This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on the logical structure of intentional action, on the (...) question of whether basic actions are tryings, and on the notion of “options” in decision theory. On the way to these central ideas, we argue that a person can try to do something even if they believe it is impossible that they will succeed, that a person can try to do something even if they do not want to succeed, and that a person can try to do something even if they do not intend to succeed. (shrink)

This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.

This paper defends the simple view that in asserting that p, one lies iff one knows that p is false. Along the way it draws some morals about deception, knowledge, Gettier cases, belief, assertion, and the relationship between first- and higher-order norms.

A plausible principle about the felicitous use of indicative conditionals says that there is something strange about asserting an indicative conditional when you know whether its antecedent is true. But in most contexts there is nothing strange at all about asserting indicative conditionals like ‘If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then someone else did’. This paper argues that the only compelling explanation of these facts requires the resources of contextualism about knowledge.

Counterfactuals are context-sensitive. However, we argue that various debates and doctrines in metaphysics and the philosophy of science are premised on ignoring the full extent of counterfactual context-sensitivity. Our focus is on the prominent "miracle" versus "no-miracle" debate about counterfactuals under the assumption that our laws of nature are deterministic. But we also discuss doctrines that employ counterfactuals in theories of rational decision, as well as doctrines that explain what it is to be a law of nature in terms of (...) counterfactuals. We conclude by drawing some morals about the use of counterfactuals in philosophical theorizing more generally. (shrink)

How is what we believe related to how we act? That depends on what we mean by ‘believe’. On the one hand, there is what we're sure of: what our names are, where we were born, whether we are sitting in front of a screen. Surety, in this sense, is not uncommon — it does not imply Cartesian absolute certainty, from which no possible course of experience could dislodge us. But there are many things that we think that we are (...) not sure of. For example, you might think that it will rain sometime this month, but not be sure that it will. Both what we're sure of and what we think have important normative connections to action. But the connections are quite different. This paper explores these issues with respect to assertion, inquiry, and decision making. We conclude by arguing that there is no theoretically significant notion of ‘full belief’ intermediate in strength between thinking and being sure. (shrink)

This paper argues that two widely accepted principles about the indicative conditional jointly presuppose the falsity of one of the most prominent arguments against epistemological iteration principles. The first principle about the indicative conditional, which has close ties both to the Ramsey test and the “or‐to‐if” inference, says that knowing a material conditional suffices for knowing the corresponding indicative. The second principle says that conditional contradictions cannot be true when their antecedents are epistemically possible. Taken together, these principles entail that (...) it is impossible to be in a certain kind of epistemic state: namely, a state of ignorance about which of two partially overlapping bodies of knowledge corresponds to one's actual one. However, some of the more popular “margin for error” style arguments against epistemological iteration principles suggest that such states are not only possible, but commonplace. I argue that the tension between these views runs deep, arising just as much for non‐factive attitudes like belief, presupposition, and certainty. I also argue that this is worse news for those who accept the principles about the indicative conditional than it is for those who reject epistemological iteration principles. (shrink)

This paper presents a puzzle involving embedded attitude reports. We resolve the puzzle by arguing that attitude verbs take restricted readings: in some environments the denotation of attitude verbs can be restricted by a given proposition. For example, when these verbs are embedded in the consequent of a conditional, they can be restricted by the proposition expressed by the conditional’s antecedent. We formulate and motivate two conditions on the availability of verb restrictions: a constraint that ties the content of restrictions (...) to the “dynamic effects” of sentential connectives and a constraint that limits the availability of restriction effects to present tense verbs with first-person subjects. However, we also present some cases that make trouble for these conditions, and outline some possible ways of modifying the view to account for the recalcitrant data. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the connections between our semantics for attitude verbs and issues concerning epistemic modals and theories of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper defends a theory of fictional truth. According to this theory, there is a fact of the matter concerning the number of hairs on Sherlock Holmes' head, and likewise for any other meaningful question one could ask about what's true in a work of fiction. We argue that a theory of this form is needed to account for the patterns in our judgments about attitude reports that embed fictional claims. We contrast our view with one of the dominant approaches (...) to fictional truth, which originates with David Lewis. Along the way we explore the relationship between fiction, counterfactuals, and vagueness. (shrink)

