There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource-bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein (), charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman (), does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a (...) decision problem to be Turing machines, and charge players for the “complexity” of the Turing machine chosen (e.g., its running time). This approach can be used to explain well-known phenomena like first-impression-matters biases (i.e., people tend to put more weight on evidence they hear early on) and belief polarization (two people with different prior beliefs, hearing the same evidence, can end up with diametrically opposed conclusions) as the outcomes of quite rational decisions. For the second approach, we model people as finite automata, and provide a simple algorithm that, on a problem that captures a number of settings of interest, provably performs optimally as the number of states in the automaton increases. (shrink)

The debate over Plato’s “ so called unwritten doctrines”, which he communicated only to a small circle of trusted disciples, has caused a stir among philosophers in recent decades. Rafael Ferber assumes a differentiated position in this controversy. He is convinced that the unwritten doctrines did exist, but that Plato, for reasons inherent in the process of gaining knowledge, was unable to communicate these doctrines even to his closest disciples. In this book, Ferber outlines the discussion and summarizes the (...) standpoints of greatest interest. Ever since Aristotle, we have known that Plato did not put his most important teachings into writing, but instead communicated them only orally to the inner circle of his disciples. While the extant dialogues merely pass down Plato’s “exoteric” doctrines, his most important “esoteric” insights were not meant for the general public. In the meantime, the contents and the significance of Plato’s “unwritten doctrines” have become the subject of debate in philosophical circles. Fifteen years ago, at the height of the controversy over the “unwritten doctrines”, Rafael Ferber entered the fray with a small book. He proposed that Plato was also unable to communicate the “unwritten doctrines” because the highest principles (i.e. the subject of the unwritten doctrines) cannot be known through logical operations due to an epistemological paradox. Ferber’s differentiated position met with great respect and acceptance, although in individual cases it was also rejected. Ferber’s new book again presents the text of 1991, but significantly expands on it through new perspectives and an outline of the discussion it triggered. In this book, the reader learns what is meant by Plato’s unwritten doctrines and what the controversy is all about. (shrink)

This article seeks to clarify the value of the Christian faith improvements through well founded arguments, in order to protect it from a certain lessening to the immanent and temporal ideas, aiming to the existentiality of the Christian being who reads up on what is eschatological. The proposed itinerary is achieved by the authentic awareness of sin, so that the sinner recognizes himself as such one and experiences the saving presence of God, both personally and socially. The methodology used was (...) based on bibliographical and electronic researches related to the proposed theme. Basically there was the usage of some renowned authors like Zygmunt Bauman, on his expressiveness of the liquid modernity, Alonso Schökel, on his biblical approach, and also several pronouncements of the Magisterium of the Universal and Latin American Church, as well as references to Sacred Scripture. The route passed through the present liquidity in today's reality to the firmness of spirituality, more specifically the one concerning the people of Israel through the Psalms, in the revisiting of such spiritual genesis. Among these, one opted for the penitential sphere, with a greater focus on Psalm 32. A deep-rooted and permanent spirituality was achieved through the cultivation of communion with God, assuring master pilasters to live the faith extensively in the midst of the contemporary times swifts. (shrink)

