Philosophy is the search for the large patterns of the world and of the large patterns of experience, perceptual, theoretical, . . . , aesthetic, and practical - the patterns that, regardless of specific contents, characterize the main types of experience. In this book I carry out my search for the large patterns of practical experience: the experience of deliberation, of recognition of duties and their conflicts, of attempts to guide other person's conduct, of deciding to act, of influencing the (...) physical world with one's doings, and the like. This is the experience that makes possible our social life, the formulation of plans for teamwork, the building of institutions, the development of nations, and the adoption of the ideal of morality. Here I develop a network of theories about the most fundamental aspects of practical thinking: what is thought in such thinking; what makes that thinking correct; what makes it practical; and the structure of the doings that accrue to the world when such thinking is effective. I have attempted to build each theory in sufficient detail, so that it il luminates its subject matter with a certain degree of fullness. But I have also aimed at producing an harmonious system of theories, so that the grand pattern of practical thinking can be admired, not only for the beauty of the separate structures of its parts, but also for its architectonic unity. Chapter 1 gives the details of the many facets of this project and discusses some methodological techniques. (shrink)

This paper discusses the possibility of an absolute vacuum - a space without any substance. The motivation of this study is the contrast between most philosophers, up to Descartes, who stated that a vacuum was impossible, and the 17th century change of outlook, when the possibility and effective existence of the vacuum was accepted after the experiments of Torricelli and Pascal. This article attempts to show that, contrary to the received opinion, the acceptance of an ether is preferable to the (...) acceptance of a vacuum for several reasons. First: it is impossible to provide an empirical proof of the non-existence of the ether; second, an absolute vacuum is unthinkable; third, the ether concept is useful for the understanding of physical phaenomena; and fourth, the hypothesis of an ether in apparently void spaces is useful for the future development of science. The paper also endeavours to show that no recent advance of science changed those conclusions and that no future development can change them. (shrink)

No artigo “A única tradição materialista”, Althusser apresenta alguns fundamentos de sua teoria da materialidade da ideologia referenciados explicitamente em Pascal: 1) o pró-ao-contra e a condição material da verdade ; 2) a intuição [sic] do vácuo como assunto filosófico. Caracteriza a produção ideológica como um trabalho humano capaz de incorporar as contradições de classe e impregnar diretamente os aparatos ideológicos e postula a necessidade da formulação de uma doutrina dogmática, para combater numa arena de dogmáticos. Apresenta-se aqui uma (...) das ferramentas centrais de tal teoria: o aparato dos corpos – que também tributa a Pascal – efetivamente uma forma de expressar a materialidade da ideologia. (shrink)

Este artigo reflete sobre a desmaterialização de um tipo documental e seus arranjos no contexto digital, observando que a desmaterialização do álbum sonoro é marcada por um fenômeno nomeado de vácuo informacional no contexto do serviço de música digital Spotify. A desmaterialização de tipos documentais mostra-se uma realidade consolidada em tempos de informação digital. Com as inovações tecnológicas, mudanças culturais, comportamentais e todo um arcabouço conceitual e epistémico atrelado a essas inovações floresce e se desenvolve num curto espaço de (...) tempo. Revisita a noção de documento e neodocumentação, adotando-se a premissa Neodocumentalista a respeito do valor contextual que a materialidade do documento oferece. A pesquisa caracteriza-se como exploratória, bibliográfica, documental e telematizada e utiliza como corpus de pesquisa 112 álbuns sonoros da extinta gravadora pernambucana Rozenblit. Constata-se que a desmaterialização dos álbuns sonoros tem como característica principal o comprometimento da natureza ontológica do documento, da marca distintiva deste enquanto documento: a sua natureza informativa. (shrink)