Although much has been written about the truth-conditions of de re attitude reports, little attention has been paid to certain ‘ultra-liberal’ uses of those reports. We believe that if these uses are legitimate, then a number of interesting consequences for various theses in philosophical semantics follow. The majority of the paper involves describing these consequences. In short, we argue that, if true, ultra-liberal reports: bring counterexamples to a popular approach to de re attitude ascriptions, which we will call ‘descriptivism’; and (...) combine with independently plausible principles about the logic of belief to imply that subjects can achieve omniscience about what exists from the armchair. Although we are not committed to the view that ultra-liberal reports are false, in the final part of the paper we discuss the prospects of pursuing a line according to which the acceptability of such reports ought not be taken at face value. We conclude by arguing that those who are sympathetic with this move might have reason to doubt the truth of an even broader class of acceptable de re attitude reports, namely those that have been taken to undermine orthodox accounts of de re attitude ascriptions. (shrink)

This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as “values debate,” includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and we offer (...) strategic recommendations for improving LD as a tool for teaching philosophy. Ultimately, our aim is to create a dialogue between LD and academic philosophy, with the hope that such dialogue will improve LD’s capacity to teach students how to do philosophy. (shrink)

Claims concerning processes, claims of the form “xisφing”, have been the subject of renewed interest in recent years in the philosophy of action. However, this interest has frequently limited itself to noting certain formal features such claims have, and has not extended to a discussion of when they are true. This article argues that a claim of the form “xisφing” is true when what is happening withxis such that, if it is not interrupted, a φing will occur. It then applies (...) itself more directly to the case of action, arguing that when “xisφing” describesx's intentional action, it is true iffxis acting from a method she knows to be sufficient to φ, in the sense that if she is not interrupted in carrying out this method, she will φ. I use this criterion to argue that the carbon‐copier example Donald Davidson gives in “Intending” fails to refute Elizabeth Anscombe's claim that an agent who is φing intentionally knows that she is, because the agent in Davidson's example is not intentionally making the copies. (shrink)

Abstract:This article sets out two central theses. Both theses primarily involve a fundamental criticism of current contractarian business ethics (CBE), but if these can be sustained, they also constitute two boundary conditions for any future contractarian theory of business ethics. The first, which I label the self-discipline thesis, claims that current CBE would gain considerably in focus if more attention were paid to the logic of the social contract argument. By this I mean the aims set by the theorist and (...) method of reasoning by which normative conclusions are drawn in the contract model. The second, to which I refer as the domain-specificity thesis, argues that current CBE needs to be better adapted to its field of application and the specific goals which it aims to establish. I will substantiate these two theses on the basis of a comparative analysis of CBE with two earlier families of social contract theories. (shrink)

This article argues that standard causal and functionalist definitions of realization fail to account for the realization of entities that cannot be individuated in causal or functional terms. By modifying such definitions to require that realizers also logically suffice for any historical properties of the entities they realize, one can provide for the realization of entities whose resistance to causal/functional individuation stems from their possession of individuative historical properties. But if qualia cannot be causally or functionally individuated, then qualia can (...) be physically realized only if the thesis that all things are physical or physically realized is insufficient for physicalism. (shrink)

Chalmers’ meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining “problem reports”; i.e. reports to the effect that phenomenal consciousness has the various features that give rise to the hard problem. Chalmers suggests that solving the meta-problem will likely “shed significant light on the hard problem.” Against this, I argue that work on the meta-problem will likely fail to make the hard problem any easier. For each of the main stances on the hard problem can provide an account of problem reports, (...) and we have no way of deciding which of these accounts gives the correct explanation of an individual’s problem reports without presupposing a stance on the hard problem. We thus cannot determine which of the available solutions to the meta-problem is correct without having already solved the hard problem. (shrink)

