Confirmation bias has been widely studied for its role in failures of reasoning. Individuals exhibiting confirmation bias fail to engage with information that contradicts their current beliefs, and, as a result, can fail to abandon inaccurate beliefs. But although most investigations of confirmation bias focus on individual learning, human knowledge is typically developed within a social structure. We use network models to show that moderate confirmation bias often improves group learning. However, a downside is that a stronger form of confirmation (...) bias can hurt the knowledge producing capacity of the community. (shrink)

This is an edited collection of essays on the changing character of military professionalism and the role of ethics in the 21st century military. The authors are uniformed military, academics, and non-uniformed professionals on the battlefield, and they look at the concepts of Samuel Huntington, Morris Janowitz, and Sir John Hackett, how training and continuing education play a role in defining a profession, and if a universal code of ethics is required for the military as a profession."--Provided by publisher.

I argue that intentionalism in aesthetics and in legal interpretation is vulnerable to a different sort of criticism than is found in the voluminous literature on the topic. Specifically, a kind of paradox arises for the intentionalist out of recognition of a second-order intention embedded in the social practices that characterize both art and law. The paper shows how this second-order intention manifests itself in each of the two enterprises, and argues that its presence entails the overriding centrality of the (...) public text, and hence a rejection of the interpretive stance distinctive of intentionalism itself. (shrink)

In this paper we critically examine and seek to extend Philip Kitcher’s Ethical Project to weave together a distinctive naturalistic conception of how ethics came to occupy the place it does in our lives and how the existing ethical project should be revised and extended into the future. Although we endorse his insight that ethical progress is better conceived of as the improvement of an existing state than an incremental approach towards a fixed endpoint, we nonetheless go on to argue (...) that the metaethical apparatus Kitcher constructs around this creative metaethical proposal simply cannot do the work that he demands of it. The prospect of fundamental conflict between different functions of the ethical project requires Kitcher to appeal to a particular normative stance in order to judge specific changes in the ethical project to be genuinely progressive, and we argue that the virtues of continuity and coherence to which he appeals can only specify rather than justify the normative stance he favors. We conclude by suggesting an alternative approach for ethical naturalists that seems to us ultimately more promising than Kitcher’s own. (shrink)

The specialist field of intellectual disability nursing has been subjected to a number of changes since the move towards deinstitutionalisation from the 1970s. Government policies sought to change the nature of the disability workforce from what was labelled as a medicalised approach, towards a more socially oriented model of support. Decades on however, many nurses who specialise in the care of people with intellectual disability are still employed. In Australia, the advent of the National Disability Insurance Scheme offers an apt (...) moment to reflect upon these decades of specialised nursing care as the context of this nursing care will continue to evolve. A review of the published literature was conducted to explore what has shaped the field in the past and how this might inform the future of this speciality area under new policy and service contexts. People with intellectual disability have specific health and support needs that require a specialised workforce. Specialist nurses continue to be needed for people with intellectual disability. (shrink)

The thought of G. W. F. Hegel has had a deep and lasting influence on a wide range of philosophical, political, religious, aesthetic, cultural and scientific movements. But, despite the far-reaching importance of Hegel's thought, there is often a great deal of confusion about what he actually said or believed. This is an invaluable introduction for philosophical beginners and a useful reference source for more advanced scholars and researchers.

In recent years, the biological inheritance of what has been traditionally known as original sin has come more clearly to the fore. Examining the genetic forebears of Homo sapiens has allowed for a richer understanding of what exactly the "propagation" of original sin might really mean. The wounded imperfection of the human biological inheritance has clarified matters concerning the question of where exactly original sin comes from. Since the human experience of sentience and agency is built biologically upon the shoulders (...) of its ancestors, the human experience of being always-already bound by sin—an essential component of the meaning of original sin—comes into clearer relief. At the same time, a much richer... (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy is a neuroimaging technique that has undergone tremendous growth over the last decade due to methodological advantages over other measures of brain activation. The action-observation network, a system of brain structures proposed to have “mirroring” abilities, has been studied in humans through neural measures such as fMRI and electroencephalogram ; however, limitations of these methods are problematic for AON paradigms. For this reason, fNIRS is proposed as a solution to investigating the AON in humans. The present review (...) article briefly summarizes previous neural findings in the AON and examines the state of AON research using fNIRS in adults. A total of 14 fNIRS articles are discussed, paying particular attention to methodological choices and considerations while summarizing the general findings to aid in developing better protocols to study the AON through fNIRS. Additionally, future directions of this work are discussed, specifically in relation to researching AON development and potential multimodal imaging applications. (shrink)