The author presents four thesis: I. Time is three-dimensional, a) the dynamism of being (time as origin); b) the measure of this dynamism (time as mediation); c) the duration of being (time as end). II. Time is not a permanent passing by, but time is really always a "wholeness", something "complete", a permanent synthesis of past, present and future. III. The simultaneity of time is space, and the variability of space is time. IV. There are three "diseases" of time: the (...) disease in the origin is ageing; the disease in the mediation is madness and lack of rhythm; the disease in the end is weakness. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to offer guidelines to deal with hard choices, specifically in situations where some compromise among opposing values is inescapable. The guidelines are intended to help ethicists and practitioners to delineate different alternatives and to dismiss some of them as morally unacceptable. This article explores the view that compromises arise from negotiations but from ethical predicaments as well. For this reason, I distinguish between strategic and moral compromises. Both managers and employees are individual moral agents (...) who have to confront the possibility of unpalatable and even disgusting compromises, so that they are forced to put their integrity into risk in certain compromise situations. However, I shall argue for the possibility of palatable moral compromises. The guidelines to cope with those situations and to identify the unpalatable compromises are based on J. S. Mill's moral philosophy. Mill suggested that half-measures passed in Parliament must have certain key elements to be morally acceptable. I make use of this doctrine to put forward compromise guidelines in the form of a set of hallmarks, internal and external elements of palatable compromises. Two minicases are used to test the guidelines and to emphasize the importance of compromises for ethical decision making and commitment to company. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to understand how sortals determine what aesthetic properties an object has. It is argued that Frank Sibley’s notion of an ideal of beauty does not help us to achieve that aim. Instead, it is argued, the special aesthetic relevance of sortals is better understood by reference to the (non-aesthetic) ideas of normality and functionality associated with sortals. In passing, the paper also argues that there must be a maximum degree of beauty if non-comparative judgments (...) of beauty are possible, as they seem to be. (shrink)

Although formal analysis provides us with interesting tools for treating Curry’s paradox, it certainly does not exhaust every possible reading of it. Thus, we suggest that this paradox should be analysed with non-formal tools coming from pragmatics. In this way, using Grice’s logic of conversation, we will see that Curry’s sentence can be reinterpreted as a peculiar conditional sentence implying its own consequent.

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

This article explores the complex position of British women missionaries under the Raj at a time of rising Indian nationalism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. By 1920, 311 unmarried female recruits were serving the two leading Anglican societies in India – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the evangelical Church Missionary Society – as opposed to 270 men. Although they transgressed imperial norms of ‘pukka’ female behaviour, these single women had numerous ties to the British (...) regime. Missionary and imperial ideals of service intertwined, and mission institutions frequently enjoyed imperial patronage. Sometimes, as at the Criminal Tribes Settlement in Hubli, women missionaries were even employed in direct government service. Using letters and reports, this article examines women missionaries’ negotiation of their complicated status, traversing the gap between the ruling race and its awakening subjects. It highlights their reticence with regards to all-India nationalist politics and their concentration on immediate, local affairs, arguing that such apoliticism and parochialism were consequences of their distinctive, gendered position within mission and imperial hierarchies. Their responses to nationalism and Independence were also conditioned by their Christianity, in particular their ultimate aim to ‘Indianize’ the Mission, promoting swaraj – not necessarily for India as a nation – but for the indigenous Indian Church. After Independence, this ongoing work, and the ambiguities of women missionaries’ connections to Empire, legitimated their continued presence in the subcontinent. (shrink)

This paper argues for analyzing the systematic invisibility of persons living with disabilities by temporalizing their oppression within a framework of “productive time,” which I posit as a normative sense of time by which cultural products and practices appear within capitalist economies. I argue that productive time is employed in cultural evaluations of actions that render persons with disabilities as “non-productive agents” who cannot partake in historical processes. My hope is that a theory of productive time will assist social justice (...) efforts in analyzing the oppression of particular minority groups by identifying and combating harmful social values. (shrink)

In this paper we present a reconstruction of Hegel's critique of Kant. We try to show the congruence of that critique in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We argue that this congruence is to be found in Hegel's criticism of Kant's hylemorphism in his theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel is much more sympathetic to Kant's response to the distinction between matter and form in his theoretical philosophy and he credits Kant with ‘discovering’ here that thinking is an activity that always (...) takes place within a greater whole. He, however, argues that the consequences of this are much more significant than Kant suspects and that, most importantly, the model of cognition in which thought (form) confronts something non-thought (matter) is unsustainable. This leads to Hegel's appropriation of Kantian reflective judgements, arguing that the greater whole in which thinking takes place is a socially shared set of meanings, something resembling what Kant calls a sensus communis. From here, it is not far to Hegel's Geist, which eventually gains self-consciousness in Sittlichkeit, a whole of social practices of mutual recognition. In practical philosophy, Hegel argues for the importance of situating oneself within such a whole in order to attain the self-knowledge required for autonomous, or ethically required, action. For this to happen, he claims, it is necessary to recognise the status of Kantian Moralität as a form of Sittlichkeit or social practice. This would justify our practices without an appeal to a ‘fact of reason’ and also allow a wider range of actions that could count as autonomous. (shrink)