RESUMEN Desde el planteamiento de Gadamer sobre diálogo se muestra que cuando los interlocutores efectúan la conversación en armonía con el proteger el derecho de opinión y el reconocer de modo recíproco los límites de los puntos de vista arriesgados, es factible configurar comunidad de vida humana en la mutua estima y aprobar la validez de otros juicios como respuestas que ayudan con el proceso interhumano de entendimiento común. Y en este realizar el diálogo así tiene lugar una creación nueva (...) de sentido que con la participación de la pluralidad lleva a cabo simultáneamente la actualización del habitual modo de efectuar la formación de comunidad de vida. En la medida en que los interlocutores ejercen el entender sus opiniones en relación con la pregunta orientadora del diálogo y reconocen la finitud de sus puntos de vista como posibilidades entre otras, se contribuye con el establecimiento de comunidad de vida humana en un sentido completamente distinto trasformando con ello de un modo u otro las prácticas habituales de relación e integración social. En primer lugar, se explica el vínculo entre experiencia comprensible y conversación; y, en segundo lugar, se establece el modo como Gadamer describe el presupuesto hermenéutico de la pertenencia y su relación con la creación de un nuevo sentido que incumbe a la experiencia comprensible del entendimiento interhumano en la conversación. ABSTRACT From Gadamer's approach to dialogue, it is shown that when the interlocutors carry out the conversation in harmony with protecting the right of opinion and reciprocally recognizing the limits of risky points of view, it is feasible to configure a community of human life in mutual estimate and approve the validity of other judgments as answers that help with the interhuman process of common understanding. And in this realization of the dialogue thus a new creation of meaning takes place that with the participation of the plurality simultaneously carries out the updating of the usual way of carrying out the formation of a community of life. To the extent that the interlocutors understand their opinions in relation to the guiding question of the dialogue and recognize the finiteness of their points of view as possibilities among others, it contributes to the establishment of a community of human life in a completely different sense, transforming with this, in one way or another, the usual practices of relationship and social integration. First, the link between understandable experience and conversation is explained; and, secondly, the way in which Gadamer describes the hermeneutical assumption of belonging and its relationship with the creation of a new meaning that concerns the comprehensible experience of interhuman understanding in conversation is established. (shrink)

Esta reflexión pretende visualizar algunos elementos y características de lo que se ha nombrado actualmente como el agotamiento de la racionalidad constitutiva de lo que fue conocido como “el proyecto político de la modernidad”. Para el caso latinoamericano, la institucionalidad política, acuñada al sistema democrático de occidente, en lugar de ser solución termina agudizando el contexto de dominación e injusticia. Al presente, “las repúblicas democráticas”, en la región latinoamericana, no han sido los espacios esperados de trámite de las contradicciones del (...) propio sistema. El siguiente argumento, en perspectiva crítica, intenta aportar al actual debate político nombrando algunos desafíos para las teorías políticas que buscan superar el pensamiento único, hoy reducido al economicismo hegemónico que hace ilegítimo el estado, en la búsqueda de otros proyectos de sociedad para el siglo XXI. (shrink)

Theories of phenomenal intentionality have been claimed to resolve certain worries about the indeterminacy of mental content that rival, externalist theories face. Thus far, however, such claims have been largely programmatic. This paper aims to improve on prior arguments in favor of phenomenal intentionality by using attention and Gestalt principles as specific examples of factors that influence the phenomenal character of perceptual experience in ways that thereby help determine perceptual content. Some reasons are then offered for rejecting an alternative interpretation (...) of these examples, according to which the phenomenal effects of attention and Gestalt principles play no role in the determination of perceptual content. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking new study, Ben Ware carries out a bold reassessment of the relationship between modernism and ethics, arguing that modernist literature and philosophy offer more than simply a snapshot of the moral conflicts of the past: they provide a crucial point of reference for today's emancipatory struggles. Modernism in this assessment is characterized not only by a concern with language and aesthetic creativity, but also by a preoccupation with the question of how to live. Investigating ethical ideas in (...) Wittgenstein, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Kant, Cavell, Marx, Henry James and Lacan, Ware demonstrates how these thinkers can bring us to a new understanding of a constellation of issues which contemporary radical thought must re-visit: utopia, repetition, perfectionism, subtraction, negativity, critique, absence, duty, revolution and political love. The result is a timely and provocative intervention, which re-draws the boundaries for future debates on the ethics and politics of modernism. (shrink)

