I argue that philosophy has achieved no appreciable progress in making people better and wiser or solving its own central problems. This lack of progress matters, but I find hope in experimental philosophy. Although philosophical worldviews from Plato's to the present have aided comprehension of how things hang together, their only steady progress has come from adjusting to advances in science. If the power of philosophy were like the power of poetry, this would not matter. Each worldview could be appreciated (...) in its own right. Yet most authors of philosophical worldviews have sought solutions to philosophical problems that would be persuasive to anyone who was willing and able to follow their arguments. Without progress of this kind, philosophy runs the risk of being marginalized. I conclude by arguing that experimental philosophy offers the best hope for philosophy's progress as a problem‐solving discipline and defend the use of intuitions as evidence. (shrink)

The works of the early Greek philosophers are not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and the whole of ancient philosophy, but also a perennially fresh resource that has stimulated Western thought until the present day. This nine-volume edition presents all the major fragments from the sixth to the fourth centuries BC.

Although experimental philosophers have been busy kindling fires under well-worn armchairs in areas of philosophy as varied as epistemology, normative ethics, theories of reference, and the free will controversy, the philosophy of art has remained largely untouched. As Denis Dutton observes: “There is precious little reference to empirical psychology in contemporary philosophical aesthetics, almost as if philosophers of art have wanted to protect their patch from incursions by psychologists.” I intend to show how techniques borrowed from experimental psychology can bring (...) light as well as warmth to the old debate over “What is art?”. (shrink)

Lo psíquico, que no la psicología como ciencia, es un tema poco tratado en la filosofía de Polo. En este escrito se busca dar explicación de qué es lo psíquico y cuál es su importancia. Se defiende que lo psíquico tiene dos condiciones reduccionistas implícitas que se constituyen a partir de la crisis de la filosofía de Hegel. La primera es creer que la realidad es reductible a la percepción individual. La segunda consiste en que el pensamiento ya esté determinado (...) preconceptualmente. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

Literary texts activate ones’ metaphorical sensibilities to the myriad possibilities for reflecting on our own lives while inviting us to imagine the complex experiences of others. Readers’ ability...

This collection of five articles and two interviews, compiled by the author himself as a kind of political testament, focuses on the ecological thinking he pioneered in Europe.

In a recent paper, Erasmus et al. (2021) defend the idea that the ambiguity of the term “explanation” in explainable AI (XAI) can be solved by adopting any of four different extant accounts of explanation in the philosophy of science: the Deductive Nomological, Inductive Statistical, Causal Mechanical, and New Mechanist models. In this chapter, I show that the authors’ claim that these accounts can be applied to deep neural networks as they would to any natural phenomenon is mistaken. I also (...) provide a more general argument as to why the notion of explainability as it is currently used in the XAI literature bears little resemblance to the traditional concept of scientific explanation. It would be more fruitful to use the label “understandable AI” to avoid the confusion that surrounds the goal and purposes of XAI. In the second half of the chapter, I argue for a pragmatic conception of understanding that is better suited to play the central role attributed to explanation in XAI. Following De Regt (2017) and Kuorikoski and Ylikoski (2015), the conditions of satisfaction for understanding an ML system are fleshed out in terms of an agent’s success in using the system. (shrink)

I defend the view that circular definitions can be useful and illuminating by focusing on the fitting-attitudes analysis of value. This definition states that an item has value if and only if it is a fitting target of attitudes. Good items are the fitting targets of positive attitudes, and bad items are the fitting targets of negative ones. I shall argue that a circular version of this definition, defended by Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2006), is preferable to its non-circular counterpart and (...) upholds reasonable standards of acceptability. The standards I will be discussing come from Humberstone (1997), who claims that definitions cannot be informative as long as they are inferentially circular. (shrink)

It is held by many philosophers that it is a consequence of epistemic contextualism that speakers are typically semantically blind, that is, typically unaware of the propositions semantically expressed by knowledge attributions. In his ?Contextualism, Invariantism and Semantic Blindness? (this journal, 2009), Martin Montminy argues that semantic blindness is widespread in language, and not restricted to knowledge attributions, so it should not be considered problematic. I will argue that Montminy might be right about this, but that contextualists still face a (...) serious and related problem: that it is a consequence of epistemic contextualism that subjects are typically unaware of contents conveyed by knowledge attributions, independently of whether these are semantic or non-semantic contents. Even if semantic blindness is widespread in language, it does not seem that content unawareness of this sort is. (shrink)

The book forms a balanced structure in which the three conceptual pillars of Spinoza's natural law theory (individuality, natural laws, and power) are first analyzed from the viewpoint of his ontology and then from the viewpoint of his ...