Qual o lugar da filosofia nos dias atuais? Diante das inúmeras respostas possíveis a esta questão, nos debruçaremos em alguns tópicos que podemos inserir na chamada Ética Informacional, um ramo de investigação filosófico-interdisciplinar relativamente recente que discute problemas oriundos da relação ser humano/tecnologias digitais. Temas como privacidade informacional, arrogância epistêmica e divisão digital serão discutidos e relacionados, com o intuito de ilustrar o papel da filosofia na compreensão da complexidade inerente às dinâmicas sociais no contexto da sociedade da informação. Argumentaremos (...) que pensar o mundo contemporâneo a partir do viés da ética informacional se faz cada dia mais imprescindível para que possamos entrar em sintonia com as rápidas mudanças que a revolução informacional impõe à vida em sociedade e não sermos levados pelas enxurradas informacionais que presenciamos diariamente. (shrink)

A critically acute summary of the main theories about the 'State', from Greek antiquity to the present. The authors highlight the importance of archaeology to our knowledge of how the first States were formed and how they functioned. They also ask what conditions of social production led to the State arising as the self-interested regulator of social relationships.

Resumen: El objetivo principal de este escrito es proponer un papel propedéutico de las intuiciones racionales, a fin de defender una propuesta híbrida entre el acceso epistémico a priori y a posteriori. Las intuiciones racionales deben ser informadas empíricamente, y descartadas cuando hay pruebas contra ellas, cuando la evidencia empírica muestra que la intuición racional es errada, por lo que cualquier creencia guiada por ella también lo sería. Se sostiene que las intuiciones racionales cumplen un importante rol propedéutico: ayudan a (...) comprender diferentes escenarios modales a través de ejemplificaciones contrafácticas. Esto no se opone a la variación cultural de intuiciones, por ello se propone un confiabilismo intuicional variable. Esta propuesta comprende a las intuiciones como falibles y como no conductoras de verdad: no es el objetivo de las intuiciones rastrear la verdad de alguna proposición, sino ayudar a comprender los escenarios hipotéticos que pueden ser relevantes en diferentes áreas.: The main target of this paper is to propose a preparatory learning role of rational intuitions, in order to defend a hybrid proposal between a priori and a posteriori epistemic access. Rational intuitions must be informed empirically, and discarded when there is evidence against them, when empirical evidence shows that rational intuition is wrong, so any belief guided by it would also be wrong. It is argued that rational intuitions play an important propaedeutic role: they help to understand different modal scenarios through counterfactual exemplifications. This is not opposed to the cultural variation of intuitions, therefore a variable intuitional reliability is proposed. This proposal includes intuitions as fallible and as not truth conducive: it is not the goal of intuitions to trace the truth of a proposition, but to help understand the hypothetical scenarios that may be relevant in different areas. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se analiza la noción de nostalgia de futuro para comprender su significado en el contexto de la filosofía transhumanista y en el de la filosofía de Leonardo Polo. Se ha elegido como representantes del transhumanismo a los que históricamente son sus padres intelectuales: Julian Huxley y Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, quien más tarde cambió su nombre a FM-2030. El objetivo del artículo es analizar las dos filosofías para profundizar en el deseo de trascendencia que cada una desarrolla (...) y ver hasta qué punto es posible un diálogo entre ambas. (shrink)

This paper aims at analyzing the missionary discourse in the final document of Aparecida, in order to concern about the mission and the consequent search for dialogue outside the religious pluralism of the continent. The central question we try to answer: how does the discourse of the document is positioned in front of religious pluralism? What interpretation can we give speeches in the mission document? The central hypothesis is that the mission is the central document of Aparecida. The missionary position, (...) mediated by the speeches, varies according to the theological positions. As we review the text of the document have the foundations for a project of the Church missionary and liberating. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explain why cultural preservation is important, and in particular, why it is important enough to justify immigration restrictions. I also attempt to explain why one rarely encounters this type of argument in philosophy.