This paper seeks to present in detail Silvia Federici's considerations about neoliberalism, having as a center of discussion the way in which the body, reproduction and daily life are mobilized by the author. In this perspective, a materialistic condition of the way of becoming possible of individuals will be presented to the extent that we are fundamentally bodies whose connection to social totality is mediated by rooting in the situated particularity of daily life. Therefore, also dialoguing with other authors such (...) as Simone de Beauvoir, Rosa Luxemburgo and Henri Lefebvre, it is a question of presenting the development of a perspective that places the daily reproduction of life as a central productive force for the social being and, sedimented as habits in the body, produces and reproduces ways of being, the basis from which considerations about neoliberal logic will be understood, and thus, the importance of Federici’s feminist critical approach to the capitalist mode of production will be marked. (shrink)

Brain activity in the action observation network is lateralized during action execution, with greater activation in the contralateral hemisphere to the side of the body used to perform the task. However, it is unknown whether the AON is also lateralized when watching another person perform an action. In this study, we use fNIRS to measure brain activity over the left and right cortex while participants completed actions with their left and right hands and watched an actor complete action with their (...) left and right hands. We show that while activation is lateralized when the participants themselves are moving, brain lateralization is not affected by the side of the body when the participant is observing another person’s action. In addition, we demonstrate that individual differences in hand preference and dexterity between the right and left hands are related to brain lateralization patterns. (shrink)

Este trabalho visa apresentar o pensamento ético de Simone de Beauvoir tal como é exposto em seu livro Por une morale de l'ambiguité. Neste livro, a autora retoma sua compreensão da existência humana dada em seu texto anterior, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, porém, desdobrando melhor sua análise e apresentando um princípio ético ambíguo posto que universal e singular simultaneamente, a partir do qual uma ética condizente ao existir humano seria esboçada. Assim, buscaremos aqui caracterizar propriamente como Simone de Beauvoir entende essa (...) ética da ambigüidade, fundamentalmente a partir da compreensão da afirmação de que "querer-se livre e querer-se moral é uma só e mesma decisão". (shrink)

In this, the first published collection of writings by Hippolyte Havel (1871–1950), Nathan Jun brings a crucial, yet largely forgotten revolutionary figure back into historical focus. Havel was a Czech anarchist at the center of New York’s political and artistic circles at the turn of the twentieth century. He was an editor of numerous publications, including Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth and his influence on several writers, artists, and intellectuals (including Eugene O’Neill, Joseph Stieglitz, and Sadakichi Hartmann) helped shape American (...) modernism. Proletarian Days provides an illuminating introduction to the man and his times. (shrink)

