Pintar, escribir, pensar... ¿cabe hallar la medida común de esas tres tareas? ¿Compensar la radical incompatibilidad de lo Visto, lo Escrito, lo Pensado?

¿Cuál es el sentido del aparente renacimiento del comunismo en la filosofía continental? ¿Hemos de tomarlo en serio, o se trata de una simple moda en el terreno del pensamiento? Esta breve nota señala las viejas y poderosas raíces de esta nueva fascinación y propone una comparación irónica entre los “nuevos filósofos franceses” de la década de 1980 y estos “viejos filósofos franceses” que hoy convergen en el neocomunismo.

"When misfortune kills citizens by stripping them of their material well-being, this discomfort is called poverty." In the current landscape, populism spreads across America and Europe. A lucid and argued warning about the discontent in which we live and the one that awaits us.

The will to escape from the so called Metaphysics of Presence has become a topic in contemporary philosophy. However, this topic is often related to the primacy, in ancient thought, of the actual being, and the correlative evaluation of the potential as an imperfect way of existence. In this text we first analyze the traditional interpretation of the foundations of this primacy in Aristotle’s philosophy, that exhibits a theological form. According to this we explore, in the second part of the (...) article, how the efforts of modern thinkers to build an ontological discourse free from this primacy have produced, in some cases, a kind of Umkehrung resulting in a Metaphysics of Absence that preserves the theological form and results in a primacy of the potential, that is specifically consistent with the Imperium of the Virtual, very illustrative of nowadays conceptions of time, language, power and being. Finally, we essay to offer another interpretation of the primacy of the actual in Aristotle’s Ethics and Metaphysics, which could identify a political philosophy capable to avoid the infertile alternative Presence/Absence in ontology. (shrink)

This article argues that bodily awareness is a basic form of self-consciousness through which perceiving agents are directly conscious of the bodily self. It clarifies the nature of bodily awareness, categorises the different types of body-relative information, and rejects the claim that we can have a sense of ownership of our own bodies. It explores how bodily awareness functions as a form of self-consciousness and highlights the importance of certain forms of bodily awareness that share an important epistemological property with (...) canonical forms of self-consciousness such as introspection. (shrink)

It is now 25 years since Gareth Evans introduced the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content in The Varieties of Reference. This is a fitting time to take stock of what has become a complex and extended debate both within philosophy and at the interface between philosophy and psychology. Unfortunately, the debate has become increasingly murky as it has become increasingly ramified. Much of the contemporary discussion does not do full justice to the powerful theoretical tool originally proposed by Evans (...) and subsequently refined by theorists in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – most effectively, I think, by Christopher Peacocke (particularly in his 1992). Even worse, significant parts of the discussion are somewhat confused. This paper makes a start on clarifying what I think ought to be the central issues in debates about nonconceptual content. I begin in §1 by pointing out how narrowly focused contemporary discussion is relative to Evans’s original discussion. We are not making as much use as we should of nonconceptual content as a tool for understanding subpersonal information processing and the complexities of its status relative to perception and thought at the personal level. In §2 I turn to what is the central focus of contemporary discussion, namely, the content of perception and identify a “master argument” for nonconceptualism based on the relation between conceptual capacities and capacities for perceptual discrimination. The aim of §3 is to clarify the relation between the claim that perception has nonconceptual content and some superficially similar claims discussed by philosophers of perception. Finally, in §4 I explain why the attention recently focused on what is sometimes called the state version of the nonconceptualist thesis seems to me to be misdirected. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of self-deception can be divided into two broad groups – the intentionalist and the anti-intentionalist. On intentionalist models what happens in the central cases of self-deception is parallel to what happens when one person intentionally deceives another, except that deceiver and deceived are the same person. This paper offers a positive argument for intentionalism about self-deception and defends the view against standard objections.

