Neste artigo, temos como objetivo perscrutar o funcionamento da verbo-visualidade de uma perspectiva dialógica do discurso, utilizando, como material de análise, uma videomontagem humorística acerca do ator político Dilma Rousseff, durante a campanha presidencial brasileira do ano de 2010. Primeiramente, procuramos refletir acerca de alguns pressupostos teórico-metodológicos de Bakhtin e de Brait, qual seja, o de verbo-visualidade, alicerçado na concepção bakhtiniana de linguagem. Em um segundo momento, detivemo-nos na análise do texto objeto do artigo, que se pautou na seguinte indagação: (...) como contribuem e funcionam os elementos verbais e visuais para produção e direcionamento de sentidos na videomontagem? Nossa hipótese é a de que os discursos carregados pela montagem criam uma trilha ideológica de sentido que leva os interlocutores a interpretar a então candidata como uma pessoa sem discurso, manipulável. Diante do exposto, tentaremos demonstrar a hipótese que sustentamos. (shrink)

… our faults do not allow our qualities to show themselves to best effect. That is why, at the moment, Brazilians are a people of intermittent qualities and permanent faults.Mário de Andrade, Essai sur la musique brésilienne, 1928This paper sets out to discuss the use and power of music in representing social identities, concentrating on the more specific case of the Brazilian nation, which has made itself a complex and all-embracing socio-political unit in spite of the great diversity and the (...) great inequalities to be found within its borders. It is well known that what appears to be its most uniform feature, the use of a dominant language, is actually quite fragmented, due to the influence of various co-existing systems of production, cultural models and social hierarchies, which change on a daily basis. Although this diversity seems to be underwritten by daily practice and independent of debate and official encouragement, the same cannot be said of the search for national unity. It is obvious in the case of most of the action undertaken with this end in mind, that questions such as exclusion and the imbalance and arbitrariness of power have been eliminated. Besides, certain alert individuals are wary of this insistence on the construction of a nation, since the role of the old national states throughout the world seems to be disintegrating in the face of the proliferation and growing importance of social, economic and cultural relations at a supranational level. It is therefore hardly surprising that the twentieth century is considered to be a milestone in both the rise and fall of efforts to achieve Brazilian national unity. Amongst these efforts, music has played a prominent role, as I shall endeavour to show. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that there is a version of possibilism—inspired by the modal analogue of Kit Fine’s fragmentalism—that can be combined with a weakening of actualism. The reasons for analysing this view, which I call Modal Fragmentalism, are twofold. Firstly, it can enrich our understanding of the actualism/possibilism divide, by showing that, at least in principle, the adoption of possibilia does not correspond to an outright rejection of the actualist intuitions. Secondly, and more specifically, it can enrich (...) our understanding of concretism, by proving that, at least in principle, the idea that objects have properties in an absolute manner is compatible with transworld identity. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, substantive moral theories are typically classified as either consequentialist or deontological. Standard consequentialist theories insist, roughly, that agents must always act so as to produce the best available outcomes overall. Standard deontological theories, by contrast, maintain that there are some circumstances where one is permitted but not required to produce the best overall results, and still other circumstances in which one is positively forbidden to to do. Classical utilitarianism is the most familiar consequentialist view, but it is (...) widely regarded as an inadequate account of morality. Although Professor Scheffler agrees with this assessment, he also believes that consequentialism seems initially plausible, and that there is a persistent air of paradox surrounding typical deontological views. In this book, therefore, he undertakes to reconsider the rejection of consequentialism. He argues that it is possible to provide a rationale for the view that agents need not always produce the best possible overall outcomes, and this motivates one departure from consequentialism; but he shows that it is surprisingly difficult to provide a satisfactory rationale for the view that there are times when agents must not produce the best possible overall outcomes. He goes on to argue for a hitherto neglected type of moral conception, according to which agents are always permitted, but not always required, to produce the best outcomes. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta tradução – a primeira para o português – e análise dos argumentos dos dois fragmentos supérstites de Sobre a Harmonia Feminina (Peri gunaikos harmonias), atribuído a Perictione, dita filósofa pitagórica. Ele pretende contribuir ao debate sobre o feminino na Antiguidade ­– tema do presente dossiê – ao discutir a autoria feminina de um discurso sobre a virtude das mulheres e argumentar que este é plausivelmente o mais antigo texto a atribuir às mulheres a tarefa de gerar a (...) afeição (philia) na família e em suas extensões em todas as circunstâncias. Palavras-chave: Perictione; harmonia; pitagorismo; mulheres; filósofas. (shrink)

1a pt. Socrática. t. 1. Cármides ; Lisis ; Eutifron ; Apología; Critón ; Fedón ; Menón -- t. 5. Eutidemo ; Gorgias -- t. 7-8. República.