O movimento dos secundaristas brasileiros e o momento sofístico: uma nova história começa a ser contada 1 Resumo: A partir das proposições de Arendt delineamos o momento sofístico como um instante no qual a intersecção entre os termos riqueza, liberdade e poder possibilita aos indivíduos se engajarem na esfera política permitindo assim que influenciem nas decisões. O objetivo deste trabalho é argumentar que o momento orquestrado pelos estudantes brasileiros pode ser considerado também um momento sofístico tal qual o vimos acontecer (...) no século de Péricles, evidenciando assim a necessidade de uma formação que abarque uma pedagogia retórica para que esse momento seja aproveitado em sua plenitude. As ações do movimento secundarista evidenciaram o peso da comunicação demandando assim uma educação retórica, a qual inclui não só a formação na palavra em seu sentido dialógico e persuasivo, mas também raciocínio e deliberação, capacidades tão caras ao desenvolvimento do ethos democrático, por sua vez imprescindível para a edificação plena de um modo democrático de vida.Palavras-chave: Momento sofista. Educação. Movimento secundarista. Retórica. Kairós 1 A pesquisa contou com apoio da Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo. Brazilian high school students’ movement and the sophistical moment: a new story begins to be told1: Drawing from the propositions of Arendt this work delineates the sophistical moment as an instant in which the intersection between the terms wealth, freedom and power enables individuals to engage in the political sphere thus allowing them to influence decisions. The aim of this work is to argue that the moment orchestrated by the Brazilian students can also be considered a sophistical moment as we have seen it happen in the century of Pericles, thus evidencing the necessity of a formation that embraces a rhetorical pedagogy. The actions of the high school movement evidenced the significance of communication, thus demanding a rhetorical education, which includes not only the formation of the word in its dialogical and persuasive sense, but also reasoning and deliberation. Those capacities are so important for the development of the democratic ethos which is indispensable for the full building of a democratic way of life.Keywords: Sophistical moment. Education. High school movement. Rhetoric. Kairos Movimiento de los secundarios brasileños y el momento sofístico: una nueva historia comienza a ser contada1 Resumen: A partir de las proposiciones de Arendt, delineamos el momento sofístico como un instante en el que la intersección entre los términos riqueza, libertad y poder permite a los individuos participar en la esfera política, lo que les permite influir en las decisiones. El objetivo de este trabajo es argumentar que el momento orquestado por los estudiantes brasileños también puede considerarse un momento sofístico como lo hemos visto en el siglo de Pericles, lo que evidencia la necesidad de una formación que abarque una pedagogía retórica. Las acciones del movimiento secundario evidenciaron el peso de la comunicación, exigiendo así una educación retórica, que incluye no solo la formación de la palabra en su sentido dialógico y persuasivo, sino también el razonamiento y la deliberación, así como las capacidades para el desarrollo del espíritu democrático, para su desarrollo. indispensable para la plena construcción de un modo de vida democrático.Palabras-clave: Momento sofista. Educacion. Movimiento de los secundaristas. Retórica. Kairos Data de registro: 08/08/2019Data de aceite: 24/04/2020. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:178 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nathan Snaza Biopolitics without Bodies: Feminism and the Feeling of Life Against a restrictive and imperialist concept of “the human,” which has become globalized during the long march of colonialist, heterosexist modernity, Samantha Frost’s Biocultural Creatures summons “counter-concepts” of the human that might authorize new political possibilities and theories of what it means to be human. (...) She writes, “These counter-concepts of the human are creatures who are embedded in various ecologies and networks of relations and who can integrate their acknowledgement of their embodiment, animality, physicality, dependence, and vulnerability into their self-conception and their orientation toward and modes of being in the world” (3). As this formulation suggests, whatever the new theory of the human is, it has been emerging at the edges of imperialist humanism for some time in a number of distinct political and intellectual projects clustering around decolonization, feminism, queer critique, technoscience, and ecology.1 Frost’s book, 1. Vandana Shiva and Ingunn Moser, editors, Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology (London: Zed Books, 1995); Cyd Cipolla, Kristina Gupta, David A. Rubin, and Angela Willey, eds., Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017); Sandra Harding, Sciences From Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Sandra Harding, ed., The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 179 Nathan Snaza Books Discussed in This Essay Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human. Samantha Frost. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Flourishing Thought: Democracy in an Age of Data Hoards. Ruth A. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets: A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman. Ruth A. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. The Economization of Life. Michelle Murphy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. along with recent work by Michelle Murphy and Ruth Miller, among many other feminist biopolitical thinkers, summons us to reconceive and decolonize the human by feeling it differently, and in so doing, open our intellectual and political projects toward what Miller calls “democracy as a nonhuman affair” in The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets (9). My sense is that this reconception throws into question the ways that we have understood both the human and politics through specific ideas about bodies. The body has a certain phenomenological obviousness for (some) humans, which might explain why it has been so central to most political projects of modernity, many of which share at least some commitment to the liberal individual as a self-contained entity.2 However, something else is beginning to press on contemporary feminist biopolitical thought. Karen Barad’s claim that “[o]bjects are not already 2. For a rich overview of the ways in which the body has animated feminist thought and politics, especially in light of debates in the physical and biological sciences, see Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally Shuttleworth, eds., Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (New York: Routledge, 1990. A different sense of the body begins to appear a few years later in Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993); and Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). 180 Nathan Snaza there; they emerge through specific practices” attunes us to this new orientation.3 For Barad, knowledge practices are open-ended, and “the differential constitutions of human and nonhuman designate particular phenomena that are themselves implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity, including their enfolding and reconstitution in the reconfiguring of apparatuses.”4 In other words, knowledge emerges from the world through “cuts” that reconfigure it: entities—such as “the body” or “the human”—come into being through specific apparatuses. These include theoretical concepts: “Theorizing, like experimenting, is a material practice.”5 The concept of the body, then, is a material part of the intra-active becoming of the world in knowledge production—its meaning exceeds the fact of its existence. While the body has been useful to an enormous number of projects, contemporary feminist thought, in a wide variety of ways, is feeling... (shrink)

