El ciudadano se convirtió en modelo de "buen hombre" a principias de sigla. Los manuales escolares susten-taron una ética naturalista, inmanente y cívica.

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential (...) reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. (shrink)

Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics (...) from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory. Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community, normativity. (shrink)

Antonia Lolordo presents an original interpretation of John Locke's metaphysics of moral agency, in which to be a moral agent is simply to be free, rational, and a person.

It is common to criticize a debate by alleging that it is a “merely verbal dispute.” But how conclusive would an argument based on such allegations be? This article takes the material‐composition debate as a case study and argues that the merely verbal dispute objection is less decisive than one might expect. While assessing the dialectical effectiveness of the mere‐verbality move, the article also tries to mark some progress in the philosophical understanding and appreciation of the phenomenon itself of merely (...) verbal disputes. Its contribution consists in shedding light on a distinction between the “faultlessness” and “faultiness” of a merely verbal dispute. (shrink)

Pluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, it is (...) a contended question whether conceptual engineering projects should pursue only one set of values and goals (epistemic ones) or, rather, a variety of values and goals, including non-epistemic ones. Finally, the engineering of a concept may result in a form of “local” conceptual pluralism, which gives rise to its own ontological and semantic challenges. Having explored the various ways in which pluralism becomes important for conceptual engineers, this contribution presents and summarizes the articles published in this special issue. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering projects have been criticized for creating discontinuities of subject-matter and, as a result, discontinuities in inquiries: call this the Change of Subject objection. In this paper, I explore a way of dealing with the objection that clarifies its scope and eventually downplays it. First, two strategies aimed at saving subject-continuity are examined and found wanting: Herman Cappelen’s appeal to topics, and the account in terms of concept function. Second, the idea is introduced that one can begin an object-level (...) inquiry either with a ‘semantically conservative’ approach, whereby semantic change is not permitted, or with a ‘semantically progressive’ approach, whereby semantic change is permitted. This distinction helps one significantly downplay the Change of Subject objection. (shrink)

Gentrification has led to the eviction and displacement of many people from working-class areas around the world. However, the relationship between gentrification and displacement has sparked much debate in the literature, with some researchers downplaying displacement, while others have argued that gentrification can occur without the displacement of people. These studies have tended to be quantitative in nature. However, there are few qualitative accounts of the experience of displacement and there is little consideration of the affective or phenomenological dimensions of (...) displacement in current debates about gentrification. This is in part because researchers have tended not to engage directly with displaced people as it is often difficult to locate them. The purpose of this article is to describe the essence of displacement from the perspective of a group of individuals who were evicted from their homes in a gentrifying inner-city area of Johannesburg, South Africa. Through the methodology of transcendental phenomenology, five interrelated themes were derived from in-depth interviews with the participants. The findings show that the essence of displacement is one of great pain, loss and trauma, which disrupts the lifeworld of those displaced and impacts their overall health and well-being. (shrink)

This study presents some of the contributions to the process of the constructing Europe since the illustrated ideas of the German philosopher Krause that were promoted and represented by eminent Spanish Krausist legal experts, such as Francisco Giner de los Ríos. His conception of Europe and European civilisation contains theories that, despite being surprising and openly opposed at the time, have today become part of the global heritage of modern day legal philosophy and our social aspirations. We firstly study how (...) the development of the Krausist legal philosophy contributed to the political development of Spain and how this ius-philosophical thinking had a modernising influence on Spanish legal philosophy and science. Secondly, we delve deeper into the basic principles of Krausist legal-sociological theory that have had a major influence on Europeanisation, reviewing its most ardent criticism of the European imperial nationalism doctrine. (shrink)