Gils-Schmidt and Salloch recognise that human and climate health are inextricably linked, and that mitigating healthcare-associated climate harms is essential for protecting human health.1 They argue that physicians have a duty to consider how their own practices contribute to climate change, including during their interactions with patients. Acknowledging the potential for conflicts between this duty and the provision of individual patient care, they propose the application of Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian account of practical identities to help navigate such scenarios. In this commentary, (...) we argue that by focusing attention on this physician–patient level, the authors overlook the complexity of climate change, both within the healthcare sector and beyond. We recognise the importance of individual agency in tackling this issue, and we also recognise that the authors do briefly acknowledge the importance of considering these broader complexities; however, we emphasise the need for climate and health discussions/action to be situated in a wider framework of systemic change. Our concern is that overemphasis on patient-level interactions risks normalising the prioritisation of individual-level approaches to addressing climate change, detracting from such a broader approach. Physician training emphasises the need for trust, confidentiality and shared decision-making in the doctor–patient relationship. …. (shrink)

This paper aims to elucidate the meanings of the concept of modernity, highlighting its contradictory core and the theoretical and practical implications of this contradiction. To this end, we turn to the works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), as a paradigmatic intellectual expression of modernity, insofar as the author highlights notions that seem central to understanding the specificity of his time, which are brought together in his reflections on history and human progress, in the context of the enlightenment (...) that is struggling to become effective. We believe it is possible to extract from these reflections an idea of utopia which, although it needs to be cleansed of certain idealistic excesses, ends up representing a perspective that dialogues with Critical Theory, notably with Theodor Adorno (1903-1969). Although he demonstrates the bankruptcy and limits of the philosophical categories that authors such as Kant used to think about modernity, he doesn't discard the concepts in question, but rather puts them under tension, ultimately aiming to unveil the prospects for emancipation from the administered world, which, in the final analysis, have always been present at the heart of modern thought. (shrink)

_Abstract_: The recent proliferation of the term “_Psychological Humanities_” (PH) raises many questions, not least of which is the wide variety of ways in which the term is employed. After noting some of this variety, we focus on a related question that has been insufficiently discussed: the extent to which PH represents a genuinely new contribution and approach, and to what extent it represents a renaming. To address this question, we examine examples of past efforts to theorize the relation between (...) psychology and the humanities. We explore Dilthey’s argument in favor of “two sciences” and C.S. Snow’s description of “two cultures”, which offer somewhat different models of the relations between science and the humanities. We then discuss the application of these models to the discipline of psychology, first by Dilthey himself and later by Sigmund Koch, noting similarities to descriptions of the project for PH as currently described. We question the need for a renaming of the project and call attention to the risk of PH exhibiting its own form of presentism while critiquing the presentism of (in) “mainstream” psychological science. _Keywords_: Psychological Humanities; Wilhelm Dilthey; C.P. Snow; Sigmund Koch; Philosophical and Theoretical Psychology _Cosa c’è in un nome? Le Psychological Humanities e la logica del presentismo_ _Riassunto_: L’uso crescente del lemma _Psychological Humanities_ solleva diversi problemi, non ultimo l’ampia varietà di modi in cui questo è impiegato. Dopo aver portato l’attenzione su alcuni usi di questo lemma, ci concentreremo su una questione collegata, fin qui trattata in maniera insoddisfacente: fino a che punto le _Psychological Humanities_ rappresentano un contributo e un approccio davvero innovativo e in che misura sono solo una nuova denominazione. Per affrontare questo problema, prenderemo in esame alcuni tentativi compiuti in passato per trattare il rapporto tra psicologia e discipline umanistiche. Prenderemo in considerazione l’argomento di Dilthey in favore delle “due scienze” e la posizione di C.S. Snow circa l’esistenza delle “due culture”, che offrono modelli leggermente diversi rispetto alla relazione tra scienza e discipline umanistiche. Discuteremo poi l’applicazione di questi modelli alla psicologia, seguendo dapprima lo stesso Dilthey per poi considerare il modello di Sigmund Koch, mettendo in risalto le loro affinità con le descrizioni correnti del progetto delle _Psychological Humanities_. Discuteremo poi la necessità di una nuova denominazione per questo progetto per richiamare l’attenzione sul rischio che le _Psychological Humanities_ possano esibire una propria forma di presentismo mentre criticano il presentismo della scienza psicologica “mainstream”. _Parole chiave_: Psychological Humanities; Wilhelm Dilthey; C.P. Snow; Sigmund Koch; Psicologia filosofica e teoretica. (shrink)

