Unlike other classical arguments for the existence of God, Pascal’s Wager provides a pragmatic rationale for theistic belief. Its most popular version says that it is rationally mandatory to choose a way of life that seeks to cultivate belief in God because this is the option of maximum expected utility. Despite its initial attractiveness, this long-standing argument has been subject to various criticisms by many philosophers. What is less discussed, however, is the rationality of this choice in situations where the (...) decision-makers are confronted with greater uncertainty. In this paper, I examine the imprecise version of Pascal’s Wager: those scenarios where an agent’s credence that God exists is imprecise or vague rather than precise. After introducing some technical background on imprecise probabilities, I apply five different principles for decision-making to two cases of state uncertainty. In the final part of the paper, I argue that it is not rationally permitted to include zero as the lower probability of God’s existence. Although the conditions for what makes an act uniquely optimal vary significantly across those principles, I also show how the option of wagering for God can defeat any mixed strategy under two distinct interpretations of salvation. (shrink)

Epistemic justification has been widely accepted as both a gradational and relational notion. Given those properties, a natural thought is to take degrees of epistemic justification to be probabilities. In this paper, we present a simple Bayesian framework for justification. In the first part, after putting the model in an evidentialist form, we distinguish different senses of “being evidence for” and “confirming”. Next, we argue that this conception should accommodate the two relevant kinds of qualitative confirmation or evidential support. In (...) the second part of the paper, we discuss the claim that this view is unable to satisfy the modified version of the conjunction closure for beliefs in probabilistically independent propositions. We defend that the underlying assumption on which this objection depends leads to an improper reading of the concept of epistemic probability. After providing a better interpretation of it, we put forward a rationale, which is based on the notion of conditional uncertainty, in support of a more plausible and restricted version of the closure of justification under conjunction. (shrink)

In this challenging study, André Gallois proposes and defends a thesis about the character of our knowledge of our own intentional states. Taking up issues at the centre of attention in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and epistemology, he examines accounts of self-knowledge by such philosophers as Donald Davidson, Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright, and advances his own view that, without relying on observation, we are able justifiably to attribute to ourselves propositional attitudes, such as belief, that we consciously (...) hold. His study will be of wide interest to philosophers concerned with questions about self-knowledge. (shrink)

Increasingly, frontiers between business and philanthropy seem to be blurred. Reward-Based Crowdfunding platforms contribute to this blurring of lines since they propose funders to support both for-profit and philanthropic projects. Our empirical paper explores the case of Ulule, the leading crowdfunding platform in Europe. Our results, based on a statistical analysis of more than 3000 projects, show that crowdfunding platforms foster specific kinds of relationships relying on reciprocal giving, beyond the usual opposition between altruistic and selfish motivations. We use the (...) work of Marcel Mauss to account for this process of reciprocal giving, and we argue that Maussian theory of gift can be used more generally to describe funding activities in the context of early stage entrepreneurship. (shrink)

This paper develops a future-oriented and person-centred normative argument based on expectancies that is immune to most of the problems identified in the rights of future persons. The argument unfolds in four parts. The first draws on the notion of expectancies present in inheritance law and maintains that it is possible to formulate a rule of prospective beneficiaries that correlates with entitlements and legitimate claims without necessarily acquiring the status of rights. The second extends expectancies to future persons and concludes (...) that the latter can be considered present holders of such currently binding entitlements. The third section raises the question of whether democracies are bound to a principle of fidelity towards expectancies in such a way that outweighs current people’s rights in cases of conflicts. The response does not prove particularly future-beneficial in such cases. However, section four clarifies why expectancies still carry a crucial moral weight in democracies, one that is not sufficiently established by depersonalised forms of future-oriented ethics. (shrink)