Well-Being and Death addresses philosophical questions about death and the good life: what makes a life go well? Is death bad for the one who dies? How is this possible if we go out of existence when we die? Is it worse to die as an infant or as a young adult? Is it bad for animals and fetuses to die? Can the dead be harmed? Is there any way to make death less bad for us? Ben Bradley defends the (...) following views: pleasure, rather than achievement or the satisfaction of desire, is what makes life go well; death is generally bad for its victim, in virtue of depriving the victim of more of a good life; death is bad for its victim at times after death, in particular at all those times at which the victim would have been living well; death is worse the earlier it occurs, and hence it is worse to die as an infant than as an adult; death is usually bad for animals and fetuses, in just the same way it is bad for adult humans; things that happen after someone has died cannot harm that person; the only sensible way to make death less bad is to live so long that no more good life is possible. (shrink)

I develop a formal logic in which quantified arguments occur in argument positions of predicates. This logic also incorporates negative predication, anaphora and converse relation terms, namely, additional syntactic features of natural language. In these and additional respects, it represents the logic of natural language more adequately than does any version of Frege’s Predicate Calculus. I first introduce the system’s main ideas and familiarize it by means of translations of natural language sentences. I then develop a formal system built on (...) these principles, the Quantified Argument Calculus or Quarc. I provide a truth-value assignment semantics and a proof system for the Quarc. I next demonstrate the system’s power by a variety of proofs; I prove its soundness; and I comment on its completeness. I then extend the system to modal logic, again providing a proof system and a truth-value assignment semantics. I proceed to show how the Quarc versions of the Barcan formulas, of their converses and of necessary existence come out straightforwardly invalid, which I argue is an advantage of the modal Quarc over modal Predicate Logic as a system intended to capture the logic of natural language. (shrink)

Motivated by weaknesses with traditional accounts of logical epistemology, considerable attention has been paid recently to the view, known as anti-exceptionalism about logic, that the subject matter and epistemology of logic may not be so different from that of the recognised sciences. One of the most prevalent claims made by advocates of AEL is that theory choice within logic is significantly similar to that within the sciences. This connection with scientific methodology highlights a considerable challenge for the anti-exceptionalist, as two (...) uncontentious claims about scientific theories are that they attempt to explain a target phenomenon and prove their worth through successful predictions. Thus, if this methodological AEL is to be viable, the anti-exceptionalist will need a reasonable account of what phenomena logics are attempting to explain, how they can explain, and in what sense they can be said to issue predictions. This paper makes sense of the anti-exceptionalist proposal with a new account of logical theory choice, logical predictivism, according to which logics are engaged in both a process of prediction and explanation. (shrink)

To what extent do we know our own minds when making decisions? Variants of this question have preoccupied researchers in a wide range of domains, from mainstream experimental psychology to cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics. A pervasive view places a heavy explanatory burden on an intelligent cognitive unconscious, with many theories assigning causally effective roles to unconscious influences. This article presents a novel framework for evaluating these claims and reviews evidence from three major bodies of research in which unconscious factors (...) have been studied: multiple-cue judgment, deliberation without attention, and decisions under uncertainty. Studies of priming and the role of awareness in movement and perception are also given brief consideration. The review highlights that inadequate procedures for assessing awareness, failures to consider artifactual explanations of “landmark” results, and a tendency to uncritically accept conclusions that fit with our intuitions have all contributed to unconscious influences being ascribed inflated and erroneous explanatory power in theories of decision making. The review concludes by recommending that future research should focus on tasks in which participants' attention is diverted away from the experimenter's hypothesis, rather than the highly reflective tasks that are currently often employed. (shrink)

The distinction between perception and cognition has always had a firm footing in both cognitive science and folk psychology. However, there is little agreement as to how the distinction should be drawn. In fact, a number of theorists have recently argued that, given the ubiquity of top-down influences, we should jettison the distinction altogether. I reject this approach, and defend a pluralist account of the distinction. At the heart of my account is the claim that each legitimate way of marking (...) a border between perception and cognition deploys a notion I call ‘stimulus-control.’ Thus, rather than being a grab bag of unrelated kinds, the various categories of the perceptual are unified into a superordinate natural kind. (shrink)