Mind wandering is typically operationalized as task-unrelated thought. Some argue for the need to distinguish between unintentional and intentional mind wandering, where an agent voluntarily shifts attention from task-related to task-unrelated thoughts. We reveal an inconsistency between the standard, task-unrelated thought definition of mind wandering and the occurrence of intentional mind wandering (together with plausible assumptions about tasks and intentions). This suggests that either the standard definition of mind wandering should be rejected or that intentional mind wandering is an incoherent (...) category. Solving this puzzle is critical for advancing theoretical frameworks of mind wandering. (shrink)

We sometimes fail unwittingly to do things that we ought to do. And we are, from time to time, culpable for these unwitting omissions. We provide an outline of a theory of responsibility for unwitting omissions. We emphasize two distinctive ideas: (i) many unwitting omissions can be understood as failures of appropriate vigilance, and; (ii) the sort of self-control implicated in these failures of appropriate vigilance is valuable. We argue that the norms that govern vigilance and the value of self-control (...) explain culpability for unwitting omissions. (shrink)

In this anthology, distinguished scholars--Thomas Nagel, T.M. Scanlon, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Samuela Scheffler, Conrad D. Johnson, Bernard Williams, Peter Railton, Amartya Sen, Philippa Foot, and Derek Parfit-- debate arguments for and against the moral doctrine of consequentialism to present a complete view of this important topic in moral philosophy.

Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. John Rawls is the most significant and influential philosopher and moral philosopher of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly shaped contemporary discussions of social, political and economic justice in philosophy, law, political science, economics and other social disciplines. In this exciting collection of new essays, many of the world's (...) leading political and moral theorists discuss the full range of Rawls's contribution to the concepts of political and economic justice, democracy, liberalism, constitutionalism, and international justice. There are also assessments of Rawls's controversial relationships with feminism, utilitarianism and communitarianism. New readers will find this the most accessible guide to Rawls currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Rawls. (shrink)

Suppose that a patient is receiving treatment options from her doctor. In one case, the doctor says, “the surgery has a 90% survival rate.” Now, suppose the doctor instead said, “the procedure has a 10% mortality rate.” Predictably, the patient is more likely to consent on the first description and more likely to dissent on the second. This is an example of a framing effect. A framing effect occurs when “the description of [logically-equivalent] options in terms of gains (positive frame) (...) rather than losses (negative frame) elicits systematically different choices.” Framing effects are ubiquitous, but they are particularly troublesome in medicine. Many worry that there is tension between valuing informed consent and using framing effects in clinical settings. In this paper, I answer this question: if an individual is subject to a framing effect when she gives her consent, does this undermine the validity of her consent? I argue that framing effects do not undermine consent in general. (shrink)

This dissertation is an experiment: what happens if we treat proper names as anaphoric expressions on a par with pronouns? The first thing to notice is that a name's 'antecedent' can occur in a discourse prior to the one containing the name. An individual may be introduced and tagged with a name in one context, and then retrieved using the name in a later context. To allow for discourse crossing anaphora, in addition to the usual cross-sentential anaphora, a revision of (...) discourse semantics is in order. Essentially, we must countenance discourse referents that span contexts, and think of contexts, not as islands, but as nodes connected to each other by the discourse referents they share. Discourse semantics gives rise to a new notion of content determined by discourse reference rather than pure reference. In a space of contexts structured by shared discourse referents, discourse content becomes transmissable. For a piece of content may be sent from one context to another whenever the discourse referents bundled up in the content are held in common by the two contexts. The final step is to treat the cognitive state of an agent as just another kind of context, and so a potential recipient of discourse content. Discourse content is more fine-grained than traditional 'singular' content, and so is a better fit for our pretheoretic intuitions about communication and attitude reporting. This is illustrated by applying the theory to Frege's puzzle, a puzzle of Loar's about communication, Kripke's puzzle about belief, Geach's intentional identity and new breed of 'mixed' de re-de dicto sentence. (shrink)