Rendre hommage à un auteur, ce n'est pas seulement célébrer ce qu'il fut mais c'est aussi alerter sur ce que son oeuvre apporte au présent et à l'avenir de la connaissance. C'est bien le sens donné à cet hommage à André-Jean Arnaud. Repenser le droit, c'était pou r cet auteur érudit : repenser les lieux, les conditions et les façons de l'étudier en dépassant les frontières géographiques en même temps que les frontières disciplinaires. En montrant en quoi André-Jean Arnaud fut, (...) hors des sentiers battus et des orthodoxies de la production et de la transmission des savoirs en la matière, un exceptionnel précurseur et l'infatigable artisan d'un nouveau régime de connaissance sur le droit, le présent ouvrage s'adresse à toutes celles et à tous ceux, enseignants, chercheurs, étudiants ou simples citoyens, pou r qui l'étude du droit permet de mieux comprendre ce que sont et ce que sont susceptibles de devenir nos sociétés. (shrink)

Scientists often reach provisional agreement solutions to problems central to their disciplines, whereas philosophers do not. Although philosophy has been practiced by outstanding intellects for over two thousand years, philosophers have not reached agreement, provisional or otherwise, on the solution or dissolution of any central philosophical problem by philosophical methods. What about philosophy’s future? Until about 1970, philosophers were generally optimistic. Some pinned their hopes on revolution in methodology, others on reform of practice. The case for gradual reform still finds (...) articulate advocates in philosophers like Michael Dummett and Timothy Williamson, but many philosophers today suspect that perennial disagreement may be inescapable. I consider three explanations for the inescapability of perennial disagreement—Richard Rorty’s relativism, Colin McGinn’s skepticism, and Nicholas Rescher’s pluralism—and find each wanting. I argue that a better explanation is the resistance of philosophers to commit, as scientists do, to formulating testable theories and collecting data to help decide between competing theories. I close by proposing that experimental philosophy, a movement still in its infancy, holds the promise of reuniting philosophy with science and moving philosophers closer to agreement on the solution of its central problems. (shrink)

Since Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustattempts to show that the Holocaust is explicable and can be understood largely in terms of a single cause, “eliminationist anti-Semitism”, it is not surprising that the book has generated an international debate. What is surprising is the magnitude and emotional intensity of the debate. This article argues that the deepest flaws in it Hitler's Willing Executioners,as well as the chasm of disagreement between Goldhagen's detractors and defenders, have as (...) much to do with reasoning and concepts as with matters of fact. It concludes that Goldhagen's central argument is stronger than many of his critics claim, but that the inadequacy of his cognitive interpretation of anti-Semitism and his unexamined psychological assumptions weaken his attempt to explain the Holocaust. (shrink)

The philosophy problem of identity and the related problem of change go back to the ancient Greek philosophers and fascinated later figures including Leibniz, Locke and Hume. Heraclitus argued that one could not swim in the same river twice because new waters were ever flowing in. When is a river not the same river? If one removes one plank at a time when is a ship no longer a ship? What is the basic nature of identity and persistence? This book (...) introduces and asseses the philosophical puzzles posed by things persisting through time. Beginning with essential historical background to the problem it explores the following key topics and debates: mereology and identity, including 'Leibniz's Law' the constitution view of identity the 'relative identity' argument concerning identity temporary identity four-dimensionalism, counterpart and mulitiple counterpart theory supervenience the problem of temporary intrinsics the necessity of identity presentism ontological and epistemological criteria for persistence and the difference between them. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a clear and informative introduction to and assessement of the metaphysics of identity. (shrink)

Trata-se de capítulo de um livro sobre a noção de "substância" na história da filosofia e contém uma discussão sobre a noção ordinária de "corpo" do ponto de vista da filosofia analítica.

