Thinking without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Many scientific disciplines treat non-linguistic creatures as thinkers, explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and about the environment. But this theorizing has proceeded without any clear account of the types of thinking available to non-linguistic creatures. One consequence of this is that ascriptions of thoughts to non-linguistic creatures have frequently been held to be metaphorical and not to be taken at face value. (...) Bermúdez offers a conceptual framework for treating human infants and non-human animals as genuine thinkers. Whereas existing discussions of thought at the non-linguistic level have concentrated on how such thoughts might be physically realized, Bermúdez approaches the problem by considering what is required in explaining behavior in psychological terms. In developing a positive account of non-linguistic thought he shows how the experimental tools used by developmental psychologists and students of animal behavior can be used to give a precise account of the way in which a human infant or non-human animal is representing the world. Much of the book is devoted to exploring the differences between thinking without words and language-based thinking. Bermúdez argues that there are clear limits to the expressive power of non-linguistic thought. Nonetheless, he identifies primitive analogues at the non-linguistic level that can be used to explain sophisticated non-linguistic behaviors. Thinking Without Words is the first full-length philosophical study of this important topic. It is written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, and students of animal behavior. (shrink)

Paul Silva has recently argued that doxastic justification does not have a basing requirement. An important part of his argument depends on the assumption that doxastic and moral permissibility have a parallel structure. I here reply to Silva's argument by challenging this assumption. I claim that moral permissibility is an agential notion, while doxastic permissibility is not. I then briefly explore the nature of these notions and briefly consider their implications for praise and blame.

Given plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence and undercutting defeat, many believe that the force of the evidential problem of evil depends on sceptical theism’s being false: if evil is...

Deontological evidentialism is the claim that we ought to form and maintain our beliefs in accordance with our evidence. In this paper, I criticize two arguments in its defense. I begin by discussing Berit Broogard’s use of the distinction between narrow-scope and wide-scope requirements against W.K. Clifford’s moral defense of. I then use this very distinction against a defense of inspired by Stephen Grimm’s more recent claims about the moral source of epistemic normativity. I use this distinction once again to (...) argue that Hilary Kornblith’s criticism of Richard Feldman’s defense of is incomplete. Finally, I argue that Feldman’s defense is insensitive to the relation between normative requirements and privileged values: values that have normative authority over us. (shrink)

3rd ed, 2021. A circumscription of the classical theory of computation building up from the Chomsky hierarchy. With the usual topics in formal language and automata theory.

In this paper, I offer two counterexamples to the so-called ‘Uniqueness Thesis.’ As one of these examples rely on the thesis that it is possible for a justified belief to be based on an inconsistent body of evidence, I also offer reasons for this further thesis. On the assumption that doxastic justification entails propositional justification, the counterexamples seem to work.

Deontological internalism is the family of views where justification is a positive deontological appraisal of someone's epistemic agency: S is justified, that is, when S is blameless, praiseworthy, or responsible in believing that p. Brian Weatherson discusses very briefly how a plausible principle of ampliative transmission reveals a worry for versions of deontological internalism formulated in terms of epistemic blame. Weatherson denies, however, that similar principles reveal similar worries for other versions. I disagree. In this article, I argue that plausible (...) principles of ampliative transmission reveal a worry for deontological internalism in general. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel account of how to determine the intrinsic value of possible worlds. Section 1 argues that a highly intuitive and widely accepted account leads to undesirable consequences. Section 2 takes the first of two steps towards a novel account by clarifying and defending a view about value-contribution that is based on some of W. D. Ross’ claims about the value of pleasure. Section 3 takes the second step by clarifying and defending a view about value-suppression that (...) is based on Ross’ claims about the interplay between prima-facie duties. Section 4 states and defends the account that I call Rossian Totalism. According to this account, the atoms of intrinsic value within a world only sometimes contribute their intrinsic value to the value of that world. (shrink)

We point out the need to clarify some of the ideas related to the connection between development and sustainability in the Report of the Open Working Group of the General Assembly on Sustainable Development. In particular, the meaning of ‘sustainable’ is not clear when applied to specific areas of human activity. A more detailed explanation of the kind of equality sought for in the proposal is also needed. Because of potential conflicts between goals, we miss some considerations on the impact (...) of population increase both on development and on sustainability. A distinction is made here between two kinds of goals included in the Report. Some of the proposed 17 goals can then be seen as ends in themselves, whereas others seem to be means for the first set. The two sets thereby established should be seen in theory and dealt with in practice in a differentiated manner. (shrink)

I reinforce my defense of permissivism about the rationality of doxastic attitudes on the face of a certain body of evidence against criticism published in this journal by Anantharaman. After making some conceptual clarifications, I manage to show that at least one of my original arguments pro-permissivism is left unscathed by Anantharaman's points.