Existing theoretical literature on justice, law, and community typically treats them as ideas studying them through an analytical and rational approach. In this article, I propose to investigate these concepts through aesthetic experience as an attempt to both sharpen our imagination of such concepts and demonstrate they are inseparable. I do this by painstakingly examining the movies Shoplifters by Kore-eda and The House That Jack Built by Von Trier. Rather than focusing on thematic analysis, I claim and show that film (...) form is crucial for aesthetic and affective experience. Furthermore, and against the conventional view, I argue that both movies articulate a spatialized vision of justice defined by its materiality. Together these aspects help us to keep (re)imagining law, justice, and community, and grasp better their worldmaking properties and powers. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to identify the strongest evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism and to assess on which empirical assumptions it relies. In the recent metaethical literature, several authors have de-emphasized the evolutionary component of EDAs against moral realism: presumably, the success or failure of these arguments is largely orthogonal to empirical issues. I argue that this claim is mistaken. First, I point out that Sharon Street’s and Michael Ruse’s EDAs both involve substantive claims about the evolution (...) of our moral judgments. Next, I argue that combining their respective evolutionary claims can help debunkers to make the best empirical case against moral realism. Some realists have argued that the very attempt to explain the contents of our endorsed moral judgments in evolutionary terms is misguided, and have sought to escape EDAs by denying their evolutionary premise. But realists who pursue this reply can still be challenged on empirical grounds: debunkers may argue that the best, scientifically informed historical explanations of our moral endorsements do not involve an appeal to mind-independent truths. I conclude, therefore, that the empirical considerations relevant for the strongest empirically driven argument against moral realism go beyond the strictly evolutionary realm; debunkers are best advised to draw upon other sources of genealogical knowledge as well. (shrink)

Este artigo trata da importância dophronésai como uminstrumento da alma que se estrutura enquantoponto de intersecção da dialética ascendente eda descendente. Para a educação do filósofodialético, tanto a contemplação noética quanto oconhecimento para a melhor atuação dos homensna vida em comum são expostos por Platão desdeo livro IN, ao apresentar os homens que têmphrónimos. O tema é aprofundado no livro VII, naexposição do movimento específico de um órga-non do logístico, o phronésai.

Liberdade e poder são dois temas que se correlacionam ao longo da história da filosofia política moderna. Nos textos de Hobbes, a ideia da liberdade como ausência de impedimentos às ações ajuda-nos a pensar o dever de obediência ao poder soberano e as relações entre política e direito. Uma situação de vácuo jurídico, em que tudo é permitido, faz-se, contudo, impossível, de modo que a solução de Hobbes consiste em sustentar a ideia do direito natural como direito originário individual (...) vinculado à preservação da vida. Suas ideias do direito natural e da lei natural, que servem de fundamento ao dever de obediência ao soberano, amparam-se em princípios jurídicos, teológicos e biológicos. Tais princípios, entretanto, não dão conta da questão da extensão do poder soberano. Hobbes recorre à análise da linguagem. Sua teoria contratual afirma o princípio de preservação da vida na base da política e sustenta a ideia da criação e da manutenção do poder soberano no ato de linguagem implicado na estrutura representativa do pacto político. (shrink)

Picard, Fedor, and Ayzenberg provide a review of the existing literature on the relationship between electrodermal activity and affective processes and present data from a number of studies suggesting strong lateralization in EDA reactivity to emotion. As the authors note, their manuscript extends previous work suggesting the concept of arousal is more complex than previously thought, and they provide a framework for interpreting such complexities within the context of a multiple arousal theory.

