C'est une erreur d'atribbuer à Rousseau une position favorable au droit naturel, la lecture attentive des textes explique la forme complexe mais radicale du refus chez cet auteur de faire la moindre concession à ce concept.

O pensamento filosófico não é história das “idéias”. Em filosofia, não se trata de oferecer representações prontas , mas de forjar ferramentas para trabalhar e responder às dificuldades que se apresentam: nas ciências, na sociedade, na cultura . Isso porque uma filosofia é relativa a uma paisagem, no seio da qual ela toma posição, na qual ela se orienta, ou seja ela se esforça por tomar tal direção antes que outra, é isso que eu chamo “tendência”. Uma filosofia pode, então, (...) tomar uma tendência que parece oposta às idéias que ela propõe. Por exemplo, Berkeley sustenta idéias realistas e as inscreve em uma tendência espiritualista . Outro exemplo, Kant afirma a excelência da democracia , mas ele a inscreve em uma tendência aristocrática . O caso de Jean-Jacques Rousseau é exemplar: ele ataca os “materialistas” e os “ateus”, afirma a liberdade de espírito e a existência de Deus, mas seu espiritualismo se inscreve em uma lógica radicalmente materialista. É esta dificuldade que torna a leitura de sua obra complexa e o que explica que alguns o fazem um kantiano, outros um hegeliano, outros um hursseliano, etc. (shrink)

Philosophe et penseur du politique, intellectuel marxiste et militant communiste, enseignant, directeur de collection... : à travers le rayonnement de son oeuvre et de sa personne, Louis Althusser a renouvelé la théorie politique et la philosophie de l'histoire, de Machiavel à Marx. Parmi ses contemporains, Michel Foucault exhorte : " Ouvrez les livres d'Althusser! ", Jacques Derrida évoque " la force rayonnante et provocante de sa pensée ", Gilles Deleuze salue l'" Althusser's Band ", et pour Roland Barthes, " le (...) seul modèle acceptable de la science est celui mis au jour par les études d'Althusser sur Marx ". Aliocha Wald Lasowski converse avec vingt écrivains et philosophes qui ont lu, rencontré, parfois travaillé avec Althusser, quand ils n'ont pas fait partie de ses proches. Où l'on mesure à quel point la pensée d'Althusser demeure d'une actualité brûlante. (shrink)

Departing from modal logic, Jean-Yves Girard, as a logician interested in philosophy, presented a distinction between essentialism and existentialism in logic. Carlos Lobo reflected about the Girard’s concept to reinterpret the Husserlian Platonism in regard of the status of logical modalities. We start rescuing the notion of modal logic in the Edmund Husserl’s works, especially Formal and Transcendental Logic and First Philosophy. Developing this reflexion, we propose a new contribution to this discussion, reinterpreting the platonic influence in the Husserlian (...) notions of eidos and science, light of some readings of Lee Hardy and Johanna M. Tito. As a conclusion of this dialogue between Husserl and Girard, the method of eidetic variation is presented as a tool to review the idea of science, in a manner consistent with the phenomenological approach. (shrink)

Many prominent theories of moral responsibility rely on the notion of “tracing,” the idea that responsibility for an outcome can be located in (i.e., “traced back to”) some prior moment of control, perhaps significantly antecedent to the proximate sources of a considered action. In this article, I show how there is a problem for theories that rely on tracing. The problem is connected to the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. Many prima facie good candidate cases for tracing analyses appear to (...) violate the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. So, either we need to dispense with tracing approaches or we must refine our understanding of the knowledge condition or we are responsible less frequently than we suppose. (shrink)

Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is the idea that some aspect of responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. While the increased frequency of revisionist language in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is striking, what discussion there has been of revisionism about responsibility and free will tends to be critical. In this paper, I argue that at least one species of revisionism, moderate revisionism, is considerably more sophisticated and defensible than critics have (...) realized. I go on to argue for the advantages of moderate revisionist theories over standard compatibilist and incompatibilist theories. (shrink)