2nd edition. Many-valued logics are those logics that have more than the two classical truth values, to wit, true and false; in fact, they can have from three to infinitely many truth values. This property, together with truth-functionality, provides a powerful formalism to reason in settings where classical logic—as well as other non-classical logics—is of no avail. Indeed, originally motivated by philosophical concerns, these logics soon proved relevant for a plethora of applications ranging from switching theory to cognitive modeling, and (...) they are today in more demand than ever, due to the realization that inconsistency and vagueness in knowledge bases and information processes are not only inevitable and acceptable, but also perhaps welcome. The main modern applications of (any) logic are to be found in the digital computer, and we thus require the practical knowledge how to computerize—which also means automate—decisions (i.e. reasoning) in many-valued logics. This, in turn, necessitates a mathematical foundation for these logics. This book provides both these mathematical foundation and practical knowledge in a rigorous, yet accessible, text, while at the same time situating these logics in the context of the satisfiability problem (SAT) and automated deduction. The main text is complemented with a large selection of exercises, a plus for the reader wishing to not only learn about, but also do something with, many-valued logics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Institutional History of Colonial Philosophy The Conquest of America: Some Epistemological and Ethical Questions Post Conquest Indigenous Perspectives Creole Perspectives: Two Seventeenth‐Century Intellectuals The American Experience of the Enlightenment Colophon References.

The claim that ordinary ethical discourse is typically true and that ethical facts are typically knowable seems in tension with the claim that ordinary ethical discourse is about features of reality friendly to a scientific worldview. Cornell Realism attempts to dispel this tension by claiming that ordinary ethical discourse is, in fact, discourse about the same kinds of things that scientific discourse is about: natural properties. We offer two novel arguments in reply. First, we identify a key assumption that we (...) find unlikely to be true. Second, we identify two features of typical natural properties that ethical properties lack. We conclude that Cornell Realism falls short of dispelling the tension between ethical conservativism and ethical naturalism. (shrink)

A conception of global citizenship should not be viewed as separate from, or synonymous with, the cosmopolitan moral orientation, but as a primary component of it. Global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame. Such requirements, framed here as belonging to the category of individual cosmopolitanism, offer guidelines on right action in the context of global human community. They are complementary to the principles of moral cosmopolitanism — those to be used in assessing the justice (...) of global institutions and practices — that have been emphasised by cosmopolitan political theorists. Considering principles of individual and moral cosmopolitanism together can help to provide greater clarity concerning individual duties in the absence of fully global institutions, as well as clarity on individual obligations of justice in relation to emerging and still-developing trans-state institutions. (shrink)

The emergence of organic, metabolic, cognitive and cultural codes points us to the need for a new kind of explanatory causality, and a different kind of bio-logic— one dependent on, but different from, the deterministic logic derived from mechanical causality, and one which can account for the increase in semiotic freedom which is evident in the biological hierarchy. Building upon previous work (Bruni 2003), in this article I provide a stipulative definition of semiotic freedom and its relation to causality in (...) biological and cognitive systems. To do so, I will first discuss the close relation that triadic causality and semiotic freedom have to the notions of teleology and emergence, and how the latter two are interrelated in living systems. I pinpoint some of the reservations that these notions have encountered in the history of science (including evolutionary biology and cognitive science), but stress also their necessity in the study of any given biological and cognitive system. I draw a distinction between horizontal and vertical emergence in order to arrive at a notion of ‘second order emergence’ that affords us a more viable definition of semiotic freedom. I will then attempt to show that all of these concepts are of paramount importance when we come to study processes of sensing, perception andcognition at any level of a living system. Accordingly, these ideas are part of a framework-in-development to research the scale of thresholds of semiotic freedom, by assuming a top-down approach i.e., by starting from the highest levels of semiotic freedom and cognitive processes, and exploring how those processes disaggregate into lesser degrees of freedom. I thus hope to bridge the gap between those levels from above. (shrink)

En los escenarios universitarios cada vez resulta menos extraño toparse con investigaciones que indagan por la escritura filosófica proveniente de centros no hegemónicos de producción de conocimiento. Nosotros, que hemos tenido la oportunidad de acercarnos al pasado del ejercicio de la filosofía en el actual territorio colombiano, quisimos hacer una convocatoria pública de escritos dedicados a identificar temas, preguntas y formas en que la variopinta comunidad de la filosofía local está escribiendo su propia historia.

