At the core of anthropomorphism lies a false-positive cognitive bias to over-attribute the pattern of the human body and/or mind. Anthropomorphism is independently discussed in various disciplines, is presumed to have deep biological roots, but its cognitive bases are rarely explored in an integrative way. I present an inclusive, multifaceted interdisciplinary approach to refine the psychological bases of mental anthropomorphism. I have integrated 13 conceptual dissections of folk finalistic reasoning into four psychological inference systems (physical, design, basic-goal and belief stances); (...) the latter three are truly teleological and thus prone to anthropomorphisms. I then have empirically integrated the cross-disciplinary genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive evidence that converge supporting the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems is framed as an evolved design feature to avoid harmful ancestral contexts. Nowadays, these stances easily engage with scientific reasoning about bio-evolutionary matters with negative and positive consequences. Design, basic-goal, and belief stances benefit biology by providing cognitive foundations, expressing a high-powered explanatory system, promoting functional generalization, fostering new research questions and discoveries, enabling metaphorical/analogical thinking and explaining didactically with brevity. Hence, it is neither feasible nor advantageous to completely eliminate teleology from biology. Instead, we should engage with the eight classes of problems in bio-philosophy and bio-education that relate to the three stances: types of anthropomorphism, variety of misunderstandings, misleading appeal, legitimacy controversy, gateway to mysticism, total prohibition and its backfire effect. Recognizing the distinction among design, basic-goal, and belief stances helps to elucidate much of the logic underlying these issues, so that it enables a much more detailed taxonomy of anthropomorphisms, and organizes the various misunderstandings about evolution by natural selection. It also offers a solid psychological grounding for anchoring definitions and terminology. This tripartite framework also shed some light on how to better deal with the over-reactive stances in bio-education, by organizing previous pedagogical strategies and by suggesting new possibilities to be tested. Therefore, this framework constitutes a promising approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms and to further support regulating and clarifying teleology and anthropomorphism in biology. (shrink)

Since Darwin proposed that human musicality evolved through sexual selection, empirical evidence has supported intersexual selection as one of the adaptive functions of artistic propensities. However, intrasexual competition has been overlooked. We tested their relative importance by investigating the relationship between the self-perceived talent/expertise in 16 artistic and 2 sports modalities and proxies of intersexual selection and intrasexual competition in heterosexuals. Participants were 82 Brazilian men, 166 Brazilian women, 146 Czech men, and 458 Czech women. Factor analysis revealed five factors: (...) Literary-arts, Visual-arts, Musical-arts, Circus-arts, and Sports. Multivariate General Linear Model showed more associations of the arts to intersexual selection in women and to intrasexual selection in men, and overall more relationships in women than in men. In women, literary and musical-arts were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selections proxies, visual and circus-arts were related to elevated intersexual selection proxies, and sports were related to intrasexual selection proxies. In men, literary-arts and sports were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selection proxies, musical-arts were related to intrasexual proxies, and circus-arts were related to intersexual proxies; visual-arts did not have predictors. Although present in both sexes, each sexual selection component has different relative importance in each sex. Artisticality functions to attract and maintain long/short-term partners, and to compete with mating rivals. (shrink)

