The Criminalization series arose from an interdisciplinary investigation into criminalization, focussing on the principles that might guide decisions about what kinds of conduct should be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. Developing a normative theory of criminalization, the series tackles the key questions at the heart of the issue: what principles and goals should guide legislators in deciding what to criminalize? How should criminal wrongs be classified and differentiated? How should law enforcement officials apply the law's specifications of (...) offences? The sixth volume in the series offers a philosophical investigation of the relationship between moral wrongdoing and criminalization. Considering the justification of punishment, the nature of harm, the importance of autonomy, inchoate wrongdoing, the role of consent, and the role of the state, the book provides an account of the nature of moral wrongdoing, the sources of wrongdoing, why wrongdoing is the central target of the criminal law, and the ways in which criminalization of non-wrongful conduct might be permissible. (shrink)

Scriven’s paradox of predictability arises from the combination of two ideas: first, that everything in a deterministic universe is, in principle, predictable; second, that it is possible to create a system that falsifies any prediction that is made of it. Recently, the paradox has been used by Rummens and Cuypers to argue that there is a fundamental difference between embedded and external predictors; and by Ismael to argue against a governing conception of laws. The present paper defends a new diagnosis (...) of the roots of the paradox. First, it is argued that the unpredictability has to be understood in the light of Turing’s famous results about computability, in particular his proof that there is no solution to the ‘halting problem.’ This allows us to see that previous analyses of the paradox were either mistaken or not fully adequate. Second, the sense of paradox that nevertheless remains is traced to the idea that rational behaviour is not dependent on contingent environmental circumstances: that it is always up to us to engage in activities such as rational prediction or rational belief. The paradox of predictability teaches us that this idea, natural though it may be, is mistaken. (shrink)

We articulate a holistic understanding of hope, going beyond the common conceptualization of hope in terms of positive affect and cognition by considering what hope means for the underprivileged. In the recognition that hope is always situated in a particular place, we explore the perspective of the privileged and the underprivileged, clarifying how spatial contexts shape their goals for the future and their agency toward attaining these goals. Where some people experience precarity due to their disability, race, gender, sexuality, and (...) social class, others enjoy enhanced agency due to their privilege. In our analysis, this loss of agency does not mean the underprivileged are hopeless; instead, it suggests that hope can incorporate negative affect and cognition. In our view, a spatial understanding acknowledges the power of hope in discouraging situations, and it points to practical measures through which hope can be cultivated by marginalized communities. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in bioethics, particularly in research ethics and public health ethics. The traditional approach construes vulnerability as inherent in individuals or the groups to which they belong and views vulnerability as requiring special protections. Florencia Luna and other bioethicists continue to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing and applying the term. Luna began proposing a layered approach to this concept and recently extended this proposal to offer two new concepts to analyze the concept of vulnerability, (...) namely understanding external conditions that trigger vulnerability and layers of vulnerability with cascading effects. Luna's conception of vulnerability is useful, which we demonstrate by applying her layered view and the new analyses in multiple contexts. We begin by outlining Luna's view and we use vignettes from healthcare involving transgender patients, the care of patients in psychiatric contexts, and research involving prisoners to illustrate how each part of Luna's concept elucidates important moral issues. (shrink)

Consider the Unshareability View, namely, the view that first person thought or self-thought—thought as typically expressed via the first person pronoun—is not shareable from subject to subject. In this article, I show that a significant number of Fregean and non-Fregean commentators of Frege have taken the Unshareability View to be the default Fregean position, rehearse Frege’s chief claims about self-thought and suggest that their combination entails the Unshareability View only on the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence between way (...) of thinking and thought-individuating cognitive value, outline an account of self-thought that rejects the assumption and keeps intact all of Frege’s chief claims, and respond to a number of worries to the effect that this proposal yields undesirable results from the point of view of the individuation of self-thought at the level of cognitive value. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe’s classic paper Causality and Determination claims that causation can be perceived. It also defends causal singularism, the idea that the causal relation is fundamentally between the particular cause and effect, and does not depend on regularities holding elsewhere in the universe. But does the former furnish an argument for the latter? The present paper analyses a special type of causal experience involving emotional reactions to present stimuli; for instance, being frightened by a spider. It argues that such experiences (...) are strongly local, in the sense that they justify belief in a local causal relation independently of our knowledge about events elsewhere in the universe. If this analysis is correct, Humean regularity theories of causation are false; and all other non-singularist theories of causation face a difficult explanatory challenge. This means that the case for causal singularism comes out considerably strengthened. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the Transparency Thesis, the claim that by introspection one cannot become aware of one's experience. Recently, some authors have suggested that the Transparency Thesis is challenged by introspective states reached under mindfulness. We label this the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis. The present paper develops the hypothesis in important new ways. First, we motivate the hypothesis by drawing on recent clinical psychology and cognitive science of mindfulness. Secondly, we develop the hypothesis by describing the implied shift in experiential perspective, (...) the scope of introspectable qualities, and the level of skill. Thirdly, we defend the hypothesis against various philosophical arguments. We conclude that the Mindfulness Opacity Hypothesis is empirically and theoretically well motivated and supported. (shrink)