Evolutionary debunking arguments claim that the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs imply that those beliefs cannot be justified under the assumption of moral realism. In chapter one I outline three prominent evolutionary debunking arguments in the literature, and in chapter two I outline two types of “minimalist” replies to debunking arguments. These replies grant that our moral beliefs are not explained by the moral facts and then rely on substantive moral claims to show that our moral beliefs might still (...) be reliable. One way of objecting to these minimalist responses is to claim that the explanatory disconnect implied by debunking arguments defeats our moral beliefs, and so minimalist replies are not entitled to rely on substantive moral claims once they have granted this explanatory disconnect. In chapter 3 I argue that information can undermine our beliefs even if does not imply that our beliefs are modally insecure, and that this removes one way that the minimalist might deny that the explanatory disconnect implied by debunking arguments defeats those beliefs. In the next chapter I argue for a specific explanatory constraint on belief:. I point out, however, that according to, EDAs do not, by themselves, establish the explanatory disconnect that defeats our belief. In chapter five I supplement EDAs with my own arguments which, when combined with EDA’s, establish that our moral beliefs are defeated according to. When EDAs are combined with these arguments, minimalist replies fail because they crucially rely on defeated moral beliefs. In the final chapter, I consider and reject a potential avenue of response by the minimalist, and considering this response sheds further light on the kind of attitude we can have towards our belief that defeats that belief. (shrink)

Este artigo enfoca a concepção de infinito atual do filósofo judeu medieval Hasdai Crescas, formuladas no livro Or Hashem às três primeiras proposições de Maimônides, tal como são enunciadas na segunda parte do Guia dos Perplexos. As teses de Maimônides têm como objetivo negar a possibilidade do infinito atual como magnitude imaterial ou material, como conjunto infinito de seres finitos e como série infinita de causa e efeito. Após uma breve exposição da trajetória dos conceitos de infinito nas diversas tradições (...) sapienciais judaicas recebidas na Idade Média, indicamos como a argumentação em prol da ideia de infinito atual em Crescas dialoga com elas. Desse diálogo, emerge o conceito de infinito como singularidade atualizada paralelamente no real como vácuo infinito, lugar de coexistência de infinitos universos, e como infinito atual divino como Kavod, Glória, que preenche o universo infinito e como causa imanente da série infinita de causa e efeito que constitui a existência eterna dos seres contingentes. Na crítica à terceira proposição maimonidiana, a causa primeira é descrita como causa ontológica e imanente da série infinita de causas e efeitos. Nessa discussão, Crescas aponta para uma ideia de Deus muito diferente daquela elaborada por Maimônides. Temos aqui o debate judaico medieval entre os defensores da transcendência divina e os defensores da imanência. Esse tema é importante para a compreensão da recepção da obra de Hasdai Crescas por Picco Della Mirandolla, Bruno e Espinosa. (shrink)

What do you know when you know what a sentence means? According to some theories, understanding a sentence is, in part, knowing its truth-conditions. Dorit Bar-On, Claire Horisk, and William Lycan have defended such theories on the grounds of an “epistemic determination argument”. That argument turns on the ideas that understanding a sentence, along with knowledge of the non-linguistic facts, suffices to know its truth-value, and that being able to determine a sentence’s truth-value given knowledge of the non-linguistic facts is (...) knowing its truth-conditions. I argue that the EDA withstands the objections recently raised by Daniel Cohnitz and Jaan Kangilaski, but fails for other reasons. It equivocates between a fine-grained and a coarse grained conception of “facts.”. (shrink)

Trata de uma leitura do papel da tecnociência no que tange ao esvaziamento ético com o qual nos deparamos. Para tanto, vale-se das abordagens feitas por Jürgen Habermas e Hans Jonas. Neste sentido, opera com alguns conceitos fundamentais de ambos os teóricos, no que se refere ao tema posto. Do primeiro filósofo refletir-se-á acerca do esvaziamento dos significados do mundo da vida face ao caráter instrumentalizador que a razão assumiu após o iluminismo. Do segundo, analisar- se-á o vácuo ético (...) operante diante do poder que foi outorgado ao homem pela tecnociência. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs) have attracted extensive attention in meta-ethics, as they pose an important challenge to moral realism. Mogensen (2015) suggests that EDAs contain a fallacy, by confusing two distinct forms of biological explanation – ultimate and proximate. If correct, the point is of considerable importance: evolutionary genealogies of human morality are simply irrelevant for debunking. But we argue that the actual situation is subtler: while ultimate claims do not strictly entail proximate ones, there are important evidential connections between (...) the two. Attending to these connections clears ground for a new and improved EDA. However, it also brings into view some possible problems with EDAs that have been largely neglected so far. (shrink)