Humans have been using fire for hundreds of millennia, creating an ancestral expansion toward the nocturnal niche. The new adaptive challenges faced at night were recurrent enough to amplify existing psychological variation in our species. Night-time is dangerous and mysterious, so it selects for individuals with higher tendencies for paranoia, risk-taking, and sociability. During night-time, individuals are generally tired and show decreased self-control and increased impulsive behaviors. The lower visibility during night-time favors the partial concealment of identity and opens more (...) opportunities for disinhibition of self-interested behaviors. Indeed, individuals with an evening-oriented chronotype are more paranoid, risk-taking, extraverted, impulsive, promiscuous, and have higher antisocial personality traits. However, under some circumstances, such as respiratory pandemics, the psychobehavioral traits favored by the nocturnal niche might be counter-productive, increasing contagion rates of a disease that can evade the behavioral immune system because its disease cues are often nonexistent or mild. The eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis presented here suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the evening-oriented psychobehavioral profile can have collectively harmful consequences: there is a clash of core tendencies between the nocturnal chronotype and the recent viral transmission-mitigating safety guidelines and rules. The pandemic safety protocols disrupt much normal social activity, particularly at night when making new social contacts is desired. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious even in presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, which enables it to mostly evade our evolved contagious disease avoidance mechanisms. A growing body of research has indirectly shown that individual traits interfering with social distancing and anti-contagion measures are related to those of the nocturnal chronotype. Indeed, some of the social contexts that have been identified as superspreading events occur at night, such as in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Furthermore, nocturnal environmental conditions favor the survival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus much longer than daytime conditions. We compare the eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis with other factors related to non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, namely sex, age, and life history. Although there is not yet a direct link between the nocturnal chronotype and non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, security measures and future empirical research should take this crucial evolutionary mismatch and adaptive metaproblem into account, and focus on how to avoid nocturnal individuals becoming superspreaders, offering secure alternatives for nocturnal social activities. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global societal, economic, and social upheaval unseen in living memory. There have been substantial cross-national differences in the kinds of policies implemented by political decision-makers to prevent the spread of the virus, to test the population, and to manage infected patients. Among other factors, these policies vary with politicians’ sex: early findings indicate that, on average, female leaders seem more focused on minimizing direct human suffering caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while male leaders implement (...) riskier short-term decisions, possibly aiming to minimize economic disruptions. These sex differences are consistent with broader findings in psychology, reflecting women’s stronger empathy, higher pathogen disgust, health concern, care-taking orientation, and dislike for the suffering of other people—as well as men’s higher risk-taking, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and focus on financial indicators of success and status. This review article contextualizes sex differences in pandemic leadership in an evolutionary framework. Evolution by natural selection is the only known process in nature that organizes organisms into higher degrees of functional order, or counteracts the unavoidable disorder that would otherwise ensue, and is therefore essential for explaining the origins of human sex differences. Differential sexual selection and parental investment between males and females, together with the sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain, drive sex differences in cognition and behavioral dispositions, underlying men’s and women’s leadership styles and decision-making during a global pandemic. According to thesexually dimorphic leadership specialization hypothesis, general psychobehavioral sex differences have been exapted during human evolution to create sexually dimorphic leadership styles. They may be facultatively co-opted by societies and/or followers when facing different kinds of ecological and/or sociopolitical threats, such as disease outbreaks or intergroup aggression. Early evidence indicates that against the invisible viral foe that can bring nations to their knees, the strategic circumspection of empathic feminine health “worriers” may bring more effective and humanitarian outcomes than the devil-may-care incaution of masculine risk-taking “warriors”. (shrink)

By conceptualizing Sexual Selection, Darwin showed a way to analyze intra-specific individual differences within an evolutionary perspective. Interestingly, Sexual Selection is often used to investigate the origins of sports, arts, humor, religion and other phenomena that, in several languages, are simply called “play.” Despite their manifested differences, these phenomena rely on shared psychological processes, including playfulness. Further, in such behaviors there is usually considerable individual variability, including sex differences, and positive relationship with mating success. However, Sexual Selection is rarely applied (...) in the study of play, with exception to what is concerned as infant training behavior for adult sex roles. We offer an integrated grounding of playful phenomena aligning evolutionary propositions based on sexual selection, which might stimulate further exploration of playfulness within evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

A questão fundamental dessa investigação será mostrar quais bases sustentam a ideia do poder soberano no interior do chamado Estado Moderno e como nele se manifesta a relação com seus membros. Para alcançar esse objetivo pretendemos inicialmente mostrar a busca destas bases que o pensamento de Jean-Jacques Rousseau persegue desde o Discurso sobre as ciências e as artes (1749), passando pelo Discurso sobre a Origem e os Fundamentos da Desigualdade entre os Homens (1755) até alcançar sua formulação mais completa em (...) Do Contrato Social (1762), considerado o estudo mais influente da vida intelectual do autor. Nesta última obra, a legitimidade do comportamento se torna necessária para organizar os integrantes da sociedade, tornando coeso o corpo político. Para isso, os cidadãos se submetem a uma lei inviolável, a qual será validada pelos próprios membros do Estado. Portanto, delegam seu poder particular em direção à vontade geral, sendo cada homem considerado parte do poder soberano do Estado. (shrink)

The article pretends to situate basic patterns in order to think the nature of “the epistemological revolution”, having in mind criteria that allow to distinguish and meaning fully take into consideration the place from where one stares and speaks. This supposes to think “the epistemological revolut..