This article summarizes the moderate revisionist position I put forth in Four Views on Free Will and responds to objections to it from Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Michael McKenna. Among the principle topics of the article are (1) motivations for revisionism, what it is, and how it is different from compatibilism and hard incompatibilism, (2) an objection to the distinctiveness of semicompatibilism against conventional forms of compatibilism, and (3) whether moderate revisionism is committed to realism about (...) moral responsibility. (shrink)

In mid-twentieth-century Mexican philosophy, there was a peculiar nationalist existentialist project focused on the cultural conditions of agency. This article revisits some of those ideas, including the idea that there is an important but underappreciated experience of one's relationship to norms and social meanings. This experience—something called accidentality—casts new light on various forms of social subordination and socially scaffolded agency, including cultural alienation, biculturality, and double consciousness.

In recent years, reflection on the relationship between individual moral responsibility and determinism has undergone a remarkable renaissance. Incompatibilists, those who believe moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism, have offered powerful new arguments in support of their views. Compatibilists, those who think moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, have responded with ingenious counterexamples and alternative accounts of responsibility. Despite the admirable elevation of complexity and subtlety within both camps, the trajectory of the literature is somewhat discouraging. Every dialectical stalemate between (...) incompatibilists and compatibilists seems to be superseded by a similar though often more subtle stalemate.1 The stalemates have two sources. On the one hand, incompatibilists again and again find powerful intuitive support from our folk concept. On the other hand, compatibilists seem right to insist that even if determinism were true, this would not mitigate our need for a concept of responsibility. (shrink)

Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility argues that the normative basis of moral responsibility is anchored in the effects of responsibility practices. Further, the capacities required for moral responsibility are socially scaffolded. This article considers criticisms of this account that have been recently raised by John Doris, Victoria McGeer, and Michael Robinson. Robinson argues against Building Better Beings’s rejection of libertarianism about free will, and the account of desert at stake in the theory. considers methodological questions that arise (...) from the account of desert, providing some additional resources for thinking about these issues within the framework of the account. McGeer objects to the particular mode of justification used to motivate the prescriptive aspect of the account. This article presents replies to each of these lines of response. (shrink)

In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility-characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have (...) particular sorts of histories, others have argued that no such history is required. Resolution of this contentious issue is connected to a wide range of concerns, including the significance and culpability of different forms of manipulation, the plausibility of important incompatibilist criticisms of compatibilism, and of course, a satisfactory account of moral responsibility. As it turns out, history matters sometimes, but less frequently than we might think. (shrink)

This article summarizes and extends the moderate revisionist position I put forth in Four Views on Free Will and responds to objections to it from Robert Kane, John Martin Fischer, Derk Pereboom, and Michael McKenna. Among the principle topics of the article are (1) motivations for revisionism, what it is, and how it is different from compatibilism and hard incompatibilism, (2) an objection to libertarianism based on the moral costs of its current epistemic status, (3) an objection to the distinctiveness (...) of semicompatibilism against conventional forms of compatibilism and (4) whether moderate revisionism is committed to realism about moral responsibility. (shrink)

The Luck Problem has existed in one form or another since David Hume, at least. It is perhaps as old as Stoic objections to the Epicurean swerve. Although the general issue admits of different formulations with subtly different emphases, the characterization of it that will serve as my target focuses on “cross-worlds” luck, a kind of luck that arises when the decision-making of agents is indeterministic.

The idea of moral responsibility is central to a wide range of our moral, social, and legal practices, and it underpins our basic notion of culpability. Yet the idea of moral responsibility is increasingly viewed with skepticism by researchers and scholars in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the law. Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility responds to these challenges, offering a new account of the justification of our practices and judgments of moral responsibility. Three distinctive ideas shape the account. (...) The first is the agency cultivation model, which holds that a system of responsibility practices can derive its justification from the way it supports our agency. The second idea, circumstantialism, is a new way of thinking about agential capacities. This is the view that the capacities required for moral responsibility are functions of agents in circumstances, rather than basic features of agents considered in themselves. The third idea is revisionism, or the idea that a satisfactory theory of moral responsibility will conflict with some aspects of ordinary commitments about freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Autism Spectrum Disorders have been defined as a group of developmental conditions that affect the capacity to interact with the physical and social environment, among others. A core feature of autism is the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviors that vary in complexity, form, and frequency throughout life history. These core features have traditionally been defined as impairments that interfere with communication competence. From an embodied approach, however, these actions could be seen as characteristic ways of interacting with the world. (...) In this sense, we take an enactive and embodied approach to cognition in which we conceive cognitive agents as sensorimotor systems whose perception-action occurs in terms of affordances. This framework provides an integrative view of autism considering affectivity, perception, action, exploration, and interaction within a complex and dynamic dimension. Following this, we propose different applications based on embodied, intercultural, and feminist epistemologies, to understand and participate with autistic and cognitively diverse populations. The change in theoretical and methodological paradigms within embodied cognitive science towards autism and other cognitive diversities and how they engage with the world can lead to more comprehensive, integrative, and bioethical approaches. (shrink)