Philosophers of logic are particularly interested in understanding the aims, epistemology, and methodology of logic. This raises the question of how the philosophy of logic should go about these enquires. According to the practice-based approach, the most reliable method we have to investigate the methodology and epistemology of a research field is by considering in detail the activities of its practitioners. This holds just as true for logic as it does for the recognised empirical and abstract sciences. If we wish (...) to systematically understand the aims and epistemology of logic, we are best placed achieving this by looking at what logicians do, rather than reflecting upon the nature of logic itself. In this entry, we outline the motivations for a practice-based approach towards the philosophy of logic and highlight its advantages over more “top-down” approaches, which attempt to infer conclusions about the nature of logic and its methodology on the basis of traditional assumptions about knowledge, metaphysics, or logic itself. We end by addressing several prominent concerns raised against the practice-based approach. (shrink)

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...) motivation for it is the ‘experience requirement’ (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one’s pleasures. (shrink)

Given the plethora of competing logical theories of validity available, it’s understandable that there has been a marked increase in interest in logical epistemology within the literature. If we are to choose between these logical theories, we require a good understanding of the suitable criteria we ought to judge according to. However, so far there’s been a lack of appreciation of how logical practice could support an epistemology of logic. This paper aims to correct that error, by arguing for a (...) practice-based approach to logical epistemology. By looking at the types of evidence logicians actually appeal to in attempting to support their theories, we can provide a more detailed and realistic picture of logical epistemology. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of a practice-based approach, we look to a particular case of logical argumentation—the dialetheist’s arguments based upon the self-referential paradoxes—and show that the evidence appealed to support a particular theory of logical epistemology, logical abductivism. (shrink)

In this paper we examine Husserl’s ethics contribution to the understanding of human action determined by self-responsibility. We admit that self-responsibility is that ‘capacity’ of any subject to take a reflective stance on himself and his life. In this sense, the subject only experiences fully being responsible when guides his reason in the multidimensionality of his actions, aiming at a personal and cultural renewal. To show this, we firstly analyze the project of renewal of man and culture in the personalist (...) ethics proposed by Husserl, viewed from the history of parricide Karamazov. Secondly, we inquire about one of the two dimensions of human personality, self-awareness and presence of oneself, to approach the complex intentional act in which this selfconsciousness takes place. Thirdly, we analyze how the ability of self-determination, the other key dimension of the person, makes possible the self-appraisal by which the new man values his actions, motives, means and ends. We conclude that the self guides his life in full participation and emotional manifestation out of experiences that strengthen the ‘self’ and the ‘us’. (shrink)

A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts have two independent (...) sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Across four experiments, we found evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, we found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions of moral character have a central role to play in driving dehumanization. (shrink)

El propósito del presente artículo es el de reflexionar sobre la relación política y legitimación del Estado en las sociedades modernas liberales, a partir del enfrentamiento ideológico entre los promotores del “estado de opinión” y los defensores del Estado de Derecho en Colombia. Considero que la participación, la comunicación deliberativa, el uso público de la razón práctica, la autonomía ciudadana y el respeto a los derechos fundamentales son supuestos ético-políticos inevitables sí queremos construir una cultura política democrática y pluralista en (...) Colombia. Para justificar mi punto de vista, procederé del siguiente modo. En primer lugar, introduciré la idea de que en la democracia deliberativa se privilegia el concurso de la pluralidad política en pleno respeto tanto del derecho como de los procedimientos institucionalizados de comunicación entre los ciudadanos y las instituciones públicas. En segundo lugar, sostendré que la democracia deliberativa implica un proceso democrático sujeto a principios generales imparciales de justicia. (shrink)

El problema del diálogo entre interlocutores con distintas expresionesculturales es una de las difi cultades más notables que afrontan las actualessociedades democráticas. En el presente artículo se aborda dicho problemaen clave de los aportes fi losófi cos de Hans Georg Gadamer y Charles Taylor.Se plantea como pregunta central: ¿qué actitudes ameritan promover losinterlocutores con tradiciones culturales incompatibles para la construcciónde unidad política democrática y pluricultural? Se acoge como principiode argumentación la idea de que diálogo abierto y reconocimiento mutuoson dos actitudes (...) ineludibles de cualquier intento sano por construir unidadpolítica democrática y pluricultural. (shrink)