Frames and framing make one dimension of a decision problem particularly salient. In the simplest case, framesprimeresponses (as in, e.g., the Asian disease paradigm, where the gain frame primes risk-aversion and the loss frame primes risk-seeking). But in more complicated situations frames can function reflectively, by making salient particular reason-giving aspects of a thing, outcome, or action. For Shakespeare's Macbeth, for example, his feudal commitments are salient in one frame, while downplayed in another in favor of his personal ambition. The (...) role of frames in reasoning can give rise torational framing effects. Macbeth can prefer fulfilling his feudal duty to murdering the king, while also preferring bravely taking the throne to fulfilling his feudal duty, knowing full well that bravely taking the throne just is murdering the king. Such patterns ofquasi-cyclicalpreferences can be correct and appropriate from the normative perspective of how one ought to reason. The paper explores three less dramatic types of rational framing effects: (1) Consciously framing and reframing long-term goals and short-term temptations can be important tools for self-control. (2) In the prototypical social interactions modeled by game theory, allowing for rational framing effects solves longstanding problems, such as the equilibrium selection problem and explaining the appeal of non-equilibrium solutions (e.g., the cooperative solution in the Prisoner's Dilemma). (3) Processes for resolving interpersonal conflicts and breaking discursive deadlock, because they involve internalizing multiple and incompatible ways of framing actions and outcomes, in effect create rational framing effects. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Fredérique de Vignemont has argued that there is a positive quale of bodily ownership . She thinks that tactile and other forms of somatosensory phenomenology incorporate a distinctive feeling of myness and takes issue with my defense in Bermúdez of a deflationary approach to bodily ownership. That paper proposed an argument deriving from Elizabeth Anscombe’s various discussions of what she terms knowledge without observation . De Vignemont is not convinced and appeals to the Rubber Hand Illusion (...) to undercut my appeal to Anscombe. Section 1 of this article restates the case against the putative quale of ownership. Section 2 explains why de Vignemonts’ objections miss the mark. Section 3 discusses in more detail how to draw a principled distinction between bodily awareness and ordinary perceptual awareness. (shrink)

In Thinking without Words I develop a philosophical framework for treating some animals and human infants as genuine thinkers. This paper outlines the aspects of this account that are most relevant to those working in animal ethics. There is a range of different levels of cognitive sophistication in different animal species, in addition to limits to the types of thought available to non-linguistic creatures, and it may be important for animal ethicists to take this into account in exploring issues of (...) moral significance and the obligations that we might or might not have to non-human animals. (shrink)

Table of Contents Acknowledgments 1 Self-Consciousness and the Body: An Interdisciplinary Introduction by Naomi Eiland, Anthony Marcel and José Luis Bermúdez 2 The Body Image and Self-Consciousness by John Campbell 3 Infants’ Understanding of People and Things: From Body Imitation to Folk Psychology by Andrew N. Meltzoff and M. Keith Moore 4 Persons, Animals, and Bodies by Paul F. Snowdon 5 An Ecological Perspective on the Origins of Self by George Butterworth 6 Objectivity, Causality, and Agency by Thomas (...) Baldwin 7 At Two with Nature: Agency and the Development of Self-World Dualism by James Russell 8 Ecological Perception and the Notion of a Nonconceptual Point of View by José Luis Bermúdez 9 Proprioception and the Body Image by Brian O’Shaughnessy 10 Awareness of One’s Own Body: An Attentional Theory of Its Nature, Development, and Brain Basis by Marcel Kinsbourne 11 Body Schema and Intentionality by Shaun Gallagher 12 Living without Touch and Peripheral Information about Body Position and Movement: Studies with Deafferented Subjects by Jonathan Cole and Jacques Paillard 13 Bodily Awareness: A Sense of Ownership by M. G. F. Martin 14 Bodily Awareness and the Self by Bill Brewer 15 Introspection and Bodily Self-Ascription by Quassim Cassam 16 Consciousness and the Self by Naomi Eilan Contributors Index. (shrink)

My topic in this paper is social understanding. By this I mean the cognitive skills underlying social behaviour and social coordination. Normal, encultured, non-autistic and non-brain-damaged human beings are capable of an impressive degree of social coordination. We navigate the social world with a level of skill and dexterity fully comparable to that which we manifest in navigating the physical world. In neither sphere, one might think, would it be a trivial matter to identify the various competences which underly this (...) impressive level of performance. Nonetheless, at least as far as interpersonal interactions are concerned, philosophers show a rare degree of unanimity. What grounds our success in these interactions is supposed to be our common mastery of folk psychology. (shrink)

In their recent book The Inessential Indexical Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever take issue with what has become close to philosophical orthodoxy – the view, most often associated with John Perry and David Lewis, that psychological explanations are essentially indexical. Cappelen and Dever claim that claims of essential indexicality are typically driven by intuitions rather than supported by arguments. They issue a challenge to supporters of essential indexicality: Produce an argument to back up the intuitions. This paper answers their challenge.

