computationalist background, epistemological consequences of cognitive architecture, and recent philosophical developments) at a time when the outcome of many philosophical debates depends on knowing whether and how cognitive states can influence perception. (...) All sixteen chapters were written especially for the book. The first chapters provide methodological and conceptual clarification of the topic and give an account of the relations between penetrability, encapsulation, modularity, and cross-modal interactions in perception. Assessments of psychological and neuroscientific evidence for cognitive penetration are given by several chapters. Most of the contributions analyse the impact of cognitive penetrability and impenetrability on specific philosophical topics: high-level perceptual contents, the epistemological consequences of penetration, nonconceptual content, the phenomenology of late perception, metacognitive feelings, and action. The book includes a comprehensive introduction which explains the history of the debate, its key technical concepts (informational encapsulation, early and late vision, the perception-cognition distinction, hard-wired perceptual processing, perceptual learning, theory-ladenness), and the debate's relevance to current topics in the philosophy of mind and perception, epistemology, and philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

Abstract:In 1952, John Cage wrote 4′33″ which famously asked the performer not to play a single note: tacet. This provocative work raises a number of questions. In music—and by extension, music education—what does it mean to not do something? What does it mean to make no sound? More fundamentally, what is the nature of non-action, non-sound, and even nothingness in and of itself? Since Cage was influenced by Eastern philosophy, we journey to Asia in search of insights into nothingness (...) and associated notions of absence and negation. In particular, we draw on the writings of Daoist philosophers, principally Laozi, to examine a quartet of philosophical terms, namely, wu (nothing/ness), wuwei (non-action), wusheng (non-sound), and wuaile (neither sorrow nor joy). Using these ideas, we propose a Daoist-inspired philosophy of music education, one that emphasizes the usefulness (yong) of nothingness (wu). (shrink)

In 1984, John W. Yolton published Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid. His most recent book builds on that seminal work and greatly extends its relevance to issues in current philosophical debate. Perception and Reality examines the theories of perception implicit in the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers which centered on the question: How is knowledge of the body possible? That question raises issues of mind-body relation, the way that mentality links with physicality, and the nature of the (...) known world. In contrast to commonsense realism, which suggests that the world is as it appears to be, a more complex theory developed throughout this period. Yolton traces its evolution from Descartes to Kant, via Arnauld, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Yolton explains that the new theory postulated two interactive relations between perceivers and the physical world, one physical and causal, the other cognitive. An understanding of this double relation is important for an accurate construction of the history of philosophy. It is also important for contemporary thought because it suggests a way to account for representation (cognitivity) and realism at the same time. (shrink)

One of the central debates in current analytic philosophy of time is whether time consists only of relations of simultaneity, earlier and later (B-relations), or whether it also consists of properties of futurity, presentness and pastness (A-properties). If time consists only of B-relations, then all temporal determinations are permanent; if at anyone time it is the case that birth is later than Homer's birth, then it is ever after the case that Dante's birth is later than Homer's. The temporal position (...) of Dante's birth vis a vis Homer's is permanently fixed. Moreover, if B-relations are the only temporal determinations possessed by events, then each event, regardless of when it occurs, is equally as real as each other event. Each event sustains B-relations to other events, and thus in respect of its temporal determinations is ontologically undistinguished from each other event. Why should Dante's birth be "more real" than Homer's just because it is later than it? But if time also consists of A-properties, then some events are ontologically distinguished by virtue of their temporal determinations; the events that are or exist in the tensed sense, the events that possess the A-property of present- ness, have a reality not possessed by other events. All other events are no longer (are past) or are not yet (are future), and in this respect are deprived of the being, the presentness, possessed by the events that are. The A-properties possessed by events are impermanent temporal determinations; if an event possesses a certain A-property at one time, then there is another time at which the event will not have that A-property but some other A-property instead. First an event is future, then it is present, and finally it is past. This shows that the issue between the defenders of the B-theory and the defenders of the A-theory is of fundamental ontological importance. But analytic philosophers discuss this issue ,almost exclusively in terms of the language we use to describe the temporal determinations of events. They engage in what Quine calls "semantic ascent", i.e., redirecting their concern from the "things themselves" to the words we use to describe things. Defenders of the A-theory argue that tensed sentences and their tokens, sentences containing tensed copulas like "is", "was" and "will be" and adverbs like "now" and "at present", are untranslatable or unanalyzable into tenseless sentences about B- related events, and therefore that the tensed copulas and ad- verbs refer to A-properties of events. Defenders of the B-theory argue that tensed sentences or their tokens are translatable or analyzable into tenseless sentences about B-related events, and hence that the tensed sentences or tokens refer only to B-related events. While this semantic ascent is not without its advantages, it seems to me that additional light can be thrown on this subject if it is approached from a nonlinguistic phenomenological perspective. This approach is all the more needed since this particular issue in the philosophy of time has not been explicitly addressed by any of the practitioners of "phenomenology" (in the wide sense), such as Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty .Indeed, phenomenologists have generally seemed to be unaware of the debate between the A-theorists and B-theorists. This issue has been a concern exclusively of analytic philosophers (with the exception perhaps of the early 20th century British Idealist John McTaggart.) In this paper, I will point to a number of phenomenological facts that are pertinent to the debate. These facts all favor the A-theory. I shall make the case that the basic phenomenological truths about time simply cannot be accounted for by the B-theory . (shrink)

