I review recent work on Phenomenal Conservatism, the position introduced by Michael Huemer according to which if it seems that P to a subject S, in the absence of defeaters S has thereby some degree of justification for believing P.

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of (...) warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism (PC) is the internalist view that non-inferential justification rests on appearances. PC’s advocates have recently argued that seemings are also required to explain inferential justification. The most general and developed view to this effect is Huemer (2016)’s theory of inferential seemings (ToIS). Moretti (2018) has shown that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness, which makes PC open to sceptical challenges. In this paper I argue that ToIS is afflicted by a version of the same problem (...) and it is thus hostage to inferential scepticism. I also suggest a possible response on behalf of ToIS’s advocates. (shrink)

Crispin Wright maintains that the architecture of perceptual justification is such that we can acquire justification for our perceptual beliefs only if we have antecedent justification for ruling out any sceptical alternative. Wright contends that this principle doesn’t elicit scepticism, for we are non-evidentially entitled to accept the negation of any sceptical alternative. Sebastiano Moruzzi has challenged Wright’s contention by arguing that since our non-evidential entitlements don’t remove the epistemic risk of our perceptual beliefs, they don’t actually enable us to (...) acquire justification for these beliefs. In this paper I show that Wright’s responses to Moruzzi are ineffective and that Moruzzi’s argument is validated by probabilistic reasoning. I also suggest that Wright cannot answer Moruzzi’s challenge without weakening the support available for his conception of the architecture of perceptual justification. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics I into Portuguese, with a few notes, experimental glossary and introduction. The translation, which was made at 2003/4, was preliminary and its publication was intended to provide a didactic tool for courses as well as a provisional resource in research seminars. It needs some revision. I am currently working (slowly...) on the revision of the translation and a new revised one will surely appear at some point.

Crispin Wright’s entitlement theory holds that we have non-evidential justification for accepting propositions of a general type––which Wright calls “cornerstones”––that enables us to acquire justification for believing other propositions––those that we take to be true on the grounds of ordinary evidence. Entitlement theory is meant by Wright to deliver a forceful response to the sceptic who argues that we cannot justify ordinary beliefs. I initially focus on strategic entitlement, which is one of the types of entitlement that Wright has described (...) in more detail. I suggest that it is dubious that we are strategically entitled to accept cornerstones. After this, I focus on entitlement in general. I contend that, in important cases, non-evidential justification for accepting cornerstones cannot secure evidential justification for believing ordinary propositions. My argument rests on a probabilistic regimentation of the so-called “leaching problem”. (shrink)

In this chapter I shall address the question as to whether there exists a universal and atemporal justification for the claims made by a community that adopts a particular style of reasoning. I shall present a case study in which a claim made in the laboratory style of reasoning has no universal and atemporal justification. As I shall explain, Hacking justifies his belief that unobservable entities exist on the ground that they can be regularly manipulated by experimenters in order to (...) find out and produce various phenomena (experimental realism); he also maintains that no belief that our theories are true is required in order to be realist about unobservable entities. I shall argue that his justification is relative to the laboratory style of reasoning. Ultimately, from this case study I shall draw the important conclusion that the styles of reasoning project implies epistemic relativism. In the first part of this chapter, I shall analyse Hacking’s experimental realism in the light of the styles of reasoning project. I shall start by making these points: Hacking’s theory anti-realism denies the possibility of ranking styles of reasoning in terms of their capacity to explain phenomena; furthermore, Hacking is not successful in showing that his entity realism is justified for a community that does not adopt the laboratory style of reasoning. It will follow that the styles of reasoning project is in conflict with the claim that we know about unobservable entities. (shrink)

Experiences like pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenal character: they feel pleasant or unpleasant. Imperativism proposes to explain affective phenomenal character by appeal to imperative content, a kind of intentional content that directs rather than describes. We argue that imperativism is on the right track, but has been developed in the wrong way. There are two varieties of imperativism on the market: first-order and higher-order. We show that neither is successful, and offer in their place a new theory: reflexive (...) imperativism. Our proposal is that an experience P feels pleasant in virtue of being constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content, while an experience U feels unpleasant in virtue of being constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content : More of P!Less of U! If you need a slogan: experiences have affective phenomenal character in virtue of commanding us Get more of me! Get less of me! (shrink)

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to doubt that (...) conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument. (shrink)

