Este artículo está motivado por el problema de la responsabilidad colectiva frente a las acciones cometidas por nuestros antepasados y por la pregunta acerca de la legitimidad de las demandas de perdón. Acudiendo al universo conceptual heredado de Hannah Arendt, en este texto se aboga por el ejercicio de la capacidad de juicio como detonante tanto de la demanda de perdón como de la responsabilidad colectiva. El perdón se presenta así no solo como una categoría moral sino fundamentalmente política, imprescindible (...) para reconciliarse con lo acontecido y mirar al futuro con esperanza. (shrink)

Parrhesia first appeared in Greek literature in the fifth century BC. Essentially, parrhesia refers to being granted the liberty to speak freely and openly without being deemed insubordinate to someone of greater authority and could otherwise lead to punishment or death. Parrhesia allows one to speak truth to power, essentially benefiting the one in power who lacks insight into the truth of a situation. In his book, Filosoferen met kinderen op de basisschool: een complexe activiteit, Berrie Heesen describes how doing (...) philosophy with children is a form of parrhesia in that it encourages children to speak freely and openly. Parrhesia changes the adult/child relationship. Taken seriously by adults as full-fledged human beings creates a space for children to take themselves seriously while also being held responsible for what they think and feel. By giving reasons for their thoughts and feelings, and listening to those of their peers, children not only become critical listeners of others but also of themselves. They learn that what they think and feel matters — that they matter in the eyes of others and themselves, raising their self-esteem as well. In the process, children also develop their own touchstones of reality. Moreover, (self-) scrutiny is essential to feeling whole and grounded in who we are, giving us a sense of purpose and direction. (shrink)

Este texto recoge una visión particular de la Filosofía del Derecho, en tanto situada y posicionada. Lo primero porque parte de la experiencia y la subjetividadde quien le da voz. Lo segundo porque en el texto se defiende una concepción instrumentalista del Derecho con fines contra-hegemónicos. Paraestructurar la exposición de esta particular visión iusfilosófica se utiliza la distinción entre la Filosofía como teoría y como práctica. En el apartado relativoa la Filosofía como teoría se analizan diversas posturas sobre la relación (...) entre el Derecho y el Poder. En el apartado de la Filosofía como práctica seincluye la labor de la Clínica Jurídica por la Justicia Social de la UPV/EHU en el diseño de estrategias antisubordiscriminatorias. (shrink)

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En el presente trabajo abordamos actuaciones administrativas enmarcadas en la Dirección de Espectáculos Públicos (DEP) de la Municipalidad de Córdoba. Particularmente, nos preguntamos por los sujetos encargados de implementar las políticas de esta dirección (inspectores) y la formación que adquieren para el ejercicio de prácticas administrativas de control y fiscalización de “casas de fiestas infantiles” y locales de diversión nocturna (bares, discotecas, bailes). Las preguntas que guían el análisis son las siguientes: ¿Cómo se adquieren los conocimientos necesarios para “ser inspector (...) municipal” y cuáles son los escenarios y modalidades de transmisión? ¿Cuáles son los saberes que circulan, se movilizan y son (re)apropiados en esos espacios? Y, finalmente, ¿qué sujetos se construyen en estos procesos (“inspectores”, “especialistas”, “capacitadores”)? Como fuente de reflexión empírica, consideramos actuaciones administrativas que tienen lugar en la DEP, junto con los cursos de capacitación en “Inspectoría General” ofrecidos a los agentes municipales que se desempeñan en aquella Dirección. Los materiales utilizados en el análisis provienen de registros de observaciones participantes realizadas en la DEP, en un curso de capacitación, y entrevistas a funcionarios e inspectores municipales. Las argumentaciones vertidas a lo largo del artículo pretenden contribuir al estudio de los procesos de formación continua del Estado municipal cordobés, a partir de una indagación etnográfica en torno a actuaciones administrativas y formas de transmisión de conocimientos para determinados ejercicios de poder estatal. (shrink)

Nel 1488 Laura Cereta compone una lettera indirizzata a Bibulus Sempronius, al quale scrive una risposta indignata. Secondo Cereta, quest’uomo debole, spudorato e fuorviato non è in grado di riconoscere le virtù femminili; in più non è a conoscenza di importanti figure femminili prosperate in passato e non si mostra il doveroso rispetto nei confronti delle donne intellettuali. Per questi motivi, viene esaminata la difesa da parte dell’autrice delle capacità intellettuali diachroniche delle donne, nonché la contestualizzazione della comprensione e dell’integrazione (...) dei valori umanistici nella sua opera. Inoltre, Cereta sottolinea la necessità dell’educazione femminile e il diritto delle donne ad essere riconosciute intellettualmente uguali accanto agli uomini illustri. (shrink)