Any mediation of the humanity-nature divide driven by environmental concern must satisfactorily account for ecologically destructive human behavior. Holmes Rolston, III argues that human cultures should “follow nature” when interacting with nature. Yet he understands culture to necessarily degrade ecosystems, and allows that purely cultural values could legitimate the destruction of nature itself. Edward O. Wilson, meanwhile, argues that culture’s evolutionary function is to fit humanity to its niche; culture necessarily follows “epigenetic rules” naturally selected for this purpose. However, because (...) humanity cannot but follow these rules, any human behavior—even (post)modern societies’ ecologically catastrophic behavior—is entirely natural. Therefore, Rolston’s reconciliation is too weak and Wilson’s too strong. Yet the two can be mutually modifying. Rolston’s “pure” culture should follow the natural value of human nature; yet, humans must be free to disobey (at their peril) Wilson’s epigenetic rules. Humanity thus becomesreconciled to nature by freely following its own nature, which is violated when the wider natural world is treated unnaturally. (shrink)

Buscamos aqui fundamentalmente pensar como podemos encontrar, em meio às considerações gerais de Schopenhauer sobre a arte em sua Metafísica do Belo, indicações acerca do que podemos compreender como crítica de arte. Deste modo, não serão feitas aqui alusões ao conceito de crítica de arte presente em outros autores ou outros contextos; limitaremos-nos apenas a apresentar o que podemos compreender acerca da crítica de arte a partir das implicações estéticas que o pensamento schopenhauereano nos coloca, especificamente a partir da compreensão (...) da obra de arte como possibilidade de conhecimento das Ideias. (shrink)

