Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

The confluence of different Jewish traditions in the Qumran library is evident. The Enochic traditions are not only counted as the oldest influences in Qumran, they also give it a certain theological unity. This is even more true in the case of demonology. Belial’s figure brings together a rich lexicographic heritage in which different traditions are integrated under the characteristics of the Watchers and Giants of the Enochic tradition (1 En 6—8). This study analyzes the theological characterization of the demonological (...) figures found in Qumran to specify the Enochic influence on it. (shrink)

In vertebrate development, the HOX genes act to specify cell identity along much of the anterior‐posterior axis of the embryonic central nervous system. In all vertebrates examined to date, the vitamin A metabolite retinoic acid is implicated in the patterning of the anterior posterior axis and the induction of HOX gene expression. Two recent papers have extended the study of retinoic acid induction of HOX genes to the closest relatives of the vertebrates, amphioxus and tunicates(1,2). In both these species, exogenous (...) retinoic acid is able to induce ectopic expression of HOX 1 genes in the anterior central nervous system. This suggests that retinoic acid control of anterior‐posterior axis formation and HOX induction is not specific to vertebrates. However, in the more distantly related echinoderms and arthropods, retinoic acid does not seem to act in the same way. Thus the role of retinoic acid in anterior‐posterior axis specification may be a chordate innovation, perhaps linked to the evolution of another chordate character, the dorsal neural tube. (shrink)

En este artículo me propongo abordar el problema del tiempo en las sociedades contemporáneas desde un diálogo entre las construcciones teóricas de Moishe Postone y Hartmut Rosa y el trabajo de Michel Foucault. Los dos primeros se han centrado en explicar cómo la temporalidad se ha convertido en un tipo de dominación abstracta, impersonal y cuasiobjetiva a partir de conceptos como la densificación temporal, la aceleración o la hibridación. Foucault, en cambio, concibe el tiempo bajo el prisma de la racionalidad (...) política neoliberal, por la cual el tiempo pasa a ser un recurso que debe gestionarse por los sujetos en términos empresariales y que termina por configurar una ética neoliberal de la administración del tiempo. Este diálogo ejemplifica de manera privilegiada la tensión entre la coacción o la presión temporal y la administración estratégica del tiempo propia de las sociedades contemporáneas. (shrink)

Central capabilitarian theories of well-being focus exclusively on actual opportunities to attain states of being and doing that people have reason to value. Consequently, these theories characterise ill-being and disadvantage as deprivations of such opportunities and attainments. However, some well-being aspects are inherently negative. They make up the difference between not being well and being unwell in that they constitute ill-being. While disadvantage can be plausibly captured by deprivations, ill-being cannot be fully captured by them. I support this claim by (...) analysing cases involving inherently negative aspects of homelessness that are not mere deprivations of opportunities to attain beings and doings that people have reason to value. I conclude that ill-being is not only about what one cannot be and do, but also about one’s enduring, and opportunities to avoid, negative beings and doings. Theories and policies should reflect this to get things right, and to do right by people. (shrink)

In his book The Formation of Reason (2011), David Bakhurst asserts that the end of education is autonomy, which he explains is the power to determine what to do.

Der vorliegende Beitrag beginnt mit dem Bericht eines männlichen Analysanden über heterosexuellen Geschlechtsverkehr, den er als zutiefst lustvoll und gleichzeitig verstörend erlebt. Bei der Analyse der berichteten Erfahrung entsteht ein zunächst verwirrendes Bild von Geschlechtlichkeit jenseits der Binaritäten des penetrierenden Mannes und der penetrierten Frau. Beim Versuch einer theoretischen Einordnung wird die habituelle männliche Verleugnung der passiven Position im Geschlechtsverkehr und die Betonung der aktiv penetrierenden Phallizität als Abwehrformation gegen übermäßige sexuelle Erregung verstanden. Unter Rückgriff auf Laplanches Theorie der Konstitution (...) der infantilen Sexualität als Übersetzung rätselhafter elterlicher Botschaften wird Sex als zentraler Schauplatz der Aufsprengung rigider Geschlechterstereotype und gleichzeitiger Reproduktion selbiger verstanden. Die Untersuchung will unter Einbeziehung psychoanalytischer, aber auch queertheoretischer Überlegungen einen Beitrag zum Verständnis männlicher Heterosexualität leisten, indem rigide Phallizität als eine mögliche Abwehrformation gegen eine »fluidere« und gleichzeitig verstörendere Sexualität verstanden wird. (shrink)

