El presente artículo indaga algunas implicaciones ontológicas y políticas del fenómeno de reproducción técnica tal como se presenta a inicios del siglo XX. Hay cierto consenso básico en filosofía de la técnica sobre la idea de que las innovaciones sociales y políticas no pueden comprenderse independientemente de la emergencia y utilización de ciertos medios técnicos. Nuestro interés en este trabajo reside en explorar críticamente una faceta habitualmente subestimada en este tipo de indagación sobre la técnica: cómo las propiedades inherentemente técnicas (...) atadas a ciertos nuevos sistemas técnicos favorecen fácticamente a algunos fines y, por tanto, tienden hacia una serie de utilizaciones en desmedro de otras. Con este objetivo en mente, el presente trabajo reconstruye la posición de Walter Benjamin sobre el problema de la copia reproductible y lo pone en diálogo con las críticas recientes de Hennion y Latour. (shrink)

Databases play a fundamental role in today’s world, being used by most companies, especially those that offer services through the Internet. Today there is a wide variety of database models, each adapted for use according to the specific requirements of each application. Traditionally, the relational models with centralized architectures have been used mostly due to their simplicity and general-purpose query language, which made relational systems suitable for almost any application. However, with the growth of the Internet in recent decades, both (...) in the number of users and in the amount of information, those centralized models began to suffer availability and scalability issues. To address those issues, the use of decentralized architectures and alternative database models began to arise, eventually replacing relational databases and centralized architectures when the requirements on availability and scalability are high. Those database models alternative to the traditional relational model are grouped under the name of NoSQL. In this article, we present a NoSQL database developed as an end of degree work, with a flexible data model based on documents and a fully decentralized architecture based on the Gossip protocol for node discovery and a distributed hash table, in particular the rendezvous hashing algorithm, used to distribute and replicate the data across all the nodes. The main goals of the system are to achieve high availability and high scalability. High availability is achieved thanks to the replication of the data, while high scalability is achieved by its decentralized architecture, which allows multiple entry points from the requests, and the data distribution, effectively increasing the database capacity by increasing the number of nodes. (shrink)

En este trabajo intentaré mostrar que, de acuerdo con Agustín de Hipona –y a diferencia de una cierta lectura relativamente clásica de Pascal–, el deseo puede ser el comienzo de la relación del hombre con el Absoluto. Para ello divido el texto en cuatro partes: primero, describo la situación existencial primordial de la que nace el deseo, la inquietud. Después, describo el doble despliegue del deseo: amor o concupiscencia, según objeto e inclinación. En tercer lugar, intento describir los tipos de (...) concupiscencias y sus paralelismos en ambos autores. Concluyo mostrando la importancia de la costumbre en la constitución del deseo. (shrink)

This work focuses on the role that music has in the constitution of the World as a philosophical category. I explore the work of Eugenio Trías and Augustine of Hippo, and the way both philosophers have conceptualized music in relation to the constitution of the time of the World. For Trías music is not about the World but about its limits and, in that way, gives it a form. For Augustine music relates man to universe’s ordo , liberating him from (...) mundane distentio animi and helping him to give sense to a World that gives itself as finite. (shrink)

Perkins, Patricio Agustín.“La rela-ción filosófica entre Husserl y Avenarius en Problemas fundamentales de la fenomenología.” _Diánoia_ 59.72 (2014): 25-48.

Perkins, Patricio Agustín.“La rela-ción filosófica entre Husserl y Avenarius en Problemas fundamentales de la fenomenología.” _Diánoia_ 59.72 (2014): 25-48.

Perkins, Patricio Agustín. Respuesta al comentario de Juan Diego Bogotá “La relación filosófica entre Husserl y Avenarius en Problemas fundamentales de la fenomenología.” Ideas y Valores 65.160 (2016): 286-289.

Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present is an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the entire history of skepticism. Divided chronologically into ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary periods, and featuring 50 specially-commissioned chapters from leading philosophers, this comprehensive volume is the first of its kind.