The essay investigates the relationship between humanity and catastrophe in Davi Kopenawa’s shamanic cosmology, which is compared by approximation to Lucretius’ venusian cosmology and by contrast to Kant’s moral eschatology. It considers the thesis of the structural and dynamic instability of the sky and the problem of the cosmic void. So it seeks to develop the question about the origin and the end of humanity through the catastrophe, both in its ancestral, extra-human dimension, and in its connection with the current (...) socio-environmental destruction, of anthropic origin. In conclusion, it speculates about the role played by the critical thinking in the catastrophe’s eruption. (shrink)

Book reviews: FLOOD, Gavin. Uma introdução ao Hinduísmo. Tradução de Dilip Loundo e Fernanda Winter. Juiz de Fora: Ed. da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 2014, 428p. Book of English Gavin Flood, director of Hindus Studies Center at the University of Oxford, with translation by Dilip Loundo to Portuguese.

Advocates of the Person-Centered Healthcare (PCH) approach say that PCH is a response to a failure of caring for patients as persons. Nevertheless, there are many human subjects falling to fulfill the requirements of a traditional philosophical definition of personhood. Hence, if we take, PCH seriously, a greater clarification of the key terminology of PCH is urgently needed. It seems necessary, for instance, that the concept of the person should be extended in order to include those individuals with insipient or (...) immature levels of consciousness, as well as those who are severely and permanently mentally handicapped. In this article, we will depart from some well-known philosophical concepts of what it means to be a person and try to offer a broader and more inclusive meaning. We suggest that persons are human beings with a socially recognized biography, which implies to recognize as persons individuals with necessities, but also with narratives about their interests and claims, expressed sometimes by other people related to them. This is particularly the case of individuals that suffer from severe disorders of consciousness. For those, is not only care that matters; respect matters too. Caregivers should therefore not only sympathetically care for the well-being of these people; they should also be concerned to respect their interests and claims by interpreting them empathetically, in the light of their biographical story. Our conclusion is that, in order to be coherent, PCH must consider individuals with severe disorders of consciousness as persons and we think that our revised concept of personhood fits with this requirement. (shrink)

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority. It may be considered optimistic to think that our present moral (...) capabilities can be successfully improved by means of moral education, moral persuasion, and fear of punishment. So, without moral enhancement, drastic restrictions on human freedom would become the only alternative to prevent those dramatic potential outcomes. In this article, I will try to show that we still have reason to be less pessimistic and that Persson & Savulescu’s arguments are fortunately unconvincing. (shrink)

Influenced by James Bernat’s approach, the US President’s 1981 Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioural Research concluded that human death is an instant that separates the dying process from the cadaveric state. Death, as Bernat and the President’s Commission argue, cannot be a process. Because organisms cannot be both alive and dead, Bernat claims, the transition from one state to the other must be sudden and instantaneous. Since then, few have argued the opposite (...) notion that death is a process, and that the transition between living and perishing is not a discrete event. In this article we argue that human death is a process that comprises three distinct phases: dying (when the physiological responses against the shutdown of vital organs and systems are in an imminence of breaking down), decease (when events such as respiratory and cardiac arrest indicate the critical failure of vital organs or systems), and decay (the irreversible and accelerated systemic biological process of cellular death that eventually takes over the whole body). We also argue that human death differs from the ‘time of death’ indicated by death certificates, which is pointed out only to clinically and legally establish the irreversibility of the entire process. (shrink)

Love and pride are passions related to ideas of entities capable of well-being. In the case of love, those entities are people we are related to, whose characters, qualities or traits we admire; pride, by its turn, is a passion related to the self. In spite of that, Hume is explicit in stating that love is naturally attended by a desire for the goodness and happiness of the beloved being; but it does not make sense to say that we desire (...) our own happiness and well-being because we are proud of ourselves. How can we explain this asymmetry? First, I will deal with the problem of the contrast between the unrelatedness of the emotion of pride and the desire of our own happiness and the relatedness of passion of love and the desire of happiness of the beloved person. After, I will link the conclusions reached with Hume’s famous claim that we cannot be happy in solitude. Our own happiness depends not only on our own well-being and success, but also on the well-being and happiness of the people we love, and both of which are related to the well functioning of society in the long run. (shrink)

Afirma-se inicialmente que a filosofia oferece elementos formativos para o ser humano, seja quando acessa produções filosóficas, seja quando se dá ao trabalho do filosofar dialogando com estas produções filosóficas. Daí os três itens que compõem o texto: formação humana e filosofia; papel formativo da filosofia segundo alguns autores; perspectivas relativas ao papel formativo da filosofia.