The essay represents teaching as the coming to be of the human individual. In order to do so, it reflects on the character of human life by which it is knowledge of itself. Being knowledge of itself, human life is self-determining or free. Therefore generality and particularity come together in the human being in a distinctive way: a human being is not an exemplar, instance or specimen of a species, nature or life-form. Rather, she is her own principle. This is (...) captured in the idea of the human being as an individual. The essay reveals teaching to be the form of coming to be which is proper to what is an individual in this sense. In this way, the essay shows teaching to be internal to human freedom. (shrink)

Culture or Biology? The question can seem deep and important. Yet, I argue in this chapter, if you are enthralled by questions about our biological differences, then you are probably confused. My goal is to diagnose the confusion. In debates about the role of biology in the social world it is easy to ask the wrong questions, and it is easy to misinterpret the scientific research. We are intuitively attracted to what is called psychological essentialism, and therefore interpret what is (...) biological as what can be traced to “essences”. On this interpretation, it would be deep and important to know what about, say, the differences between the genders is biological: it would correspond to what is essential to being a man or being a woman, and be opposed to what is a mere accidental feature that some women or some men have. Yet, the psychological essentialist understanding of ‘biological differences’ is deeply mistaken about biology. It has the wrong conception of biological kinds, of biological heritability, and of how genes and hormones work. Those who argue for an important role of ‘biology’ in the explanation of human differences often see ‘the science’ on their side. But this is false – on the interpretation of ‘biological differences’ that is most intuitive and that makes the question appear to be most interesting. Defenders of ‘biology’ often have the science against them. What is often called ‘biology’ is a myth: a myth created by an intuitive tendency that grotesquely distorts real biological research. (shrink)

Intentional transaction. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/13869795.2014.941909.

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 624-633, September 2021.

The first part of this essay develops the idea of logic as the science of thought, articulating, and thus being, the self-consciousness of thought. It explains that logic, so understood, is nothing other than metaphysics, the science of what is in so far as it is. Self-consciousness, then, thought itself, is not empty, but the source of all content. The second part of the essay discusses the opening paragraphs of Hegel’sScience of Logic; it shows how, in these paragraphs, thought is (...) revealed to be the source of its own content in virtue of its original negativity. Thus the second part begins to make concrete the idea of logic provided by the first. (shrink)

This paper identifies and addresses persistent gaps in the consideration of ethical practice in ‘technology for good’ development contexts. Its main contribution is to model an integrative approach using multiple ethical frameworks to analyse and understand the everyday nature of ethical practice, including in professional practice among ‘technology for good’ start-ups. The paper identifies inherent paradoxes in the ‘technology for good’ sector as well as ethical gaps related to (1) the sometimes-misplaced assignment of virtuousness to an individual; (2) difficulties in (...) understanding social constraints on ethical action; and (3) the often unaccounted for mismatch between ethical intentions and outcomes in everyday practice, including in professional work associated with an ‘ethical turn’ in technology. These gaps persist even in contexts where ethics are foregrounded as matters of concern. To address the gaps, the paper suggests systemic, rather than individualized, considerations of care and capability applied to innovation settings, in combination with considerations of virtue and consequence. This paper advocates for addressing these challenges holistically in order to generate renewed capacity for change at a systemic level. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of three parts. Part I is a defense of an artificial language methodology in philosophy and a historical and systematic defense of the logical empiricists' application of an artificial language methodology to scientific theories. These defenses provide a justification for the presumptions of a host of criteria of empirical significance, which I analyze, compare, and develop in part II. On the basis of this analysis, in part III I use a variety of criteria to evaluate the scientific (...) status of intelligent design, and further discuss confirmation, reduction, and concept formation. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

El propósito de este texto es abordar la problemática de las inteligencias artificiales y su incidencia en la sociedad contemporánea. Para ello, se realizan lecturas paralelas de las sociedades distópicas creadas por Isaac Asimov y Philip K. Dick. A partir de estas, se identifican algunos rasgos existentes en nuestro contexto inmediato, enfocándonos en tres ejes principales: la sociedad de vigilancia y control tecnológico, el problema de lo natural en los ciber-seres, y la visión del siglo XXI en la ciencia ficción (...) para analizar si esta es ilusoria o, por el contrario, forma parte de nuestra realidad inmediata. Todo esto con el fin de definir al género como un espejo de nuestro futuro, basándonos en la lectura de nuestro presente para interpretar los mundos posibles y el futuro como fuente de reflexión filosófica y tecnológica. En este artículo, analizaremos a grandes rasgos los elementos de la ciencia ficción de Isaac Asimov y Philip K. Dick, enfocándonos en aspectos como la naturalidad de los individuos, las sociedades de control y las líneas que separan lo humano de lo artificial como bases para la reflexión filosófica. A través de este ejercicio, examinaremos diversas obras de ambos autores, tales como El hombre bicentenario (Asimov 2019b), Satisfacción Garantizada (Asimov 2019a), La última pregunta (Asimov 2019a), ¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas? (Dick 2017) y El hombre en el castillo (Dick 2021). El objetivo es identificar elementos que nos permitan interpretar el siglo XXI como una obra de ciencia ficción en constante desarrollo. (shrink)