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human life whose skeptical implications have been emphasized particularly by the ancient Pyrrhonists and by contemporary moral skeptics. Although the connection between disagreement and skepticism is also a focus of analysis in the emerging and burgeoning area of epistemology concerned with the significance of controversy, it has arguably not received the full attention it deserves. The present volume explores for the first time the possible skeptical consequences of disagreement in different areas and from different (...) perspectives, with an emphasis in the current debate over the epistemic impact of disagreement. The thirteen new essays collected here examine the Pyrrhonian approach to disagreement and its relevance to the present epistemological discussions of the topic; the relationship between disagreement and moral realism and antirealism; disagreement-based skeptical arguments in contemporary epistemology; and disagreement and the possibility of philosophical knowledge and justified belief. Given the ever-growing interest in both the significance of disagreement and the challenge of skepticism, this volume makes a new contribution by conjugating two important trends in current philosophical research. (shrink)

This book explores the nature and significance of Pyrrhonism, the most prominent and influential form of skepticism in Western philosophy. Not only did Pyrrhonism play an important part in the philosophical scene of the Hellenistic and Imperial age, but it also had a tremendous impact on Renaissance and modern philosophy and continues to be a topic of lively discussion among both scholars of ancient philosophy and epistemologists. The focus and inspiration of the book is the brand of Pyrrhonism expounded in (...) the extant works of Sextus Empiricus. Its aim is twofold: to offer a critical interpretation of some of the central aspects of Sextus’s skeptical outlook and to examine certain debates in contemporary philosophy from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective. The first part explores the aim of skeptical inquiry, the defining features of Pyrrhonian argumentation, the epistemic challenge posed by the Modes of Agrippa, and the Pyrrhonist’s stance on the requirements of rationality. The second part focuses on present-day discussions of the epistemic significance of disagreement, the limits of self-knowledge, and the nature of rationality. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in skepticism. (shrink)

This paper argues for the following three claims. First, the Agrippan mode from disagreement does not play a secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment. Second, the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Five Modes of Agrippa, which nonetheless does not prevent him from non-doxastically assenting to them. And third, some recent objections to Agrippan Pyrrhonism raised by analytic epistemologists and experimental philosophers fail to appreciate the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem style of argumentation and the real (...) challenge posed by the mode from disagreement. (shrink)

In his account of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus talks about the disturbance concerning matters of opinion that afflicts his dogmatic rivals and that he himself was afflicted by before his conversion to Pyrrhonism. The aim of the present paper is to identify the distinct sources of doxastic disturbance that can be found in that account, and to determine whether and, if so, how they are related. The thesis to be defended is that it is possible to discern three sources of doxastic (...) disturbance and that two of them are to be explained by reference to the third, which is the real cause of mental distress. The paper also considers whether the thesis in question entails that there is no reason for the Pyrrhonist to suspend judgment across the board, but only to suspend judgment about evaluative matters. (shrink)

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness (...) of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

La presente obra ofrece la primera historia completa de toda la filosofía novohispana desde 1521 hasta 1821. Se trata de una visión unitaria y completa de toda la filosofía de la época colonial de México, única en su género y con muchas aportaciones valiosas y originales, con método y bases de verdadera investigación histórico-filosófica. Se abre el libro con una hermenéutica de la historia de la filosofía novohispana en la cual el autor, siguiendo las orientaciones más modernas, comprende e interpreta (...) la historia de las ideas en México a partir de sus verdaderos comienzos: desde la polémica entablada por Agustín Rivera y Agustín de la Rosa sobre la validez o no de la acción de España en la enseñanza de la filosofía y de la ciencia en la Nueva España. En su conjunto la obra, estructurada cronológicamente, estudia las actividades y manifestaciones filosóficas de las órdenes religiosas en los tres siglos clásicos, estableciendo una división entre humanistas y escolásticos. Entre los humanistas, destacan fray Juan de Sumárraga, fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Vasco de Quiroga y Francisco Hernández. En la exposición de los escolásticos, y atendiendo a las diversas órdenes, traza un resumen de las obras principales de los autores más destacados: Diego Valdés, Alonso de la Vera Cruz, Pedro de Hortigosa, Antonio Rubio y Antonio Arias, así como sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. (shrink)