Organizational restructuring involving mass layoffs is an integral part of the corporate strategic landscape. While aimed at increasing a company’s efficiency and profitability, it often falls short of desired objectives, partly due to negative consequences for remaining employees, the so-called “survivors”. As workforce reductions may jeopardize a company’s legitimacy, we develop a model that links the change in post-restructuring employee productivity to the factors that help mitigate legitimacy issues. By using a comprehensive and innovative dataset of restructuring announcements reported by (...) European companies over the post-crisis period, we analyze the moderating effect of the restructuring extent on the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and economic justification as legitimacy tools in counterbalancing the negative effects of job reduction measures. Our findings reveal that in reactive layoffs, induced by financial difficulties, initially high levels of CSR help lessen negative effects of restructuring on employee productivity in low-extent restructuring events; while in high-extent restructuring events employee productivity is supported by continuing investments in CSR. We provide evidence that both the level and dynamics of CSR practices play a significant role, and their effect on employee performance is conditional on the restructuring context. (shrink)

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

Any contextualist approach to knowledge has to provide a plausible definition of the concept of context and spell out the mechanisms of context changes. Since it is the dynamics of context change that carry the main weight of the contextualist position, not every mechanism will be capable of filling that role. In particular, I argue that one class of mechanisms that is most popularly held to account for context changes, namely those that arise out of shifts of conversational parameters in (...) discourses involving knowledge claims, are not suited to the job because they cannot account for the genuinely epistemic nature of the context shift. A form of epistemic contextualism that defines the context through the structure of our epistemic projects is suggested. Context changes in this account are linked to changes in the background assumptions operative in our epistemic projects and the methods used to carry out our inquiries. (shrink)

Paulo Friere is considered to be one of the most influential educational philosophers of the twentieth century. Within many progressive circles, he would be considered the most important radical educational philosopher of our times, given his contribution to a revolutionary understanding of education and his certainty and faith that education can function as one of the most significant empowering and democratizing forces in the lives of the disenfranchised. In this deeply personal introduction to the man,and his ideas and their contribution (...) to ideas of progressive schooling, Antonia Darder reflects on her personal memories of time spent with Freire and his influence on her own work. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Conceptual engineering has been linked by Herman Cappelen to a position called “representational skepticism”, described as one’s refusal to uncritically take over the conceptual representations one is handed. This position is contrasted with an uncritical attitude, called “representational complacency”. Arguably, neither position, or a hybrid of the two, is rationally sustainable. This paper therefore proposes an alternative option, called “critical concept conservatism”, stating that having a concept makes it rational (in a suitable sense of “rational”) for one to retain it, (...) unless there are grounds to question it. Critical concept conservatism avoids the drawbacks of skepticism and complacency; plus, it is independently supported by both positive and negative considerations. Furthermore, it complies with the demanding attitude towards conceptual representations that a conceptual engineer would be expected to have. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the view that some ontological disputes are “metalinguistic negotiations”, and to make sense of the significance of these controversies in a way that is still compatible with a broadly deflationist approach. I start by considering the view advocated by Eli Hirsch to the effect that some ontological disputes are verbal. I take the Endurantism–Perdurantusm dispute as a case-study and argue that, while it can be conceded that the dispute is verbal at the (...) object-level, this does not rule out the possibility of a non-verbal disagreement at the metalinguistic level. I then explore the metalinguistic dispute hypothesis by seeing how it can be defended from a first objection playing on the idea of inter-translatability, as well as a second objection raising the question of equal theoretical virtues. (shrink)

Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, best known for his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, challenged education plans that contributed to the marginalization of minorities and the poor. Freire believed that education should be used for liberation by helping learners reflect on their experiences historically, giving immediate reality to issues of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of workers. Known as one of the most influential theoretical innovators of the twentieth century, his views have left a significant mark on progressive thinkers about education (...) and liberation. Reinventing Paulo Freire is an homage to him by protégé Antonia Darder. Here, she explores the legacy of Freire, interviews eight former students who studied him-- now teachers themselves, and reflects on the teaching practice as demonstrated by Freire himself. The interviews take the form of first person narratives; the epilogue consists simply of a letter and a poem. (shrink)