I discuss experimental work by Nichols, and Nichols and Knobe, with respect to the philosophical problems of free will and moral responsibility. I mention some methodological concerns about the work, but focus principally on the philosophical implications of the work. The experimental results seem to show that in particular, concrete cases we are more willing to attribute responsibility than in cases described abstractly or in general terms. I argue that their results suggest a deep problem for traditional accounts of compatibilism, (...) and that they may cast some light on the literature surrounding Frankfurt cases. I also suggest a way in which mature philosophical convictions about free will may reflect a contingent process of refining and defending either of two competing strands of intuitions, and suggest that this may partly explain the persistence of philosophical debates about free will. (shrink)

Both legal and moral theorists have offered broadly “communicative” theories of criminal and moral responsibility. According to such accounts, we can understand the nature of responsibility by appealing to the idea that responsibility practices are in some fundamental sense expressive, discursive, or communicative. In this essay, I consider a variety of issues in connections with this family of views, including its relationship to free will, the theory of exemptions, and potential alternatives to the communicative model. Focusing on Michael McKenna’s Conversation (...) and Responsibility, I argue that communicative accounts, and the conversational model in particular, direct our attention to important and under-appreciated elements of our responsibility practices. However, rather than focusing on a model of conversation-as-address, as McKenna does, we do better to regard gossip as the paradigmatic conversational form that captures the main features of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Focusing on the recent work of Michael Bratman as emblematic of several important developments in the philosophy of action, I raise four questions that engage with a set of interlocking concerns about systemic functionalism in the philosophy of action. These questions are: (i) Are individual and institutional intentions the same kind of thing? (ii) Can the risk of proliferation of systemic functional explanations be managed? (iii) Is there an appealing basis for the apparent methodological individualism in our theories of action (...) and agency? and (iv) Why not, instead, pursue a methodologically anti-individualist and ecological approach to action and agency? The latter alternative, I suggest, offers a promising way to retain many of the core insights of the Bratmanian project while avoiding the difficulties inherent to some of the methodological presumptions of some strands of contemporary philosophy of action. (shrink)

A satisfactory construal of the subject matter of free will debates must allow for disagreements along two axes. First, it must allow for the possibility of higher order disagreements, or disagreements about what concepts, phenomena, or practices an account of free will is supposed to capture or explain. Second, it must allow for the fact of variation in the extent to which theories are bound by antecedent pre-philosophical thought, talk, and practices. A promising way of accommodating these two thoughts is (...) to treat free will in broadly functionalist terms. On the account proposed here, free will is a power that makes sense of everyday responsibility practices. This construal is not widely shared, but it allows for the possibility that we might have false beliefs about the nature of free will, while still making sense of central philosophical debates about free will. (shrink)

The idea of inclusive collective decision-making is important in establishing democratic legitimacy, but it fails when citizens are excluded. Stated-preference methods of valuation, which are commonly used in economics, have been criticised because the principle of willingness to pay may exclude low-income earners who do not have the capacity to pay. Deliberative valuation has been advocated as a way to overcome this problem, but deliberation may also be exclusive. In this review, two deliberative valuation frameworks are compared. The first is (...) grounded on the idea of rational discourse that emphasises argument at the expense of other communicative strategies. It seeks to secure inclusion through procedural rules and prerequisites, but fails to address the underlying democratic limitation of argumentation. The second does not rely on the distinction between rational and rhetorical speech, and therefore admits alternative forms of communication. This approach recognises differences in the communicative capacities and practices of those who take part in deliberation, and so is better equipped to improve, though not to guarantee, inclusion. (shrink)