Cohen’s (2023) mapping exercise of possible bioethical issues emerging from the use of ChatGPT in medicine provides an informative, useful, and thought-provoking trigger for discussions of AI ethic...

This article picks up on Foucault’s radical reconceptualisation of concept “power”, and presents asignificant challenge to contemporary discourses surrounding instructionist classroom management. We critique his approach to instructionist classroom management on the basis that it conceptualises power as domination in dealing with disruption in the classroom. We argue that power and discourse are interrelated constructs that the teacher uses to perpetuateTaylorism, Fordism andbureaucraticdomination in aninstructionist classroom setting. Drawing on Foucault’s and Bourdieu’s works, this document reviews:1) explores Foucault’s theory of discourse; (...) 2) argues discourse as an instrument of power; 3) captures the philosophical perspectives on instructionist classroom management; and 4) argues a teacher’s power as a tool for social reproduction and domination in instructionist classroom setting. (shrink)

Naturalists who conceive of knowledge as a natural kind are led to treat ‘knowledge’ as a natural kind term. ‘Knowledge,’ then, must behave semantically in the ways that seem to support a direct reference theory for other natural kind terms. A direct reference theory for ‘knowledge,’ however, appears to leave open too many possibilities about the identity of knowledge. Intuitively, states of belief count as knowledge only if they meet epistemic criteria, not merely if they bear a causal/historical relation to (...) the term. I will develop this objection and show that it is grounded in modal considerations central to Kripke’s work on reference. I will also argue that a more plausible externalist semantics for natural kind terms disarms the objection. (shrink)

Problem 2 at the 56th International Mathematical Olympiad asks for all triples of positive integers for which ab−c, bc−a, and ca−b are all powers of 2. We show that this problem requires only a primitive form of arithmetic, going back to the Pythagoreans, which is the arithmetic of the even and the odd.

a forma como o autor insere na filosofia o trabalho de campo etnográfico, que passa a ser uma das metodologias da filosofia.

There is an unresolved conflict concerning the normative nature of desire. Some authors take rational desire to differ from rational belief in being a normatively unconstrained attitude. Others insist that rational desire seems plausibly subject to several consistency norms. This article argues that the correct analysis of this conflict of conative normativity leads us to acknowledge intrinsic and extrinsic reasons to desire. If sound, this point helps us to unveil a fundamental aspect of desire, namely, that we cannot desire at (...) will. Unlike belief, however, desire can unproblematically accommodate a notion of instrumental attitude. (shrink)

Many theists regard the claim that certain fundamental constants of nature are fine-tuned for life as the best scientific argument for the existence of God since Paley’s watch. Even atheist physicists find these so-called “anthropic coincidences” difficult to explain naturally and many think they need to invoke multiple universes and the so-called “anthropic principle” to do so. Certainly if there are many universes, fine-tuning is simple. Our universe is not fine-tuned for life. Life is fine-tuned to our universe. While multiple (...) universes are expected from modern cosmological theories, theists and some scientists object that invoking the unobservable is not science. Of course, God is unobservable too, so the best theists can claim is a standoff. (shrink)

We prove that, in the framework of ordered geometry, the inner form of the Pasch axiom does not imply its outer form . We also show that OP can be properly split into IP and the weak Pasch axiom.