Galileo claimed inconsistency in the Aristotelian dogma concerning falling bodies and stated that all bodies must fall at the same rate. However, there is an empirical situation where the speeds of falling bodies are proportional to their weights; and even in vacuo all bodies do not fall at the same rate under terrestrial conditions. The reason for the deficiency of Galileo’s reasoning is analyzed, and various physical scenarios are described in which Aristotle’s claim is closer to the truth than is (...) Galileo’s. The purpose is not to reinstate Aristotelian physics at the expense of Galileo and Newton, but rather to provide evidence in support of the verdict that empirical knowledge does not come from prior philosophy.Author Keywords: Author Keywords: Aristotle; Galileo; Thought experiments; Falling bodies. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

Resumo: Este artigo busca investigar possíveis significações da palavra “imagem”, que se depreendam dos textos de Deleuze sobre as artes, através de uma pesquisa filológica que respeita a cronologia de suas obras. Essa noção de imagem, fundamental para a Estética, aparece em seus comentários sobre Proust, o cinema, Bacon e Beckett, principalmente, seja com o uso do termo “imagem”, seja com os termos “signo” e “ideia”, àquele correlatos. Assim, verifica-se um vácuo na década de 70, de modo que, se (...) a noção de signo é estudada na década anterior, ao tratar de Proust, e a de ideia, em Diferença e repetição, o tema “imagem” é retomado nas duas décadas subsequentes com toda a intensidade, ao abordar a pintura de Bacon, o universo cinematográfico e a obra teatral e televisiva de Beckett.: The present article seeks to investigate possible meanings of the word “image” that can be deduced from Deleuze’s writings on the arts, respecting the chronology of his works. The notion of image, which is fundamental to aesthetics, appears in Deleuze’s comments on Proust, the cinema, Bacon, and Beckett, whether with the use of the term “image” or with the correlated terms “sign” and “idea”. Thus, there is found in Deleuze’s writings a vacuum in the 1970’s: the notion of sign is studied in the previous decade when dealing with Proust and the notion of idea in Difference and repetition, and the theme of image is intensely taken up again in the following two decades in dealing with Bacon’s painting, the cinematographic universe, and Beckett’s theater and television work. (shrink)

Resumo: A questão da secularização também tem espaço no pensamento de Hannah Arendt. A autora sempre procurou um conceito puro de política, que fosse independente de qualquer raiz religiosa ou que estivesse desvinculado de toda fonte metafísica e transcendente. No entanto, desde Platão, a tradição do pensamento político ocidental não encontra tal autonomia e esse problema se repete nos tempos modernos, sobretudo no momento da fundação de corpos políticos, como é o caso das revoluções, por exemplo. Além disso, Arendt também (...) esclarece como o vácuo de autoridade contribui para a permanência do problema e reforça a necessidade daquilo que ela entende como "o incômodo problema do absoluto". Este artigo privilegia a investigação de tais questões através dos textos Sobre a revolução, Religião e política e O que é autoridade? e sustenta a necessidade da separação das esferas política e religiosa, visando à boa manutenção de ambas.: One can argue that secularization is an important issue in Hannah Arendt's thought. This thinker always sought a pure concept of politics, one that is independent of any religious roots or transcendent and metaphysical sources. Nevertheless, the tradition of Western political thought since Plato has not found such independence. This problem remains in modernity, especially at the moment of the foundation of new political bodies, as in the case of revolutions. Furthermore, Arendt also explains how the absence of authority reinforces what she calls the "problem of the absolute". This article focuses on the investigation of these issues through texts that include On Revolution and What is Authority?, and defends the separation of the religious and political spheres in order to ensure their existence. (shrink)