We explore the notion that culture influences people’s values, and their subsequent ideologies and ethical behaviors. We present the idea that culture itself changes with time, and explore the influence of culture and generational markers on consumer ethics by examining differences in these ethical dimensions between Australians, Indonesians, and Indonesian Migrants in Australia, as well as differences between Generation X versus Generations Y and Z. The present study addresses the need to investigate the role that culture plays in consumer ethics, (...) and the interaction between culture and generational attitudes in determining consumer ethics. Results established a distinct multiculturality in our three cultural samples, including a generational cohort differences. This suggests that culture and generational markers influence ethical beliefs, ideologies, and consumer ethics. It further indicates that Indonesian Migrants have acculturated to Australian society both in terms of their values and consumer behaviors, illustrating a crossvergence effect; scores indicate that these Migrants have the highest cultural intelligence among our samples. Implications of the findings for consumer ethics theory and practice are considered and future directions identified. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOne of the recurrent motifs in political thought is the idea of the social contract, according to which a society, a government, or moral principles depend for their existence on agreements...

Para solucionar a questão “sobre o que há” levantada por Quine, e realizar a tarefa de compreender de forma exauriente as muitas unidades ontológicas que povoam a grande província do Ser, propomos como alternativa à ontologia punteliana, uma nova ontologia designada de “Ontologia Estrutural” (OE). Tal ontologia parte de bases teóricas sistemático-estruturais, mas desemboca em uma visão diversa em que co-subsistem unidades factuais estruturadas, configurações estruturais (dinâmicas), bem como unidades ontológicas aparentes (objetos), todas englobadas pela subdimensão temporal que as interconexiona, (...) compreendida esta como uma subdimensão (interna) da macrodimensão do Ser. Nesse sentido, começamos situando a temática ontológica na discussão filosófica atual a partir de uma chave quineana; prosseguimos apresentando um conceito de verdade derivado de nossa leitura da filosofia punteliana, o qual constituirá o ponto de ligação entre linguagem e mundo. Na sequência, mostramos como do conceito de verdade trazido à lume, após uma breve incursão na semântica filosófica, chegamos ao campo ontológico a partir das categorias ontológicas de estrutura e estado ontológico. Ao final, delineamos, em seus caracteres gerais, a nossa ontologia estrutural, compreensiva de noções ontológicas próprias que dão novos rumos à compreensão filosófica desta grande temática. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to put forward a new kind of partial model for representing belief states. I first introduce some philosophical motivations for working with partial models. Then, I present the standard (total) model proposed by Hintikka, and the partial models studied by Humberstone and Holliday. I then show how to reduce Hintikka’s semantics in order to obtain a partial model which, however, differs from Humberstone’s and Holliday’s. The nature of such differences is assessed, and I provide motivations (...) for using the newly proposed semantics rather than the existing ones. Finally, I review some promising philosophical applications of the ideas developed throughout the discussion. (shrink)

Pendant 26 années, la couverture annuelle de Kernos a seulement varié par la tomaison, le millésime et la couleur. Le moment était donc venu de confier à un graphiste le toilettage de la revue… Sans renoncer à la forme du kernos qui nous suit depuis le début, fût-il minoen, nous avons choisi de rapprocher la ligne graphique de la revue de celle des suppléments. Vous avez le résultat entre les mains! Ce changement de graphisme ne modifie en rien nos ambitions (...) qui sont toujours de fournir, une... (shrink)

L’année 2020 restera certainement marquée par l’arrivée d’une pandémie qui a secoué le monde et arrêté le temps pour des pays entiers. Il nous a semblé que la meilleure manière de résister à l’incertitude du présent et de l’avenir était de poursuivre notre tâche de diffusion des recherches qui ont cours sur la religion grecque antique. Certes, le travail de nombre de chercheurs a été entravé par la fermeture des bibliothèques, l’arrêt des chantiers de fouilles et l’impossibilité d’accéder aux...

Comme vous le constatez en le prenant en main, le volume du Kernos 2021 est plus mince qu’à l’habitude. La raison principale en est assurément l’absence de la Chronique archéologique. La mise au point du site internet de cette Chronique a pris plus de temps que prévu. Or, le site est appelé à devenir la plateforme de travail des collaborateurs et à générer l’information disponible à la fois en ligne, sur l’impression papier et sur le site OpenEdition Journals quand se (...) lève la barrière mobile.... (shrink)

Ce sont les Actes d’un colloque interdisciplinaire qui s’est tenu, en avril 2011, à l’Université de Genève. Comme l’indiquent les éditeurs scientifiques dans leur introduction, la rencontre avait pour but d’étudier, à travers différents contextes culturels et historiques, la manière dont l’homme pense l’espace clos des jardins et comment s’exprime, en l’occurrence, le rapport de la nature et de la culture. Dix-sept contributions concourent à ce projet et trois disciplines principales y sont r...

