The book suggests a new perspective on the essence of human language. This enormous achievement of our species is best characterized as a communication technology - not unlike the social media on the Net today - that was collectively invented by ancient humans for a very particular communicative function: the instruction of imagination. All other systems of communication in the biological world target the interlocutors' senses; language allows speakers to systematically instruct their interlocutors in the process of imagining the intended (...) meaning - instead of directly experiencing it. This revolutionary function has changed human life forever, and in the book it operates as a unifying concept around which a new general theory of language gradually emerges. Dor identifies a set of fundamental problems in the linguistic sciences - the nature of words, the complexities of syntax, the interface between semantics and pragmatics, the causal relationship between language and thought, language processing, the dialectics of universality and variability, the intricacies of language and power, knowledge of language and its acquisition, the fragility of linguistic communication and the origins and evolution of language - and shows with respect to all of them how the theory provides fresh answers to the problems, resolves persistent difficulties in existing accounts, enhances the significance of empirical and theoretical achievements in the field, and identifies new directions for empirical research. The theory thus opens a new way towards the unification of the linguistic sciences, on both sides of the cognitive-social divide. (shrink)

The self-domestication hypothesis suggests that, like mammalian domesticates, humans have gone through a process of selection against aggression – a process that in the case of humans was self-induced. Here, we extend previous proposals and suggest that what underlies human social evolution is selection for socially mediated emotional control and plasticity. In the first part of the paper we highlight general features of human social evolution, which, we argue, is more similar to that of other social mammals than to that (...) of mammalian domesticates and is therefore incompatible with the notion of human self-domestication. In the second part, we discuss the unique aspects of human evolution and propose that emotional control and social motivation in humans evolved during two major, partially overlapping stages. The first stage, which followed the emergence of mimetic communication, the beginnings of musical engagement, and mimesis-related cognition, required socially mediated emotional plasticity and was accompanied by new social emotions. The second stage followed the emergence of language, when individuals began to instruct the imagination of their interlocutors, and to rely even more extensively on emotional plasticity and culturally learned emotional control. This account further illustrates the significant differences between humans and domesticates, thus challenging the notion of human self-domestication. (shrink)

We investigate the relationship between weak square principles and simultaneous reflection of stationary sets.

The paper motivates a novel research programme in the philosophy of action parallel to the ‘Knowledge First’ programme in epistemology. It is argued that much of the grounds for abandoning the quest for a reductive analysis of knowledge in favour of the Knowledge First alternative is mirrored in the case of intentional action, inviting the hypothesis that intentional action is also, like knowledge, metaphysically basic. The paper goes on to demonstrate the sort of explanatory contribution that intentional action can make (...) once it is no longer taken to be a target for reductive analysis, in explaining other, non-intentional kinds of action and voluntariness. (shrink)

This chapter contributes to the ongoing debate over how to understand attention. It spells out and defends a novel account according to which attending is the most general type of mental act, that which one performs on some object if one performs any mental act on it at all. On this view, all mental acts are (to a first, rough approximation) species of attending. The view is novel in going against the grain of virtually all extant accounts, which work by (...) identifying the purported unique functional role of attention. It is inspired by Timothy Williamson’s account of knowledge as the most general factive mental state (Williamson, 2001: ch. 1). -/- Beyond the Williamsonian thin explanation of knowledge, the account of attention as the most general mental act is animated by two striking pre-theoretical features of attention, dubbed ubiquity and heterogeneity. The hope of accommodating these twin features seems to drive at least two other extant accounts of attention, very different from the one proposed here, offered by Mole and Wu, respectively. However, as the chapter explains, both Mole’s and Wu’s accounts fall short, leaving room for the novel account defended here, which does adequately capture both features. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of the sorites paradox for collective nouns and gradable adjectives within the framework of classical logic. The paradox is explained by distinguishing between qualitative and quantitative representations. This distinction is formally represented by the use of a different mathematical model for each type of representation. Quantitative representations induce Archimedean models, but qualitative representations induce non-Archimedean models. By using a non-standard model of \ called \, which contains infinite and infinitesimal numbers, the two paradoxes are shown (...) to have distinct structures. The sorites paradox for collective nouns arises from the use of infinite numbers, whereas the sorites paradox for gradable adjectives arises from the use of infinitesimal numbers. Each paradox can be traced to a different source of vagueness. The sorites paradox for collective nouns is caused by \, and the sorites paradox for gradable adjectives is caused by \ \. If correct, this analysis implies that infinite and infinitesimal numbers are cognitively real, and that they play a role in the semantic interpretation of natural language. (shrink)