1. Over the last 50 years or so, and especially over the last few decades, the U.S. and many other societies have undergone a large, rapid, and broad decline in anti-gay attitudes. The magnitude, s...

In this paper, we bring into focus the level of thought or content in the elucidation of disagreement. We set out the view that disagreement at this level involves a specific form of noncotenability, namely, noncotenability as captured by sense or intension as opposed to reference. We present the challenge that nourishes the alternative referential view and suggest, through examples, that (i) only intensional disagreement is apt to adequately accommodate basic rationality constraints on disagreement, and (ii) it can meet the (...) aforementioned challenge insofar as we discriminate between noncotenability affecting one's concepts, intensionally conceived, and noncotenability affecting merely one's particular understanding of those concepts. We conclude that intensional disagreement is our best choice for an account of disagreement at the level of thought. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously regarded philosophy as an activity and not as a body of doctrine. And yet within the secondary literature there is little agreement as to what Wittgenstein took the purpose of that activity to be. In this paper, I claim that the purpose of philosophical activity, at least according to the Later Wittgenstein, was to solve philosophical problems. As support for this claim, I argue that our everyday talk about the mind presents us with a philosophical problem about the (...) mind. Focusing then on what Wittgenstein says about understanding and using his distinction between internal and external relations, I show how we can solve this problem. If my reading is accepted, then the purpose of philosophical activity, according to the later Wittgenstein, was not therapy. As such, later Wittgenstein should not be read as a therapist. (shrink)

After the last very deep and intense investigations on Zubiri’s thought carried out in recent decades, this essay aims to contribute to make an assessment of the current state of the matter, examining several fundamental problems concerning human knowledge, which has been masterfully elucidated by the Spanish thinker: the question of truth and its modalities; the link between truth, knowledge and reality (the question of realism, types of scepticism and the question of hermeneutic). It is also about seeing the question (...) of the limits and possibilities from human Knowledge, attending to the articulation between human cognitive activity and the ontological structure of man (spiritual and corporeal at once). All of this is about seeing the achievements of Zubiri’s approach - placing his proposal in the context of the history of Western thought, and in particular, in the context of current thinking - emphasizing the possibilities it opens in the future, but its difficulties too. (shrink)

This article examines the possibility of establishing a Department of Peace (DOP) as a Department of the Government of Canada. The topic has been introduced in Parliament twice, as Bill C-447 in 2009 and as Bill C-373 in 2011, without any further actions beyond the formal First Reading. The introduction of the bills could only happen on the basis of significant support among Canadians. At present efforts to introduce the DOP continue, although in somewhat muted form. Based largely on oral (...) interviews, this article assesses the potential for establishing a DOP in the context of the Canadian peace tradition as well as global developments. It concludes that a DOP has great potential to move the peace agenda forward but that, in view of the priorities of the current government and the general mood in Canadian society, it is not realistic to expect a DOP to be implemented at present. (shrink)

This paper explores the thinking of some Salamancan theologians regarding the notion of pure nature. In particular, I address Suárez’s thinking on this subject and locate it within the context of the debate over whether human beings have a desire for the beatific vision. Insofar as a number of Thomists and Suárez think that there is no natural desire for a supernatural end, human beings are, by nature, left only with a desire for natural beatitude. The theoretical possibility of a (...) human nature created without any order to a supernatural end and also falling outside the economy of grace becomes a subject of speculation that serves to illuminate something about created nature itself. (shrink)

Comment penser une philosophie du droit chez Epicure, sans le trahir? Comment degager des principes politiques dans l'oeuvre de celui dont la maxime etait de vivre cache, loin des affaires administratives concernant la Cite? Le defi peut paraitre ambitieux, c'est pourtant celui que releve Victor Goldschmidt dans cet ouvrage. Et il puise a la source meme, au coeur des dernieres sentences des Maximes Capitales, grace auxquelles il thematie et structure une pensee politique s'inscrivant parfaitement au sein de la logique (...) de la doctrine epicurienne. En effet, pour vivre bien, il est necessaire de penser le vivre ensemble avec des lois pour toile de fonds. La pensee epicurienne se deploie autour des concepts directeurs que sont l'interet, la reciprocite, la securite, le juste se definissant en reference a l'utile. Le droit epicurien veut s'imposer comme une realite et depasser le simple statut de doctrine du droit. C'est dire toute la portee de cette etude, et la place qu'on doit accorder a la pensee epicurienne dans la philosophie politique. (shrink)