Two key ideas of scientific explanation−explanation as causal information and explanation as unification-have frequently been set into mutual opposition. This paper proposes a “dialectical solution” to this conflict, by arguing that causal explanations are preferable to non-causal ones, because they lead to a higherdegree of unification at the level of explaining statistical regularities. The core axioms of the theory of causal nets (TC) are justified because they offer the best if not the only unifying explanation of two statistical phenomena: screening (...) off and linking up. Alternative explanations of the two phenomena are discussed and it isshown why they don’t work. It is demonstrated that although the core axioms of TC are empirically vacuous, extended versions of TC have empirical content by means of which they can generate independently testable predictions.Con frecuencia se han planteado como contrapuestas dos ideas clave en la explicacion cientifica (explicacion como informacion causal y explicacion como unificacion). El presente articulo propone una “solucion dialectica” argumentando que las explicaciones causales son preferibles a las no-causales porque aquellas comportan un mayor grado de unificacion en la explicacion de regularidades estadisticas. Los axiomas centrales de la teoria de redes causales (TC) estan justificados porque ofrecen la mejor, si no la unica, explicacion unificada de dos fenomenos estadisticos: neutralizacion (screening off) y vinculacion (linking up). Se discuten las explicaciones alternativas de estos dos fenomenos y se razona por que no funcionan. Se demuestra ademas que aunque los axiomas centrales de TC son empiricamente vacuos, las versiones extendidas de TC tienen un contenido empirico gracias al cual pueden generar predicciones independientemente contrastables. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the impact of Darwinism in metaethics and dispel some of the confusion surrounding it. While the prospects for a Darwinian metaethics appear to be improving, some underlying epistemological issues remain unclear. We will focus on the so-called Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) which, when applied in metaethics, are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs so as to undermine their epistemic justification. The point is that an epistemic disanalogy (...) can be identified in the debate on EDAs between moral beliefs and other kinds of beliefs, insofar as only the former are regarded as vulnerable to EDAs. First, we will analyze some significant debunking positions in metaethics in order to show that they do not provide adequate justification for such an epistemic disanalogy. Then, we will assess whether they can avoid the accusation of being epistemically incoherent by adopting the same evolutionary account for all kinds of beliefs. In other words, once it is argued that Darwinism has a corrosive impact on metaethics, what if its universal acid cannot be contained? (shrink)

An influential species of evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism holds that since cumulative natural selection shaped the contents of our moral beliefs, those beliefs do not count as knowledge. Critics have taken issue with a range of empirical, epistemic, and metaphysical assumptions that EDAs are said to rely on, which has engendered a complex debate over whether and to what extent the debunking challenge succeeds. However, recently it has been argued that we can reject EDAs without having to enter (...) this thicket of issues. EDAs supposedly fail at the outset, by trading on a glaring misunderstanding about the scope of natural selection explanations. I argue that this objection to EDAs fails, and itself rests on a mistaken view of natural selection explanation and its relation to justification. (shrink)

Ao longo da história da filosofia, John Locke tem sido frequentemente associado à tradição do liberalismo político, o que decorre, invariavelmente, de um modo peculiar de interpretação da noção de liberdade para o filósofo, que estaria estruturada em torno da ideia de não-interferência. Derivada frequentemente de propostas analíticas realizadas em um “vácuo histórico”, em que as ideias de Locke são tomadas como uma estática coleção, tal conclusão expressa uma perspectiva que não considera o caráter essencialmente discursivo da filosofia política (...) e o “campo problemático” em que os conceitos foram pensados pelo filósofo. Diante dessa perspectiva, o propósito deste artigo é o de realçar, na linguagem política utilizada pelo filósofo, os elementos contextuais que permitem a compreensão dos argumentos desenvolvidos pelo autor como parte de uma _performance_ – na acepção proposta por John Pocock –, a fim de destacar os aspectos que indicam a possibilidade de aproximação do conceito de liberdade de Locke da ideia de liberdade republicana, descrita por Philip Pettit a partir da ideia de não-dominação, sem descuidar da análise das evidências textuais que indicam a presença de argumentos na obra do autor que compõem o cerne da concepção republicana de liberdade. (shrink)