I examine Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge in Posterior Analytics 71b 9-12 and try to understand how it relates to the sophistical way of knowing and to "kata sumbebekos knowledge". I claim that scientific knowledge of p requires knowing p by its appropriate cause, and that this appropriate cause is a universal (katholou) in the restricted sense Aristotle proposes in 73b 26-27 ff., i.e., an attribute coextensive with the subject (an extensional feature) and predicated of the subject in itself (an (...) intensional feature). Kata sumbebekos knowledge, on the other hand, can occur even when the predicate of a conclusion is coextensive with its subject and is proved by a convertible meson which is not the most appropriate from an explanatory standpoint. (shrink)

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces a contrast in (...) terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

A subject S's belief that Q is well-grounded if and only if it is based on a reason of S that gives S propositional justification for Q. Depending on the nature of S's reason, the process whereby S bases her belief that Q on it can vary. If S's reason is non-doxastic––like an experience that Q or a testimony that Q––S will need to form the belief that Q as a spontaneous and immediate response to that reason. If S's reason (...) is doxastic––like a belief that P––S will need to infer her belief that Q from it. The distinction between these two ways in which S's beliefs can be based on S's reasons is widely presupposed in current epistemology but––we argue in this paper––is not exhaustive. We give examples of quite ordinary situations in which a well-grounded belief of S appears to be based on S's reasons in neither of the ways described above. To accommodate these recalcitrant cases, we introduce the notion of enthymematic inference and defend the thesis that S can base a belief that Q on doxastic reasons P1, P2, …, Pn via inferring enthymematically Q from P1, P2, …, Pn. (shrink)

Deflationists about truth hold that the function of the truth predicate is to enable us to make certain assertions we could not otherwise make. Pragmatists claim that the utility of negation lies in its role in registering incompatibility. The pragmatist insight about negation has been successfully incorporated into bilateral theories of content, which take the meaning of negation to be inferentially explained in terms of the speech act of rejection. We implement the deflationist insight in a bilateral theory by taking (...) the meaning of the truth predicate to be explained by its inferential relation to assertion. We combine this account of the meaning of the truth predicate with a new diagnosis of the Liar Paradox: its derivation requires the truth rules to preserve evidence, but these rules only preserve commitment. The result is a novel inferential deflationist theory of truth, which solves the Liar Paradox in a principled manner. We end by showing that our theory and simple extensions thereof have the resources to axiomatize the internal logic of several supervaluational hierarchies, including Cantini’s. This solves open problems of Halbach (2011) and Horsten (2011). (shrink)

I discuss the exact meaning of the thesis according to which the object of scientific knowledge is necessary. The thesis is expressed by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, in his definition of scientific knowledge. The traditional interpretation understands this definition as depending on two parallel and independent requirements, the causality requirement and the necessity requirement. Against this interpretation, I try to show, through the examination of several passages that refer to the definition of scientific knowledge, that the necessity requirement specifies (...) more exactly the causality requirement: what cannot be otherwise is the explanatory relation between the explanandum and the cause by which it is what it is. (shrink)

This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but can't. For instance, why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran to the store for five minutes? Why is five pounds of books acceptable, but *five pounds of book not acceptable? What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a (...) swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth? And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous? The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect, plural and mass reference, measurement, and distributivity. In this book, Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains, connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology, and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above. (shrink)

I discuss the methodological passage in the begin- ning of Ethica Eudemia I.6 (1216b26-35), which has received attention in connection with Aristotle’s notion of dialectic and his methodology in Ethics. My central focus is not to discuss whether Aristotle is prescribing and using what has been called the method of endoxa. I will focus on how this passage coheres with the remaining parts of the same chapter, which also are advancing methodological remarks. My claim is that the meth- od of (...) Ethica Eudemia I.6 is in agreement with many features of Aristotle’s theory of explanation as presented in the Posterior Analytics: Aristotle’s main concern is a warning against misuses of explanatory arguments. (shrink)

Mindreading (or folk psychology, Theory of Mind, mentalizing) is the capacity to represent and reason about others’ mental states. The Simulation Theory (ST) is one of the main approaches to mindreading. ST draws on the common-sense idea that we represent and reason about others’ mental states by putting ourselves in their shoes. More precisely, we typically arrive at representing others’ mental states by simulating their mental states in our own mind. This entry offers a detailed analysis of ST, considers theoretical (...) arguments and empirical data in favour of and against it, discusses its philosophical implications, and illustrates some alternatives to it. (shrink)