Philosophers have often argued that ascriptions of content are appropriate only to the personal level states of folk psychology. Against this, this paper defends the view that the familiar propositional attitudes and states defined over them are part of a larger set of cognitive proceses that do not make constitutive reference to concept possession. It does this by showing that states with nonconceptual content exist both in perceptual experience and in subpersonal information-processing systems. What makes these states content-involving is their (...) satisfaction of certain basic conditions deriving from a general account of representation-driven behaviour that is neutral on the question of concept possession. It is also argued that creatures can be in states with nonconceptual content even though they possess no conceptual abilities at all. (shrink)

Cognitive Science combines the interdisciplinary streams of cognitive science into a unified narrative in an all-encompassing introduction to the field. This text presents cognitive science as a discipline in its own right, and teaches students to apply the techniques and theories of the cognitive scientist's 'toolkit' - the vast range of methods and tools that cognitive scientists use to study the mind. Thematically organized, rather than by separate disciplines, Cognitive Science underscores the problems and solutions of cognitive science, rather than (...) those of the subjects that contribute to it - psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, etc. The generous use of examples, illustrations, and applications demonstrates how theory is applied to unlock the mysteries of the human mind. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text has been updated and enhanced to incorporate new studies and key experiments since the first edition. A new chapter on consciousness has also been added. (shrink)

Decision Theory and Rationality offers a challenging new interpretation of a key theoretical tool in the human and social sciences. This accessible book argues, contrary to orthodoxy in politics, economics, and management science, that decision theory cannot provide a theory of rationality.

Debates about bodily ownership and psychological ownership have typically proceeded independently of each other. This paper explores the relation between them, with particular reference to how each is illuminated by psychopathology. I propose a general framework for studying ownership that is applicable both to bodily ownership and psychological ownership. The framework proposes studying ownership by starting with explicit judgments of ownership and then exploring the bases for those judgments. Section 3 discusses John Campbell’s account of ψ-ownership in the light of (...) that general framework, emphasizing in particular his fractionation of ψ-ownership into two dissociable components. Section 4 briefly presents an account of φ-ownership that I have developed in more detail elsewhere. Section 5 explores the suggestion, originating with Alexandre Billon, that there needs to be an integrated account of φ-ownership and ψ-ownership because depersonalization disorders typically involve breakdowns of both φ-ownership and ψ-ownership. The argument from depersonalization is not compelling, but Section 6 proposes a different way of reaching the same conclusion. Section 7 shows how reflecting on agency and practical reasoning offers a common thread between the models of φ-ownership and ψ-ownership discussed earlier in the paper. (shrink)

This commentary defends intentionalist accounts of self-deception against Mele by arguing that: (1) viewing self-deception on the model of other-deception is not as paradoxical as Mele makes out; (2) the paradoxes are not entailed by the view that self-deception is intentional; and (3) there are two problems for Mele's theory that only an intentionalist theory can solve.

This paper argues that, while there is a difference between personal and sub-personal explanation, claims of autonomy should be treated with scepticism. It distinguishes between horizontal and vertical explanatory relations that might hold between facts at the personal and facts at the sub-personal level. Noting that many philosophers are prepared to accept vertical explanatory relations between the two levels, I argue for the stronger claim that, in the case of at least three central personal level phenomena, the demands of explanatory (...) adequacy require postulating horizontal explanatory relations. (shrink)

My topic in this paper is social understanding. By this I mean the cognitive skills underlying social behaviour and social coordination. Normal, encultured, non-autistic and non-brain-damaged human beings are capable of an impressive degree of social coordination. We navigate the social world with a level of skill and dexterity fully comparable to that which we manifest in navigating the physical world. In neither sphere, one might think, would it be a trivial matter to identify the various competences which underly this (...) impressive level of performance. Nonetheless, at least as far as interpersonal interactions are concerned, philosophers show a rare degree of unanimity. What grounds our success in these interactions is supposed to be our common mastery of folk psychology. (shrink)

Psychiatric treatment and diagnosis rests upon a richer conception of normativity than, for example, cognitive neuropsychology. This paper explores the role that considerations of rationality can play in defining this richer conception of normativity. It distinguishes two types of rationality and considers how each type can break down in different ways in delusional psychiatric disorders.

This article evaluates the following four theses about bodily experience and self-consciousness: Descartes's thesis ; Kant's thesis ; Locke's thesis ; and Merleau-Ponty's thesis. I argue that they are all true.