: What is it about pragmatism that has from its inception been found disturbing? I am reminded of Daniel Dennett's remark in his 2000 American Philosophical Association Presidential Address that "many people dislike Darwinism in their guts." There is something about pragmatism that has always been found deeply troubling and I believe it is related to what troubles people about Darwinism. Inspired by Dennett's treatment of the idea and impact of evolutionary theory in his Presidential Address and in his book, (...) Darwin's Dangerous Idea, I will look at pragmatism in that light and will suggest that it may be even more threatening than Darwinism to traditional western values and the glorification of individualism. I will suggest that pragmatism is a naturalistic philosophy that presupposes a radical evolutionism and that, try as they might to subsititute a belief in an exuberant meliorism for religious faith, pragmatists must eventually face the fact that everything is fleeting and that ignorance will prevail. In fact, taking the long view of things, there really is no future. But, surprisingly perhaps, this is no cause for a pessimistic outlook. Futility, in the long run, is no excuse for despair today. Interlaced with these somewhat didactic themes, I will include some comparison of Dennett's parsimonious philosophy with the views of the original pragmatists, especially with Peirce's semiotic pragmatism, and I will briefly consider whether the naturalism running from Quine to Dennett is a branch of neo-pragmatism that has been largely unrecognized.Key-words: pragmatism; Peirce; Dennett; Darwinism; evolutionism; naturalismResumo: O que há com o pragmatismo que desde seu nascimento é considerado perturbador? Lembro-me da observação de Daniel Dennett, em seu Pronunciamento Presidencial da American Philosophical Association, que "muitas pessoas detestam visceralmente o darwinismo". Há algo com o pragmatismo que sempre foi considerado profundamente incômodo, e eu acredito que isso esteja relacionado com o que incomoda as pessoas no darwinismo. Inspirado no tratamento de Dennett, em seu Pronunciamento Presidencial e em seu livro Darwin's Dangerous Idea, da idéia e do impacto da teoria evolucionária, olharei para o pragmatismo sob essa luz e sugerirei que ele pode ser ainda mais ameaçador do que o darwinismo, para os valores tradicionais do ocidente e para a glorificação do individualismo. Sugerirei que o pragmatismo é uma filosofia naturalista que pressupõe um evolucionismo radical e que, tentem o quanto puderem substituir uma crença em um meliorismo exuberante pela fé religiosa, os pragmatistas devem conseqüentemente encarar o fato de que tudo é passageiro e de que a ignorância prevalecerá. Mas, talvez surpreendentemente, isto não é causa para uma perspectiva pessimista. A futilidade, em longo prazo, não é desculpa para o desespero, hoje em dia. Incluirei, entrelaçada com estes temas algo didáticos, alguma comparação da filosofia parcimoniosa de Dennett com as visões dos pragmatistas originais, especialmente com o pragmatismo semiótico de Peirce, e considerarei brevemente se o naturalismo que vem de Quine para Dennett é um ramo neopragmatista que foi amplamente ignorado.Palavras-chave: pragmatismo; Peirce; Dennett; darwinismo; evolucionismo; naturalism. (shrink)

