A fenomenologia, como método filosófico, consiste primeiramente numa mudança de atitude, do “olhar natural” para o “ver essencial”. O caminho fenomenológico se inicia quando um fenômeno se mostra para a consciência segundo algum modo descritivo. Com a redução dos pressupostos ou interpretações, a fenomenologia se propõe a descrever o dado puro, a essência do que se dá em aparição. Numa descrição literária, podemos entender esse objetivo fenomenológico como a descrição do conhecimento da feitiçaria, ordenada por Carlos Castaneda em suas experiências (...) incomuns de percepção. No presente artigo, pretendemos aproximar alguns pontos em comum entre feitiçaria e fenomenologia. Além do próprio Castaneda fazer referência direta aos conceitos fenomenológicos e utilizar seu método de descrição, o artigo mostra uma aproximação com o “ver”, que é o objetivo tanto do fenomenólogo quanto do feiticeiro. (shrink)

A ciência fenomenológica procura tratar os fenômenos como puras possibilidades. Tudo o que se doa para a consciência tem a possibilidade de ser descrito tal e qual se mostra por si mesmo numa intuição. O sujeito transcendental é o fundamento receptivo para o que é dado e, é dele, que partem os raios intencionais, dos quais os fenômenos ganham um sentido de ser de algo. Deus para ter sentido de “Deus” precisa ser para um sujeito. Mas, como Deus se doa? (...) Ele não é tal como os objetos que são dados de imediato para a consciência, mas mediado por uma teleologia da própria razão. O presente artigo se propõe pensar no tratamento que Husserl dá a sua fenomenologia como metafisica, partindo da subjetividade transcendental e destacando se “Deus” não excede ou seria outro fundamento ao lado do ego puro. A partir daí, procura-se ressaltar como o “fenômeno Deus” aparece no seu sistema fenomenológico, verificando como isso se dá em seus escritos inéditos apresentados por Jocelyn Benoist e a abertura para uma fenomenologia metafísica com Jean Luc-Marion. (shrink)

In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart's answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement. Only then will you become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart's Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an (...) imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Heidegger had a lifelong fascination with Eckhart, referring to him as "the old master of letters and life." Drawing on archival material and Heidegger's marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart's writings, Moore argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger's philosophy. This book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji's essay "Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart," which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger's classes in 1938. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar as proposições de Martin Buber (1878-1965) no campo da Filosofia da Educação mediante a análise de um texto específico de sua vasta produção, a saber: uma conferência realizada em 1929, intitulada Educação para a comunidade, que integra o livro Sobre comunidade, uma coletânea de textos de Buber organizada por Marcelo Dascal e Oscar Zimmermann.

Abstract:This paper is a further development of two previous pieces of work (Moore 2002, 2005) in which modern virtue ethics, and in particular MacIntyre’s (1985) related notions of “practice” and “institution,” have been explored in the context of business. It first introduces and defines the concept of corporate character and seeks to establish why it is important. It then reviews MacIntyre’s virtues-practice-institution schema and the implications of this at the level of the institution in question—the corporation—and argues that the concept (...) of corporate character follows from, but is a novel development of, MacIntyre’s schema. The paper contrasts corporate character and virtues with the more familiar concepts of corporate culture and values. The constitutive and substantive elements of corporate character, including the essential corporate virtues, are then drawn out and illustrated with reference to the cases explored in Koehn (1998). Finally, the paper acknowledges and counters a specific criticism of this approach. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is a further development of two previous pieces of work (Moore 2002, 2005) in which modern virtue ethics, and in particular MacIntyre’s (1985) related notions of “practice” and “institution,” have been explored in the context of business. It first introduces and defines the concept of corporate character and seeks to establish why it is important. It then reviews MacIntyre’s virtues-practice-institution schema and the implications of this at the level of the institution in question—the corporation—and argues that the concept (...) of corporate character follows from, but is a novel development of, MacIntyre’s schema. The paper contrasts corporate character and virtues with the more familiar concepts of corporate culture and values. The constitutive and substantive elements of corporate character, including the essential corporate virtues, are then drawn out and illustrated with reference to the cases explored in Koehn (1998). Finally, the paper acknowledges and counters a specific criticism of this approach. (shrink)

This cutting edge volume provides an overview of the dynamic new field of cyberphilosophy – the intersection of philosophy and computing.