Studies demonstrating the benefits of ethical behavior at an individual level are scarce. The business ethics literature centers its analysis on unethical behaviors and their consequences, rather than ethical behaviors and their benefits. There is now considerable debate on the role of auditors in society and the function of accounting firms in the free market capitalist system. Specifically, the eminently ethical nature of the auditor’s work has been highlighted. Therefore, the aim of our paper is to show the impact of (...) auditors’ sustained ethical behavior: the trust it generates. This trust results in considerable benefits for the firm due to a reduction in the costs of the partner’s supervision of the auditor. The methodology chosen to validate these claims is a survey of partner of the audit firm in auditing companies. The results of this research confirm the hypotheses raised in the theoretical model. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the structure of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, using the framework of human emotions in response to grieving and death as developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Through her studies of terminally ill patients, Kubler-Ross identified five stages when approaching death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages accurately fill the process that the character Sethe experiences in the novel as she learns to accept her daughter’s death.

The Aymara of the Andes use absolute (cardinal) frames of reference for describing the relative position of ordinary objects. However, rather than encoding them in available absolute lexemes, they do it in lexemes that are intrinsic to the body: nayra (“front”) and qhipa (“back”), denoting east and west, respectively. Why? We use different but complementary ethnographic methods to investigate the nature of this encoding: (a) linguistic expressions and speech–gesture co-production, (b) linguistic patterns in the distinct regional Spanish-based variety Castellano Andino (...) (CA), (c) metaphorical extensions of CA’s spatial patterns to temporal ones, and (d) layouts of traditional houses. Findings indicate that, following fundamental principles of Aymara cosmology, people, objects, and land—as a whole—are conceived as having an implicit canonical orientation facing east, a primary landmark determined by the sunrise. The above bodily based lexicalizations are thus linguistic manifestations of a broader macro-cultural worldview and its psycho-cognitive reality. (shrink)

This article offers a new reading of Heidegger's thesis of the animal in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Framing Heidegger's text through a brief analysis of Protagoras' genetic story of nature and of man's nature in Plato's eponymous dialogue, our reading brings out three key elements common to both texts: living nature as a normative rather than a physical order, the poverty of man's world in relation to the animal, and the attempted redemption of the latter through the acquisition of (...) Weltbildung. Staying with the way Heidegger brings out man's poverty in world in the text allows us (i) to undo once for all the oft-repeated charge of Heidegger's anthropocentric interpretation of the animal, (ii) to stage the hypothesis that philosophy and the life sciences of his day draw upon a common basic experience of the autonomy of life in relation to everything human, all-too-human, and (iii) to demonstrate the normativity and poverty of life. (shrink)

Rafael Malach is currently a professor in the department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. His current research is aimed at understanding how the neuronal circuitry in the human brain translates a stream of sensory stimuli into meaningful perception. Rafael Malach received his PhD in physiological optics from UC Berkeley and did his post-doctorate research at MIT. Originally doing research on the organization of neuronal connections in the primate brain, his focus has recently shifted to the (...) study of the human cerebral cortex using fMRI. Professor Malach has begun this research at Massachusetts General Hospital, exploring a new object-related region called the lateral occipital complex. Since then he expanded this research, studying the human visual cortex using a variety of methods, including adaptation paradigms, backward masking, and more recently naturalistic stimuli--all aimed at deciphering the intriguing link between perceptual experience and brain activity. (shrink)