O trumpismo nos Estados Unidos, assim como outras erupções populistas ao redor do mundo, demonstra que valores fundamentais herdados pelo Iluminismo são muito menos seguros no Ocidente do que fora presumido. Estima pela racionalidade e conhecimento objetivo e o respeito pela liberdade individual vem sendo enfraquecidos pela dissolução da sociedade em facções intransigentes. O abandono de princípios centrais que por muitas gerações serviram como base comum para a civilização Ocidental, fragmentou a sociedade Ocidental em campos aparentemente irreconciliáveis, não mais sujeitos (...) a uma mente comunal compartilhada. Como pode suceder que uma sociedade governada por uma mente social compartilhada, e já estabelecida de longa data, sumariamente se fragmenta em campos, de opinião muito diferentes, claramente sob a influência de princípios discrepantes? Seriam a desintegração de ideias e a dissolução da mente, consequências inevitáveis de conteúdo mental proliferante, de entropia intelectual talvez até inerente? Guiado pela semiótica de Peirce e pela filosofia da mente, e utilizando a chacoalhada provocada pelo Trump na vida social e político dos EUA como exemplo ilustrativo de um cismo cultural profundo, considerarei algumas possíveis causas estruturais de um crescente sectarismo e abordarei as condições semióticas que explicariam a desintegração da mente social. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Common Sense and Theological 9 9 Exper_,ence on the Bas s o,f Franz Rosenzweig's Philosophy NATHAN ROTENSTREICH The position of Franz Rosenzweig's thinking within the framework of presentday philosophy is difficult to ascertain. Though he was deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition, his chief work, The Star o] Redemption (Der Stern der Erlgsung, 1921), was conceived outside the main discussions of the philosophical controversy in the twenties. He (...) formulated his ideas side by side with the trends of German philosophy, but not by way of keeping pace with these trends. Yet his polemic against traditional philosophy in general, and against idealism in particular brings Rosenzweig close to the character of the rebellion represented by Existenz-Philosophie. 1 I The question of grounding a philosophical system or a set of philosophical ideas with an objective toward faith clearly poses the difficulty, in terms of the ultimate authority, of maintaining the validity of such a system of ideas. Could that authority be reason, which as a source of ideas and confirmation is outside faith while having consequences or expressions within the scope of faith? Or is faith, asserting the existence of God and his relations to world and man, an independent source? In case faith is an independent source, does it have the guarantee of its validity in its own boundaries, or does it still point to a source of validity which is outside faith and yet is not reason? It seems that Franz Rosenzweig was willy-nilly in his concern with this question. As said before the first approach would have been to construct a system along rational lines. This, however, would have done violence to a basic anti-rationalistic trait in Rosenzweig's thinking that can be clearly discerned in his The Star o] Redemption, in his Kleinere Schri]ten and in his small book, Understanding the Sick and Healthy, published until now in English only. Rosenzweig's criticism of rationalism may be summed up as follows: a) Reason strives for a unified conception of the world; and in support of this monistic fiction its assimilative energy is ready to seize upon all arguments that militate against the doctrines and practices of faith. b) Reason tends to ignore the existence of the individual which it regards as 1On the relation between Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger, see Karl LSwith, "M. Heideggerand F. Rosenzweigor Temporality and Eternity," Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch,III (Sept., 1942),53-77. [353] 354 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY merely one of the variations of an all-inclusive unity. The question of the relation of the particular to the general or of the individual to the whole, which has engrossed philosophers since time immemorial, has no place in rationalistic systems. c) Since reason places the understanding above the things to be understood (and hence also above the data of religious experience, including the existence of God), we find that from a speculative and historical point of view rationalism has a strong bias against religion or theology. The other way open to Rosenzweig was to rely on the principle of Revelation, but he could not adopt this principle as the basis of his system for the following reasons" a) The first reason can be understood from Schelling's paradox: He who adheres to Revelation does not philosophize, and he who philosophizes finds Revelation inadequate for his purposes. Since Rosenzweig was basically a philosopher --despite his protestations to the contrary--he was precluded by that very fact from appealing to the evidence furnished by Revelation. On the contrary, he sought to find a non-rational basis for Revelation itself. b) The second reason that precluded Rosenzweig from taking the traditional course of relying on Revelation is implicit in that principle itself as Rosenzweig understood it. Revelation in his system has no enlightening or cognitive significance, or what is called in Christian theology Kerygma, instructive knowledge. In Revelation, he says, God reveals only revelation; He reveals himself to man and to man alone.2 In his view, then, Revelation does not transmit informative content and hence has no dogmatic significance. It is a dialogue that posits the existence of the participants, the existence of God, and (highly important for... (shrink)

Resumo Na entrevista ficcional que se segue, as ideias de Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos sobre as artes de representação serão aplicadas a aspectos relevantes do cinema. Du Bos argumenta que, normalmente, as obras de ficção cinematográfica são projectadas para dar origem a “paixões artificiais”, que têm a função de fornecer alívio ao tédio, sem as consequências negativas que muitas actividades alternativas têm. Também será considerada a questão, se os filmes têm um significado filosófico. O resultado é uma perspectiva desconhecida, do (...) princípio do século XVIII, em algumas temáticas contemporâneas. Palavras-chave : catarse, cinema apocalíptico, Du Bos, emoção, paixões artificiais, paradoxo do afecto negativoIn the following fictional interview, the Abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ ideas about the representational arts are applied to relevant aspects of the cinema. Du Bos argues that normally works of cinematic fiction are designed to give rise to ‘artificial passions’ that have the function of providing relief from boredom without the negative consequences that many alternative pursuits would have. Du Bos’ solution to the paradox of negative affect and his position on Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis are also set forth in the interview. The question of whether films have philosophical significance is also taken up. The upshot is a somewhat unfamiliar early 18th-century perspective on some contemporary issues. Keywords: apocalyptic cinema, artificial passions, catharsis, Du Bos, emotion, paradox of negative affect. (shrink)