This paper discusses some issues concerning the definition of moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics 1106b 36- 1107a 2. It is reasonable to expect from a definition the complete enumeration of the relevant features of its definiendum, but the definition of moral virtue seems to fail in doing this task. One might be tempted to infer that this definition is intended by Aristotle as a mere preliminary account that should be replaced by a more precise one. The context of the argument (...) Aristotle develops in Book II of his NE give us some help. I argue that the definition of moral virtue, once considered in the light of its context, is far from being an incomplete and provisional account: it rather introduces coherently the same notion of moral virtue that Aristotle employs in other texts (as in Nicomachean Ethics VI 13). My main proposal is that the way in which "hexis" is understood in the context of previous chapters allows Aristotle to encode in it the notion of an ability to do the right things regularly. Thus, moral virtue is a "hexis prohairetike etc.", but the ability to do the right things regularly is already encoded in the occurrence of "hexis" in the definiens account of moral virtue, as if Aristotle meant "hexis [praktike] prohairetike". (shrink)

Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. John Campbell’s relational theory is a prominent representative of the latter (...) approach, and the main focus of this paper. We argue that Campbell’s theory is problematic for a variety of reasons, through which runs a common thread: most of the problems that the theory is faced with arise from the relational view of perception that he endorses, and, more generally, they suggest that perceptual experience is not sufficient for an analysis of joint attention. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contrast between scientific knowledge and opinion as it is presented by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics A.33. Aristotle's contrast is formulated in terms of understanding or not understanding some "necessary items". I claim that the contrast can only be understood in terms of explanatory relevance. The "necessary items" are middle terms (or explanatory factors) that are necessary for the fully appropriate explanation. This approach gives a coherent interpretation of each step in the chapter.

Affective experiences such as pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenology: they feel pleasant. This type of phenomenology has a loopy regulatory profile: it often motivates us to act a certain way, and these actions typically end up regulating our affective experiences back. For example, the pleasure you get by tasting your morning coffee motivates you to drink more of it, and this in turn results in you obtaining another pleasant gustatory experience. In this article, we argue that reflexive imperativism (...) is the only intentionalist account of affective phenomenology—probably, the only account at all—that is able to make sense of its loopy regulatory profile. (shrink)

Tradução para o Português de Ethica Nicomachea VI.

This paper explores some aspects of Aristotle’s notion of subject for predications. I examine the argument Aristotle develops in Posterior Analytics I.22, 83a1-14. I argue that the notion advanced by Aristotle in that argument is different from the one found in his Categories, although they are far from being incompatible with each other. I also add some philological considerations to justify the Portuguese translation of “hypokeimenon” as “algo subjacente” (“underlying thing”) instead of “sujeito” (“subject”).

I discuss the notion of education or educatedness (paideia) involved in the ‘educated human being’ (pepaideumenos), which Aristotle presents at the beginning of his Parts of Animals and a few other passages. The competence of educated human beings makes them able to evaluate some aspects of the explanations in a given domain without having a determinate knowledge about the specific subject-matter in that domain. I examine how such a competence is possible and how it is related to other critical abilities (...) which Aristotle usually ascribes to the science of being qua being. Discuto a noção de educação ou cultura (paideia) envolvida na figura do ser humano cultivado (pepaideumenos), que Aristóteles apresenta no início do tratado As Partes dos Animais e em algumas outras passagens. A competência do ser humano cultivado o habilita a avaliar certo aspecto das explicações propostas em um dado domínio, sem requerer dele um conhecimento determinado sobre o assunto específico do mesmo domínio. Examino de que modo essa competência é possível e como ela se articula a outras habilidades críticas que Aristóteles geralmente associa à ciência do ser enquanto ser. (shrink)

A comparative analysis of the different notions of ‘ways of thinking’ introduced by philosophers. A guiding thread running through historical epistemology in an attempt to unify the researches of its authors. A comprehensive study of Ian Hacking’s ‘project of styles of reasoning’ and its implications for the relativism.

Tradução preliminar em pré-print. A Tradução definitiva é a de 2009.