P. Kyle Stanford defends the problem of unconceived alternatives, which maintains that scientists are unlikely to conceive of all the scientifically plausible alternatives to the theories they accept. Stanford’s argument has been criticized on the grounds that the failure of individual scientists to conceive of relevant alternatives does not entail the failure of science as a corporate body to do so. I consider two replies to this criticism and find both lacking. In the process, I argue that Stanford does not (...) provide evidence that there are likely scientifically plausible unconceived alternatives to scientific theories accepted now and in the future. (shrink)

One popular theory of moral responsibility locates responsible agency in exercises of control. These control-based theories often appeal to tracing to explain responsibility in cases where some agent is intuitively responsible for bringing about some outcome despite lacking direct control over that outcome’s obtaining. Some question whether control-based theories are committed to utilizing tracing to explain responsibility in certain cases. I argue that reflecting on certain kinds of negligence shows that tracing plays an ineliminable role in any adequate control-based theory (...) of responsibility. (shrink)

This volume contains articles covering a broad spectrum of proof theory, with an emphasis on its mathematical aspects. The articles should not only be interesting to specialists of proof theory, but should also be accessible to a diverse audience, including logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists and philosophers. Many of the central topics of proof theory have been included in a self-contained expository of articles, covered in great detail and depth. The chapters are arranged so that the two introductory articles come first; (...) these are then followed by articles from core classical areas of proof theory; the handbook concludes with articles that deal with topics closely related to computer science. (shrink)

This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace the familiar orientation towards a state of justice with a structurally similar orientation towards a state of legitimacy. As a result, they fail to provide more reliable practical guidance, and wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action towards any state of affairs, I suggest that a more practically useful approach to political theory would directly (...) address judgments, by comparing the concrete possibilities for action faced by real political actors. (shrink)

Confabulation is typically understood to be dysfunctional. But this understanding neglects the phenomenon’s potential benefits. In fact, we think that the benefits of non-clinical confabulation provide a better foundation for a general account of confabulation. In this paper, we start from these benefits to develop a social teleological account of confabulation. Central to our account is the idea that confabulation manifests a kind of willful ignorance. By understanding confabulation in this way, we can provide principled explanations for the difference between (...) clinical and non-clinical cases of confabulation and the extent to which confabulation is rational. (shrink)

The controversy over the equivalence of continuous sedation until death (CSD) and physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia (PAS/E) provides an opportunity to focus on a significant extended use of CSD. This extension, suggested by the equivalence of PAS/E and CSD, is designed to promote additional patient autonomy at the end-of-life. Samuel LiPuma, in his article, “Continuous Sedation Until Death as Physician-Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia: A Conceptual Analysis” claims equivalence between CSD and death; his paper is seminal in the equivalency debate. Critics contend that sedation (...) follows proportionality protocols for which LiPuma’s thesis does not adequately account. Furthermore, sedation may not eliminate consciousness, and as such LiPuma’s contention that CSD is equivalent to neocortical death is suspect. We not only defend the equivalence thesis, but also expand it to include additional moral considerations. First, we explain the equivalence thesis. This is followed by a defense of the thesis against five criticisms. The third section critiques the current use of CSD. Finally, we offer two proposals that, if adopted, would broaden the use of PAS/E and CSD and thereby expand options at the end-of-life. (shrink)

Humans have always sought to change their environment—building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art to be admired. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman explores how engineers think and feel about their profession. A deeply insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates (...) engineering not only crucial and fundamental but also vital and alive he views it as a response to some of our deepest impulses, an endeavor rich in spiritual and sensual rewards. Opposing the "anti-technology" stance, Florman gives readers a practical, creative, and even amusing philosophy of engineering that boasts of pride in his craft. (shrink)

The more we rely on digital assistants, online search engines, and AI systems to revise our system of beliefs and increase our body of knowledge, the less we are able to resort to some independent criterion, unrelated to further digital tools, in order to asses the epistemic reliability of the outputs delivered by them. This raises some important questions to epistemology in general and pressing questions to applied to epistemology in particular. In this paper, we propose an experimental method for (...) the assessment of GPT-3’s capacity to generate consistent and coherent sets of outputs. When several outputs to one and the same input are very repetitive they tend to be consistent with each other, that is they do not contradict each other. But consistency does not make the set of outputs as a whole more informative than the outputs considered individually. We argue that the less informative a set of outputs is, the less coherent it is. We establish a conceptual distinction between consistency and coherence in the light of what some epistemologists refer to as a coherence theories of truth and justification. While much attention has been given to GPT-3’s capacity to produce internally coherent individual outputs, we argue, instead, that more attention should be given to its capacity to produce consistent and coherent outputs generated on a single-input-multiple-outputs basis. (shrink)