In this introductory article to the special issue on Multi-level semiosis we attempt to stage the background for qualifying the notion of “multi-levelness” when considering communication processes and semiosis in all life forms, i.e. from the cellular to the organismic level. While structures are organized hierarchically, communication processes require a kind of processual organization that may be better described as being heterarchical. Theoretically, the challenge arises in the temporal domain, that is, in the developmental and evolutionary dimension of dynamic semiotic (...) processes. We discuss the importance of this fundamental difference in order to explain how levels, domains and orders of magnitude, on the one hand, and synchronic and diachronic processes, on the other, contribute to the overall organization of every living being. To account for such multi-level organization, semiotic freedom is assumed to be a scalar property that endows living systems at different levels and domains with the capacity to ponder selectively the overall structural coherence and functional compatibility of their heterarchical processing, which is increasingly less conditioned by the underlying molecular determinism. (shrink)

Las edificaciones con valor patrimonial son un testimonio excepcional del progreso de una comunidad y representan ejemplos innegables de la transferencia de conocimientos a lo largo de las generaciones. Es inevitable caminar por centro consolidado de Pasaje y no reconocer el legado cultural de muchas edificaciones. Sin embargo, también resulta fácil observar las alteraciones erróneas que sea han realizado a estas edificaciones con el objetivo de responder a las “nuevas exigencias” de la actualidad. La conservación de los bienes patrimoniales resulta (...) necesaria para la preservación de la integridad e identidad de la ciudad. La presente investigación posibilita entender el nivel de susceptibilidad que presentan las edificaciones consideradas como bienes patrimoniales, debido a que estás viviendas poseen un valor cultural. El objetivo de la investigación es el de identificar la susceptibilidad sísmica a las que están expuestas, para esto se utilizaron métodos de matrices de evaluación sísmica para medir el nivel de susceptibilidad en las edificaciones patrimoniales. (shrink)

The tendency to idealise artificial intelligence as independent from human manipulators, combined with the growing ontological entanglement of humans and digital machines, has created an “anthrobotic” horizon, in which data analytics, statistics and probabilities throw our agential power into question. How can we avoid the consequences of a reified definition of intelligence as universal operation becoming imposed upon our destinies? It is here argued that the fantasised autonomy of automated intelligence presents a contradistinctive opportunity for philosophical consciousness to understand itself (...) anew as holistic and co-creative, beyond the recent “analytic” moment of the history of philosophy. Here we introduce the concept of “crealectic intelligence”, a meta-analytic and meta-dialectic aspect of consciousness. Intelligent behaviour may consist in distinguishing discrete familiar parts or reproducible functions in the midst of noise via an analytic process of segmentation; intelligence may also manifest itself in the constitution of larger wholes and dynamic unities through a dialectic process of association or assemblage. But, by contrast, crealectic intelligence co-creates realities in the image of an ideal or truth, taking into account the desiring agent imbued with a sense of possibility, in a relationship not only with the Real but also with the creative sublime or “Creal”. (shrink)

The emergence of organic, metabolic, cognitive and cultural codes points us to the need for a new kind of explanatory causality, and a different kind of bio-logic— one dependent on, but different from, the deterministic logic derived from mechanical causality, and one which can account for the increase in semiotic freedom which is evident in the biological hierarchy. Building upon previous work (Bruni 2003), in this article I provide a stipulative definition of semiotic freedom and its relation to causality in (...) biological and cognitive systems. To do so, I will first discuss the close relation that triadic causality and semiotic freedom have to the notions of teleology and emergence, and how the latter two are interrelated in living systems. I pinpoint some of the reservations that these notions have encountered in the history of science (including evolutionary biology and cognitive science), but stress also their necessity in the study of any given biological and cognitive system. I draw a distinction between horizontal and vertical emergence in order to arrive at a notion of ‘second order emergence’ that affords us a more viable definition of semiotic freedom. I will then attempt to show that all of these concepts are of paramount importance when we come to study processes of sensing, perception andcognition at any level of a living system. Accordingly, these ideas are part of a framework-in-development to research the scale of thresholds of semiotic freedom, by assuming a top-down approach i.e., by starting from the highest levels of semiotic freedom and cognitive processes, and exploring how those processes disaggregate into lesser degrees of freedom. I thus hope to bridge the gap between those levels from above. (shrink)

Análisis historiográfico del relato de las vicisitudes del alfaquí Ṭālūt, elaborado por Ibn al-Qūṭiyya y reproducido por numerosas fuentes andalusíes y orientales. De dicho análisis se desprende que la supuesta versión amplia de la crónica de Ibn al-Qūṭiyya nunca existió y que la coincidencia entre varias obras en presentar una versión extensa del relato es debida a su común dependencia de un subarquetipo que amplificó retóricamente el texto original de Ibn al- Qūṭiyya.

