This article provides a state of the art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions, and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics, and of the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is (...) finally urged that the most promising approaches - and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments - are deflationary. In particular, a defence is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation. (shrink)

This article provides a state-of-the-art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics and the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is finally urged that the (...) most promising approaches—and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments—are deflationary. In particular, a defense is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation. (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

In the logic of theory change, the standard model is AGM, proposed by Alchourrón et al. (J Symb Log 50:510–530, 1985 ). This paper focuses on the extension of AGM that accounts for contractions of a theory by a set of sentences instead of only by a single sentence. Hansson (Theoria 55:114–132, 1989 ), Fuhrmann and Hansson (J Logic Lang Inf 3:39–74, 1994 ) generalized Partial Meet Contraction to the case of contractions by (possibly non-singleton) sets of sentences. In this (...) paper we present the possible worlds semantics for partial meet multiple contractions. (shrink)

Individualism is one of the fundamental traits of our time, based on an emphatic and recurrent defence of individual freedom, as experienced by consciousness. This point of view seems to entail a refuse of all kinds of transcendence, cosmological or onto-theological, characterized by an authoritarian and undisputed heteronomy. However, this perspective does not take into account a third type of transcendence, one that occurs in that radical immanence, in the core of individual freedom and autonomy. This type of transcendence takes (...) shape as an ethical and aesthetical relationship carved in the heart of each individual human being, each one of his particular conscious States and the simultaneous consciousness of his Humanity. The aim of this essay is to give an understanding of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity and its philosophy of Revelation, as a reflection on religion and its anthropological origins. In our viewpoint, The Essence of Christianity is an effort to ascertain the genetic elements of human religiosity and clarify its meaning as a movement of reconnecting the human individual with a transcendence that is his own Humanity, given in the immanence of his conscious life. Religion remains a law of transcendence, as the feeling that binds the individual to his Humanity, an everlasting commandment coming from an Otherness that projects itself as a horizon to his free actions. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar algumas fotografias de Miguel Rio Branco que, diferente de muitos de seus predecessores que atuaram na documentação de determinados grupos sociais no Brasil, buscou romper com a representação do Outro segundo uma visão externa, estereotipada e unívoca. Ao documentar grupos marcadamente oprimidos como prostituas e moradores de ruas, ele produziu não apenas imagens libertas do olhar romântico predominante entre fotógrafos viajantes que percorreram o território brasileiro a partir da segunda metade do século XIX, mas, (...) sobretudo, narrativas visuais que transcendem a função exclusivamente informativa e, por vezes, denuncista das fotografias dos dramas sociais do país realizadas em meados do século XX por fotojornalistas nacionais ou estrangeiros. (shrink)

No presente texto propomos uma perspectiva multiespecífica para a análise da biopolítica. Partindo da situação da emergência da pandemia do COVID-19, tomada dentro do contexto das mutações ecológicas do Antropoceno, argumentamos que, para além da atenção voltada às operações das diversas experiências e dispositivos biopolíticos sobre o corpo humano – corpo individual ou corpo social – deve-se trilhar por uma via expandida que leve também em consideração, conjuntamente (e não por exclusão), os efeitos dessas operações sobre formas de vida outras-que-humanas, (...) tomando termos como meio ambiente e natureza não apenas pelo prisma de serem recursos geridos finalizando a condução da conduta humana, mas como meios vivos, igualmente. (shrink)

1Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TB, UKScience Without Laws Ronald Giere Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 1999 x + 285 Hardback£17.50.

These are the introduction chapters to the forthcoming collection of essays published by Springer (Synthese Library) and entitled Probabilities, Causes and Propensities in Physics.

It is still a matter of controversy whether the Principle of the Common Cause (PCC) can be used as a basis for sound causal inference. It is thus to be expected that its application to quantum mechanics should be a correspondingly controversial issue. Indeed the early 90’s saw a flurry of papers addressing just this issue in connection with the EPR correlations. Yet, that debate does not seem to have caught up with the most recent literature on causal inference generally, (...) which has moved on to consider the virtues of a generalised PCC-inspired condition, the so-called Causal Markov Condition (CMC). In this paper we argue that the CMC is an appropriate benchmark for debating possible causal explanations of the EPR correlations. But we go on to take issue with some pronouncements on EPR by defenders of the CMC. (shrink)