En este trabajo se presentan algunos de los elementos teóricos que fundamentanla dimensión interpretativa como parte del marco epistemológicoque nos permitirá entender la situación de tensión y conflicto entre la visiónde justicia del régimen imperante y la administración de justicia pensada yrealizada desde las etnias en Colombia. Después se reconstruyen tres aspectospropios de la dimensión interpretativa para mostrar que dicha situaciónde tensión y conflicto puede comprenderse por fuera de la alternativa deobjetividad y de subjetividad establecida por la concepción clásica del (...) conocimiento.Se concluye que la dimensión interpretativa nos posibilita comprendery reconocer que existe un espacio de la multiplicidad simbólica ycultural. Espacio que demanda de ciudadanos con disposición para arriesgary remover continuamente las mentalidades empleadas en la interacciónsocial. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se afirma que el lenguaje determinado por el seguimiento de reglas, por la intencionalidad de los estados mentales y por las expresiones con contenidos, tiene una preeminencia frente al planteamiento funcional ofrecido por la versión cognitiva en lo relacionado con el estudio de los procesos mentales. 1) Se reconstruye el modo como Searle entiende el lenguaje y la manera como están entrelazados sus rasgos constitutivos con el problema de los estados mentales. 2) Se muestra la característica (...) principal de cada uno de los rasgos del lenguaje. 3) Se concluye que los contenidos de la acción mental intencionada están siempre determinados por la infinita capacidad individual y por la generosa multiplicidad de perspectivas generales sobre el mundo, en lo referente con la continua creación y representación de los hechos institucionales determinados por el lenguaje. (shrink)

En esta ponencia me propongo exponer algunas de las reflexiones de Wittgenstein, para intentar mostrar que, aun cuando el proyecto racional de fundamentar el conocimiento en verdades absolutas es, en efecto, irrealizable, habría una forma de entender el concepto de verdad que no implica un relativismo personal o cultural sino que, por el contrario, lo excluye. [Fragmento].

Este artículo tratará el problema del reconocimiento de las identidades colectivasen el marco del Estado democrático de derecho a partir de la interpretación sugerida por Jürgen Habermas. Se presenta, en primer lugar, el problemadel reconocimiento de las demandas de las identidades colectivas; en segundolugar, algunos presupuestos teóricos previos al debate con Taylorsobre la lucha por el reconocimiento en las sociedades modernas; y en tercerlugar, algunos de los elementos teóricos que estructuran la interpretación deJürgen Habermas en torno al reconocimiento de las (...) demandas no satisfechasde las identidades colectivas. Se concluye que el reconocimiento de lasidentidades colectivas puede articularse moral y políticamente si en el Estadodemocrático de derecho se crean condiciones de igualdad de derechos yparticipación. Condiciones fundamentales para que en el ámbito de lo públicolos actores sociales realicen el ejercicio de la autonomía ciudadana, el cualdebe estar orientado a visualizar con claridad los intereses colectivos y loscriterios justificados que permitan tratar de modo justo los diferentes interesesy necesidades de las identidades colectivas. (shrink)