Recent attempts to develop and apply digital ethics principles to address the challenges of the digital transformation leave organisations with an operationalisation gap. To successfully implement such guidance, they must find ways to translate high-level ethics frameworks into practical methods and tools that match their specific workflows and needs. Here, we describe the development of a standardised risk assessment tool, the Principle-at-Risk Analysis (PaRA), as a means to close this operationalisation gap for a key level of the ethics infrastructure at (...) many organisations – the work of an interdisciplinary ethics panel. The PaRA tool serves to guide and harmonise the work of the Digital Ethics Advisory Panel at the multinational science and technology company Merck KGaA in alignment with the principles outlined in the company’s Code of Digital Ethics. We examine how such a tool can be used as part of a multifaceted approach to operationalise high-level principles at an organisational level and provide general requirements for its implementation. We showcase its application in an example case dealing with the comprehensibility of consent forms in a data-sharing context at Syntropy, a collaborative technology platform for clinical research. (shrink)

Diversität ist eines der zentralen Themen unserer Zeit. Sie durchdringt alle Lebensbereiche unserer Gesellschaften. Das Nachdenken über Diversität reicht von den Naturwissenschaften über die Geschichtswissenschaften, die Gesellschaftswissenschaften, die Philosophie bis zu den Künsten. Diversität ist zudem politisch und emotional beladen. Man denke an gesellschaftliche Minderheiten und ihre Rechte oder an das massive Artensterben unserer Tage. In diesem Buch wird nicht nur über Einzelaspekte von Diversität berichtet, es wird auch eine Synthese versucht. Drei einleitende Kapitel der HerausgeberInnen führen verständlich in komplexe (...) interdisziplinäre Problemzusammenhänge ein. Der Band versammelt 17 Beiträge namhafter Autorinnen und Autoren aus den Bereichen Kunst-, Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Medizin und Gesellschaftstheorie.00. (shrink)

El pluralismo religioso trata de presentar lugares comunes en los que establecer diálogos entre diferentes religiones sin intención de persuadir. En esta investigación se aborda el pluralismo religioso en los periodos de Tubinga y Berna de Hegel. Esto es, en la filosofía del joven Hegel, periodo en el que se dedicó especialmente a la reflexión sobre la política y la religión. En este periodo, menos estudiado por la academia que su madurez, encontramos que hay al menos tres lugares comunes que (...) pueden facilitar el diálogo interreligioso: el sentimiento, la universalidad ética y la libertad. En esta investigación se presenta estos tres tópicos que Hegel descubre para el diálogo entre diferentes religiones para, finalmente, conectarlos con la discusión cronológicamente posterior sobre el pluralismo religioso. (shrink)

Pourquoi Averroès? Pourquoi Averroès juriste? Parce que dans le cadre du débat avec ceux qui soutiennent le caractère indubitable du texte sacré, Averroès affirme la primauté de la raison. Il a ainsi mis en avant le questionnement, le doute dans la recherche de la vérité. Ce doute toléré dans le cercle restreint des philosophes était inacceptable en droit (la charia) qui s'applique à tous les membres de la communauté des musulmans. D'où sa condamnation et son exil. La redécouverte de la (...) pensée d'Averroès pourrait permettre au monde arabo-musulman de s'extraire du chaos. (shrink)

On présente trop souvent Spinoza comme le créateur de l'un des systèmes conceptuels les plus arides de l'histoire de la pensée. Loin d'être un système de plus, il s'agit en fait d'un itinéraire existentiel, de l'effort d'un homme pour se libérer du malheur, de l'ignorance, de la souffrance, lot de tout homme venant en ce monde. Pour sortir de ce bourbier où la vie s'enlise, il faut prendre la décision ferme d'y voir enfin clair sur la nature des biens que (...) nous aimons et auxquels nou nous attachons car il y va de notre bonheur et de notre malheux. Pour y parvenir, 'il convient d'abord de trouver un moyen de guérir l'entendement' et de se consacrer entièrement à la mise en œuvre de cette guérison de soi. Ces pages, nées d'une libre méditation, ont pour seul but d'attirer l'attention sur un aspect de l'œuvre et de la vie d'un homme qui fut un Sage, et don't la voix demeure aussi vivante qu'au jour où elle s'éleva pour la première fois"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

En este libro, el autor traza un retrato histórico-conceptual del republicanismo que desmiente por completo la imagen con que se lo suele asociar: la de un discurso anticuado, conservador, que moraliza lo político. A contrapelo de esa visión, el autor desarrolla su argumentación a partir del análisis de cinco aspectos republicanos claves: "la libertad como no dominación, la virtud como soporte motivador y epistémico de la participación cívica, el debate como el elemento constitutivo de la política, la ley como la (...) otra cara de la libertad y la patria como el espacio particularista aunque estrictamente institucional de la república". (shrink)

Introduction : Gramsci, ce célèbre inconnu -- 1. Trois portaits de Gramsci en intellectuel politique -- 2. Quasi système et histoire dans les cahiers de prison -- 3. Antonio Gramsci : quel socialisme ? Quel communisme ? -- 4. La philosophie de la praxis entre conception du monde, religion, idéologie, sens commun -- 5. Survie et création en prison -- 6. L'hégémonie comme pédagogie: formation de la volonté collective et de la personnalité individuelle.