The concept of eudaimonia put forward by Aristotle in the first Book of his Nicomachean Ethics reflects an attempt to synthesize and clarify a well known concept in the Greek society, in popular as well as in more restricted intellectual circles, giving it a new scope and conceptual consistency. Ordinarily translated as happiness, well-being or prosperity, this concept frequently had a subjective sense, describing the lives of those who lived well or were eudaimon; but it also had an objective sense, (...) establishing a life conducting rule for everyone who wanted to be happy or eudaimon. In the present paper we give an account of the meaning and operative range of the concept of eudaimonia and show the eudaimonia's guiding role in the Aristotelian ethical project, namely as its founding principle and final horizon, its relations with the good and virtue, as well as with the nature of man and the generation of a new modality of being. Finally, we establish that the concept of eudaimonia is central to an ethics seen as a life project. (shrink)

This paper intends to give a critical reading of Jean-Paul Sartre’s treatment of inter-consciousness relationship as presented in his work L'être et le néant, namely in the chapter L'existence d'autrui. Our main objective is to understand the treatment Sartre gave the referred issue in that particular work, but also to show that his theoretical standpoint falls short on a true determination of the meaning of the experience of Otherness for consciousness. Our method for approaching Sartre’s views stands on a detailed (...) reading of the author’s own analyses, trying to show their limited scope and providing a different, less conflictual treatment and interpretation for the presented data. In Sartre’s view, consciousness is not inhabited by an ego, that is, it doesn’t have an ego until one becomes an object to it, similar to the remaining objects of the world, which occurs with the Other’s entry in the world. That being, Sartre’s fundamental problem is to know how is it possible for consciousness to constitute an ego as an object - as an object among other objects, but whose experience is, for consciousness, different from the one it makes of all other objects -, and, on a second step, to state its identity with that ego, i.e., to be that ego, without loosing, in the process, its subjective spontaneity and freedom. Taken as a subject/object kind of relation, as Sartre affirms it, the inter-consciousness relationship is condemned to failure, doomed to be a permanent struggle for domination of one over an other. Our analysis of the sartrian data as put forward in L'Être et le néant will show that Sartre’s thesis about inter-consciousness relationship is one-sided and that a more comprehensive interpretation of the above-mentioned relationship is possible, an interpretation based in the view that envisaging the Other as an object is founded on an anticipation of its subjectivity and of consciousness’ own subjectivity, that is, on a founding intersubjective relationship. According to our viewpoint, if it is true that an ego can be an object, it is already as a degraded ego and not as the ego properly said, born out of a relationship between subjects. The experience of Othemess shows consciousness, originally and immediately, what it can and should be, and that being has a positivity that remains an other for a concrete, knowable ego. That founding experience, which takes place at an affective level, has the meaning of an experience of the limits which, when surpassed, will allow consciousness to reach a higher dignity of being. Therefore it is as anticipation and project, as desire, as afectivity, that the relationship to an other takes place, as a pure relationality without masks, and not as a dialectical conflict, as Sartre intends to show with his occasionally convincing arguments. (shrink)

RESUMO: A presente incapacidade de o ser humano estar em casa no mundo encontrou expressão numa crise “ecológica” que possui elementos éticos, políticos e ontológicos. Partindo de uma breve elaboração do sentido dessa crise “ecológica” e da sua relação com a própria constituição do ser do humano, este artigo procura traçar um percurso, no quadro do pensamento arendtiano, da relação entre o sentido do ser do humano, a questão da banalidade do mal, a atividade de pensar e o surgimento da (...) consciência moral. Para tanto, o texto faz uso de ferramentas de análise e de descrição fenomenológico-existenciais, para chegar a um tipo de normatividade que não brota de uma necessidade formal dada, mas da própria contingência da fatualidade existencial, isto é, da liberdade, a qual se estabelece como condição de toda a ação, descobrindo-lhe assim a sua própria medida. ABSTRACT: The human being’s current inability to be at home in the world has found expression in an “ecological” crisis which has ethical, political and ontological elements. Beginning with a brief elaboration on the meaning of that “ecological” crisis and its relation with the human’s own constitution of being, this paper aims at drawing a path, within Arendtian thought, between the meaning of the being of humans, the issue of the banality of evil, thinking and the emergence of conscience. To that effect, this paper uses phenomenological-existential tools of analysis and description to arrive at a type of normativity that emerges not from any kind of formal necessity, but from the existential factuality’s contingency itself, that is, from freedom, which is established as a condition for all action, thus finding it its own measure. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem o propósito de apresentar alguns desenvolvimentos teóricos e metodológicos operados na formulação do projeto intelectual de Michel Foucault denominado História do Pensamento. Perfazemos em linhas gerais os deslocamentos operados por Foucault para estabelecer uma determinação recíproca entre experiência e pensamento.