Putnam and others have argued that semantic externalism extends to artifactual kind words such as “pencil” or “doorstop”. I first show that, even with natural kinds, externalism applies to words for ground level kinds. The issue then arises of which categories of artifacts should be identified as kinds in the relevant, restricted sense. I argue that, though there are natural taxonomies of artifactual categories at least some of which have well-defined ground levels, even words for such kinds do not appear (...) to have externalist semantics, as they do not support ignorance or error arguments. Some think that membership to any kind is determined by objective features. Against this, I argue that the makers’ productive intentions are often crucial in selecting which pattern of features counts as constitutive of a kind. Though externalists may insist that membership to a kind is ultimately determined by sharing objective features, the resulting version of externalism can hardly be distinguished from internalism. (shrink)

Pyrrhonism was one of the two main ancient skeptical traditions. In this second paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present and discuss some of the issues on Pyrrhonian skepticism which have been the focus of much attention in the recent literature. The topics to be addressed concern the outlooks of Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, and Sextus Empiricus.

In this introductory chapter, I first offer an overview of the two themes addressed in the present collection - namely, disagreement and skepticism - and their connection, then present the purpose and content of the volume.

My purpose in this article is to revisit an issue concerning the state of undisturbedness or tranquility (ἀταραξία) in ancient Pyrrhonism as this skeptical stance is depicted in Sextus Empiricus’s extant works. The issue in question is whether both the pursuit and the attainment of undisturbedness in matters of opinion should be regarded as defining features of Pyrrhonism not merely from a systematic standpoint that examines Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy, but mainly according to Sextus’s own account of that (...) skeptical stance. In exploring this issue, I will develop an interpretation defended in previous work, responding to some objections, discussing alternative interpretations, offering further textual support, and putting forward new arguments. It is my contention that examining whether both the pursuit and the attainment of undisturbedness in matters of opinion are essential to Pyrrhonism will make it possible to gain a more accurate understanding of this brand of skepticism. (shrink)

La présente étude a deux objectifs. Le premier est d’examiner les différentes formulations de l’objection de l’ἀπραξία telle qu’elle fut soulevée contre le scepticisme académicien et le pyrrhonisme, ainsi que les réponses à cette objection proposées par Arcésilas et Sextus Empiricus. Le second objectif consiste à évaluer la force de la version de l’objection de l’ἀπραξία selon laquelle le sceptique ne peut réaliser les actions rationnelles propres à l’être humain.

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, (...) and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to examine whether Pyrrhonian skepticism, as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant works, has practical or epistemic value. More precisely, I would like to consider whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment (ἐποχή) and undisturbedness (ἀταραξία) can be deemed to be of practical or epistemic value. By ‘practical’ value I mean both moral value and prudential value. Moral value refers to moral rightness and wrongness; prudential value to the value of well-being, personal or (...) social. Hence, when I ask whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension and undisturbedness have practical value, I mean whether they make us behave in a manner that is morally right or wrong, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possible to live well. As for ‘epistemic’ value, it refers basically to the values of attaining truth and avoiding error. Hence, when I ask whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension has epistemic value, I mean whether it allows us to attain truth and avoid error. My main focus will be the practical value of both suspension and undisturbedness because this is the value on which ancient philosophy scholars critical of Pyrrhonism have laid emphasis. The reason for examining the epistemic value of suspension is that doing so will enable a fuller assessment of the significance of Pyrrhonism as a kind of philosophy, which is my primary concern. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in Pyrrhonism among both philosophers and historians of philosophy. This skeptical tradition is complex and multifaceted, since the Pyrrhonian arguments have been put into the service of different enterprises or been approached in relation to interests which are quite distinct. The diversity of conceptions and uses of Pyrrhonism accounts for the diversity of the challenges it is deemed to pose and of the attempts to meet them. The present volume brings together twelve (...) essays by leading specialists which explore the history and philosophical significance of this form of skepticism: they discuss some thorny questions concerning ancient Pyrrhonism, explore its influence on certain modern thinkers, and examine it in relation to contemporary analytic philosophy. The essays combine historical and exegetical analysis with an assessment of the philosophical merits of the Pyrrhonian outlook, with the aim of understanding it both in its historical context and in connection with contemporary concerns. This volume, the first entirely devoted to a detailed study of the Pyrrhonian tradition, is intended to open up new exegetical and philosophical perspectives on Pyrrhonism and to motivate further examination of certain difficult issues. It will be a valuable resource for scholars of ancient philosophy, historians of modern philosophy, and epistemologists, as well as for graduate students interested in skepticism. (shrink)