This paper analyses the structure of evolutionary theory as a quasi-Newtonian theory and the need to establish a Zero-Cause Law. Several authors have postulated that the special character of drift is because it is the default behaviour or Zero-Cause Law of evolutionary systems, where change and not stasis is the normal state of them. For these authors, drift would be a Zero-Cause Law, the default behaviour and therefore a constituent assumption impossible to change without changing the system. I defend that (...) drift's causal and explanatory power prevents it from being considered as a Zero-Cause Law. Instead, I propose that the default behaviour of evolutionary systems is what I call the Principle of Stasis, which posits that an evolutionary system where there is no selection, drift, mutation, migration, etc., and therefore no difference-maker, will not undergo any change (it will remain in stasis). (shrink)

The contemporary proliferation of “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” seems to render obsolete the notion of a public sphere in the singular. In my article, I would like to argue against this view: Following Jürgen Habermas, “the public sphere” can be understood as the concomitant horizon of communicative action, while the latter permeates society as a whole. On the basis of this socio-philosophical approach, the omnipresent tendencies toward fragmentation appear as reactive attempts to ward off this socially established and context-transcending (...) context of discussion. Habermas himself, however, has never adopted this perspective. Instead, he interprets the various symptoms of the decline of the public sphere—including its fragmentation—as the result of a “colonization of the lifeworld” by economic, bureaucratic, and technological system logics. However, on the basis of the concept of “systematically distorted communication,” which was still crucial for Habermas’s early work, it is possible to reconstruct how the lifeworld context of communicative action, out of which the public sphere emerges, is not only corroded and cut through from the outside by system logics but also exhibits its own dialectic of the refusal of discourse and the overcoming of this refusal. The fragmentation of the public sphere that we are confronted with today can be theoretically interpreted and politically addressed as a precarious standstill of this dialectic. (shrink)

It is well known that the history of Calculus in the nineteenth century coincides with the process of substitution of infinitesimals by the notion of limit. But it is adviseable to keep in mind the ontological implications of that process.We can find a background for this ontological approach in Abraham Robinson’s Non-Standard AnaIysis and “The Metaphysics of the Calculus”. Indeed, by the choice of the word “metaphysics” and by the several recalls of the ontological nature of the arguments, Robinson claims (...) for a filiation which is at the same time fruitful in the mathematical register and necessary for a true philosophical reflection about the infinite. (shrink)

The long‐standing issue of Wittgenstein's controversial remarks on Gödel's Theorem has recently heated up in a number of different and interesting directions [, , ]. In their , Juliet Floyd and Hilary Putnam purport to argue that Wittgenstein's‘notorious’ “Contains a philosophical claim of great interest,” namely, “if one assumed. that →P is provable in Russell's system one should… give up the “translation” of P by the English sentence ‘P is not provable’,” because if ωP is provable in PM, PM is (...) ω ‐inconsistent, and if PM is ω‐inconsistent, we cannot translate ‘P’as ’P is not provable in PM’because the predicate‘NaturalNo.’in ‘P’“cannot be…interpreted” as “x is a natural number.” Though Floyd and Putnam do not clearly distinguish the two tasks, they also argue for “The Floyd‐Putnam Thesis,” namely, that in the 1930's Wittgenstein had a particular understanding of Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem. In this paper, I endeavour to show, first, that the most natural and most defensible interpretation of Wittgenstein's and the rest of is incompatible with the Floyd‐Putnam attribution and, second, that evidence from Wittgenstein's Nachla strongly indicates that the Floyd‐ Putnam attribution and the Floyd‐Putnam Thesis are false. By way of this examination, we shall see that despite a failure to properly understand Gödel's proof—perhaps because, as Kreisel says, Wittgenstein did not read Gödel's 1931 paper prior to 1942‐Wittgenstein's 1937–38, 1941 and 1944 remarks indicate that Gödel's result makes no sense from Wittgenstein's own perspective. (shrink)

Between existenz and a hard-rock place, there is the man, trying to not make the same mistakes of the past and recvonciliate himself with himself, even on liberty or prison. Any conclusion is unnecessary, because life goes on.