This paper proposes freedom as the condition of possibility for the construction of trust in human relationships. The methodology used is a review of the scientific literature of the most recent moral and political philosophy. As a result of the dialogue between different positions, it is discovered that freedom, despite being present in the act of trust, is forgotten in the discussion around trust, a forgetfulness that has as its main causes the assumption that trust is natural and the confusion (...) between the propensity to trust and the act of trusting. All this leads to proposing an approach of the act of trusting that starts from the freedom of the trustee and the trustor. (shrink)

A connection viewed from the perspective of integration has the Bianchi identities as constraints. It is shown that the removal of these constraints admits a natural solution on manifolds endowed with a metric and teleparallelism. In the process, the equations of structure and the Bianchi identities take standard forms of field equations and conservation laws.The Levi-Civita (part of the) connection ends up as the potential for the gravity sector, where the source is geometric and tensorial and contains an explicit gravitational (...) contribution.Nonlinear field equations for the torsion result. In a “low-energy” approximation (linearity andlow energy-momentumtransfer), the postulate that only charge and velocities contribute to the source transforms these equations into the Maxwell system. Moreover, the affine geodesics become the equations of motion of special relativity with Lorentz force in the same approximation [J. G. Vargas,Found. Phys. 21, 379 (1991)]. The field equations for the torsion must then be viewed as applying to an electromagnetic/strong interaction.A classical unified theory thus arises where the underlying geometry confers their contrasting characters to Maxwell-Lorentz electrodynamics and to an Einstein's-like theory of gravity. The highly compact field equations must, however, be developed in phase-spacetime, since the connection is velocity-dependent, i.e., Finsler-like.Further opportunities for similarities with present-day physics are discussed: (a) teleparallelism allows for the formulation of the torsion sector of the theory as a flat space theory with concomitant point-dependent transformations; (b) spinors should replace Lorentz frames in their role as the subjects to which the connection refers; (c) the Dirac equation consistent with the frame bundle for a velocity-dependent metric with Lorentz signature generates a weak-like interaction in the torsion sector. (shrink)

Resenhas de Paul Sagar. Adam Smith Reconsidered. History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics. Princeton University Press, 2022, por Thiago Vargas (USP-FAPESP) e de Antoine Lilti. L’héritage des Lumières. Ambivalences de la modernité. Seuil ; Gallimard, 2019, por Ciro Lourenço (USP-Paris 1).