The question of whether the Pyrrhonist adheres to certain logical principles, criteria of justification, and inference rules is of central importance for the study of Pyrrhonism. Its significance lies in that, whereas the Pyrrhonist describes his philosophical stance and argues against the Dogmatists by means of what may be considered a rational discourse, adherence to any such principles, criteria, and rules does not seem compatible with the radical character of his skepticism. Hence, if the Pyrrhonist does endorse them, one must (...) conclude that he is inconsistent in his outlook. Despite its import, the question under consideration has not received, in the vast literature on Pyrrhonism of the past three decades, all the attention it deserves. In the present paper, I do not propose to provide a full examination of the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards rationality, but to focus on the question of whether he endorses the law of non-contradiction (LNC). However, I will also briefly tackle the question of the Pyrrhonist’s outlook on both the canons of rational justification at work in the so-called Five Modes of Agrippa and the logical rules of inference. In addition, given that the LNC is deemed a fundamental principle of rationality, determining the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards it will allow us to understand his general attitude towards rationality. (shrink)

This paper approaches the current epistemological debate on peer disagreement from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, thus adopting a form of skepticism which is more radical than those discussed in the literature. It makes use of argumentative strategies found in ancient Pyrrhonism both to show that such a debate rests on problematic assumptions and to block some maneuvers intended to offer an efficacious way of settling a considerable number of peer disputes. The essay takes issue with three views held in the peer (...) disagreement debate: there is an objective fact of the matter about at least most controversial questions; we possess theory-neutral evidence bearing on those questions which grants us access to the truth of the matter; and many peer controversies are resolved by attending to which disputant has correctly evaluated the objective evidence. With respect to the first two views, it is argued that the belief in both objective facts and theory-neutral evidence is subject to fierce dispute, and should not therefore be taken for granted in the discussion of peer disagreement. As for the third view, it is argued that from either a first- or a third-person perspective, there seems to be epistemic symmetry between the disputants which makes it necessary to suspend judgment. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to discuss some challenging issues concerning Sextus’ works and outlook, and to offer an overview of the influence exerted by Sextan Pyrrhonism on both early modern and contemporary philosophy.

It is generally thought that suspension of judgment about a proposition p is the doxastic attitude one is rationally compelled to adopt whenever the epistemic reasons for and against p are equipollent or equally credible, that is, whenever the total body of available evidence bearing on p epistemically justifies neither belief nor disbelief in p. However, in a recent contribution to this journal, Jan Wieland proposes “to broaden the conditions for suspension, and argue that it is rational to suspend belief (...) on a certain issue even if one’s current evidence is not neutral (or even close to neutral)”. My aim in this paper is to point to a number of problems in Wieland’s position, some of which in connection with the account of Pyrrhonian skepticism found in the extant works of Sextus Empiricus. (shrink)

Different notions of analysis have been both theorized and put to use in early analytic philosophy. Two of them stand out: connective analysis and analysis as paraphrase. The latter played a central role in the development of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine and beyond. With the advent of formal semantics of natural language in the 1970s, paraphrase came to be characterizable as translation into a formal “target language”. While I claim that the method cannot achieve its original philosophical aims, (...) I insist that, in spite of them, it is far from being a theoretically empty operation and that it lives on in some contemporary philosophical enterprises. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonian skeptic’s stance, as described by Sextus Empiricus, is in good part defined by his suspending judgment or belief about all the matters he has so far investigated. Most interpreters of Pyrrhonism maintain that it is a mistake to understand this form of skepticism in terms of doubt because suspension as conceived of by the Pyrrhonist is markedly different from the state of doubt. In this article, I expound the reasons that have been offered in support of that prevailing (...) view and assess their strength. (shrink)

Le scepticisme est une véritable constante de l’histoire de la philosophie depuis l’Antiquité. En se nourrissant des désaccords philosophiques, il ne cesse de se transformer pour mieux remettre en cause les certitudes du dogmatisme. Ce volume présente des contributions en langue française de spécialistes de la pensée sceptique dans l’antiquité, domaine qui s’est considérablement développé ces dernières années. Les études ici présentées portent aussi bien sur le pyrrhonisme que sur la nouvelle Académie ou l’empirisme médical ; elles utilisent une variété (...) d’approches (analytique, systématique et historiographique), toutes dans le même but : mieux comprendre l’énigme de la pensée sceptique. (shrink)