Este ensaio celebra as cinco décadas da publicação do livro A ordem do discurso de Michel Foucault, realizando uma reflexão acerca de sua repercussão entre as ciências sociais e sobre seus usos, principalmente, no campo da linguagem na parte relacionada à análise do discurso de linha francesa. Portanto, trata-se de uma retrospectiva crítica cuja análise começa com a entrevista que Foucault concedeu algumas semanas antes de proferir esta aula aos brasileiros Sergio Paulo Rouanet e José Guilherme Merquior. Em seguida, o (...) presente trabalho faz uma breve história da entrada de Foucault ao Collège de France e, por fim, lida com a microfísica do discurso que se encontra nesta aula, sobretudo, da rarefação do sujeito, além dos seus usos nas ciências humanas e sociais mais o campo da linguagem em torno da pragmática e das análises de discurso. (shrink)

Este artigo propõe uma discussão sobre jornalismo e subjetividade a partir de uma argumentação que considera que, embora o discurso hegemônico sobre a instituição se construa a partir do ideal da objetividade, de um texto constituído apenas pelos fatos e cujo autor deixa de ser sujeito para assumir a identidade de jornalista, a subjetividade foi sempre constituidora do texto jornalístico. Assim, pensando a partir dos estudos culturais o jornalismo como uma instituição social com formas, valores e funções conformados historicamente, e (...) os sujeitos como indivíduos que se reconhecem a partir de uma ampla rede de relações de poder, de tradições culturais, de representações de identidades, argumentamos que, em um contexto cada vez maior de centralidade dos sujeitos na cultura contemporânea, os discursos sobre si tem sido uma forte tendência também no jornalismo. (shrink)

This article is divided into three sections. In the first and second, I examine Sartorio’s account of the causal structure of the famous Thirsty Traveler thought experiment. I argue that this account does not withstand critical scrutiny. In the third, I turn to a novel kind of moral luck that Sartorio uses the Thirsty Traveler to expose. I expand the scope of my argument to look also at other recently proposed categories of moral luck. I argue that these proposals are (...) overhasty. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands that this (...) inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath. (shrink)

Some people believe that the demands of morality coincide with the requirements of an enlightened self-interest. Others believe that morality is diametrically opposed to considerations of self-interest. This book argues that there is another position, intermediate between these extremes, which makes better sense of the totality of our moral thought and practice. Scheffler elaborates this position via an examination of morality's content, scope, authority, and deliberative role. Although conflicts between morality and self-interest do arise, according to this position, nevertheless morality (...) is fundamentally a reasonable and humane phenomenon. Moreover, the psychological bases of effective moral motivation have sources deep within the self, and morally motivated individuals try to shape their own interests so as to avoid conflict with morality. Since human practices and institutions help to determine the prevalence of these motives, and since in this and other ways they influence the degree to which conflicts between morality and self-interest actually occur, the extent of such conflict is not fixed or immutable, and is in part a social and political issue. (shrink)

Este artigo investiga as posições do liberalismo político de John Rawls e do republicanismo de Hannah Arendt em relação ao humanismo cívico e ao republicanismo clássico. Defende que o republicanismo de Arendt não deve ser considerado um humanismo cívico abrangente e que há uma proximidade entre o liberalismo político e o republicanismo clássico, pois sustenta que um perfeccionismo minimalista baseado em virtudes políticas informa as duas teorias.

Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation, and A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, the nature of divine necessary existence, the adequacy of the Cosmological Argument, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Together (...) with the other texts presented in this edition, it also provides the best introduction to Clarke's philosophical views, which, in addition to their intrinsic interest, are historically important for the light they shed both on the philosophical positions within the Newtonian circle and on the exchange between Clarke and Leibniz, the most famous philosophical controversy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Taking the title of his book from Isaiah Berlin's famous essay distinguishing a negative concept of liberty connoting lack of interference by others from a positive concept involving participation in the political realm, Samuel Fleischacker explores a third definition of liberty that lies between the first two. In Fleischacker's view, Kant and Adam Smith think of liberty as a matter of acting on our capacity for judgment, thereby differing both from those who tie it to the satisfaction of our (...) desires and those who translate it as action in accordance with reason or "will." Integrating the thought of Kant and Smith, and developing his own stand through readings of the Critique of Judgment and The Wealth of Nations, Fleischacker shows how different acting on one's best judgment is from acting on one's desires--how, in particular, good judgment, as opposed to mere desire, can flourish only in favorable social and political conditions. At the same time, exercising judgment is something every individual must do for him- or herself, hence not something that philosophers and politicians who reason better than the rest of us can do in our stead. For this reason advocates of a liberty based on judgment are likely to be more concerned than are libertarians to make sure that government provides people with conditions for the use of their liberty--for example, excellent standards of education, health care, and unemployment insurance--while at the same time promoting a less paternalistic view of government than most of the movements associated for the past thirty years with the political left. (shrink)