Este artigo visa mostrar que a crítica de Wittgenstein a Freud pode ser epistemologicamente útil para evidenciar algumas dificuldades teóricas da parte metapsicológica da psicanálise, em especial as observações insistentes de Freud de que a sua psicologia profunda deve ser considerada como uma ciência dos fenômenos psíquicos.This article seeks to demonstrate that Wittgenstein's criticism of Freud can be epistemologically fruitful to pinpoint some insurmountable theoretical difficulties in the metapsychological aspect of psychoanalysis, especially with regard to Freud's insistent remarks that his (...) deep psychology must be viewed as a scientific approach of psychic phenomena. (shrink)

O ensaio trata do problema da invisibilidade da matéria e do vazio em Dererum natura Como é possível a Lucrécio sustentar, por um lado, que o ânimo ématerial e que o conhecimento é sensível, e, por outro, que os primórdios dascoisas, bem como o vazio e os simulacros dos corpos, são invisíveis e, no limite,inacessíveis aos sentidos? O problema é desenvolvido mediante um comentário aotexto de Lucrécio que retoma criticamente a interpretação de Deleuze em Lógica dosentido com foco na relação (...) entre o caráter oculto da natureza e a diferença develocidade entre, de um lado, sentidos e pe nsamento e, de outro, simulacros ecorpos. A partir disso, o ensaio tira conclusões a respeito da natureza do discurso deLucrécio sobre a natureza das coisas. (shrink)

Estudo comparativo entre a Tarpeia de Tito Lívio e a de Propércio, duas formas de narrativas, dois discursos literários que apresentam suas versões do fato lendário dos primórdios de Roma. Cada um dentro da proposta de seus gêneros literários.

No texto, realiza-se uma análise das características e dos padrões da sociedade hipermoderna que reforçam e incentivam manifestações hedonistas e individualistas transformando o ser humano em mero consumidor e mera mercadoria, a partir dos critérios éticos indicados por Adela Cortina. Defende-se a necessidade de educar o cidadão para um consumo consciente, indicativo transformador desta sociedade hipermoderna e elemento-chave na conscientização da população em relação à sua responsabilidade social. O consumo passa a ser visto como ação política.

Nietzsche's philosophy unfolds, at all times, in denouncing that the schools and universities in Germany serve, mostly, to domesticate as a modern force in favor of the values administered by the State. Considering this horizon, this article investigates the analytical background of the Nietzschean critique of education (Ersiehung) of his time to show the necessary tension that human formation (Bildung) emerges in the framework of his philosophy as the cultivation of new values. For that, it will be necessary to show (...) that another level of discipline, at the same time cause and effect of a unique and proper formative experience, must be triggered as a creative power of and for other existential values. (shrink)

Resumen La relación que siempre ha existido entre la filosofía y el lenguaje es una zona que nos interesa explorar. La imagen de la metáfora como figura que se contextualiza en este ensayo, tiene como presupuesto el origen occidental del acto especular y la concurrencia que lo metafórico ha tenido en este tan particular período del pensamiento. -/- Lo metafórico, entonces, se convierte en el nudo gordiano que se comienza a develar en tanto esta problematización hace aparición en el texto (...) poético como fuente genera triz de lo que posteriormente será el discurso filosófico occidental, que en su lectura fundacional atisba el caos pero cae con posterioridad en un irreversible proceso de secularización en el cual la metáfora también jugó y juega hasta hoy un muy importante desempeño. -/- Abstract The relationships that there has always been between philosophy and language is a zone we are interested in exploring from the image of the metaphor as a figure which it is contextualized in this essay having its basis on the western origin of the speculative act and the repetitiveness that the metaphoric has had in that particular period of thought. -/- The metaphoric then become the gorgian node which start to reveal as this puzzle appears in the poetic text as a generative source of the following philosophical western discourse which in its foundational reading views the chaos but it falls later in a irreversible process of secularization in which the metaphor also played and play until today an important execution. (shrink)