In a recent paper [J. G. Vargas and D. G. Torr, Found. Phys. 27, 599 (1997)], we have shown that a subset of the differential invariants that define teleparallel connections in spacetime generates a teleparallel Kaluza-Klein space (KKS) endowed with a very rich Clifford structure. A canonical Dirac equation hidden in this structure might be uncovered with the help of a teleparallel Kähler calculus in KKS. To bridge the gap to such a calculus from the existing Riemannian Kähler calculus (...) in spacetime, we commence the construction of a teleparallel Kähler calculus in spacetime. In the process, we notice: (a) Unknown to him, one of Einstein's equations in his attempt at unification with teleparallelism states that the interior covariant derivative of the torsion is zero. (b) A mechanism exists in the tangent bundle of teleparallel spaces for producing confinement (in the applicable cases, one would have to show why nonconfinement also occurs, rather than the other way around). (c) When the torsion is not zero, the interior covariant derivative in the sense of Kähler, δF, does not coincide with *d*F. The system (dF = 0, δF = j) rather than (dF = 0, *d*F = j) should then be used for generalizations of Maxwell's electrodynamics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Vuh to the Present ed. by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. FoustBernardo R. Vargas (bio)The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Vuh to the Present. Edited by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021. Pp. 480. Paperback $46.75, isbn 978-1-4742-9626-7.Philosophy in the United States continues to be among the least diverse disciplines in the humanities, (...) dominated statistically by white males, with the next largest group being white female philosophers.1 This lack of diversity affects how we define philosophy and who counts as a philosopher. As the editors of The Philosophies of America Reader, Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust, put it, "Just as history has fashioned and popularized distorted accounts of the 'discovery' of America, it has done the same in its presentation of American Philosophy" (p. xv). This exemplary collection of essays from across the Americas allows the readers and instructors to reimagine what we construe as philosophy and who we imagine an American philosopher to be.The editors offer diverse essays covering an impressive timeframe, ranging from the Popol Vuh, whose oral tradition from Guatemala predates Spanish colonization and was recorded in the mid-1500s, to contemporary philosophers such as Gregory Pappas. The collection excels in offering texts that typical philosophy anthologies are unlikely to include, which the editors call "unusual suspects" that have been historically marginalized, while also maintaining more familiar or "classical" figures (pp. xv–xvi). These "unusual suspects" include women, Latinx, American Indigenous, Black, and Caribbean thinkers.The Philosophies of America Reader offers various resources to enhance the student and instructor's experience. The book is structured into four themes: (1) Selfhood and Identity, (2) Knowing and Learning, (3) Aesthetics and Spirituality, and (5) Violence and Peace. The editors design these themes to fit the traditionally understood areas of philosophy of metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. Even if the instructor's course description does not specifically target American Philosophy, these thematic categories are valuable for th ose who wish to incorporate a more diverse reading list. For example, these essays could easily apply to courses such as Critical Philosophy of Race, Introduction to Philosophy, or Introduction to Ethics. Each thematic section also features a "For Further Reading" segment, which includes selected secondary sources to broaden research or substitute texts. In addition, the editors provide a detailed [End Page 1] syllabus example, including a Course Description and Outline of the Course for a bi-weekly class, which is neatly divided into a 16-week reading schedule. They also include instructive sections such as a Note to the Teacher to aid in thinking through how to interact with the unfamiliar texts and a Note to the Student to guide their disposition and readings.Moreover, the text presents introductory essays for each thematic section. These essays provide an overview of the content and delve into the author's positionality, such as their geography, context, motivations for writing, race, ethnicity, and native tongue. The introductions are philosophically robust yet accessible to new philosophy students and are not filled with unnecessary philosophical jargon.Due to its large scope of thinkers, this text offers a vibrant opportunity to dialogue with philosophers who share or differ in their perspectives across the major thematic categories. The editors emphasize that although this is not a history of thought, the texts present lineages of progression, elaboration, and disagreement intended to guide instructors in connecting the texts with their students (p. xx). Furthermore, this allows the reader and the instructor to avoid isolating their discourse to a particular time, geography, gender, or race and ethnicity. In addition to the biographical and contextual information given in the introductions, a small yet helpful detail is a timeline of the selections that further contextualizes the readings.I wish to underscore two key clusters of essays amidst the vast array of 50 readings related to Asian-American and Mexican-American discourse for the instructor's consideration, particularly those teaching in the United States. These two large population groups deserve consideration as enrollment rates for Asian Americans and Hispanics (of whom Mexicans are the largest population... (shrink)

Se define “iatrofilosofía” como la disciplina traslacional entre la medicina y la filosofía que tiene un doble objetivo, teórico y práctico. Se presenta un modelo de iatrofilosofía práctica aplicado al dolor crónico asociado a depresión y estrés —depresalgia— que expande al ámbito médico general la psicoterapia Fenomenológica, Hermenéutica Dinámica (PHD). Se parte del modelo general de la triada médica — patología (disease), padecimiento (illness) y condición de enfermo (sickness)— y, en el horizonte de la antropología de Ortega, se proponen cinco (...) metáforas nucleares: avaricia del cuerpo, angustia de circunstancia, desgarro personal, nudos personales y expropiación personal. Estas se relacionan con los mecanismos neurobiológicos de sensibilización central, alostasis y alteración del eje hipotálamo-hipófisis-suprarrenal. Se propone un proceso de recuperación personal basado en la concordia terapéutica. El análisis del dolor crónico y de otros problemas complejos de salud puede beneficiarse de metodologías filosóficas como la hermenéutica clínica. (shrink)