Summary This study offers a detailed analysis of an episode of the popularization of astronomy which took place in Portugal, a peripheral country of Europe, and occurring in the early twentieth century. The episode was driven by the 28 May 1900 total solar eclipse which was seen on the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). Instead of focusing on one of the ends of the popularization process, we analyze the circulation of knowledge among scientists and the public, contrast the aims of (...) the various expeditions, professional and amateur, which took place on Portuguese soil, analyze their repercussions in the Portuguese astronomical landscape, and the different ways used by the Portuguese political elite and astronomical community to successfully appropriate this astronomical event to serve their varied agendas, political, social and scientific. In this episode of public enthusiasm for science, a central figure emerged in the network of the official commission, professional and amateur communities and the ‘general public’: Frederico Tomás Oom (1864–1930), an astronomer of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory. This paper aims to illustrate the different layers of the circulation process, and at proving that the popularization of science was not a unidirectional process from scientists to lay people nor did it serve only a particular agenda, be it political, social or scientific. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza la arqueología de la máquina antropológica que Agamben desarrolla en _Lo abierto. El hombre y el animal_. Se estudia así cómo se genera la división, hacia el interior y hacia el exterior de nuestros cuerpos, entre el humano y el animal, y la consecuente creación de estas dos ficciones operativas que permiten decidir sobre la humanidad misma de quienes nos rodean y sobre la legitimidad de la violencia. Finalmente se mostrará el intento por parte de Agamben (...) de superar esa división a partir de un trabajo al interior de la filosofía heideggeriana que queda, sin embargo, aún preso de la máquina antropológica. (shrink)

In this paper, I deal with a version of the epistemic regress problem. After rejecting foundationalism as a solution to it, I consider two versions of infinitism. The first one is found to be unacceptable, for it fails both to cohere with certain attributions of justification and also to maintain its internal coherence. The second one avoids both problems, and it is found to be the best way of addressing the epistemic regress problem. As the successful version of infinitism makes (...) use of the notion of a rational disposition to form and deploy reasons, I also manage to explicate that notion. (shrink)

Information is a peculiar quantity. Unlike matter and energy, which are conserved by the laws of physics, the aggregation of knowledge from many sources can in fact produce more information (synergy) or less (redundancy) than the sum of its parts. This feature can endow groups with problem‐solving strategies that are superior to those possible among noninteracting individuals and, in turn, may provide a selection drive toward collective cooperation and coordination. Here we explore the formal properties of information aggregation as a (...) general principle for explaining features of social organization. We quantify information in terms of the general formalism of information theory, which also prescribes the rules of how different pieces of evidence inform the solution of a given problem. We then show how several canonical examples of collective cognition and coordination can be understood through principles of minimization of uncertainty (maximization of predictability) under information pooling over many individuals. We discuss in some detail how collective coordination in swarms, markets, natural language processing, and collaborative filtering may be guided by the optimal aggregation of information in social collectives. We also identify circumstances when these processes fail, leading, for example, to inefficient markets. The contrast to approaches to understand coordination and collaboration via decision and game theory is also briefly discussed. (shrink)

This article explores Bernard Stiegler’s philosophical approach to culture in dialogue with Oliver Marchart’s postfoundational framework and conflictual aesthetics. Through the exposition of two different cases of gestural devices, it exposes Stiegler’s potential postfoundational aesthetics as an attempt to establish the necessary conditions for re-thinking the grounded-ungrounded existing relationship between humans, technical objects, and the composition of potential realities to grasp from an autopoietic relationship. These artistic and cultural examples are considered critical concepts that enhance and interrupt the philosophical discourse. (...) The article argues that Stiegler’s aesthetics is committed to the capacity that art, as a technology of the spirit, can contribute as agency in shaping public power, even when these agents are not directly in conflict and develop lesser and fragile performative technics through which a memory becomes present again. (shrink)

¿Cuándo se fundan los conocimientos en razones objetivas? ¿Cómo influyen deseos e intereses? Villoro analiza sistemáticamente los conceptos epistemológicos fundamentales: creencia, certeza, saber, conocimiento, y establece sus relaciones con las razones que justifican la verdad de las creencias y con los motivos que pueden distorsionarlas. El libro desemboca en un estudio de las relaciones de creencias y conocimientos con los preceptos que rigen la vida práctica en sociedad. Las condiciones de racionalidad de las creencias aparecen entonces como condiciones de realización (...) de una vida racional y libre. (shrink)