Scholarship on ancient Pyrrhonism has made tremendous advances over the past three decades, thanks especially to the careful reexamination of Sextus Empiricus’ extant corpus. Building on this momentum, the authors of the eight essays collected here examine some of the most vexed and intriguing exegetical and philosophical questions posed by Sextus’ presentation of this form of skepticism. The essays explore in a new light the skeptical interpretation of Plato, the differences between Pyrrhonism and Cyrenaicism, the Pyrrhonist’s stance on ordinary life, (...) religion, language, and ethics, Sextus’ discussion of our access to our own mental states, and the relationship between Pyrrhonism and epistemic internalism and externalism. These new essays represent a substantial contribution to the advancement of scholarship on Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider an evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) that purports to undermine the epistemic justification of the belief in the reliability of our belief-forming processes, and an evolutionary vindicating argument (EVA) that seeks to establish that such a belief is epistemically justified. Whereas the EDA in question seems to fall prey to crippling self-defeat, the EVA under consideration seems to fall prey to vicious circularity. My interest in those arguments and the problems they face lies in what they (...) might tell us about the possibly aporetic nature of reason. For, if we take the EDA and the EVA in question to consist of true or plausible premises and valid inferences at which we arrive through a meticulous use of reason, then their falling victim to either crippling self-defeat or vicious circularity might be regarded as a sign that, when we push rational reflection on the reliability, or lack thereof, of our belief-forming capacities to the limit, we end up in a situation of aporia from which there seems to be no escape. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that one of the key differences between ancient skepticism and modern and contemporary skepticism is that the ancient skeptic does not call into question the existence of the external world, but only our ability to know the properties or qualities of external objects. In this paper, I argue that in Sextus Empiricus's attack on the Epicurean criterion of truth one finds evidence that the ancient Pyrrhonist also suspends judgment about the existence of external objects.

Pyrrhonism can safely be said to be the most prominent and influential form of skepticism in the history of Western philosophy. It was an important philosophical movement in the Hellenistic and Imperial ages, made a tremendous impact on modern philosophy, and some of its arguments continue to be a central topic of discussion in the contemporary philosophical scene. This can be taken to be a strong indication of the intriguing and challenging character of the Pyrrhonian outlook. After presenting the collections (...) entirely or primarily devoted to ancient Pyrrhonism and its presence in, or connection with, both modern and contemporary philosophy, this article deals consecutively with Pyrrhonian skepticism in the three historical periods. The reason for not including a part on Pyrrhonism in medieval philosophy is simply that knowledge of this type of skepticism was so limited in the Middle Ages that it exerted almost no influence whatsoever on medieval thinkers. Given that Pyrrhonian skepticism is essentially an ancient philosophy, the great majority of the citations concern ancient Pyrrhonism. This article focuses primarily on scholarship in English but also included are works in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. (shrink)

Ancient philosophy knew two main skeptical traditions: the Pyrrhonian and the Academic. In this final paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present some of the topics about Academic skepticism which have recently been much debated in the specialist literature. I will be concerned with the outlooks of Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Philo of Larissa.

This article investigates Foucault’s account of desiring man by drawing upon History of Sexuality vol. 4, Confessions of the Flesh. In order to do so, the article focuses on Foucault’s diagnosis of the Christian elaboration of “the analytic of the subject of concupiscence” that closes Confessions of the Flesh. As the article shows, “the analytic of the subject of concupiscence” inspires Foucault’s account of desiring man. However, Foucault’s diagnosis of the Christian elaboration of “the analytic of concupiscence” proves to be (...) debatable as it relies on a problematic interplay between Cassian’s and Saint Augustine’s account of concupiscence. The article exposes the problems that such interplay supposes by addressing the contrast between Cassian’s and Augustine’s perspective on both concupiscence and the human condition. Despite this problematic aspect of Foucault’s investigation of Christianity, the article argues that the publication of Confessions of the Flesh is central to understanding Foucault’s History of Sexuality. By providing new elements of analysis, the book reopens Foucault’s genealogical diagnosis of the formation of the medical account of sexuality and allows us to problematise new avenues for developing Foucault’s investigation in depth. (shrink)