Mit seiner Theorie der vernünftigen Übereinkunft liefert André Olbrich die Grundlegung eines Kriteriums für moralische Urteile über richtig und falsch: Im Anschluss an klassische und moderne Vertragstheoretiker wird die Akzeptanz eines Urteils durch die Betroffenen zum obersten Rechtfertigungsmaßstab erhoben. Das vertragstheoretische Denken wird weiterentwickelt und konsequent als umfassende normative Theorie ausformuliert. Die Leserinnen und Leser erfahren, von welchem Standpunkt aus sich die Regeln unseres sozialen Miteinanders einer Kritik unterziehen lassen und auf welchen moralischen Grundlagen Recht und Politik aufbauen.

Hegelians normally consider Hegel's philosophical system from two perspectives: metaphysics, interpreting this discipline as the central one to understand the work of the German philosopher, or non-metaphysics, being more relevant alternative interpretations that avoid it. This article presents a study on the senses of reflection. These senses can be extrinsic or absolute. These two senses are the backbones of the Hegelian system. Therefore, by means of a study of whether extrinsic and absolute reflection are notions that guide us towards metaphysical (...) or non-metaphysical readings, we try to give an answer to the debate between the possible interpretations of Hegel. (shrink)

André Tosel, décédé en mars 2017, était un philosophe engagé, attaché tout au long de son existence à faire vivre un marxisme critique puisant notamment dans le meilleur de la tradition italienne de ce courant de pensée ; il fut l'un des rares français à introduire et discuter les oeuvres majeures d'A. Labriola et surtout d'A. Gramsci, ainsi par ailleurs que celles de Vico dont il fut un fin connaisseur. Il consacra sa thèse de doctorat d'état aux rapports entre religion, (...) politique et philosophie chez Spinoza et contribua de façon décisive à de nouvelles lectures du philosophe en le mettant en miroir de Marx. Professeur de philosophie des universités de Besançon, Franche Comté, de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne et de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, dans lesquelles il occupa de nombreuses fonctions de directions administratives et scientifiques, il était un homme de collectif attaché à faire vivre le savoir, s'engageant dans la vie universitaire et politique, contribuant également de manière décisive au lancement et à l'animation de la revue Actuel Marx. Passionné par l'évolution des pensées contemporaines, il intervenait régulièrement dans des débats d'actualité, sous la forme de contributions dans L'Humanité ou dans des ouvrages destinés à un public large, tout particulièrement dans la dernière période sur les questions de sécularisation, de laïcité et de religion. Cet ouvrage entend lui rendre hommage en abordant les différentes facettes de son oeuvre, traversant un demi-siècle de vie intellectuelle. (shrink)

El uso de sistemas de machine learning en los procesos de selección laboral ha sido de gran utilidad para agilizarlos y volverlos más eficientes, pero al mismo tiempo ha generado problemas en términos de equidad, confiabilidad y transparencia. En este artículo comenzamos explicando los diferentes usos de la Inteligencia Artificial en los procesos de selección laboral en Estados Unidos. Presentamos los sesgos sexuales y raciales que han sido detectados en algunos de ellos y explicamos los obstáculos jurídicos y prácticos para (...) su detección y análisis. Un posible remedio jurídico a la discriminación algorítmica es el régimen de impacto diferencial sistémico utilizado en Estados Unidos. Usamos algunas características de este régimen para señalar los vacíos jurídicos frente a la discriminación en el acceso al empleo en el ámbito del derecho laboral colombiano, y ofrecemos algunas características generales que podría tener un régimen de esa naturaleza. (shrink)

The history of production of The Birth of Tragedy can be followed, in its diverse stages, by means of its preparatory texts. My goal is to carry out a general description of this process. By doing so, I hope to honor Lima’s The Masks of Dionysus. In this book, he analyzed the echoes of Nietzsche’s first work in the totality of his Oeuvre (the published and the posthumous one).