The idea of creation in the divine image has a long and complex history. While its roots apparently lie in the royal myths of Mesopotamia and Egypt, this book argues that it was the biblical account of creation presented in the first chapters of Genesis and its interpretation in early rabbinic literature that created the basis for the perennial inquiry of the concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yair Lorberbaum reconstructs the idea of the creation of man in the image (...) of God attributed in the Midrash and the Talmud. He analyzes meanings attributed to tselem Elohim in early rabbinic thought, as expressed in Aggadah, and explores its application in the normative, legal, and ritual realms. (shrink)

The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole’s prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces (...) the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process-based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate some properties of forcing which can be considered “nice” in the context of singularizing regular cardinals to have an uncountable cofinality. We show that such forcing which changes cofinality of a regular cardinal, cannot be too nice and must cause some “damage” to the structure of cardinals and stationary sets. As a consequence there is no analogue to the Prikry forcing, in terms of “nice” properties, when changing cofinalities to be uncountable.

Mental acts are conspicuously absent from philosophical debates over the nature of action. A typical protagonist of a typical scenario is far more likely to raise her arm or open the window than she is to perform a calculation in her head or talk to herself silently. One possible explanation for this omission is that the standard ‘causalist’ account of action, on which acts are analyzed in terms of mental states causing bodily movements, faces difficulties in accommodating some paradigmatic cases (...) of mental action – or so I argue. After drawing out these objections to causalism, I outline a more promising approach. Building on previous work, I show how the approach I favour, on which the attempt to analyze action is dispensed with, provides a unified account of both mental and physical action. (shrink)

In the early 1760s, the entry dedicated to the term “social” in Diderot's Encyclopédie claimed that it was “un mot nouvellement introduit dans la langue.” Strictly speaking, this description was inaccurate: “social” had already appeared in seventeenth-century French texts. But the essence of the Encyclopédie's argument was correct: “social” had been so marginal in French up until the mid-eighteenth century that its wide deployment in enlightened discourse from the 1740s onward could be treated as a new appearance. The article main (...) argument is that “social's” new appearance in the mid-1740s was of considerable intellectual importance.To support this argument, the article is divided into three parts. The first outlines the general premises of the research into the word “social” and its significance. By placing this research within the ongoing investigation of the semantic field around “société” in enlightened philosophy, the article claims that such an investigation is much more than an etymological exercise. The special epistemological status of “social” in enlightened philosophy makes an understanding of the reasons for its rapid domination of French philosophical discourse a most rewarding project from the perspective of intellectual history.The second part of the article provides empirical evidence for the argument that “social” had been all but completely absent from French intellectual discourse before the mid-eighteenth century. It is of course harder to ascertain the absence of a word before a given point in time than to confirm its presence, but many different indications substantiate the essence of the Encyclopédie's claim. These indications also allow one to follow “social's” discursive rise after about 1745 and to speculate about the identity of the author responsible for it. All evidence lead to two philosophes, the article claims: Diderot and Rousseau.Finally, the third part of the article presents an argument about the reasons for “social's” rapid naturalization in French enlightened thought and discusses what the philosophes tried so intensively to do, achieve, or express with “social.” Possible answers to this question lead to a reevaluation of mid-eighteenth century enlightened thought in general and contemporary philosophes in particular. Most importantly, such answers allow us to reflect on how we write and think about the intellectual achievements of the mid-eighteenth century, and in what way we, too, still inhabit the mental universe the philosophes helped to create. (shrink)

Welcoming their scholarly focus on metaphorizing, I critique Díaz-Rojas, Soto-Andrade and Videla-Reyes’s selection of the hypothetical constructs “conceptual metaphor” and “enactive ….