Are there nonexistent objects, i.e., objects that do not exist? Some examples often cited are: Zeus, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes, Vulcan (the hypothetical planet postulated by the 19th century astronomer Le Verrier), the perpetual motion machine, the golden mountain, the fountain of youth, the round square, etc. Some important philosophers have thought that the very concept of a nonexistent object is contradictory (Hume) or logically ill-formed (Kant, Frege), while others (Leibniz, Meinong, the Russell of Principles of Mathematics) have embraced it wholeheartedly. (...) This entry is an examination of the many questions which arise in connection with the view that there are nonexistent objects. The following are particularly salient: What reasons are there (if any) for thinking that there are nonexistent objects? If there are nonexistent objects, then what kind of objects are they? How can they be characterized? Is it possible to provide a consistent theory of nonexistent objects? What is the explanatory force of a consistent theory of nonexistent objects (if such a thing is possible)? (shrink)

This article considers aspects of a development aid that provides medical support to strengthen pediatric orthopedics in Rwanda. We present part of the Afriquia foundation work, a nonprofit foundation from Poland involved in supporting the medical sector in Rwanda as a sign of global solidarity and the human right to health. The main foundation's activity is the treatment of orthopedic problems among Rwandan citizens. We present a case study of two children under the care of the Afiquia foundation. 11‐year‐old Seraphine (...) treated due to the consequences of right tibia osteomyelitis and 11‐year‐old Lavi suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta. Both children were treated surgically in Poland due to Rwanda's lack of treatment possibilities. After the applied treatment, Seraphine walks correctly without crutches and can attend school and thrive among her peers. Lavi has not sustained any fragility fracture since the surgery in Poland. He is healthy and constantly ongoing his rehabilitation including gait training. The described cases initiated development aid in Rwanda, supplying hospitals with orthopedic implants and training medical staff. The growing number of humanitarian crises across the globe and the people affected requires increasing organizations involved in providing relief. The emphasis should be on global education, aiming to make the recipients reflect and prepare them to face humanitarian crises. (shrink)

In the past thirty years or so, the doctrine that actions are events has become an essential, and sometimes unargued, part of the received view in the philosophy of action, despite the efforts of a few philosophers to undermine the consensus. For example, the entry for Agency in a recently published reference guide to the philosophy of mind begins with the following sentence: A central task in the philosophy of action is that of spelling out the differences between events in (...) general and those events that fall squarely into the category of human action. There is no consensus about what events are. But it is generally agreed that, whatever events may prove to be, actions are a species or a class of events. We believe that the received view is mistaken: actions are not events. We concede that for most purposes, the kind of categorial refinement which is involved in either affirming or denying that actions are events is frankly otiose. Our common idiom does not stress the difference between actions and events, at least not in general terms, because it has no need to. Perhaps it sounds a little odd to say that some events are performed; but if we balked at describing, say, the abdication of Edward VIII as one of the politically significant events in Britain in 1936, it could not be for metaphysical reasons. And since actions, like events, are datable — though often, as we shall see, only imprecisely — actions are said to take place and to occur. But an important class of actions consist in moving something; indeed, according to many philosophers, every action consists in moving something. And when we consider actions of this sort from a theoretical point of view it becomes imperative to distinguish between actions and events. Or so we shall argue. (shrink)

Beginning with a historical overview of relativism, from Pythagoras in ancient Greece to Derrida and postmodernism, Maria Baghramian explores the resurgence of relativism throughout the history of philosophy. She then turns to the arguments for and against the many subdivisions of relativism, including Kuhn and Feyerabend's ideas of relativism in science, Rorty's relativism about truth, and the conceptual relativism of Quine and Putnam. Baghramian questions whether moral relativism leads to moral indifference or even nihilism, and whether feminist epistemology's concerns (...) about the very notion of objectivity can be considered a form of relativism. She concludes the relativism debate by assessing the recent criticisms such as Quine's argument from translation and Davidson's claim that even the motivations behind relativism are unintelligible. Finding these criticisms lacking, Baghramian proposes a moderate form of pluralism which addresses the legitimate worries that give rise to relativism without incurring charges of nihilism or anarchy. (shrink)

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to (...) social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

A Philosophy to Live By highlights Murdoch's distinctive conception of philosophy as a spiritual or existential practice and enlists the resources of her thought to explore a wide range of thinkers and debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics.