At the centre of the monograph (1984, first edition) lies a detailed interpretation and critique of the idea of the Good in the Republic. The main thesis of the interpretation runs as follows: The idea of the Good functions as a third item between thinking and being. The main purpose of the monograph is to introduce the systematic problem of the third item via the historical problem of the idea of the Good. The second, enlarged edition (1989) gives a new (...) reconstruction of an "exasperatingly difficult but ever fascinating topic" (H. Cherniss), that is, of the platonic theory of the ideal numbers and the two principles that were contained in the “so-called unwritten doctrines” (Aristotle). The final chapter gives new information on the reception of Plato's idea of the Good in P. Natorp and M. Heidegger. It also includes an updated bibliography. The third edition (2015) is a reprint of the second edition of 1989. Further remarks and an updated bibliography to 2005 are to be found in: - Ferber, Rafael (2005). Ist die Idee des Guten nicht transzendent oder ist sie es doch? Nochmals Platons ΕΠΕΚΕΙΝΑ ΤΗΣ ΟΥΣΙΑΣ. In: Barbaric Damir: Platon über das Gute und die Gerechtigkeit / Plato on Goodness and Justice / Platone sul Bene e sulla Giustizia. Würzburg, 149-174. - Ferber, Rafael / Damschen, Gregor (2015). Is the Idea of the Good Beyond Being? Plato's "epekeinea tês ousias" Revisted (Republic, 6, 509b8-10). In: Nails, Debra; Harold, Tarrant; Kajava, Mika; Salmenkivi, Eero. Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato. Espoo, 197-203. (shrink)

A recent issue of Topics in Cognitive Science featured 11 thoughtful commentaries responding to our article “What happened to cognitive science?” (Núñez et al., 2019). Here, we identify several themes that arose in those commentaries and respond to each. Crucial to understanding our original article is the fundamental distinction between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavors: Cognitive science began (and has stayed) as multidisciplinary but has failed to move on to form a cohesive interdisciplinary field. We clarify and elaborate our original argument (...) and reiterate the importance of a data‐driven evaluation of the current status of the field, which exhibits a marked disciplinary imbalance, a lack of a coherent conceptual core, and a striking absence of a consistent curriculum in the institutions that grant degrees in this domain. Half a century after the creation of cognitive science, it may now be a good time to revisit goals and visions for how to best approach the ever‐fascinating scientific study of the mind(s). (shrink)

The Gongsun Longzi is often considered the only extant work of the Classical Chinese “School of Names”, an early intellectual tradition mainly concerned with logic and the philosophy of language. The Gongsun Longzi is a heterogeneous collection of five chapters that include short treatises and largely fictive dialogues between an anonymous persuader and his opponent, which typically revolve around a paradoxical claim. Its value as a testimony to Early Chinese philosophy, however, is somewhat controversial due to the intricate textual history (...) of the text and our limited knowledge about its intellectual backgrounds. This volume gathers contributions by leading specialists in the fields of Classical Chinese philosophy, philology, logic, and linguistics. Besides an overview of the scholarly literature on the topic and a detailed account of the reception of the text throughout time, it presents fresh insights into philological and philosophical problems raised by the Gongsun Longzi and other closely-related texts equally attributed to the “School of Names”. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir a relação entre a construção de uma postura individualista como estratégia de cuidado de si dentro do contexto atual em que vivemos. Para tanto é realizado uma reflexão a partir da idéia de “sociedade de consumidores” trazida por Zygmunt Bauman, buscando construir uma relação desta com diferentes campos de atuação do sujeito humano. O que encontramos é uma postura que busca defender o indivíduo de possíveis riscos, sendo o outro, seu principal alvo de controle. (...) Dessa forma, constrói-se um individualismo que não pode ser confundido com a postura ascética do cuidado de si grego que possuía em seu conceito a dimensão trágica como suporte a política da existência. Ao final, concebe-se a resistência às políticas de controle de desejos como saída aos dispositivos presentes na sociedade de consumo. (shrink)