Background Informed consent is often cited as the “cornerstone” of research ethics. Its intent is that participants enter research voluntarily, with an understanding of what their participation entails. Despite agreement on the necessity to obtain informed consent in research, opinions vary on the threshold of disclosure necessary and the best method to obtain consent. We aimed to investigate Australian researchers’ views on, and their experiences with, obtaining informed consent. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 researchers from NSW institutions, working (...) in various fields of research. Interviews were analysed and coded to identify themes. Results Researchers reported that consent involved information disclosure, understanding and a voluntary decision. They emphasised the variability of consent interactions, which were dependent on potential participants’ abilities and interests, study complexity and context. All researchers reported providing written information to potential participants, yet questioned the readability and utility of this information. The majority reported using signed consent forms to ‘operationalise’ consent and reported little awareness of, and lack of support in implementing more dynamic informed consent procedures, such as verbal informed consent, that was fit for the purposes of their studies. Views on Human Research Ethics Committees varied. Some reported inconsistent, arduous inputs on the information form and consent process. Others expressed reliance on HRECs for guidance, viewing them as institutional safeguards. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of transparent relationships, both between researchers and participants, and between researchers and HRECs. Where the relationship with study participants was reported as more robust, researchers felt that they were better able to ensure participants made better, more informed decisions. Where the relationship with HRECs was reported as more robust, researchers were more likely to view them as institutional safeguards, rather than as bureaucratic hindrances. Conscientious and mindful researchers are paramount to ensuring the procedure accommodates individual requirements. This study advocates that when designing ethical informed consent practices, researchers should be integrated as autonomous players with a positive input on the process, rather than, in the worst case, predatory recruiters to be curtailed by information forms and oversight. (shrink)

One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates (...) in all of their occurrences; they are predicates that are true of their bearers. When a name appears as a bare singular in argument position, it really occupies the predicate position of what in this essay is called a denuded definite description: a definite description with an unpronounced definite article. Sloat provided good evidence for this. The definite article is sometimes pronounced with names in the singular: ‘The Ivan we all love doesn't feel well’. Sloat proposed a disjunctive generalization of when the definite article must be pronounced with a singular name. This essay shows that by slightly revising Sloat's generalization, we arrive at a simple, nondisjunctive, syntactic rule that governs the overt appearance of the definite article with singular names. But Ivan does not necessarily bear the name ‘Ivan’, so one might worry that the sentence “Ivan might not have had ‘Ivan’ as a name” would incorrectly be predicted false. This essay shows that Predicativism does not have this consequence by showing that incomplete definite descriptions in general and incomplete denuded descriptions, such as ‘Øthe Ivan’, in particular are rigid designators. (shrink)

Just as bodily actions are things you do with your body, mental actions are things you do with your mind. Both are different from things that merely happen to you. Where does the idea of mental action come from? What are mental actions? And why do they matter in philosophy? These are the three main questions answered in this paper. Section 1 introduces mental action through a brief history of the topic in philosophy. Section 2 explains what it is to (...) be a mental action in terms of intentional action. Section 3 argues that the fact that we can perform mental actions has some striking consequences concerning mental content. Section 4 shows how mental action helps to explain some important facts about self-knowledge and the normativity of thought. The conclusion mentions two further fruitful avenues for philosophical research on mental action. (shrink)

Paradigmatic cases of ontological disputes are taken to concern whether or not certain objects exist. Some theorists, however, prefer to view ontologists as really debating about what we should mean with the term “exist” (or other cognate terms). This implies interpreting ontological disputes as metalinguistic negotiations, in keeping with a recent trend to interpret other philosophical disputes along these lines (Plunkett and Sundell. Philosopher's Imprint; 2013;13:1–37). A number of issues arise from such proposal. The first is what counts as evidence (...) that an object‐level dispute is actually a metalinguistic negotiation. The second regards the dialectical relevance of considering metalinguistic negotiation as even just a possible interpretative option. The third issue concerns whether, and why, certain object‐level disputes (and especially ontological ones) should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