In “The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism,” Neil Sinclair and James Chamberlain present a novel answer that quasi-realists can pro-vide to a version of the reliability challenge in ethics—which asks for an explanation of why our moral beliefs are generally true—and in so doing, they examine whether evolutionary arguments can debunk quasi-realism. Although reliability challenges differ from EDAs in several respects, there may well be a connection between them. For the explanatory premise of an EDA may state that a particular theory (...) of beliefs of a certain kind does not, or cannot, provide a plausible account of why those beliefs might be generally true, and its epistemic premise may state that, if that is the case, then the beliefs in question have a negative epistemic status or the theory is false inasmuch as, if it were true, it would lead to those beliefs having such a negative epistemic status. The quasi-realist can answer the reli-ability challenge by claiming that, when we form our moral beliefs through a process of well-informed impartial reflection, we form them in response to the non-moral features of things on which depend the moral features they have. Hence, when we form beliefs by means of such a process, we are most likely forming true moral beliefs. (shrink)

Há muito tempo o progresso científico provoca nossas convicções e ameaça deixar o discurso moral para trás. Mais recentemente, a polêmica em torno da permissão ou proibição da eugenia negativa e positiva questiona nossa autocompreensão de natureza, moralidade e liberdade. O presente texto tem por objeto uma série de artigos de J. Habermas, convertidos posteriormente em livro, onde são expostos argumentos fortemente plausíveis em favor da tese da indisponibilidade da natureza humana no âmbito da eugenia positiva. Após contextuar o problema (...) e mapeá-lo no horizonte filosófico, o trabalho apresenta a posição metafísica habermasiana, com destaque para a distinção entre eugenia negativa e positiva, e a confronta com os argumentos liberais dworkinianos acerca do tema. O artigo pleiteia a favor da tese de que a naturalidade humana consiste, desde os primórdios da espécie, em autocriação natural, de modo que cabe à moralidade e ao direito preencherem o vácuo do destino criado pela biotecnologia. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Natureza humana. Habermas. Eugenia negativa e positive. Ética. Filosofia do direito. ABSTRACT For a long time scientific progress has been challeging our moral convictions, bringing the threat of making moral discourse totally surpassed. More recently the controversy around the permission or prohibition of negative and positive eugeny questions our selfunderstanding of nature, morality and freedom. The text has as its object several articles of J. Habermas, which turned afterwards into a volume, where the author exposes strongly plausible arguments for the thesis of the unavailability of human nature in the field of positive eugeny. After contextualising the problem and mapping it in the scientific horizon, the study presents Habermas’s metaphysical account, putting emphasis on the distinction between negative and positive eugeny, and confronts that same account of Habermas with Dworkin’s liberal arguments about the topic. The article pleads for the thesis that human naturality consists since the beginning of humanity in natural self-creation, so that it is a task of morality and science of law to fulfill the empty space of the destiny built up by biotechnology. KEY WORDS – Human nature. Negative and positive eugeny. Philosophy of law. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es evaluar si la estrategia populista conlleva oportunidades o peligros para la democracia y para ello se analizan los principales elementos del discurso populista a la luz de las intervenciones de dos líderes europeos, Pablo Iglesias y Marine Le Pen. Se sostiene que la estrategia populista no implica por sí misma un riesgo para la democracia sino que depende del tipo de demandas sociales que se articulen y de los valores hegemónicos que se quieran transmitir (...) a la opinión pública. La estructura del artículo es la siguiente: en primer lugar, se realiza una revisión crítica de la literatura sobre populismo; en segundo lugar, se analizan tanto la estructura formal como el carácter vacuo y disputado del discurso populista a partir de las intervenciones de Iglesias y Le Pen; por último, se presentan unas reflexiones finales. (shrink)