El texto presenta la crítica heideggeriana a los conceptos de teoría y praxis, tal como han sido acuñados por la tradición filosófica. El artículo muestra el giro transformador que hace el filósofo alemán en el tratamiento de estas dos nociones, con el fin de delinear una nueva concepción de filosofía, a propósito de la crítica y transformación de estas concepciones. La crítica se centra en señalar cómo en la tradición filosófica ha preponderado la teoría, comprendida desde una visión lógico – (...) racional, y la comprensión de la praxis como una instancia a-teórica, lo que deja de lado las consideraciones prácticas centrales y primarias implicadas en el pensar, y el ejercicio práctico como instancia comprensiva y de pensamiento. En este sentido, se muestra la reivindicación de la praxis, de la cotidianidad y de la situación fáctica como aspectos de central importancia en el ser del Dasein; y se plantea una nueva comprensión de lo que implica la teoría y las nuevas relaciones que se establecen en el nexo teoría – praxis como posibilidades del ser del Dasein, sin caer en el primado de la una sobre la otra, lo que implica la transformación de sus modos de comprensión. Finalmente, se muestra cómo un ejercicio filosófico desde estas intuiciones se encuentra más cercano a la comprensión e interpretación práctica que al desarrollo de teorías en el sentido clásico del término. (shrink)

I consider some themes and issues arising in recent work on moral responsibility, focusing on three recent books —Carlos Moya's Moral Responsibility, Al Mele's Free Will and Luck, and John Martin Fischer's My Way. I argue that these texts collectively suggest some difficulties with the way in which many issues are currently framed in the free will debates, including disputes about what constitutes compatibilism and incompatibilism and the relevance of intuitions and ordinary language for describing the metaphysics of free will (...) and moral responsibility. I also argue that each of the accounts raise more particular puzzles: it is unclear to what extent Moya’s account is properly an account of free will; Mele’s account raises questions about the significance of luck for compatibilist theories; and Fischer’s account of the value of responsibility as self-expression raises questions about the normative significance of moral responsibility. (shrink)

With the meaning of trust, good faith and respect for promises made, protection, or assistance, fides in the non-exclusively religious sense of the word comes from the demand for ethical perfection: as such, it is omnipresent in human relations and in the dynamic of societies in the Middle Ages.

El artículo analiza la cristología de Thomas Hobbes con el propósito de entender una de las principales causas de su descrito como un pensador cristiano o, incluso, ateo, lo que afecta eventualmente la validez de su teología política. El autor sostiene que si bien Hobbes hace uso de la Biblia como fundamento de su filosofía política, su recepción del cristianismo en general no es enteramente correcta, debido a que está fuertemente influenciada por su decisión política en favor del absolutismo. Esta (...) posición política lo lleva a escoger textos ad-hoc que apoyan su teoría y a rechazar otros que no lo hacen, dejando así fuera importantes aspectos del cristianismo, uno de los cuales, el más central, es la naturaleza de Jesucristo como Dios-hombre y la interpretación contractualista del federalismo judío. El artículo hace uso de estudios de reconocidos investigadores (Elazar, Pangle, Kraynak, Ratzinger entre otros) y el autor concluye que Hobbes exhibe una visión reduccionista del cristianismo que influye en su teología política. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a problem I call the “Conditional Position Problem” that arises for Ernest Sosa’s externalist epistemology. The problem is that, due to a phenomenon of epistemic circularity, one is unable to attain the reflective knowledge that one is justified in believing that perception is reliable, and is confined to the merely conditional position that one is so justified if perception is reliable. The problem is similar but different from a problem that Barry Stroud has tried to (...) formulate. However, because of space limitations I cannot explain in detail what makes the two problems different. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I explain the structural features of Sosa’s epistemology that allow the problem to arise; I also describe the normative task that is thwarted by the Conditional Position Problem; then I expound the problem itself. I proceed to examine one response that Sosa can give based on a simple inferential manoeuvre and explain why that response fails; then I examine another response he can give based on a complex form of self-support, and explain why this response also fails. I conclude explaining why the problem I present is specifically a problem for externalism. In an appendix, I very briefly describe what I take to be the main reason that justifies my claim that Stroud's problem is not the same as the problem I develop. (shrink)