A pesar de haber trascurrido diecisiete años desde su publicación, por su interés en el campo de su investigación y por ser aun relativamente desconocido en el medio de la exégesis latinoamericana se puede juzgar pertinente analizar esta obra. El libro de Pamela E. Kinlaw presenta una visión de las expectativas que la audiencia del antiguo mundo mediterráneo (AMM) pudo tener respecto a la epifanía de Jesús. Asimismo, ofrece categorías literarias sobre el concepto joánico de encarnación, y abre un debate (...) polémico respecto a las tendencias teológicas adoptadas por el autor(res) del cuarto evangelio y sus oponentes. Estas razones son más que suficientes para leer con detenimiento las tesis que en su libro ofrece. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We argue that Roberts’s argument for the thesis that absolute velocity is not measurable in a Newtonian world is unsound, because it depends on an analysis of measurement that is not extensionally adequate. We propose an alternative analysis of measurement, one that is extensionally adequate and entails that absolute velocity is measured in at least one Newtonian world. If our analysis is correct, then this Newtonian world is a counterexample to the widely endorsed thesis that if a property varies (...) under the symmetries of a theory then, according to that theory, the property could not be measured. Thus, our paper shows that the debate over the measurability of symmetry-variant properties is more unsettled than previously supposed. (shrink)

LANDEMORE, Hélène. Open Democracy. Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Despite the implied critical stance of dystopian narratives, there is a strand of beautiful, aesthetically pleasant dystopias—inherently ambivalent texts that are—both fascinating and horrifying. Drawing from examples in literature and television, this article argues that “beautified dystopias” generate a surplus of aesthetic enjoyment, harboring a mystifying potential in tension with the critical-satirical potential of dystopias. In a rereading of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, this article first examine how D-503's aestheticizing voice—although undeniably constructed for a satirical effect—fosters a degree of fascination toward (...) the dystopian world in excess of Zamyatin's intentions. Second, taking Black Mirror's “Fifteen Million Merits” as an example of contemporary televisual dystopias, this article argues that the supposedly ironic construction of beautified cinematic mise-en-scènes deepens and complicates the underlying ambivalence of “beautified dystopias.” The author's assumption is that this is not an exceptional case, but rather an integral part of the current dystopian structure of feeling. (shrink)

The essay argues that there is no such thing as the epistemology of testimony as it is currently conceived: a subfield of epistemology that concerns itself with a special form of acquiring knowledge, a special kind of justification, a special sort of reason for belief. Rather, the concept of knowledge contains an account of the possibility of knowing from others. We cannot find ourselves in this predicament: we comprehend what knowledge is all right, and yet have difficulty seeing how one (...) may, from the words of another, come to acquire that: knowledge. And if we cannot find ourselves in this predicament, then there can be no need to introduce, in response to it, concepts that currently attract much interest—trust, authority, sincerity, etc. (shrink)

This essay explores the idea of acting from knowledge. This idea is a thought of ourselves: the distinctive way in which we act, in which we live, resides in this, that our actions, our life, may rest on knowledge. Yet the idea of action resting on knowledge is puzzling, even mysterious. The difficulty springs from the character of judgment that is knowledge: its objectivity. The objectivity of a judgment is a character of its validity: it is objectively valid. Yet it (...) is equally, and therefore, a character of the source of the reality of a valid judgment: a judgment that is knowledge is explained by nothing other than that which constitutes its validity. Now, action from knowledge partakes of this character of the knowledge on which it rests: it is explained by nothing other than what constitutes its validity, that is, its goodness. This dissolves the idea that action springs from a natural power, a power of change, a physis. That is the mystery. What could action be but the act of a natural power, and what could we be but agents of such a power? (shrink)

Laudan’s argument against the possibility of a demarcation criterion for scientific theories rests on establishing that any criterion must be a necessary and sufficient condition. But Laudan’s argument at most establishes that any criterion must provide a necessary condition and a possibly different sufficient condition. His own claims suggest that such a criterion is possible.