The ecological crisis is endangering life on Earth as we know it, giving rise to multiple protests, strikes and marches around the world, most of them lead by children and teenagers. The aim of this paper is to argue for the legitimacy of the presence of children and teenagers in political life in the current state of the ecological crisis through a seemingly paradoxical kind of participation: civil disobedience, i.e. refusal to participate. The paper will start by addressing the need (...) to think the ecological crisis and analyze its origins; it will then consider the significance of the role performed by children and teenagers in the political stances regarding the crisis on the basis of Hannah Arendt’s ontological-political thought. (shrink)

IntroductionThe idea of video recording in the operating room with panoramic cameras and microphones is a new concept that is changing the approach to medical activities in the OR. However, VR in the OR has brought up many concerns regarding patient privacy and has highlighted legal and ethical issues that were never previously exposed.AimTo review the literature concerning these aspects and provide a better ethical and legal understanding of the new challenges concerning VR in the OR.ConclusionsThere is a disparity between (...) the two main legal models concerning VR in the OR, namely the European legal system ) and the American legal framework ). This difference mainly deals with two distinct bioethical paradigms: GDPR places a strong emphasis on protecting patients’ privacy to improve the public health system, whereas HIPAA indicates the need to generate protocols to safeguard the risks connected to medical activity and patient privacy. Following from this point, we may argue that, at the ethical and bioethical level, GDPR and HIPAA depend mainly on two different ethical models: a perspective based on moral acquaintances and weak proceduralism, respectively. It is worth noting the importance of developing additional guidelines concerning different world regions to avoid the ethical problems that may emerge when simply applying a foreign paradigm to a very different culture. (shrink)

El modelo de ser humano: homo oeconomicus, impuesto por la racionalidad económica capitalista, ha tenido en las dos últimas décadas una metamorfosis compleja, a saber, la formación de un tipo de subjetividad representada en la figura del “emprendedor” o “su propio jefe” que, desde una nueva gramática teológica, encarna un proyecto mercantil solapado y subrepticio que condiciona las relaciones entre sujetos. En razón a esto, el propósito de este texto es pensar dicha problemática desde el ejercicio hermenéutico-crítico que lleva a (...) cabo el joven Marx, para someter al análisis las categorías de culpa, deuda, sacrificio y expiación destacadas por Walter Benjamin, a la luz de la categoría esencia subjetiva de la propiedad privada que permita entender cómo el capitalismo se vale hoy de la teología y su lenguaje para continuar responsabilizando al ser humano de su pobreza, de su riqueza o su fracaso económico. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar el problema triple (trilema) de Agripa que cuestiona la posibilidad de alcanzar una justificación epistemológica del conocimiento empírico. Una posible reconstrucción del problema es la que se apoya en el problema del regreso al infinito -uno de los modos de..

Con el objetivo de superar la crisis en la que se encuentra la filosofía hoy, se expone de manera sencilla una propuesta de una hermenéutica analógica. Se trata de una teoría de la interpretación que incorpora el concepto de la analogía, noción que evitará caer en la postura unívoca de los positivismos y en la equívoca de los posmodernismos. Esto permitirá salir a terrenos más promisorios y fructíferos para la labor filosófica. Para ello, en primer lugar, se desarrollará la concepción (...) de hermenéutica en general y, en segundo lugar, se expondrá el concepto de analogía, de la que toma su nombre la hermenéutica analógica, a fin de que su concepto sea comprendido más fácil y claramente. (shrink)

This volume defends a novel approach to the philosophy of physics: it is the first book devoted to a comparative study of probability, causality, and propensity, and their various interrelations, within the context of contemporary physics -- particularly quantum and statistical physics. The philosophical debates and distinctions are firmly grounded upon examples from actual physics, thus exemplifying a robustly empiricist approach. The essays, by both prominent scholars in the field and promising young researchers, constitute a pioneer effort in bringing out (...) the connections between probabilistic, causal and dispositional aspects of the quantum domain. The book will appeal to specialists in philosophy and foundations of physics, philosophy of science in general, metaphysics, ontology of physics theories, and philosophy of probability. (shrink)