This article aims at showing that contemporary attempts to rehabilitat Pyrrhonian scepticism do not hold water. I claim that a sceptic of this trend gets stuck in two major dilemmas. The first regards her object of investigation. I argue that, if she holds that her object of investigation is the non-evident truth, she will not be able to distance herself from dogmatism. In turn, if she holds that she seeks to establish sense data propositions, she will not be able to (...) pose herself as an investigator. The second dilemma stems from the sceptical attempt to wipe out dogmatism by developing arguments to the effect that no (dogmatic) proof exists. I contend that those arguments can be viewed either as "good" arguments, in which case the sceptic will be considered just another theorist in possession of an explanation, or as expendable devices, in which case the sceptic will be incapable of carrytng out her anti-dogmatic programme. Either way the sceptical position crumbles. (shrink)

In this article, I endeavor to analyze Wittgenstein’s remarks on certain aspects of Freud’s theory in the hope to show that his criticism can be epistemologically fruitful to pinpoint some insurmountable theoretical difficulties in the metapsychological aspect of psychoanalysis, especially with regard to Freud’s insistent remarks that his deep psychology must be viewed as a scientific approach of psychic phenomena.

O conceito de espiritualidade laica pode permitir um espaço na educação escolar para tratar de questões que, por serem públicas e de foro privado, envolvem a vida cotidiana nas mais diversas facetas, incluindo a política, as relações sociais e culturais, por isso precisam ser convenientemente tratadas. Ensaiar, pois, uma abordagem educacional dessa relação é importante em nosso momento histórico no qual a vida social e política são assaltadas por certa religiosidade ou crença. A partir da leitura de um historiador e (...) três filósofos, o texto procura definir uma espiritualidade não apenas laica, mas que possibilite o diálogo entre o laico, o ateísta, o agnóstico, o religioso etc. Para tanto, aposta-se na filosofia e procura encontrar pistas para a ação pedagógica. Conflui o conceito para a existência de determinações históricas, culturais e existenciais e destaca apontamentos para a educação nos quais se admite uma pluralidade de espiritualidades. Palavras-chave: Espiritualidade laica; educação laica; educação e espiritualidade. What is spirituality and how we can approach it in the school environment Abstract: The concept of secular spirituality can allow a space in school education to deal with issues that, being public or private, involve daily life in the most diverse facets, including politics, social and cultural relations, and therefore need to be conveniently dealt with. Rehearsing, therefore, an educational approach to this relationship is important in our historical moment in which social and political life is assaulted by a certain religiosity or belief. Based on the reading of one historian and three philosophers, the text seeks to define a spirituality that is not only secular, but one that enables dialogue between the secular, the atheistic, the agnostic, the religious, etc. To this end, it relies on philosophy and tries to find clues for pedagogical action. It makes the concept converge to the existence of historical, cultural, and existential determinations, and highlights notes for education in which a plurality of spiritualities is admitted. Key-words: Secular spirituality; secular education; education and spirituality. Qué es la espiritualidad y cómo podemos abordarla en el ámbito escolar Resumen: El concepto de espiritualidad laica puede permitir un espacio en la educación escolar para abordar temas que, siendo públicos y privados, involucran la vida cotidiana en las más diversas facetas, incluyendo la política, las relaciones sociales y culturales, por lo que requieren ser tratados convenientemente. Ensayar, por lo tanto, una aproximación educativa a esta relación es importante en nuestro momento histórico en el que la vida social y política se ve asaltada por una determinada religiosidad o creencia. A partir de la lectura de un historiador y tres filósofos, el texto busca definir una espiritualidad que no solo sea laica, sino que posibilite el diálogo entre lo laico, lo ateo, lo agnóstico, lo religioso, etc. Para eso, apuesta por la filosofía y busca encontrar pistas para la acción pedagógica. Hace converger el concepto a la existencia de determinaciones históricas, culturales y existenciales y destaca notas para una educación en la que se admite una pluralidad de espiritualidades. Palabras llave: Espiritualidad secular; educación laica; educación y espiritualidad Data de registro: 27/05/2022 Data de aceite: 17/08/2022. (shrink)