Evaluativism (Carruthers 2018) and reflexive imperativism (Barlassina and Hayward 2019) agree that valence—the (un)pleasantness of experiences—is a natural kind shared across all affective states. But they disagree about what valence is. For evaluativism, an experience is pleasant/unpleasant in virtue of representing its worldly object as good/bad; for reflexive imperativism, an experience is pleasant/unpleasant in virtue of commanding its subject to get more/less of itself. I argue that reflexive imperativism is superior to evaluativism according to Carruthers’s own standards. He maintains that (...) a theory of valence should account for its phenomenology and role in imagination-based decision-making. I show that it is reflexive imperativism, rather than evaluativism, that fits this explanatory bill. (shrink)

A 'self-refutation argument' is any argument which aims at showing that a certain thesis is self-refuting. This study was the first book-length treatment of ancient self-refutation and provides a unified account of what is distinctive in the ancient approach to the self-refutation argument, on the basis of close philological, logical and historical analysis of a variety of sources. It examines the logic, force and prospects of this original style of argumentation within the context of ancient philosophical debates, dispelling various misconceptions (...) concerning its nature and purpose and elucidating some important differences which exist both within the ancient approach to self-refutation and between that approach, as a whole, and some modern counterparts of it. In providing a comprehensive account of ancient self-refutation, the book advances our understanding of influential and debated texts and arguments from philosophers like Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Academic sceptics, the Pyrrhonists and Augustine. (shrink)

According to constitutivism, we can justify the authority of aims and norms on the ground that they are inescapable. Constitutivist views divide between ambitious and modest ones. According to ambitious constitutivism, the inescapability of aims grounds their unconditional authority, whereas according to modest constitutivism, the inescapability of aims only grounds their conditional authority. Either way, both forms of constitutivism share the assumption that inescapability grounds authority, which in turn presupposes that at the foundation of normativity we find aims and norms (...) that can be evaluated as having or lacking authority. In this paper I shall defend a form of constitutivism that rejects this assumption. According to this view, which I shall call Hinge Constitutivism, at the foundation of epistemic normativity we find an aim, the truth-aim, that is altogether beyond the evaluation in terms of the ordinary notion of authority. Moreover, I shall argue that to aim at truth is a condition of possibility for justifying the authority of any other aims or norms. In this sense, to aim at truth is a hinge of deliberation. (shrink)

We present epistemic multilateral logic, a general logical framework for reasoning involving epistemic modality. Standard bilateral systems use propositional formulae marked with signs for assertion and rejection. Epistemic multilateral logic extends standard bilateral systems with a sign for the speech act of weak assertion (Incurvati and Schlöder 2019) and an operator for epistemic modality. We prove that epistemic multilateral logic is sound and complete with respect to the modal logic S5 modulo an appropriate translation. The logical framework developed provides the (...) basis for a novel, proof-theoretic approach to the study of epistemic modality. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of the approach, we show how the framework allows us to reconcile classical logic with the contradictoriness of so-called Yalcin sentences and to distinguish between various inference patterns on the basis of the epistemic properties they preserve. (shrink)

I discuss the argument Aristotle ascribes to Parmenides at Physics 186a23-32. I discuss (i) the reasons why Aristotle considers it as eristic and inconclusive and (i) the solution (lusis) Aristotle proposes against it.