This study investigated the link between meditation, self-reported mindfulness and cognitive flexibility as well as other attentional functions. It compared a group of meditators experienced in mindfulness meditation with a meditation-naïve control group on measures of Stroop interference and the “d2-concentration and endurance test”. Overall the results suggest that attentional performance and cognitive flexibility are positively related to meditation practice and levels of mindfulness. Meditators performed significantly better than non-meditators on all measures of attention. Furthermore, self-reported mindfulness was higher in (...) meditators than non-meditators and correlations with all attention measures were of moderate to high strength. This pattern of results suggests that mindfulness is intimately linked to improvements of attentional functions and cognitive flexibility. The relevance of these findings for mental balance and well-being are discussed. (shrink)

Considerations of accuracy – the epistemic good of having credences close to truth-values – have led to the justification of a host of epistemic norms. These arguments rely on specific ways of measuring accuracy. In particular, the accuracy measure should be strictly proper. However, the main argument for strict propriety supports only weak propriety. But strict propriety follows from weak propriety given strict truth directedness and additivity. So no further argument is necessary.

We present a semantics for a language that includes sentences that can talk about their own probabilities. This semantics applies a fixed point construction to possible world style structures. One feature of the construction is that some sentences only have their probability given as a range of values. We develop a corresponding axiomatic theory and show by a canonical model construction that it is complete in the presence of the ω-rule. By considering this semantics we argue that principles such as (...) introspection, which lead to paradoxical contradictions if naively formulated, should be expressed by using a truth predicate to do the job of quotation and disquotation and observe that in the case of introspection the principle is then consistent. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on expressively rich languages that can formalise talk about probability. These languages have sentences that say something about probabilities of probabilities, but also sentences that say something about the probability of themselves. For example: (π): “The probability of the sentence labelled π is not greater than 1/2.” Such sentences lead to philosophical and technical challenges; but can be useful. For example they bear a close connection to situations where ones confidence in something can affect whether it is (...) the case or not. The motivating interpretation of probability as an agent's degrees of belief will be focused on throughout the thesis. -/- This thesis aims to answer two questions relevant to such frameworks, which correspond to the two parts of the thesis: “How can one develop a formal semantics for this framework?” and “What rational constraints are there on an agent once such expressive frameworks are considered?”. (shrink)

It is natural to think that there is something epistemically objectionable about avoiding evidence, at least in ideal cases. We argue that this thought is inconsistent with a kind of risk-avoidance...

The present article examines important subjects related to the political theory in Hobbes´s Philosophy. This article looks for a clear and brief understanding about how Hobbes´s theory of artificial sociability articulates his political theory.

We investigate the processes underlying the feeling of control over one’s actions . Sense of agency may depend on internal motoric signals, and general inferences about external events. We used priming to modulate the sense of agency for voluntary and involuntary movements, by modifying the content of conscious thought prior to moving. Trials began with the presentation of one of two supraliminal primes, which corresponded to the effect of a voluntary action participants subsequently made. The perceived interval between movement and (...) effect was used as an implicit measure of sense of agency. Primes modulated perceived intervals for both voluntary and involuntary movements, but the modulation was greatest for involuntary movements. A second experiment showed that this modulation depended on prime–movement contiguity. We propose that sense of agency is based on a combination of internal motoric signals and external sensory evidence about the source of actions and effects. (shrink)

Conceptual Foundations of Radical Behaviorism is intended for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students in courses within behavior analytic curricula dealing with conceptual foundations and radical behaviorism as a philosophy. Each chapter of the text presents what radical behaviorism says about an important topic in a science of behavior, and then contrasts the radical behaviorist perspective with that of other forms of behaviorism, as well as other forms of psychology.

A prevailing view is that while human communication has an ‘ostensive-inferential’ or ‘Gricean’ intentional structure, animal communication does not. This would make the psychological states that support human and animal forms of communication fundamentally different. Against this view, I argue that there are grounds to expect ostensive communication in non-human clades. This is because it is sufficient for ostensive communication that one intentionally address one’s utterance to one’s intended interlocutor – something that is both a functional pre-requisite of successful communication (...) and cognitively undemanding. Furthermore, while ostension is an important feature of intentional communication, the inferences required in Gricean communication may be minimal: ostension and inference may come apart. The grounds for holding that animal communication could not be Gricean are therefore weak. I finish by defending the idea that a ‘minimally Gricean’ model of communication is a valuable tool for characterising the communicative interactions of many animal species. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