Para entender y comprender la emergencia de un discurso nuevo en Bolivia entre el 2005 y 2015, será necesario estudiar los síntomas sociopolíticos desencadenantes del 2000 al 2004, pero para entender de manera profunda y global, estás décadas es necesario ir al pasado, revisar dos siglos más o menos de historia, represión y contenidos reprimidos, para luego analizar y posteriormente realizar un diagnóstico de la realidad boliviana, de esa manera podremos reconocer lo íntimo de lo filosófico y político de esta (...) realidad, estableciendo algunos lineamientos esenciales de la neo-ontología. (shrink)

Essa pesquisa teve como proposta realizar um estudo acerca da angústia na obra do escritor Haruki Murakami (1949-), tendo como ponto de apoio secundário a teoria de Sigmund Freud (1858-1939) da angústia. Visamos, com esse estudo, lançar luz sobre a literatura como modelo de leitura da vida humana, em nosso caso, uma leitura das angústias humanas a partir da literatura. Para isso, iremos abordar o próprio gênero literário em que a obra de Murakami está circunscrita, os principais conceitos que dão (...) suporte a esse caráter angustiante, presentes no texto murakamiano, e a influência de concepções e ideias filosóficos em sua obra. Como por exemplo, a teoria da Vontade de Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) e a ideia do lugar do pensamento, postulado por Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) no quarto capítulo da obra “A vida do espírito". (shrink)

In this article, I am intent on rehabilitating Strawson's overall anti-sceptical strategy. First, I focus on his earlier attempt, which ignited the debate about the adequacy of transcendental arguments against the sceptic. I present Stroud's main reservation that Strawson's viewpoint is unworkable because it does not take into consideration the view of the external world upon which the sceptic is based in order to challenge our knowledge claims. I then focus on Strawson's later attempt, which is based upon a Humean-like (...) naturalistic strategy. I show that his naturalism is intractable for two reasons: first because it reproduces the proof structure of transcendental arguments and ends up employing a rational proof to counter rational proofs; and second, because it matches the sceptic's advice that we should live according to our natural inclinations without ever trying to justify our beliefs. In the last section, I claim that it is possible to rehabilitate transcendental arguments as sound anti-sceptical proofs if we argue for the senselessness of the idea of thing in itself completely apart from our powers of conceptualisation. (shrink)

In this article, I am intent on rehabilitating Strawson’s overall anti-sceptical strategy. First, I focus on his earlier attempt, which ignited the debate about the adequacy of transcendental arguments against the sceptic. I present Stroud’s main reservation that Strawson’s viewpoint is unworkable because it does not take into consideration the view of the external world upon which the sceptic is based in order to challenge our knowledge claims. I then focus on Strawson’s later attempt, which is based upon a Humean-like (...) naturalistic strategy. I show that his naturalism is intractable for two reasons: first because it reproduces the proof structure of transcendental arguments and ends up employing a rational proof to counter rational proofs; and second, because it matches the sceptic’s advice that we should live according to our natural inclinations without ever trying to justify our beliefs. In the last section, I claim that it is possible to rehabilitate transcendental arguments as sound anti-sceptical proofs if we argue for the senselessness of the idea of thing in itself completely apart from our powers of conceptualisation. (shrink)

In this paper I shall show that Kant's best anti-sceptical argument, found in the “Refutation of Idealism” — hereafter Refutation —, is not successful in debunking the sceptic. My strategy will be to argue that, although dependent upon transcendental idealism, the Refutation is inconsistent with it. In order to achieve this goal, I shall sketch, in section 1, the two main interpretations of Kant's idealism, namely, the ‘two world’ and the ‘two aspect’ theories. I shall maintain that the latter is (...) more in keeping with Kant's overall intentions in the Critique of Pure Reason. In section 2, I shall spell out the main points of the Refutation. In section 3, I shall argue that, in the context of the Refutation, the conception of the permanent as the pre-condition of any temporal sequence clashes with some of the main doctrines of transcendental idealism. Finally, in section 4, I shall follow some unsuccessful attempts to harmonise transcendental idealism with the Refutation. (shrink)

Esse artigo parte da arte, da ficção científica e da literatura fantástica para propor uma outra cosmopolítica, divergente daquela que sustentaria, simultaneamente, realismo literário e etnocentrismo ocidental.