An Indexed Synopsis of the Grammar of Assent by John J. Toohey. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1906 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

Including three of his most famous and important essays,Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Essay onBentham, along with formative selections from Jeremy Benthamand John Austin, this volume provides a uniquely perspicuous viewof Mill's ethical and political thought. Contains Mill's most famous and influential works,Utilitarianism and On Liberty as well as hisimportant Essay on Bentham. Uses the 1871 edition of Utilitarianism, the last to bepublished in Mill's lifetime. Includes selections from Bentham and John Austin, the twothinkers who most influenced Mill. Introduction (...) written by Mary Warnock, a highly respected figurein 20th-century ethics in her own right. Provides an extensive, up-to-date bibliography with the bestscholarship on Mill, Bentham and Utilitarianism. (shrink)

This book provides an intellectual biography of Max Horkheimer during the early and middle phases of his life and analyzes his model of early Critical Theory.

In this book John Ziman seeks the answers to crucial questions facing scientists who need to change the direction of their careers.

This book addresses one of the fundamental topics in philosophy: the relation between appearance and reality. John Yolton draws on a rich combination of historical and contemporary material, ranging from the early modern period to present-day debates, to examine this central philosophical preoccupation, which he presents in terms of distinctions between phenomena and causes, causes and meaning, and persons and man. He explores in detail how Locke, Berkeley and Hume talk of appearances and their relation to reality, and offers (...) illuminating connections and comparisons with the work of contemporary philosophers such as Paul Churchland and John McDowell. He concludes by offering his own proposal for a 'realism of appearances', which incorporates elements of both Humean and Kantian thinking. His important study will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the history of philosophy, the history of ideas, and contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

Practical wisdom and judgment, rather than seen as ‘things’ hidden inside the mind, are best talked of, we suggest, as emerging developmentally within an unceasing flow of activities, in which practitioners are inextricably immersed. Following a performative line of thinking, we argue that when practitioners (namely, individuals immersed in a practice, experiencing their tasks through the emotions, standards of excellence and moral values the practice engenders or enacts) face a bewildering situation in which they do not know, initially at least, (...) how to proceed, the judgment they exercise emerges out of seeking to establish a new orientation to their puzzling surroundings. They do so through actively trying to be in touch with their felt emotions and moral sensibilities, while attempting to articulate linguistically the feelings experienced in order to get a clearer view of relevant aspects of the situation at hand. Coming to a judgment involves moving around within a landscape of possibilities, and in so doing, being spontaneously responsive to the consequences of each move, and assessing which one (or combination of moves) seems best in resolving the initial tension aroused in one’s initial confusion. (shrink)