The only test theory used by workers in the field of testing special relativity to analyze the significance of their experiments is the proof by H. P. Robertson [Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 378 (1949)] of the Lorentz transformations from the results of the experimental evidence. Some researchers would argue that the proof contains an unwarranted assumption disguised as a convention about synchronization procedures. Others would say that alternative conventions are possible. In the present paper, no convention is used, but the (...) Lorentz transformations are still obtained using only the results of the experiments in Robertson's proof, namely the Michelson-Morley, Kennedy-Thorndike, and Ives-Stilwell experiments. Thus the revised proof is a valid test theory which is independent of any conventions, since one appeals only to the experimental evidence. The analysis of that evidence shows the directions in which efforts to test special relativity should go. Finally it is shown how the resulting test theory still has to be improved for consistency in the analysis of experiments with complicated experimental setups, how it can be simplified for expediency as to what should be tested, and how it should be completed for a missing step not considered by Robertson. (shrink)

The energy-momentum relationship is obtained in para-Lorentzian dynamics. It is shown that the well-known correspondence rule for the operators energy and momentum holds in any inertial system if it is assumed to hold in the preferred reference frame. The new Dirac equation is obtained. Some qualitative features of the new theory are given; one of then is the spontaneous appearance of conserved-vector and nonconserved-axial weak currents. Finally one evaluates the convenience of further developments of the present theory in view of (...) the excellent agreement of QED with experiment. (shrink)

In this research, we analyse the impact of the inclusion of ethical expressions in the prospectuses of socially responsible (SR) mutual funds on money flows. We contribute to the existing literature by proposing a text-based measure that integrates three attributes that are relevant to whether clients are attracted: exclusiveness, intensity and lexical diversity. We analyse a sample formed of 266 SR US equity mutual funds in the period 1999–2019. Our findings show that both the proposed indicator and other alternative partial (...) proxies based on textual data have a positive impact on the money flows of the SR funds. This effect is more relevant in the case of SR mutual funds belonging to smaller families. Besides, persistence in money flows is more intense for SR mutual funds that are more attractive because of their ethical expressions. Another finding shows that return-chaser behaviour occurs among all SR investors, independently of the level of text attractiveness of the mutual funds in which they invest, revealing that they take into account both financial and non-financial outcomes. Our results indicate that policymakers should control fund prospectus information, given its importance for investors' decisions. In addition, managers should be especially cautious with the information provided in prospectuses because of its impact on investor decisions. (shrink)

In recent years, animal welfare has become an important element of sustainable production that has evolved along with the transformation of animal production systems. Consumer attitudes towards farm animal welfare are changing around the world, especially at emerging markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Survey-based research on consumer attitudes towards farm animal welfare has increased. However, the geographical coverage of studies on consumer attitudes and perceptions about farm animal welfare has mostly been limited to Europe, and North America. Until (...) now, Latin American consumers’ attitudes towards animal welfare have not been well studied. Despite the fact that Mexico, Chile and Brazil belong to the same region, there are marked differences between these countries in terms of their economical and geographical characteristics among other factors. Those differences potentially have an impact on consumer attitudes towards animal welfare and livestock production systems in general. Given the evidence from the literature review, it seems advisable that Latin American producers and food industry who engage in animal welfare-enhancing practices should clearly label their products with information on the type of husbandry system to reach those consumers who want to make an informed choice. Therefore, there are some aspects that need to be studied and cannot be worked separately in order to promote and understand consumer attitudes towards dairy and beef systems, such as geography, economic development, and politics. (shrink)

In post-Revolutionary Mexico, the Indian was conceptualized as a problem that needed to be solved. Indians were believed to be weighing down the nation and thought to constitute an obstacle for fulfilling its promised modern future. Thus, the scientific study of indigenous peoples in Mexico became, in the 1930s, a focus of anthropologists, physicians, and other experts, who sought to learn more about indigenous populations in order to solve this "problem." In this paper I explore how this "problem-solving" was practiced, (...) how and why particular groups of people were used as subjects of inquiry and intervention, how they were selected, and how they enabled the production of knowledge deemed useful to... (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.