Locke’s consciousness-based theory of personal identity resulted not only from his agnosticism on substance, but also from his biblical theology. This theory was intended to complement and sustain Locke’s moral and theological commitments to a system of otherworldly rewards and sanctions as revealed in Scripture. Moreover, he inferred mortalist ideas from the Bible, rejecting the resurrection of the same body and maintaining that the soul dies at physical death and will be resurrected by divine miracle. Accordingly, personal identity is neither (...) in the soul, nor in the body, nor in a union of soul and body. To Locke, personal identity is in consciousness, which, extending “backwards to any past Action or Thought,” enables the self, both in this life and upon resurrection for the Last Judgment, to recognize that “it is the same self now it was then; and ‘tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done” (Essay II.xxvii.9). (shrink)

En este artículo, se aborda, desde una óptica Spinoziana, el problema de la libertad. Spinoza rechaza la libertad como el libre albedrío. Sin embargo, considera que podemos tener agencia (libertad) en tanto, guiados por el conocimiento de las causas de nuestros afectos, actuemos en favor de nuestro conatus. Esta investigación está dividida en tres capítulos: En el primero, se reconstruye, someramente, la posición de Spinoza sobre el libre albedrío; en el segundo, se desarrolla su propuesta de agencia; finalmente, en el (...) tercero, se busca reactualizar las consideraciones de Spinoza en torno a la discusión contemporánea sobre problema de la libertad. (shrink)

This paper engages with Svavar Svavarsson’s recent essay, “Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence,” arguing against both (i) his interpretation of whether two rival arguments appear equipollent to the Pyrrhonist because he himself is equally persuaded by both of them, and (ii) his interpretation of the way in which the argument from possible disagreement is supposed to induce suspension of judgment in the Pyrrhonist. In so doing, I aim to dispel some serious misunderstandings regarding key aspects of the Pyrrhonist’s skeptical (...) outlook and argumentative practice. (shrink)

How is it possible that a phenomenon like psychoanalysis, which has dominated the cultural and intellectual life of the last century in Europe, North and South America, has had apparently no resonance in Hong Kong? While psychoanalysis is raising some interest in Mainland China and in Taiwan, it remains only marginally relevant in Hong Kong. This book attempts to explain why. Addressing the subject from an East to West approach, this study proposes an experience of displacement, as it is argued (...) that the chance for psychoanalysis today is not just to be exported to the East, but asking how psychoanalysis can be re-invented after experiencing the culture in Hong Kong. What remains of psychoanalysis, after this? How to re-invent and innovate psychoanalysis today? This study also debunks the myth that psychoanalytic research cannot be led by adopting a quantitative/statistical methodology. (shrink)

Several scholars familiar with Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrhonism who have attentively read his Against the Ethicists have gotten the impression that something strange is going on in this book. For, at variance with the ‘official’ Pyrrhonian attitude of universal suspension of judgment, a number of passages of Against the Ethicists seem to ascribe to the Pyrrhonist both a type of negative dogmatism and a form of realism, which together amount to what may be called ‘moderate ethical realism’. The purpose of this (...) paper is to determine whether Sextus does embrace such a position in Against the Ethicists. (shrink)

My aim in this short essay is both to critically examine the nature and extent of Jonathan Matheson's disagreement-based skepticism in his book, The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement, and to consider three ways not discussed by him in which disagreement may pose, or contribute to posing, skeptical challenges. The essay will therefore be organized around four issues.

Moral skepticism is at present a vibrant topic of philosophical inquiry. Particularly since the turn of the millennium, the metaethical study of skepticism has profited from advances in general epistemology and findings in empirical sciences, in light of which new arguments for and against moral skepticism have been devised, while the traditional ones have been reexamined. This collection of original essays by leading metaethicists will advance the ongoing debates about various forms of moral skepticism by drawing on recent innovative work (...) on moral disagreement, moral knowledge and justification, moral error theory, moral fictionalism, moral phenomenology, moral psychology, and evolutionary debunking of morality. It will be a valuable resource for professionals and advanced students working in the areas of moral philosophy and moral psychology. (shrink)