The assumption that coercion is largely responsible for our legal systems’ efficacy is a common one. I argue that this assumption is false. But I do so indirectly, by objecting to a thesis I call “(Compliance)”, which holds that most citizens comply with most legal mandates most of the time at least partly in virtue of being motivated by legal systems’ threats of sanctions and other unwelcome consequences. The relationship between (Compliance) and the efficacy of legal systems is explained in (...) section 1. There I also show that (Compliance) must be rejected for it relies on unsubstantiated empirical assumptions. In section 2, I claim that an alternative, and more refined, formulation of (Compliance) also lacks adequate support. I conclude with a few general remarks about the centrality of coercion in our thought and talk about legal systems. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hegel’s account of the animal organism as it is presented in the Philosophy of Nature, with a special focus on its normative implications. I argue that the notion of “organisation” is fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity. The paper starts by showing how a Hegelian approach takes up the scientific image of organism and assigns a basic explanatory role to the notion of “organisation” in its understanding living beings. Moving from this premise, the paper turns to (...) the group of accounts in contemporary theoretical biology known as “organisational accounts”, which offer a widely debated strategy for naturalizing teleology and normativity in organisms. As recent scholarship recognizes, these accounts explicitly rely on insights from Kant and Post-Kantianism. I make the historical and conceptual argument that Hegel’s view of the organism shares several basic commitments with OAs, especially regarding the notion of “organisational closure”. I assess the account of normativity that such accounts advance and its implications for how we approach Hegel. Finally, I argue that the notion of “organisation” is more fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity than the Aristotelian notion of “Gattung” or “species”, which by contrast appears derivative – at least in the Philosophy of Nature and the Lectures – and does not play the central role in his account maintained by some scholars. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between change and the B-theory of time, sometimes also called the Scientific view of time, according to which reality is a four-dimensional spacetime manifold, where past, present and future things equally exist, and the present time and non-present times are metaphysically the same. I argue in favour of a novel response to the much-vexed question of whether there is change on the B-theory or not. In fact, B-theorists are often said (...) to hold a ‘static’ view of time. But this far from being innocent label: if the B-theory of time presents a model of temporal reality that is static, then there is no change on the B-theory. From this, one can reasonably think as follows: of course, there is change, so the B-theory must be false. What I plan to do in this paper is to argue that in some sense there is change on the B-theory, but in some other sense, there is no change on the B-theory. To do so, I present three instances of change: Existential Change, namely the view that things change with respect to their existence over time; Qualitative Change, the view that things change with respect to how they are over time; Propositional Change, namely the view that things (i.e. propositions) change with respect to truth value over time. I argue that while there is a reading of these three instances of change that is true on the B-theory, and so there is change on the B-theory in this sense, there is a B-theoretical reading of each of them that is not true on the B-theory, and therefore there is no change on the B-theory in this other sense. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the nature and the importance of a third kind of sophistic argument that is not always found in the classification of those arguments in the secondary literature. An argument of the third kind not only is a valid one, but is also constituted of true propositions. What makes it a sophistic argument is the fact that it produces a false semblance of scientific explanation: its explanation seems to be appropriate to the explanandum without being so. (...) Evidence from this kind of argument comes from Sophistic Refutations 11, and Brison’s attempt to square the circle should be counted as one of its instances. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda into Portuguese.

I discuss Aristotle's anomalous terminology in Physics A.1 (involving "universals" and "particulars") and its coherence with Aristotle's notion of scientific demonstration.

Public participation in scientific research has gained prominence in many scientific fields, but the theory of participatory research is still limited. In this paper, we suggest that the divergence of values and goals between academic researchers and public participants in research is key to analyzing the different forms this research takes. We examine two existing characterizations of participatory research: one in terms of public participants' role in the research, the other in terms of the virtues of the research. In our (...) view, each of these captures an important feature of participatory research but is, on its own, limited in what features it takes into account. We introduce an expanded conception of norms of collaboration that extends to both academic researchers and public participants. We suggest that satisfying these norms requires consideration of the two groups' possibly divergent values and goals, and that a broad characterization of participatory research that starts from participants' values and goals can motivate both public participants’ role in the research and the virtues of the research. The resulting framework clarifies the similarities and differences among participatory projects and can help guide the responsible design of such projects. (shrink)

That space and time should be integrated into a single entity, spacetime, is the great insight of Einstein's special theory of relativity, and leads us to regard spacetime as a fundamental context in which to make sense of the world around us. But it is not the only one. Causality is equally important and at least as far as the special theory goes, it cannot be subsumed under a fundamentally geometrical form of explanation. In fact, the agent of propagation of (...) causal influence is electromagnetic radiation. In this examination, the authors find support for a rationalist approach to physics, never neglecting experimentation, but rejecting a simple empiricist or positivist view of science. (shrink)

The two treatises Modus concionandi and Istructio pro concionatoribus were written by Gasparo Contarini for the preachers of Belluno between 1538 and 1541. With these works, Contarini explores three aspects of the predication. First, he focuses on a rhetorical issue: the language of the predication must be adequate for an inexpert audience. Second, he suggests to censure the most complex theological issues from the field of the predication since the audience could not understand such technical concepts like predestination and causal (...) bounds. Third, he reveals that the aim of the predication is to help a civil ethic and to avoid social disorders – like those triggered by Augustinian preachers. In the texts Contarini also shows his debt to Pietro Pomponazzi, who in his Tractatus and Apologia provided both a civic paradigm and an accusation of the bad preachers. (shrink)