The recent debate on Semantic Contextualism and Relativism has definitely brought the phenomenon of disagreement under the spotlight. Relativists have considered disagreement as a means to accomplish a defence of their own position regarding the semantics of knowledge attributions, epistemic modals, taste predicates, and so on. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, we argue that several specific notions of disagreement can be subsumed under a common “schema” which provides a unified and overarching notion of disagreement. Secondly, we avail (...) ourselves of such a unified notion of disagreement to assess the arguments devised especially by Relativists in order to criticise certain forms of Contextualism, which crucially rely on the idea that Relativism is better suited than Contextualism to capture certain intuitions of disagreement. (shrink)

El retorno del lenguaje conlleva la desaparición del hombre como figura cardinal del saber moderno. La muerte del hombre anunciada por Foucault está en estrecha relación con la muer-te de Dios anunciada por Nietzsche. El último hombre ha matado a Dios y debe responder ahora de su propia finitud. La obra de Foucault traza una historia crítica del pensamiento. Su escepticismo es una crítica del conocimiento. Foucault dudó de las verdades de cada época y de las verdades intemporales. En este (...) artículo trazo el recorrido del hombre en la obra fou-cauldiana y muestro que el escepticismo en Foucault deviene una herrramienta importante en su crítica del conocimiento. (shrink)

There are multiple and diverse voices of jurists who have expressed their fear of the unrestricted power of law enforcement and have announced the crisis of the formalist sense of Law. The widespread reaction against the abstract and formalist character of the positivist theory of law manifested itself as the Krausist philosophy of law and was backed by the philosophy of Krause, Schelling, Hegel and the most recent Natural Law theories that seek to establish substantial criteria for moral action. This (...) distrust was caused by the heteronomy of modest and obedient civil servants of the judicial order that rely on political balance of power in which nothing depends on the human bottom of institutions. Let us consider briefly the impressive analyses performed by different thinkers on this issue, which they considered characteristic of their era, but that continues to constitute a difficulty that challenges contemporary society. (shrink)

There are multiple and diverse voices of jurists who have expressed their fear of the unrestricted power of law enforcement and have announced the crisis of the formalist sense of Law. The widespread reaction against the abstract and formalist character of the positivist theory of law manifested itself as the Krausist philosophy of law and was backed by the philosophy of Krause, Schelling, Hegel and the most recent Natural Law theories that seek to establish substantial criteria for moral action. This (...) distrust was caused by the heteronomy of modest and obedient civil servants of the judicial order that rely on political balance of power in which nothing depends on the human bottom of institutions. Let us consider briefly the impressive analyses performed by different thinkers on this issue, which they considered characteristic of their era, but that continues to constitute a difficulty that challenges contemporary society. (shrink)

I propose that the meanings of vague expressions render the truth conditions of utterances of sentences containing them sensitive to our interests. For example, 'expensive' is analyzed as meaning 'costs a lot', which in turn is analyzed as meaning 'costs significantly greater than the norm'. Whether a difference is a significant difference depends on what our interests are. Appeal to the proposal is shown to provide an attractive resolution of the sorites paradox that is compatible with classical logic and semantics.

Basic actions are those intentional actions performed not by doing any other kind of thing intentionally. Complex actions involve doing one kind of thing intentionally by doing another kind of thing intentionally. There are both basic and complex mental actions. Some complex mental actions have a striking feature that has not been previously discussed: they have several distinct contents at once. This chapter introduces and explains this feature, here called “content plurality.” This chapter also argues for the philosophical significance of (...) this feature. The existence of content plurality offers a new explanation of transparent self-knowledge and suggests a new theory of inference. It also opens up a new conception of the relation between decisions to act and judgments about what ought to be done. (shrink)