Cognitive theorists routinely disagree about the evidence supporting claims in cognitive science. Here, we first argue that some disagreements about evidence in cognitive science are about the evidence available to be drawn upon by cognitive theorists. Then, we show that one’s explanation of why this first kind of disagreement obtains will cohere with one’s theory of evidence. We argue that the best explanation for why cognitive theorists disagree in this way is because their evidence is what they rationally grant. Finally, (...) we explain why our view does not lead to a pernicious kind of relativism in cognitive science. (shrink)

Most democratic theorists agree that concentrations of wealth and power tend to distort the functioning of democracy and ought to be countered wherever possible. Deliberative democrats are no exception: though not its only potential value, the capacity of deliberation to ‘neutralise power’ is often regarded as ‘fundamental’ to deliberative theory. Power may be neutralised, according to many deliberative democrats, if citizens can be induced to commit more fully to the deliberative resolution of common problems. If they do, they will be (...) unable to get away with inconsistencies and bad or private reasons, thereby mitigating the illegitimate influence of power. I argue, however, that the means by which power inflects political disagreement is far more subtle than this model suggests and cannot be countered so simply. As a wealth of recent research in political psychology demonstrates, human beings persistently exhibit ‘motivated reasoning’, meaning that even when we are sincerely committed to the deliberative resolution of common problems, and even when we are exposed to the same reasons and evidence, we still disagree strongly about what ‘fair cooperation’ entails. Motivated reasoning can be counteracted, but only under exceptional circumstances such as those that enable modern science, which cannot be reliably replicated in our society at large. My analysis suggests that in democratic politics – which rules out the kind of anti-democratic practices available to scientists – we should not expect deliberation to reliably neutralise power. (shrink)

Despite claims to the contrary, the science of ecology has a long history of building theories. Many ecological theories are mathematical, computational, or statistical, though, and rarely have attempts been made to organize or extrapolate these models into broader theories. The Theory of Ecology brings together some of the most respected and creative theoretical ecologists of this era to advance a comprehensive, conceptual articulation of ecological theories. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, from ecological niche theory to population (...) dynamic theory to island biogeography theory. Collectively, the chapters ably demonstrate how theory in ecology accounts for observations about the natural world and how models provide predictive understandings. It organizes these models into constitutive domains that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of ecological understanding. This book is a milestone in ecological theory and is certain to motivate future empirical and theoretical work in one of the most exciting and active domains of the life sciences. (shrink)

Este estudio se ocupa del control social del cuerpo y de la reconfiguración de la memoria popular en películas de horror a través de la perspectiva genealógica de Foucault, presentada en su libro Vigilar y Castigar, publicado hace 40 años. Por lo tanto, tomaremos, À l’interieur e Frontière (s), dos producciones de horror cinematográfico hechas por directores franceses, ambos publicados en 2007. La hipótesis principal es que las películas de terror se muestran como una nueva forma de vigilancia y control (...) social del cuerpo. Por otro lado, también puede recodificar la memoria popular apropiándose de acontecimientos polítcos y/o revolucionarios como en las películas comentadas por Foucault en la revista Cahiers de Cinéma en 1974 políticas, aunque no sean las películas de terror. (shrink)

According to the attentional resources account, mind wandering (or “task-unrelated thought”) is thought to compete with a focal task for attentional resources. Here, we tested two key predictions of this account: First, that mind wandering should not interfere with performance on a task that does not require attentional resources; second, that as task requirements become automatized, performance should improve and depth of mind wandering should increase. Here, we used a serial reaction time task with implicit- and explicit-learning groups to test (...) these predictions. Providing novel evidence for the attentional resource account’s first prediction, results indicated that depth of mind wandering was negatively associated with learning in the explicit, but not the implicit, group, indicating that mind wandering is associated with impaired explicit, but not implicit, learning. Corroborating the attention resource account’s second prediction, we also found that, overall, performance improved while at the same time depth of mind wandering increased. From an implicit learning perspective, these results are consistent with the claim that explicit learning is impaired under attentional load, but implicit learning is not. (shrink)