A fibromialgia é uma síndrome crônica, não inflamatória caracterizada por dores musculoesqueléticas difusas e pela presença de pontos dolorosos em determinadas regiões do corpo "Tender Points". Seu diagnóstico é clínico, não havendo alterações laboratoriais específicas. O enfoque deste trabalho é co..

Intention Cognitivism – the doctrine that intending to V entails, or even consists in, believing that one will V – is an important position with potentially wide-ranging implications, such as a revisionary understanding of practical reason, and a vindicating explanation of 'Practical Knowledge'. In this paper, I critically examine the standard arguments adduced in support of IC, including arguments from the parity of expression of intention and belief; from the ability to plan around one's intention; and from the explanation provided (...) by the thesis for our knowledge of our intentional acts. I conclude that none of these arguments are compelling, and therefore that no good reason has been given to accept IC. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments appeal to selective etiologies of human morality in an attempt to undermine moral realism. But is morality actually the product of evolution by natural selection? Although debunking arguments have attracted considerable attention in recent years, little of it has been devoted to whether the underlying evolutionary assumptions are credible. In this paper, we take a closer look at the evolutionary hypotheses put forward by two leading debunkers, namely Sharon Street and Richard Joyce. We raise a battery of (...) considerations, both empirical and theoretical, that combine to cast doubt on the plausibility of both hypotheses. We also suggest that it is unlikely that there is in the vicinity a plausible alternative hypothesis suitable for the debunker’s cause. (shrink)

I describe a new problem for metaethical constructivism. The problem arises when agents make conflicting judgments, so that the constructivist is implausibly committed to denying they have any reason for any of the available options. The problem is illustrated primarily with reference to Sharon Street’s version of constructivism. Several possible solutions to the problem are explained and rejected.

There has been a resurgence of interest lately within philosophy of mind and action in the category of mental action. Against this background, the present paper aims to question the very possibility, or at least the theoretical significance, of teasing apart mental and bodily acts. After raising some doubts over the viability of various possible ways of drawing the mental act/bodily act distinction, the paper draws some lessons from debates over embodied cognition, which arguably further undermine the credibility of the (...) distinction. The insignificance of the distinction is demonstrated in part by showing how the focus on ‘inner’ acts hampers fruitful discussion of Galen Strawson’s skepticism of mental agency. Finally, the possibility is discussed that a distinction between covert and overt action should supplant the one between mental and bodily action. (shrink)

Mind &Language, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 518-529, September 2019.

What is reductionism? -- Who is reading the book of life? -- Genetics : from grammar to meaning making -- A point for thought : why are organisms irreducible? -- A point for thought : does the genetic system include a meta-language? -- Immunology : from soldiers to housewives -- A point for thought : immune specificity and Brancusi's kiss -- A point for thought : reflections on the immune self -- Meaning making in language and biology -- A point (...) for thought : meaning : bridging the gap between physics and semantics -- The rest is silence -- The polysemy of the sign : a quantum lesson -- Recursive-hierarchy : a lesson from the tardigrade -- Context and memory : a lesson from funes the memorious -- Transgradience : a lesson from Bakhtin -- The poetry of living. (shrink)

Procuraremos investigar as condições filosóficas que permitiram que o pensamento de Heidegger tenha identificado, nos anos 1930, a questão da comunidade àquela da Alemanha. Trata-se de mostrar que isso se deve ao modo pelo qual ele compreendeu o contexto de surgimento de sua investigação. Na sequência de sua obra (em particular no conjunto de estudos sobre poesia da década de 1950, reunidos em A Caminho da Linguagem), Heidegger procurará interrogar uma transformação desse contexto que impedirá todo pensamento da comunidade em (...) termos de limites locais. (shrink)

Neste texto, pretendemos analisar de que maneira a questão do aniquilamento se apresenta na filosofia de Blaise Pascal como o dever moral do cristão. Uma vez que a ideia de pecado original ocupa um lugar central nessa filosofia, será a partir da consideração da condição humana decaída e do advento do mediador Jesus Cristo na história, restabelecendo a possibilidade de salvação, que encontraremos os elementos para a compreensão do caráter salvífico que o sacrifício assume no interior da moral pascaliana.