When dealing with biological communication and information, unifying concepts are necessary in order to couple the different “codes” that are being inductively “cracked” and defined at different emergent and “deemergent” levels of the biological hierarchy. In this paper I compare the type of biological information implied by genetic information with that implied in the concept of “quorum sensing” (which refers to a prokaryotic cell-to-cell communication system) in order to explore if such integration is being achieved. I use the Lux operon (...) paradigm and the Vibrio fischeri – Euprymna scolopes symbiotic partnership to exemplify the emergence of informational contexts along the biological hierarchy (from molecules to ecologies). I suggest that the biosemiotic epistemological framework can play an integrative role to overcome the limits of dyadic mechanistic descriptions when relating the different emergent levels. I also emphasise that the realisation ofbiology as being a “science of sensing” and the new importance that is being ascribed to the “context” in experimental biology corroborate past claims ofbiosemioticians about a shift from a focus on information (as a material agent of causality) towards a focus on the world of signification. (shrink)

Interviews, field observations and other qualitative methods are being increasingly used to inform the construction of arguments in normative political theory. This article works to demonstrate the strong salience of some kinds of qualitative material for cosmopolitan arguments to extend distributive boundaries. The incorporation of interviews and related qualitative material can make the moral claims of excluded others more vivid and possibly more difficult to dismiss by advocates of strong priority to compatriots in distributions. Further, it may help to promote (...) the kind of perspective taking that has been associated with actually motivating a willingness to provide aid by individuals. Illustrative findings are presented from field work conducted for a normative project on global citizenship, including interviews with unauthorized immigrants and the analysis of artefacts left behind on heavily used migrant trails. (shrink)

El presente artículo estudia el desarrollo y el sentido teórico de la posición epistemológica de Furio Jesi respecto al problema del mito y de la ciencia del mito. La comprensión de esta posición epistemológica requerirá un análisis breve de su relación con la ciencia del mito precedente y de la configuración del modelo gnoseológico de la “máquina mitológica”, así como de su potencia crítica y política. Finalmente, el artículo analizará la aplicación que Jesi diese a su modelo teórico para el (...) estudio de los neofascismos en Cultura di destra. (shrink)

In the 1720s two Jesuit astronomers working at the court of King João V of Portugal, in Lisbon, received several instruments produced by the best makers in London, Paris and Rome. With the crucial help of the Portuguese diplomatic network contacts with academies, savants and instrument makers were established, seeking technical advice and the best astronomical instruments available at the time. It was in this context that in April 1726 a set of Latin instructions accompanying pendulum clocks made by George (...) Graham were dispatched from London to Lisbon. These unpublished instructions are now preserved in the papers of Giovanni Battista Carbone, one of these Jesuit astronomers, offering a significant window into the procedures and technical details involved in the setting, operation and transport of Graham’s astronomical clocks. In this paper, I will not only discuss this important document in the framework of Graham’s contributions to astronomy and horology, but also in the perspective of the search for accuracy. (shrink)

Viruses and related infectious genetic parasites are the most abundant biological agents on this planet. They invade all cellular organisms, are key agents in the generation of adaptive and innate immune systems, and drive nearly all regulatory processes within living cells.

[...] This paper aims, first of all, to recall the main features of hyle in Ideas I, both in its relation to the noema and as critical correction of the concept of sensation. It deals, secondly, with some conflicts arising from Husserl’s parallel characterizations of temporal datum, sensation fields, and hyletic background. In third place, it outlines two central directions in genetic analysis, which allow the hyle to expand to a more complex notion involving temporal- material syntheses whose flow is (...) governed by kinaesthesis (Genesis I), all of which shows a sedimented history due to the institution of habitualities (Genesis II). Finally, the conclusions advance some topics that should be considered in this connection from the standpoint of genetic phenomenology. (shrink)

Thomistic ontology -- Ontological morality and human rights -- The war of the philosophers -- The modern way -- Pope Leo XIII and his legacy -- The survival of tradition.

In this essay I examine the possibilities of approaching the phenomenon of memory from the point of view of space. Drawing on Edward Casey’s Getting Back into Place and on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of the spatialized lived body, I attempt to show in what way memory can be said to belong to places. My inquiry ends with a discussion of Paul Ricoeur’s proposals on the narrative dimension of human space, which, I argue, allows us to consider why a building or (...) a city may be said to produce a sensed duration by and through inscribing it in the durability of their materials and, at the same time, in human histories. (shrink)