We propose a model of uncertain belief. This models coherent beliefs by a filter, ????, on the set of probabilities. That is, it is given by a collection of sets of probabilities which are closed under supersets and finite intersections. This can naturally capture your probabilistic judgements. When you think that it is more likely to be sunny than rainy, we have{????|????(????????????????????)>????(????????????????????)}∈????. When you think that a gamble ???? is desirable, we have {????|Exp????[????]>0}∈????. It naturally extends the model of credal (...) sets; and we will show it captures all the expressive power of the desirable gambles model. It also captures the expressive power of sets of desirable gamble sets (with a mixing axiom, but no Archimadean axiom). (shrink)

Philosophers have recently attempted to justify particular belief revision procedures by arguing that they are the optimal means towards the epistemic end of accurate credences. These attempts, however, presuppose that means should be evaluated according to classical expected utility theory; and there is a long tradition maintaining that expected utility theory is too restrictive as a theory of means–end rationality, ruling out too many natural ways of taking risk into account. In this paper, we investigate what belief-revision procedures are supported (...) by accuracy-theoretic considerations once we depart from expected utility theory to allow agents to be risk-sensitive. We argue that if accuracy-theoretic considerations tell risk-sensitive agents anything about belief-revision, they tell them the same thing they tell risk-neutral agents: they should conditionalize. (shrink)

In a series of writings, James Sterba introduces several novel arguments from evil against the existence of God (Sterba, 2019; Sterba Sophia 59, 501–512, 2020; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 203–208, 2020b; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 223–228, 2020c; Sterba Religions 12, 536, 2021). According to one of these arguments, the problem of natural evil, God must necessarily prevent the horrendous evil consequences of natural evil such as diseases and hurricanes; however, these horrendous evil (...) consequences of natural evils still occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I reply to Sterba’s argument from natural evil by introducing a naturalistic theodicy, and then demonstrating how it overcomes Sterba’s problem of natural evil. This paper is divided into five sections. First, I unpack Sterba’s problem of natural evil into three parts (Section 1), namely, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about non-human life, and Sterba’s arguments from analogy. I then introduce a general naturalistic theodicy to the problem of natural evil (Section 2): naturalists grant that natural forces (entropy, evolutionary pressures, tectonic plate movements, etc.) cause horrendous consequences of natural evil, yet still consider human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to, so, if God made this naturalistic universe, God made human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to. I then use this naturalistic theodicy to reply to Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans (Section 3), before bolstering the case by appeal to Sterba’s moral obligation claims about non-human life (Section 4). I then reply to Sterba’s arguments from analogy (Section 5). (shrink)

When one allows truth to be indeterminate, “fixed point” interpretations can be found even when the language includes sentences such as the liar paradox. In this chapter this kind of account is applied to rational credences, to find non-undermining indeterminate epistemic states even in certain situations which have been discussed as challenges for rationality. In the process of doing this, a deeper understanding of how the supervaluational account of truth works is obtained, especially when one focuses on sets of precisifications.

We present a new proposal for what to do at limits in the revision theory. The usual criterion for a limit stage is that it should agree with any definite verdicts that have been brought about before that stage. We suggest that one should not only consider definite verdicts that have been brought about but also more general properties; in fact any closed property can be considered. This more general framework is required if we move to considering revision theories for (...) concepts that are concerned with real numbers, but also has consequences for more traditional revision theories such as the revision theory of truth. (shrink)

What has been the historical relationship between set theory and logic? On the one hand, Zermelo and other mathematicians developed set theory as a Hilbert-style axiomatic system. On the other hand, set theory influenced logic by suggesting to Schröder, Löwenheim and others the use of infinitely long expressions. The questions of which logic was appropriate for set theory - first-order logic, second-order logic, or an infinitary logic - culminated in a vigorous exchange between Zermelo and Gödel around 1930.

We investigate how to assign probabilities to sentences that contain a type-free truth predicate. These probability values track how often a sentence is satisfied in transfinite revision sequences, following Gupta and Belnap’s revision theory of truth. This answers an open problem by Leitgeb which asks how one might describe transfinite stages of the revision sequence using such probability functions. We offer a general construction, and explore additional constraints that lead to desirable properties of the resulting probability function. One such property (...) is Leitgeb’s Probabilistic Convention T, which says that the probability of φ equals the probability that φ is true. (shrink)