Continuing Franz Boas' work to establish anthropology as an academic discipline in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, Alfred L. Kroeber re-defined culture as a phenomenon sui generis. To achieve this he asked geneticists to enter into a coalition against hereditarian thoughts prevalent at that time in the US. The goal was to create space for anthropology as a separate discipline within academia, distinct from other disciplines. To this end he crossed the boundary separating anthropology from biology (...) in order to secure the boundary. His notion of culture, closely bound to the concept of heredity, saw it as independent of biological heredity (culture as superorganic) but at the same time as a heredity of another sort. The paper intends to summarise the shifting boundaries of anthropology at the beginning of the twentieth century, and to present Kroeber?s ideas on culture, with a focus on how the changing landscape of concepts of heredity influenced his views. The historical case serves to illustrate two general conclusions: that the concept of culture played and plays different roles in explaining human existence; that genetics and the concept of Weismannian hard inheritance did not have an unambiguous unidirectional historical effect on the vogue for hereditarianism at that time; on the contrary, it helped to establish culture in Kroeber's sense, culture as independent of heredity. (shrink)

The article addresses the question whether culture evolves in a Lamarckian manner. I highlight three central aspects of a Lamarckian concept of evolution: the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the transformational pattern of evolution, and the concept of directed changes. A clear exposition of these aspects shows that a system can be a Darwinian variational system instead of a Lamarckian transformational one, even if it is based on inheritance of acquired characteristics and/or on Lamarckian directed changes. On this basis, I apply (...) the three aspects to culture. Taking for granted that culture is a variational system, based on selection processes, I discuss in detail the senses in which cultural inheritance can be said to be Lamarckian and in which sense problem solving, a major factor in cultural change, leads to directed variation. (shrink)

Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant 'psychological conception', which says that motivating reasons are an agent's believing something; and (2) the 'non-psychological' conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties - in particular, difficulties concerning (...) 'error cases' (cases where what the agent believes is false); and difficulties concerning the explanation of action. Concerning error cases, I argue that if we are motivated by something believed that is true, what motivates us to act is a motivating reason. By contrast, if we are motivated by something believed that is false, then what motivates us to act is merely an apparent motivating reason. Either way, what motivates us is, as the non-psychological conception says, what we believe and not our believing it. I offer an account of the relation between motivating reasons and the explanation of action, and argue that this account helps bring out two important points. One is that the fact that we often do, and indeed sometimes must, use explanations such as 'He did it because he believed that p' does not vindicate the psychological conception of motivating reasons. The other is that endorsing the non-psychological conception of motivating reasons does not commit one to a non-factive view of explanations of action. (shrink)

Throughout his long intellectual life, Leibniz penned his reflections on Christian theology, yet this wealth of material has never been systematically gathered or studied. This book addresses an important and central aspect of these neglected materials—Leibniz’s writings on two mysteries central to Christian thought, the Trinity and the Incarnation. -/- From Antognazza’s study emerges a portrait of a thinker surprisingly receptive to traditional Christian theology and profoundly committed to defending the legitimacy of truths beyond the full grasp of human reason. (...) This view of Leibniz differs strikingly from traditional perceptions of the philosopher as a “hard” rationalist and quasi-deist. Antognazza also sets Leibniz’s writings in the context of the important theological controversies of his day. (shrink)

According to Donald Davidson, the very idea of a conceptual scheme is the third dogma of empiricism. In this paper I examine the ways in which this claim may be interpreted. I conclude by arguing that there remains an innocent version of the scheme -content distinction which is not motivated by empiricism and does not commit us to the pernicious type of dualism that Davidson rejects.

This work presents an analysis of the feeling of guilt and in particular of the cognitive defenses against it. It shows how the need to avoid or mitigate the feeling, with the suffering implied, affects the perception and judgment of oneself and others. It is in fact claimed that to copy with their guilt people try to alter the appraisal processes implied by the emotion. Once described the main cognitive components of the feeling of guilt, an analysis is offered of (...) the interventions of the cognitive defenses on such components, to alter the original appraisal processes underlying the feeling. (shrink)

Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The developments constituting this turn have been contemplated from different perspectives in technical and business publications (O’Reilly 2005), in treatises on convergence or participatory culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2009), and could be (...) usefully interrogated by means of political economy concepts such as the social factory and free labor (Terranova 2004). Marked, or rather symbolically constructed, by these discursive pickets lies a field of practice that the members of the participatory culture, the produsers (Bruns 2008) of open journalism, blogs, social networking sites and other characteristic Web 2.0 applications inhabit and animate with their everyday thought, decision making and action. This paper undertakes a theoretical exploration of the user practices emerging and consolidating around the new technological and organizational models making up Web 2.0. It is informed by a qualitative study of bloggers and Facebook users conducted through focus group methodology, although the concrete empirical data are not presented here. Rather, the analysis employs the concept of technologies of the self by Foucault (1988) as a heuristic device in order to situate Web 2.0 use, first, in a long history of culturally evolved forms of self-constitution and, second, in a complex matrix of relationships with other types of technologies, namely, those of production, sign systems and power. This conceptual choice, we argue, furnishes a study of Web 2.0 use, which holds in balance its liberatory potential and its susceptibility to new forms of domination, rationalization and commodification. (shrink)

In _Kazimierz Twardowski: A Grammar for Philosophy_ Maria van der Schaar shows the importance of Twardowski’s method, his philosophical grammar, for both the Lvov-Warsaw School, and analytic philosophy today.