This volume showcases the best of recent research in the philosophy of science. A compilation of papers presented at the EPSA 13, it explores a broad distribution of topics such as causation, truthlikeness, scientific representation, gender-specific medicine, laws of nature, science funding and the wisdom of crowds. Papers are organised into headings which form the structure of the book. Readers will find that it covers several major fields within the philosophy of science, from general philosophy of science to the more (...) specific philosophy of physics, philosophy of chemistry, philosophy of the life sciences, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of the social sciences and humanities, amongst others. This volume provides an excellent overview of the state of the art in the philosophy of science, as practiced in different European countries and beyond. ​It will appeal to researchers with an interest in the philosophical underpinnings of their own discipline, and to philosophers who wish to explore the latest work on the themes explored. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Extractivist OntologiesLithium Mining and Anthropocene Imaginaries in Chile's Atacama DesertMauricio F. Collao Quevedo (bio)The term energy transition generally refers to efforts to switch from one energy system to another. In light of the current climate crisis, energy transition projects have sought to move societies away from their reliance on fossil fuels and toward a renewables-based energy system. Yet such projects have not been easy to undertake. As Marie Forget (...) and Vincent Bos point out, an energy system based on renewables requires a transformation of energy "regulatory frameworks, technical and organizational structures, geographic forms and network practices" (1). More specifically, current energy transition models rely on the expansion of lithium production, accompanying systems of private property rights, and complex logistical and technical strategies. This article examines the interplay between lithium extraction, national development, and Anthropocene imaginaries in Chile's Atacama Desert, arguing that the green brand of extractivism that characterizes the industry relies on elaborate institutional arrangements aimed at expanding and protecting extractivist ontological and epistemological regimes in the politically contested region. As such, struggles over lithium in Chile's Atacama region demonstrate the extent to which efforts to decolonize the Anthropocene and make possible non-extractive futures of collective survival must unfold on ontological grounds, against the consolidation of the Age of Man.Mining, Water Rights, and Indigenous Communities in the Atacama DesertAmong today's most promising energy sources and materials are sodium, copper, sulfur, nickel, cobalt, rare earth metals, and lithium. These [End Page 78] have become central to energy transition strategies and states seeking to attract investors for development (Lunde Seefeldt). As a report by the World Bank points out, demand for transition minerals like lithium, cobalt, and graphite could increase by 500% by 2050 ("Climate-Smart Mining"), highlighting the extent to which global energy transition efforts are counting on greater extraction of transition minerals and the expansion of extractive frontiers to previously unexplored or unexploited regions (Moore, Capitalism; World Bank Group). Lithium is at the center of this economic and technological shift toward green economies.Global lithium demand is growing rapidly, with investment and production rates growing significantly in recent years (Narins) and catching the attention of states (e.g., China) and corporate tech giants (e.g., Tesla) that are already trying to secure greater shares of the global market. The light metal's popularity is largely due to its internal chemistry, which meets many of the technical and practical requirements associated with green energy transition. Lithium is light, conducive, and energy-dense, which in the context of batteries means faster recharge, lower costs, and charge-holding abilities that make lithium-ion batteries more efficient than a nickel-metal hybrid equivalent (Perotti and Coviello). Because of this, lithium is increasingly being considered as promising for human development and survival as its energy predecessors, inspiring labels such as "white gold," "white petroleum," "the new copper," "the 21st century's petroleum," or the "new gasoline" of sustainability (Acuña and Tironi; Lunde Seefeldt; Voskoboynik and Andreucci).But the industry is not without its downsides. The negative impacts of lithium extraction in Chile's Atacama Desert have been challenged by local communities for whom the metal does not exist as a discrete entity that can be easily extracted from its socioecological context. For many of these communities, lithium is more than a transition metal found in an appropriable and materially heterogenous underground brine: it is an ontologically contested, socioecological entity that sustains and participates in complex webs of life-supporting, place-based, and more-than-human relations. Such accounts of the brine are radically incompatible with "official" state accounts of it, which are maintained through an institutional architecture that allows the ontological basis of the brine to be manipulated for extractive purposes by both corporate and state actors.In the following pages, I examine the ways in which Chile's legal and institutional arrangements, informed by imaginaries of green modernization, [End Page 79] create conditions under which extralocal actors can manipulate along extractivist lines the ontological ambiguity and material heterogeneity of lithium-containing brines in the salt flats of the Atacama Desert. Through an analysis of the ways in which lithium industries in the... (shrink)

This volume collects papers presented at the Founding Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association meeting, held November 2007. It provides an excellent overview of the state of the art in philosophy of science in different European countries.