Os nomes próprios são termos singulares que intuitivamente indicam os objectos do discurso ou pensamento. Alguns nomes falham na sua função de referir, sem que, aparentemente, deixem de desempenhar um papel representacional. Isso é paradoxal: Por um lado, os objectos referidos deveriam fazer parte de uma caracterização correcta dos nomes próprios. Por outro lado, o significado das frases que incorporam nomes vácuos sugere que tais objectos são extrínsecos aos pensamentos transmitidos. Isto é o problema que se levanta com a existência (...) de representações vácuas. Este artigo apresentará o problema pela perspectiva dada pelo estado da arte corrente. (shrink)

There are at least three different genealogical accounts of morality: the ontogenetic, the sociohistorical, and the evolutionary. One can thus construct, in principle, three distinct genealogical debunking arguments of morality, i.e., arguments that appeal to empirical data, or to an empirical hypothesis, about the origin of morality to undermine either its ontological foundation or the epistemic credentials of our moral beliefs. The genealogical account that has been, particularly since the early 2000s, the topic of a burgeoning line of inquiry in (...) the metaethical literature is the one that explains the origin of moral thinking by appealing to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. For this reason, when it comes to genealogical debunking arguments, it is various types of evolutionary debunking argument (EDA) that are the focus of the current debate between moral skeptics and moral realists. Evolutionary moral debunkers maintain that the capacity to make moral judgments is an evolved trait—a view accepted by most of their detractors. They maintain, in addition, that such a capacity is an adaptation—i.e., a trait selected for because it enhances reproduction and survival—and not merely either a by-product of an adaptation or an evolutionary accident—a view accepted by fewer of their detractors. Roughly put, the thrust of EDAs is that biological evolution is aimed, not at moral belief-forming processes that are reliable, but at moral belief-forming processes that are adaptive. In other words, the evolutionary function of those processes is not that of tracking the moral truth: their general success at matching or accurately representing allegedly objective or attitude-independent moral facts, properties, or truths explains neither their emergence nor their persistence. Humans are therefore disposed to make moral judgments regardless of the evidence to which they are exposed, regardless of whether there are or are not objective moral facts, properties, or truths. In the contemporary scene, the most important and influential EDAs are those advanced by Richard Joyce and Sharon Street. Although Joyce’s EDA is more elaborate than Street’s inasmuch as it is based on a detailed evolutionary account of morality, it is Street’s EDA that has received the most attention among those seeking to defend moral realism against EDAs. If an EDA can establish at most an epistemological conclusion, then it could be argued that Joyce’s argument (at least the version defended in his later works) is superior to Street’s given that the conclusion of the former is epistemological whereas that of the latter is ontological. Indeed, while Joyce’s EDA is taken to support epistemological moral skepticism, according to which our moral beliefs are epistemically unjustified, Street’s is taken to support moral anti-realism (moral constructivism in particular), according to which attitude-independent moral facts do not exist. (shrink)

O artigo não é sobre Heidegger, mas sobre a coisa do pensar, para a qual ele acenou. A meditaçãoprocura pensar o relacionamento entre o pensar e o ser tal como se dá na dimensão da facticidade eda existência do humano, que é, ele mesmo, um abismo. O pensar se mostra como espera doinesperado e como memória criativa. A espera do inesperado não é um adiar do pensar, mas simuma insistência na serenidade da clareira do ser. A memória criativa é memória (...) do porvir econcentração do pensamento que busca resgatar no pensado o impensado. O pensar dopensamento de até agora se erige como representação. A sua finitude, porém, testemunha o toque eo apelo do ser. O ser, no pensar de até agora, se deu como parousía, isto é, como advento à presençae como vigência atual, do presente. O traço fundamental do ser repousa no desencobrimento e naatualidade. O outro pensar, porém, que se dispõe ao outro princípio e à principialidade, éreivindicado, possibilitado e pro-vocado e conduzido ao seu próprio desde o abismo do mistério doser. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to answer the question of whether the two evolutionary debunking arguments (EDA) which, in my interpretation, can be developed from memetics (the argument of contagion and the argument of belief in belief) successfully undermine both the internalist and the externalist rationality of theism. The EDA against the rationality of religious belief try to prove that if such belief is caused by processes that do not track the truth, then this belief is unwarranted or even (...) false. I will argue that the contagion argument is not valid due to the theoretical weakness of memetics, while the argument of belief in belief may be partly valid, since it is logically independent of the memetic approach. Finally, I will examine a possible refutation of that argument based on the thesis that the propositional belief in God is not decisive for the adaptive explanation of the complex system of religion. I will show, briefly, that this does not save theism from another EDA based on the adaptive nature of religion. (shrink)

