In “Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge,” Ernest Sosa notes that in attempting to account for the conditions for knowledge, externalists have proposed that the justification condition be replaced or supplemented by the requirement that a certain modal relation be obtained between a fact and a subject's belief concerning that fact. While assessing attempts to identify such a relation, he focuses on an account labeled “Cartesian‐tracking”, which accounts for the relation in the form of two conditionals. If a person S believes (...) a proposition P → P P → S believes P. Sosa suggests that be abandoned as a requirement, and that, equipped with his modifications, can offer promising results in connection with skepticism. He argues that modified coupled with the requirement that S's belief be “virtuous” can illuminate the nature of propositional knowledge. (shrink)

An important question in the debate regarding the nature of politically significant human kinds, such as gender, race, and sexual orientations, is concerned with the question of whether these human kinds are socially constructed (Stein 1999; Root 2000; Haslanger 2012; and Ásta 2013). In order to settle this debate, a more fundamental question needs to be answered: what does it mean to say that a category is socially constructed? -/- Recently, many philosophers have become interested in this issue (Hacking 1999; (...) Stein 1999; Haslanger 2003; Mallon 2007; Diaz-Leon 2015; Ásta 2015). They all seem to agree that there is not a single notion of social construction, but rather, there are different notions of social construction for different purposes. The important question in order to formulate a useful notion of social construction, then, is which project is at issue, and which notion of social construction is more useful for the purposes of that project. In this chapter I will focus on two projects that social constructivists are often interested in, namely, (i) the project of arguing against the inevitability of a trait, that is, to show that those features are not determined by human nature; and (ii) the project of arguing against the universality of a trait, that is, to show that a certain human category or kind is not a universal, transcultural, culture-independent property and that it cannot be applied to other cultures, places, and times; and I will discuss which notion of social construction is more useful with respect to each project. -/- My main questions, then, will be the following: (a) Is there any notion of social construction that entails that if X is socially constructed, then X is not inevitable, that is, X is not determined by human nature? (b) Is there any notion of social construction that entails that if X is socially constructed, then X is not transcultural or universal? (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on an influential account of phenomenal concepts, the recognitional account, and defend it from some recent challenges. According to this account, phenomenal concepts are recognitional concepts that we use when we recognize experiences as “another one of those.” Michael Tye has argued that this account is viciously circular because the relevant recognitional abilities involve descriptions of the form “another experience of the same type,” which is also a phenomenal concept. Tye argues that we avoid the (...) circularity worry if we explain the reference-fixing of phenomenal concepts in terms of dispositions to re-identify tokens of the same type without appealing to any further phenomenal concepts. However, he argues, this account is incompatible with the intuitive claim that phenomenal concepts seem to involve rich modes of presentation of their referents. Philip Goff and others have similarly argued that a recognitional account of phenomenal concepts would make phenomenal concepts opaque, that is, unable to reveal anything about their referents, which seems problematic. In this paper, I present a new version of the recognitional account that avoids the circularity worry without entailing that phenomenal concepts are opaque. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical dimension of hawala, an ancient informal financial practice rooted in Islamic moral traditions. Widely used in countries with an Islamic background and their diasporas, hawala is considered an important vehicle for the financial and economic development of some less developed countries. Nevertheless, in Western countries, hawala is regarded with suspicion due its controversial ethical nature. Unlike other Islamic financial institutions, the controversial questions are not the legitimacy of profit sources or (...) the interest charged, but rather the lack of transparency that surrounds hawala transactions. Yet, the literature on hawala has neglected its ethical perspective. Our study delves into this dimension with a critical approach, using the Triple Font Theory, grounded on virtue ethics. We conclude that if hawala transactions are carried out with honesty, and fairness, this practice deserves a positive ethical appraisal. However, it is necessary to implement efficient regulatory measures to guarantee that the system is not abused by money launders and criminals. In practice, it becomes imperative to bring over a change in the regulatory approach to hawala toward a more ethically, culturally, and economically sensitive strategy. Thus, future research should focus on how “hyper-norms” or fundamental principles inherent to humanity, which are common to both “formal” and “informal,” “Western” and “non-Western” financial practices, could run the new AML/ctf regulation agenda. (shrink)

Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this highly successful textbook continues to represent the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of canonical readings in metaphysics. In addition to updated material from the first edition, it presents entirely new sections on ontology and the metaphysics of material objects. One of the most comprehensive and authoritative metaphysics anthologies available - now updated and expanded Offers the most important contemporary works on the central issues of metaphysics Includes new sections on ontology and the metaphysics (...) of material objects, as well as readings on the topics of fictionalism, fundamentality, tropes, vague identity, temporary intrinsics, stage theory, and composition Surpasses other anthologies in its combination of contributions from leading metaphysicians and a younger generation of "rising-stars". (shrink)

Este artigo busca ampliar a reflexão a respeito da escolha profissional de jovens, assentado na premissa de que novos sentidos e compreensões heurísticas se descortinam com a consideração do conceito de identificação, conforme sua formulação em Freud e em Lacan. Considerando a adolescência, período ..

A widespread need to explain the behavior and outcomes of AI-based systems has emerged, due to their ubiquitous presence. Thus, providing renewed momentum to the relatively new research area of eXplainable AI (XAI). Nowadays, the importance of XAI lies in the fact that the increasing control transference to this kind of system for decision making -or, at least, its use for assisting executive stakeholders- already affects many sensitive realms (as in Politics, Social Sciences, or Law). The decision-making power handover to (...) opaque AI systems makes mandatory explaining those, primarily in application scenarios where the stakeholders are unaware of both the high technology applied and the basic principles governing the technological solutions. The issue should not be reduced to a merely technical problem; the explainer would be compelled to transmit richer knowledge about the system (including its role within the informational ecosystem where he/she works). To achieve such an aim, the explainer could exploit, if necessary, practices from other scientific and humanistic areas. The first aim of the paper is to emphasize and justify the need for a multidisciplinary approach that is beneficiated from part of the scientific and philosophical corpus on Explaining, underscoring the particular nuances of the issue within the field of Data Science. The second objective is to develop some arguments justifying the authors’ bet by a more relevant role of ideas inspired by, on the one hand, formal techniques from Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, and on the other hand, the modeling of human reasoning when facing the explanation. This way, explaining modeling practices would seek a sound balance between the pure technical justification and the explainer-explainee agreement. (shrink)

This chapter takes up, in six sections, issues of realism and of ontological and conceptual relativity. Section 1 briefly lays out the kind of absolutist realism of interest in what follows. Section 2 considers arguments against ordinary commonsense entities such as bodies, and for the view that subjects enjoy a superior ontological position. No such argument is found persuasive. I find no good argument against ordinary bodies or other common-sense entities, nor any good argument that subjects enjoy any ontological superiority. (...) Section 3 lays out three options in ontology, opts for a kind of conceptual relativism, and takes up three problems for the proposed view. Section 4 then offers a compromise position based on a kind of existential relativity meant to accommodate our most settled beliefs about what there is, while retaining a fundamentally realist and objectivist ontology. The main argument of that section relies on a distinction between semantical relativity and ontological relativity. Section 5 defends my use of the semantical-ontological distinction against objections to it in the recent literature. Section 6, in conclusion, takes up arguments for the view that, as subjects of consciousness and thought, we must after all occupy a special ontological position in objective reality, one whose status remains mysterious. (shrink)

Are emotions bodily feelings or evaluative cognitions? What is happiness, pain, or “being moved”? Are there basic emotions? In this chapter, I review extant empirical work concerning these and related questions in the philosophy of emotion. This will include both (1) studies investigating people’s emotional experiences and (2) studies investigating people’s use of emotion concepts in hypothetical cases. Overall, this review will show the potential of using empirical research methods to inform philosophical questions regarding emotion.