Antonia Darder closely examines Freire's ideas as they are articulated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, beginning with a historical discussion of his life and a systematic discussion of the central philosophical traditions that informed his revolutionary ideas. Darder explores Freire's fundamental themes and ideas, including issues of humanization, teacher/student relationship, reflection, dialogue, praxis, and his larger emancipatory vision. The book also includes a chapter-by-chapter close reading of the text with sample questions to prompt discussion and engagement with Freire's ideas, (...) as well as a new interview with Freire's widow, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, and a preface by Donaldo Macedo. -- from back cover. (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to widespread philosophical opinion, phenomenal indiscriminability is transitive. For if it were not transitive, we would be precluded from accepting the truisms that if two things look the same then the way they look is the same and that if two things look the same then if one looks red, so does the other. Nevertheless, it has seemed obvious to many philosophers (e.g. Goodman, Armstrong and Dummett) that phenomenal indiscriminability is not transitive; and, moreover, that this (...) non-transitivity is straightforwardly revealed to us in experience. I show this thought to be wrong. All inferences from the character of our experience to the non-transitivity of indiscriminability involve either a misunderstanding of continuity, a mistaken interpretation of the idea that we have limited powers of discrimination, or tendentious claims about what our experience is really like; or such inferences are based on inadequately supported premisses, which though individually plausible are jointly implausible. (shrink)

It has been argued by many authors that sentences fail to express full-blown propositions: a phenomenon known as semantic underdeterminacy. In some cases, this thesis is accompanied by a conception of thought as fully propositional. This implies that sentences fail to fully express our thoughts. Against this, I argue that many thoughts can be fully expressed by sentences, where by ‘fully expressed’ I mean encoded by a sentence plus minimal contextual information. These are thoughts that may be characterized as less (...) than fully propositional. I provide examples of such thoughts and argue that they plausibly constitute a non-negligible part of our mental life. As I show, these thoughts can be fully expressed by sentences that fail to express full-blown propositions. So it is not the case that sentences even generally fail to fully express our thoughts. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es realizar un acercamiento a la concepción griega de_ éros, _fundamentalmente en el ámbito de la mitología y de literatura, que aporte elementos para comprender su configuración semántica en la cultura antigua como fuerza, energía o potencia intensa a la vez que indeterminada. Intentaremos demostrar que el término _éros _revela una homonimia que, valiéndonos de la terminología aristotélica, podemos llamar “_pròs hén”_ (_Metafísica _IV,2)_, _es decir, que sus múltiples usos y sentidos que este recorrido nos (...) permitirá descubrir_ -_como potencia primordial, divinidad, amor, deseo, deseo por alguien, deseo de cosas-, convergen en un sentido subyacente: _éros _es una potencia de carácter ambivalente que puede propiciar la generación o la destrucción, el placer y el dolor, la armonía o el desequilibrio. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering projects are sometimes criticized for ‘changing the subject’. In this paper, I first discuss three strategies that have been proposed to address the change of subject objection. I notice that these strategies fail in similar ways: they all deploy a ‘loose’ notion of subject matter, while the objector can always reply deploying a ‘strict’ notion. Based on this, I then argue that at least current formulations of the change of subject objection (together with the response strategies just mentioned), (...) create an overall defective dialectic, whereby no progress can be made on either side. After considering how such defective dialectic could be (at least partly) fixed, it is concluded that current formulations of the change of subject objection may be dismissed on dialectical grounds, even though some practical lessons may still be retained from the objection. (shrink)

In this paper, I will trace a distinction between two different ways of thinking about doxastic conflicts. The first way emphasises what is going on at the level of semantics, when two subjects disagree by uttering certain sentences or accepting certain contents. The second way emphasises some aspects that are epistemic in kind, which concern what subjects are rationally required to do whenever they disagree with someone. The semantics-oriented and epistemically-oriented notions will serve for the purpose of assessing some aspects (...) of the debate that revolves around the notions of disagreement on matters of inclination. These aspects include: (i) the idea that disagreements in areas of inclination are somehow defective (Egan 2010); (ii) the idea that Relativism makes disagreement epistemically insignificant (Carter 2013); (iii) the idea that there can be faultless disagreements in which faultlessness is epistemic in kind (Schafer 2011). (shrink)

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental (...) action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)