It is commonly accepted that people can, and regularly do, deceive themselves. Yet closer examination reveals a set of conceptual puzzles that make self-deception difficult to explain. Applying the conditions for other-deception to self-deception generates what are known as the ‘paradoxes’ of belief and intention. Simply put, the central problem is how it is possible for me to believe one thing, and yet intentionally cause myself to simultaneously believe its contradiction. There are two general approaches taken by philosophers to account (...) for these puzzles about the self-deceptive state and the process of self-deception. ‘Partitioning’ strategies try to resolve the paradoxes by proposing that the mind is divided in some way that allows self-deception to occur. ‘Reformulation’ strategies suggest that the conditions we use to define self-deception should be modified so that the paradoxes do not arise at all. Both approaches are subject to criticism about the consequences of the strategies philosophers use, but recent cross-disciplinary analyses of self-deception may help shed light on the puzzles that underlie this phenomenon. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam is one of the world’s leading philosophers. His highly original and often provocative ideas have set the agenda for a variety of debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His now famous philosophical thought experiments, such as the ‘Twin earth’ and ‘the brains in the vat’ have become part of the established canon in philosophy and cognitive science. _Reading Putnam_ is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of (...) international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including: Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy Putnam’s developing views on perception. Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, _Reading Putnam_ is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In this article we aim to reconstruct some aspects of Davidson's idea of triangulation, and against this reconstruction, ask whether the idea is viciously circular. We begin by looking at the claim that without a triangularn setting, there is no saying what the cause of a being's responses is. In the first section we discuss the notion of relevant similarity, and what difference the presence of a second non‐linguistic being could make for the individuation of a common focus of attention. (...) In the second section we look at the role of a second person in language‐acquisition. It is important that being corrected to ‘go on as others do’ does not yet presuppose thought, and similarity standards can be applied to a learner's reactions even before she is aware of these standards. We also show why Davidson is not committed to any consensus view of correctness. In the last section we discern three charges of circularity that can be levelled against the idea of triangulation. We argue that Davidson can respond to the first two charges, and point to a way of answering the third. But the response we propound raises a new question, namely, why does the second being have to be a speaker or thinker even before the learner is aware of the three points of the triangle? (shrink)

Concealed questions are determiner phrases that are naturally paraphrased as embedded questions (e.g., John knows the capital of Italy ≈ John knows what the capital of Italy is). This paper offers a novel account of the interpretation of concealed questions, which assumes that an entity-denoting expression α may be type-shifted into an expression ?z.P(α), where P is a contextually determined property, and z ranges over a contextually determined domain of individual concepts. Different resolutions of P and the domain of z (...) yield a wide range of concealed question interpretations, some of which were not noted previously. On the other hand, principled constraints on the resolution process prevent overgeneration. (shrink)

This article discusses pragmatic aspects of our interpretation of intensional constructions like questions and prepositional attitude reports. In the first part, it argues that our evaluation of these constructions may vary relative to the identification methods operative in the context of use. This insight is then given a precise formalization in a possible world semantics. In the second part, an account of actual evaluations of questions and attitudes is proposed in the framework of bi-directional optimality theory. Pragmatic meaning selections are (...) explained as the result of specific rankings of potentially conflicting generation and interpretation constraints. (shrink)

The relationship between aesthetic value and other moral and cognitive values has been a key theme within contemporary aesthetic discussion. In this article, I explore once again the implications of this relationship, but from what I think might be a different angle. With few exceptions, notably Dominic Lopes, most of the contributions to this issue have dealt with the impact that moral or cognitive values could possibly have on the overall aesthetic value of a work of art. In this article, (...) I explore instead how aesthetic properties or merits could play a role in explaining moral and cognitive properties. To do so, I first offer some examples that I think may reasonably exemplify the phenomenon we are considering. Second, I argue that a proper account of interactionism should meet at least two constraints: the relevance constraint and the autonomy constraint. Finally, I try to clarify how it is possible that aesthetic properties substantially contribute to other values by appealing to the notions of expression and the affective character of aesthetic properties. (shrink)

This volume breaks new grounds by bringing together a great variety of innovative contributions on triangulation, epistemology, and mind. The notion of triangulation, developed by Donald Davidson during the last two decades of his life, has changed our understanding of the relationship between subjective, intersubjective, and objective, and shed new light on concepts such as externalism, internalism, communication, interpretation, and language. At the same time, however, it has been strongly criticized for several aspects. The papers collected in this volume written (...) by established contributors aim to provide new insights into the contemporary debate on triangulation. The upshot is not only a deeper understanding of Davidson s ideas but also a new appreciation of some central problems of epistemology and the philosophy of mind with regard to adjoining disciplines such as, for instance, cognitive sciences and the philosophy of language.". (shrink)