RESUMEN Nuestro objetivo es explicitar la historia de la hermenéutica desde sus orígenes míticos hasta el modo como esta fue acogida en el ámbito de la música como método de análisis con el fin de revelar el contenido y el significado de las obras. Se diserta sobre los diferentes ámbitos asignados al término "hermenéutica" en la filosofía y las artes. Para llevar a cabo estas consideraciones, en la primera parte se expone el origen mítico, se realiza una sucinta historia del (...) término y se presenta el puente establecido por H.G. Gadamer entre la hermenéutica y el arte. En la segunda parte se muestra la conformación de la hermenéutica musical, su desarrollo en el campo de la música a través del análisis musical y sus fines. Por último, se enuncian los puntos de encuentro entre la hermenéutica filosófica y aquella adoptada en el campo de la música. ABSTRACT Our goal is to explain the history of Hermeneutics from its mythical origins to the way in which it was received in the field of music, as a method of analysis, in order to reveal the content and meaning of the works. The different areas assigned to the term Hermeneutics in philosophy and the arts will be discussed. To carry out these considerations, in the first part, the mythical origin, a succinct history of the term is introduced, and the bridge established by H-G Gadamer between Hermeneu-tics and art, is presented. In the second part of the text, the conformation of musical Hermeneutics, its development in the field of music through musical analysis and its purposes, is shown. Finally, the meeting points of the differences between the position assumed by philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics, and that adopted in the field of music, are stated. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, me centraré únicamente en la ontología del Tractatus porque, a pesar de ser uno de los temas que abandona después de 1930, tiene dos aspectos que quisiera resaltar de manera especial: su carácter relacional, y su afirmación de la contingencia del mundo. Considero que ambos son de interés en sí mismos por su carácter inédito, pero creo, además, que es posible establecer sugerentes relaciones entre ellos y algunas posiciones contemporáneas, tanto de las ciencias naturales como de (...) las ciencias sociales. En el primer caso, haré referencia al libro recientemente publicado de Friedrich Hülster, Introduction to Wittgenstein´s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Para el segundo, tomaré como punto de partida Radical Uncertainty, publicado el año pasado por John Kay y Marvyn King. (shrink)

What is it for a life to be meaningful? In this article, I defend what I call Consequentialism about Meaning in Life, the view that one's life is meaningful at time t just in case one's surviving at t would be good in some way, and one's life was meaningful considered as a whole just in case the world was made better in some way for one's having existed.

I examine the origins of ordinary racial thinking. In doing so, I argue against the thesis that it is the byproduct of a unique module. Instead, I defend a pluralistic thesis according to which different forms of racial thinking are driven by distinct mechanisms, each with their own etiology. I begin with the belief that visible features are diagnostic of race. I argue that the mechanisms responsible for face recognition have an important, albeit delimited, role to play in sustaining this (...) belief. I then argue that essentialist beliefs about race are driven by some of the mechanisms responsible for “entitativity perception”: the tendency to perceive some aggregates of people as more genuine groups than others. Finally, I argue that coalitional thinking about race is driven by a distinctive form of entitativity perception. However, I suggest that more data is needed to determine the prevalence of this form of racial thinking. (shrink)

Among the areas of knowledge that the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) has been applied to is that of logical validity. According to RE in logic, we come to be justified in believing a (deductive) logical theory in virtue of establishing some state of equilibrium between our initial judgements over the validity of specific (natural language) arguments and the logical principles which constitute our logical theory. Unfortunately, however, while relatively popular, RE with regards to logical theorizing is underspecified. In particular, (...) it’s unclear what constitute: (1) the relevant logical “data”, (2) logical theories, so that they can be suitably tested, and (3) the mechanisms under which such theories are tested. Considering the various options for how to interpret the position, we argue that in order to be workable the advocate of RE about logic must embrace what we call an _operationalised_, _wide_ and _communal_ version of RE with a _rich_ understanding of logical theories. Fortunately for the advocate of RE, there is an available account of logic’s epistemology which possesses just these properties, _logical predictivism_. However, equally unfortunately, logical predictivism commits the advocate of RE to certain further claims that they have historically been weary of holding. Consequently, it is unclear whether RE about logic itself is a viable proposal, or rather a similar but distinct epistemology of logic. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology (e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Battaly 2006; Baehr 2011) – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr, 2013) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as (...) the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking (Scheffler 1989; Siegel 1988; 1997; 2017). In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education. (shrink)

I argue that extant accounts of harm all fail to account for important desiderata, and that we should therefore jettison the concept when doing moral philosophy.

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2-3, Page 267-283, April 2022.

An overview (about 8,000 words) of act utilitarianism, covering the basic idea of the theory, historical examples, how it differs from rule utilitarianism and motive utilitarianism, supporting arguments, and standard objections. A closing section provides a brief introduction to indirect utilitarianism (i.e., a Hare- or Railton-style view distinguishing between a decision procedure and a criterion of rightness).