Individualism is one of the fundamental traits of our time, based on an emphatic and recurrent defence of individual freedom, as experienced by consciousness. This point of view seems to entail a refuse of all kinds of transcendence, cosmological or onto-theological, characterized by an authoritarian and undisputed heteronomy. However, this perspective does not take into account a third type of transcendence, one that occurs in that radical immanence, in the core of individual freedom and autonomy. This type of transcendence takes (...) shape as an ethical and aesthetical relationship carved in the heart of each individual human being, each one of his particular conscious states and the simultaneous consciousness of his Humanity. The aim of this essay is to give an understanding of Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and its philosophy of Revelation, as a reflection on religion and its anthropological origins. In our viewpoint, The Essence of Christianity is an effort to ascertain the genetic elements of human religiosity and clarify its meaning as a movement of reconnecting the human individual with a transcendence that is his own Humanity, given in the immanence of his conscious life. Religion remains a law of transcendence, as the feeling that binds the individual to his Humanity, an everlasting commandment coming from an Otherness that projects itself as a horizon to his free actions. (shrink)

This paper defends an inferential conception of scientific representation. It approaches the notion of representation in a deflationary spirit, and minimally characterizes the concept as it appears in science by means of two necessary conditions: its essential directionality and its capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. The conception is defended by showing that it successfully meets the objections that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception captures the objectivity of the cognitive representations (...) used by science, it sheds light on their truth and completeness, and it explains the source of the analogy between scientific and artistic modes of representation. (shrink)

The article seeks to investigate the role that censorship had in the history of modern Colombian theater during the decades from 1950 to 1980, on the basis of a journey through the trajectory of groups such as Candelaria, TEC and Escuela Municipal de Teatro, as well as its directors Santiago García, Enrique Buenaventura and Gilberto Martínez. The censorship usually came from government institutions, Church ministers, or educational institutions such as universities and colleges. In addition to the analysis of direct censorship (...) phenomena such as the prohibition of performances and the expulsion of members of theater formations, or more indirect ones such as red tape or excessive tax collection, we are interested in highlighting the strategies and practices of resistance and opposition generated by playwrights and theater groups during this time before the censorial actions and speeches. Among these strategies to fight censorship, we highlight the collectivization of structured cultural formations or guilds that brought together various theater groups at the national level, as was the case with the formation of the Colombian Theater Corporation. Collectivization was the strategy against power through which the theater guild fought to resist the repressive effects of censorship. It is necessary to shed light on the role that censorship played in the life of Colombian groups and theater in general. This approach will allow us to see the history of modern theater in Colombia as the history of resistance strategies against censorship and power. (shrink)

I argue against theories that attempt to reduce scientific representation to similarity or isomorphism. These reductive theories aim to radically naturalize the notion of representation, since they treat scientist's purposes and intentions as non-essential to representation. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that similarity and isomorphism are common but not universal means of representation. I then present four other arguments to show that similarity and isomorphism are not the constituents of scientific representation. I (...) finish by looking at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that abandon the aim to radically naturalize scientific representation are likely to be successful. (shrink)

El concepto de holismo ha adquirido una gran importancia en losúltimos análisis semánticos y epistémicos. Sin embargo, muchosde los filósofos que han utilizado este concepto no lo han definidocon claridad. El objeto de este artículo es intentar aclarar uno delos sentidos en los que este concepto puede ser entendido. Paraello me concentraré en las relaciones entre holismo y teorías empíricas. Haré uso de algunos de los elementos de la teoría estructuralistapropuesta por Moulines, Sneed y Balzer para dar cabalcuenta de cómo (...) se podría conciliar las tesis del holismo con lavisión estructuralista de las teorías científicas. (shrink)

El presente texto desea dar cuenta, a partir de aquellos aspectos fenomenológicos de la teoría del conocimiento de Thomas Hobbes, el fundamentoy justificación de la génesis del Estado civil. Sin lugar a dudas, serán la percepción o la intuición, lo sensible, la imaginación o la memoria, el lenguaje, el movimiento, el cómputo, el deseo, el miedo, entre otros, lo que lleva al sujeto a comprender su propia naturaleza y a partir de ella, a pactar con otros sujetos cediendo sus derechos (...) naturales a un tercero para dar fin al estado de naturaleza y poder conservar su vida y vivir en paz. (shrink)