The metaphysics of gender and race is a growing area of concern in contemporary analytic metaphysics, with many different views about the nature of gender and race being submitted and discussed. But what are these debates about? What questions are these accounts trying to answer? And is there real disagreement between advocates of differ- ent views about race or gender? If so, what are they really disagreeing about? In this paper I want to develop a view about what the debates (...) in the metaphysics of gender and race are about, namely, a version of metaphysical deflationism, according to which these debates are about how we actually use or should use the terms ‘gender’ and ‘race’ (and other related terms), where moral and political considerations play a central role. I will also argue that my version of the view can overcome some recent and powerful objections to metaphysical deflationism of- fered by Elizabeth Barnes (2014, 2017). (shrink)

Philosophical Papers, Volume 40, Issue 3, Page 341-358, November 2011.

A recent quarrel over faultless disagreements assumes that disputes over evaluative sentences should be understood as regular, factual disagreements. Instead, I propose that evaluative disagreements should be understood in Lewisian terms. Language use works like a rule-governed game. In it, the assertion of an evaluative sentence is an attempt to establish one value as default in the conversation; its rejection, in turn, is in most cases the refusal to accept this move.

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the resistance to extinction obtained in evaluative conditioning (EC) studies implies that EC is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning (Baeyens, Eelen, & Crombez, 1995 Baeyens, F, Eelen, P, and Crombez, G, (1995a). Pavlovian associations are forever: On classical conditioning and extinction, Journal of Psychophysiology 9 ((1995a)), pp. 127–141.[Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]a) or whether it is the result of an nonassociative artefact (Field & Davey, 1997 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (...) (1997). Conceptual conditioning: Evidence for an artifactual account of evaluative learning, Learning and Motivation 25 ((1997)), pp. 446–464.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1998 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1998). Evaluative conditioning: Arti‐fact or ‐fiction?‐ A reply to Baeyens, De Houwer, Vansteenwegen, and Eelen (1998), Learning and Motivation 29 ((1998)), pp. 475–491.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). Both experiments included between‐subjects control groups in addition to standard within‐subjects control conditions. In Experiment 1, only verbal ratings were measured in order to evaluate the effect of postacquisition CS‐only exposures on EC whereas in Experiment 2, verbal ratings and postextinction priming effects were measured. The results showed that the EC effects are demonstrable in a between‐subjects design and that the extinction procedure did not have any influence on the acquired evaluative value of CSs regardless of whether the verbal ratings or the priming effects were used as dependent variables. The present results provide evidence that EC is resistant to extinction and suggest an interpretation of EC as a qualitatively distinct form of associative learning. (shrink)

Are feelings an essential part or aspect of emotion? Cases of unconscious emotion suggest that this is not the case. However, it has been claimed that unconscious emotions are better understood as either (a) emotions that are phenomenally conscious but not reflectively conscious, or (b) dispositions to have emotions rather than emotions proper. Here, I argue that these ways of accounting for unconscious emotions are inadequate, and propose a view of emotions as non-phenomenal attitudes that regard their contents as relevant (...) to one's motivations. (shrink)

Desde la Revista “Derechos y Libertades” se nos convoca a dar nuestra opinión sobre los desafíos a los que se enfrenta el actual discurso de los derechos humanos. La cuestión planteada nos remite a la historicidad del propio concepto de derechos humanos, que no puede sustentarse sobre una razón abstracta, sino sobre una concepción evolutiva, diversa e intercultural del ser humano y de la sociedad. Desafíos han existido siempre y son amplios, pero quizá ahora estamos en un momento de importantes (...) cambios tecnológicos y transiciones energéticas, que demandan un enfoque ético, político y jurídico, para poder intervenir sobre los nuevos conflictos sociales que se derivan de su aplicación. (shrink)

El artículo indaga en la reemergencia de ciertos principios que la Edad Media vinculó al pensamiento de Averroes en pensadores contemporáneos como Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Emanuele Coccia y Jean Baptiste Brenet. La eternidad del mundo y la separación del itnelecto vuelven a aparecer como sustento de una filosofía capaz de poner en tela de juicio ideas fundamentales de la modernidad como la de sujeto o persona, sin por ello entramparse en el nihilismo.