Neste artigo, pretendemos explorar a tese comparativista sobre o mal da morte e como ela lida com o chamado Desafio do Tempo. De acordo com o comparativismo, a morte pode ser um mal na medida em que a pessoa estaria melhor, caso não tivesse falecido. No entanto, se ao morrer deixamos de existir, como a morte pode ser algo ruim? Mais especificamente, em que momento a morte prejudica o sujeito? Para responder a esta questão, primeiramente explicaremos no que consiste exatamente (...) a tese comparativista, e como ela pode argumentar sobre algum valor prudencial da morte. Em seguida, explicaremos o que é o desafio do tempo e, por fim, analisaremos as respostas fornecidas pelos comparativistas ao problema. Buscaremos assim defender que o comparativismo pode não só dizer se uma morte é ruim, mas também o quão ruim pode ser para o indivíduo e, além disso, que essa abordagem propõe soluções plausíveis ao desafio do tempo. (shrink)

t. 1. Les professeurs de philosophie d'autrefois.- t. 2. Jules Lagneau.

Neste artigo é desenvolvida uma investigação acerca do percurso do negociante de origem portuguesa Antônio José de Araújo na vila paulista de Morretes, de 1804 a 1851. Nesse quadro, o propósito basilar deste estudo é evidenciar as formas de dominação social exercidas por indivíduos que, provenientes de Portugal, habitaram as sociedades do litoral paulista na primeira metade do século XIX. Assim, demonstra­se que o controle do mercado de crédito era crucial para que os negociantes formassem um séquito de dependentes. Por (...) vezes, esses dependentes eram familiares de seus credores. Era pouco viável aos pequenos comerciantes conseguir desvincular­se desses séquitos. (shrink)

Goldschmidt’s Contradiction Set Free confronts us with a variety of topics, political and philosophical topoi, in which he traces contradictions of thought and action. This article focuses on Goldschmidt’s omission of the sphere of language as a site of contradiction in Contradiction Set Free. I argue that it is a deliberate choice on the part of Goldschmidt to not project a metalanguage of contradiction, but to probe philosophy’s involvement in the practice of language and thus present a critique of philosophy (...) through the contradictory impulse of language. First, I discuss the status Goldschmidt ascribes to the work of language for philosophy. From here, I engage in a discussion of the meaning of Ergriffenheit (awe) in Contradiction Set Free. Finally, I analyze two of Goldschmidt’s uses of parables and conclude with a reference to a parable by Franz Kafka. (shrink)

This paper addresses several issues in argumentation theory. The over-arching goal is to discuss how a theory of analogical argument schemes fits the pragma-dialectical theory of argument schemes and argument structures, and how one should properly reconstruct both single and complex argumentation by analogy. I also propose a unified model that explains how formal valid deductive argumentation relates to argument schemes in general and to analogical argument schemes in particular. The model suggests “scheme-specific-validity” i.e. that there are contrasting species of (...) validity for each type of argument scheme that derive from one generic conception of validity. (shrink)

La risa caníbal -- Chaplin vs. Hitler : un estudio sobre la parodia -- En el interior de <> -- Sobre el chiste como una de las bellas artes -- La vida privada de los cómicos -- De muñecos y hombres -- El pensamiento cínico o el arte de la performance -- George Bush, o el payaso involuntario -- Prohibir la risa : el 11 de septiembre y la comunidad herida -- El político humorista, el humorista encarcelado: psoverdad, política (...) y humor -- Hombres que se ríen de los dioses -- <> feminista: el caballo en la ciudad sitiada -- Agradecimientos. (shrink)