Kant asserts that the formula of the schools “nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni” is undoubtedly certain when clearly expressed. Conversely, doubt reflects a failure clearly to express it. Once we comprehend the concepts of the formula, of the good and of desire, there is no doubting it. In recent times, the formula has fallen into doubt. If Kant is right, then this shows a lack of clarity with respect to the concepts the formula conjoins. I want to suggest that (...) Kant is right: the formula of the schools is undoubtedly certain. I first explain in Kant’s own terms why there is no such thing as doubting the formula. Then I approach it from a different angle, provided by what I take to be the unclarity that affects current thought on the topic. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 'Philosophy of Nature' has often been accused of promoting a view of nature fundamentally at odds with the modern scientific understanding of nature. I show this accusation to be false by pointing to two aspects of Hegel's treatment of nature: its rejection of the 'a priori/a posteriori' distinction, and its connection to Hegel's conception of autonomy as freedom from givenness. I give a reading of Hegel's treatment of the laws of motion along these lines, and I (...) close with some points connecting this reading of Hegel to contemporary philosophy (specifically John McDowell and Catherine Malabou). (shrink)

This paper offers a further look at Husserl’s late thought on the transcendental subject and the Husserl–Heidegger relationship. It attempts a reconstruction of how Husserl hoped to assert his own thoughts on subjectivity vis-à-vis Heidegger, while also pointing out where Husserl did not reach the new level that Heidegger attained. In his late manuscripts, Husserl employs the term ‘transcendental person’ to describe the transcendental ego in its fullest ‘concretion’. I maintain that although this concept is a consistent development of Husserl’s (...) earlier analyses of constitution, Husserl was also defending himself against Heidegger, who criticized him for framing the subject in terms of transcendental ego rather than as Dasein. Husserl was convinced that he could successfully respond to Heidegger’s critique, but he did not grasp that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology was an immanent development, rather than a scathing criticism, of his own phenomenology. (shrink)

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03136-1.

In a series of essays, Bratman defines a concept, which we may call the concept of Bratmanian action by many. Our discussion of this concept, in section 1, reveals that it is not the one called to mind by the usual examples of joint action. Section 2 lays alongside it a different concept of doing something together. According to it, many are doing A together if and only if the principle of the actions in which they are doing A is (...) a joint intention to do A, an act of intending that is theirs. It seems fitting to call this joint intentional action. In distinction to Bratmanian action by many, joint intentional action is ubiquitous in human life. This raises the question what may be the interest of Bratman's concept. Its interest can reside only in a relation it bears to the concept of joint intentional action. Section 3 discusses the suggestion that Bratmanian action by many is a precursor of joint action in human phylogenesis. This is wrong because subjects are capable of Bratmanian action only in virtue of being subjects of joint action. (shrink)

A number of contemporary philosophers of mind have brought considerations from the study of aspect to bear on the ontological question how perceptual experiences persist over time. But, apart from rare exceptions, relatively little attention has been devoted to assess whether the way we talk about perceptual occurrences is of any relevance for discussions of ontological matters in general, let alone discussions about the ontological nature of perception. This piece examines whether considerations derived from the study of lexical aspect have (...) a significant bearing on what ontological views of perception we should endorse: I shall argue that such aspectual considerations are in fact of very little use for settling the relevant ontological issue. (shrink)

Life and “good” are interchangeable, I think. Life is good, goodness life. Michael Thompson has recovered the understanding of life as goodness for contemporary philosophy. However, he errs in thinking that our life, human life, is a certain kind of life. And so he errs in conceiving the idea of the good by which we live as that of a certain kind of life. The idea of the good by which we live is not an idea, but the idea. This (...) shows that our life is not a life, but the life. This essay develops a series of forms through which “good” is thought: external purpose, organism, external process, generic process. It transpires that they are all incapable of thinking the good which is thought and known in practical thought. This is life beyond the generic process, no natural life, but the life of the spirit. (shrink)

La paix entre l’État et les FARC en 2016 a fortement limité le nombre de victimes de violences mais ces dernières risquent de repartir de plus belle. La moitié des guérilleros ont été désarmés par l’ONU, ce qui laisse le pays sans encadrement territorial pour s’opposer au narcotrafic. Les anciens FARC sont assassinés par de nouvelles structures criminelles en train d’occuper le terrain.

If intelligent design (id) is to compete with evolutionary theory (et), it must meet the modified falsifiability challenge, that is, make some deductive or probabilistic observational assertions. It must also meet the modified translatability challenge, which it fails if et makes all the observational assertions of id, while id does not make all the observational assertions of et. I discuss four prominent but diverse formulations of id and show that each either fails one of the two challenges or is analytically (...) false. (shrink)