The paper aims to defend the standard view of what it dubs ‘Self-understanding' — i.e., (very roughly) our knowledge of why we behave as we do — from the threat posed to it by Neo-Ryleanism. While the standard, entrenched view regards self-understanding as special in kind and status, the Neo-Rylean agrees with Gilbert Ryle that our method of understanding ourselves is much the same as our method of understanding others, involving self-interpretation on the basis of the available evidence. Neo-Ryleanism has (...) been gaining ground in recent decades, fueled by a wide range of empirical results which allegedly demonstrate that subjects confabulate items of self-understanding. The paper rejects this attack on the received view. After critically examining one extant response to the Neo-Rylean, which gratuitously accuses her of equivocation, the paper proceeds to offer its own response, casting doubt over the suggestion that the experimental results actually demonstrate widespread confabulation. (shrink)

Consistent with numerous electrophysiological studies, we recently reported that conscious perception is associated with a widely distributed modulation of the P3 component . We also showed that correct objective performance in the absence of subjective awareness is associated with a spatially more restricted modulation of the P3. The relatively late occurrence of the P3 along with lack of control for post-perceptual processes suggests that this component might reflect processes related to stimulus evaluation or confidence rather than to visual awareness or (...) objective performance. The main aim of the current study was to test this hypothesis. While EEG was recorded, participants performed a forced-choice localization task and reported their subjective perception of the target on a 3-level scale that also indexed their confidence. The results showed that our previous findings are replicated when confidence is controlled for. (shrink)

One of the prominent questions of moral thought throughout history is the question of moral responsibility. In other words, to what measure do human actions result from free will rather than from being subordinate to a common “predetermined” law. In ancient Greece, this question was associated with mythical figures like Moira and Ananke while in recent times it is connected with concepts such as determinism and compatibilism. The argument between these two world views crosses cultures and historical periods, giving the (...) notion that there are two types of ethical point of view that have assumed shapes during history. These points of view are mutually exclusive on the one hand, and on the other, they both stand as axiomatic standpoints of morality throughout history. The dialectical relationship between the two formulates the moral discourse throughout history. (shrink)

In his published lectures Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia, Daya Krishna criticizes postmodern thought and especially the writings of Jacques Derrida. By outlining similarities between the two, I would claim that, indeed, it was Daya Krishna’s unexpected proximity to Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ project that triggered his scathing critique of the latter. Moreover, Daya Krishna’s response to Derrida reveals an ongoing inner conflict in his own thinking. On the one hand, he provides us with a harsh critique of Derrida the ‘postmodern’; on the (...) other hand, he concedes that the ‘modern’ notion of knowledge has been totally transformed, and the ‘deconstruction’ of its old formulations was the major catalyst that provoked and directed his own philosophical enterprise in the last years of his life, reformulating knowledges. Reconstructing in this way, the dialogue which never happened might prove beneficial, not only for understanding the distinctive works of its participants, but also for carrying their writings and us one step further towards a productive, ‘relevant’ philosophical discourse in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

IN THE FOURTH AND FINAL SECTION of Maimonides’s preface to his Guide of the Perplexed, in the section labeled “Introduction”, the author lists seven “causes... for the contradictory or contrary statements in any book or composition.” The best known and most significant of these is the seventh cause. Its subject, according to most classical and modern interpreters of the Guide, is intentional contradictions the purpose of which is to hide the author’s true opinion from the multitude. Maimonides tells us that (...) contradictions of the seventh type are to be found in the Guide, and in fact he delivers on that promise: in many topics touched upon in that work, we find contradictory statements that give the reader a sense of entrapment and prevent him not only from understanding the issue at hand but also from being able to grasp related matters as well. (shrink)

Fraudulent behavior was not unfamiliar to any of Israel’s patriarchs. Despite this, the Bible’s historiography nonetheless gives voice to two contradicting tendencies. The first aims to teach that, for every transgression that is committed, God will punish the transgressor; the other, in tension with the first, tries to lessen a figure’s guilt by finding extenuating circumstances. This paper focuses on Israel’s patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who serve as national archetypes. From among the patriarchs’ sins, we will examine only the (...) most prominent, acts of lies, deception, and fraudulence, and we will consider whether the deceivers were commensurately punished and whether any effort was made to justify them. (shrink)