This paper considers the place of reasons in the metaphysics of epistemic normativity and defends a middle ground between two popular extremes in the literature. Against members of the ‘reasons first’ movement, we argue that reasons are not the sole fundamental constituents of epistemic normativity. We suggest instead that the virtue-theoretic property of competence is the key building block. To support this approach, we note that reasons must be possessed to play a role in the analysis of central epistemically normative (...) properties, and argue that the relation of possession must be analyzed in terms of competence. But while we diverge with reasons-firsters on this score, we also distance ourselves from those who deny reasons any important role in epistemology. For we maintain that possessed reasons do help to ground deontic facts in the epistemic domain (e.g., facts about what one epistemically ought to believe, may believe, or is justified in believing). Indeed, we present an argument that the possession of sufficient epistemic reasons is necessary and sufficient for propositional justification, and that proper basing on such reasons yields doxastic justification. But since possession and proper basing are themselves grounded in competence, reasons are not the end of the explanatory road: competence enables them to do their work, putting them—and us—in the middle. (shrink)

Este estudio responde a características de programas grupales de educación parental que incluye, relación con la prevención/atención al abandono escolar temprano, enfoques y relación con la Parentalidad Positiva y grado de evidencias. Siguiendo el protocolo PRISMA 2020, se buscó en bases de datos y se aplicaron criterios de inclusión y exclusión detectando escasez de programas para promover la continuidad escolar y adolescencia; la necesidad de consolidarlos desde la Parentalidad Positiva y de implantar estándares de evaluación de evidencias (12 artículos). En (...) conclusión, informa para diseñar, implementar y evaluar estos programas de Parentalidad Positiva que promocionen competencias parentales y continuidad escolar. (shrink)

Christopher Hom has recently argued that the best-overall account of the meaning of pejorative terms is a semantic account according to which pejoratives make a distinctive truth-conditional contribution, and in particular express complex, negative socially constructed properties. In addition, Hom supplements the semantic account with a pragmatic strategy to deal with the derogatory content of occurrences of pejorative terms in negations, conditionals, attitude reports, and so on, according to which those occurrences give rise to conversational implicatures to the effect that (...) the pejorative terms are non-empty, which explains the offensiveness of those occurrences. In this paper, I aim to defend this semantic strategy from several recent objections, and I will also present a novel objection, which in my view shows that we should understand the semantic account as a version of inferentialism, rather than radical externalism. (shrink)

Despite the promises made by molecular evolutionists since the early 1960s that phylogenies would be readily reconstructed using molecular data, the construction of molecular phylogenies has both retained many methodological problems of the past and brought up new ones of considerable epistemic relevance. The field is driven not only by changes in knowledge about the processes of molecular evolution, but also by an ever-present methodological anxiety manifested in the constant search for an increased objectivity—or in its converse, the avoidance of (...) subjectivity.This paper offers an exhaustive account of the methodological and conceptual difficulties embedded in each of the steps required to elaborate molecular phytogenies. The authors adopt a historical perspective on the field in order to follow the development of practices that seek to increase the objectivity of their methods and representations. These include the adoption and development of explicit criteria for evaluation of evidence, and of procedures associated with methods of statistical inference, quantification and automation. All these are linked to an increasing use of computers in research since the mid 1960s. We will show that the practices of objectivity described are highly dependent on the problems and tools of molecular phylogenetics. (shrink)

La ciudadanía y lo político. Ciudadanía y crisis de la democracia liberal en un mundo en transformación es un texto provocador, que desafía directamente a las esferas de poder económico, político y social en el marco de la corrupción. Deja al descubierto las entrañas cancerígenas de una política enferma de poder, donde priman los intereses particulares o políticos sobre los intereses del pueblo. El libro es una lanza que atraviesa las profundidades que erosionan nuestra sociedad, realizando así un análisis riguroso (...) desde distintas aristas, que tienen un elemento común: la corrupción política. A lo largo de las páginas se ofrece un enorme panorama sobre el papel de la ciudadanía dentro de la sociedad, que reclama a gritos una revolución desalienante frente a la cleptoestructura. Es así como, el papel de la ciudadanía es el centro de la reflexión analítica que nos presenta Joan Lara Amat y León. (shrink)