[Przekład] Tekst niniejszy jest wprowadzeniem do książki Eda Cohena A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Biopolitics and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body. Autor bada, w jaki sposób immunologia wpływa na postrzeganie tak ciała ludzkiego, jak i bytów politycznych, ukazując współczesne konceptualizacje tych zjawisk jako wzajemnie od siebie zależne. Zastosowane ujęcie historyczne pozwala na prześledzenie historii metafory odporności w polityce i medycynie.

El modelo de desarrollo de “crecimiento con equidad” planteado por la Concertación, tras 18 años de gobierno muestra sus primeras señales de agotamiento. Los éxitos alcanzados en materia económica, de política fiscal y transición política tras la dictadura militar, no han conducido a la equidad. A través de un análisis crítico de los datos político-económicos y sociales disponibles, la autora plantea que los fantasmas del subdesarrollo: estructura productiva basada en productos primarios, mala calidad de la educación, injusta distribución de ingresos (...) y baja inversión en ciencia y tecnología merodean a Chile amenazando con quedarse. Chile cuenta con una extraordinaria situación patrimonial a raíz de las millonarias ganancias obtenidas de las ventas del cobre, pero choca con una clase política temerosa de tomar decisiones de cambio estructural al modelo político y renuente a emprender las necesarias reformas económicas para pasar a la segunda etapa del desarrollo con mayor valor agregado. (shrink)

This article explores some of the most significant questions in feminist epistemology: how do academics demarcate what constitutes ‘proper’ academic knowledge? And to what extent is feminist theory and research recognised as such? I draw on material from an ethnographic study of academia in Portugal to examine the claims that non-feminist scholars make in classrooms and conferences about the epistemic status of feminist scholarship. I observed that feminist work was very commonly described as capable of generating credible and valuable knowledge, (...) but only in some instances and in limited ways. I present examples of these adversative claims (i.e. propositions that express opposition or discrepancy through a ‘but’ or equivalent adversative conjunction) and analyse their structure, content and uses of caricature and humour, showing how epistemic boundaries are drawn in them and how feminist scholarship is positioned in relation to those boundaries. I argue that this boundary-work produces a representation of feminist scholarship as being located partly within, and partly outside, the realm of proper knowledge, a move which I designate as an epistemic splitting of that scholarship. I suggest that this splitting enables and legitimates a selective engagement with feminist work, because it provides non-feminist scholars with a recognised epistemological rationale for taking into account the feminist insights which broadly fit mainstream frameworks, while simultaneously rejecting as epistemologically unsound the feminist critiques of those frameworks. (shrink)

Background Nurses provide care to meet the complex needs of patients in the increasing workload in the health system and are at risk of compassion fatigue. The concept of compassion fatigue has begun drawing attention in the last decade, as it negatively affects nurses' physical and mental health, job performance and satisfaction, and therefore patient care quality. Objectives This study was to examine compassion fatigue and predictive factors in paediatric surgery nurses. Participants and research context The study was cross-sectional, predictive (...) and quantitative. It was conducted with the 135 paediatric surgery nurses. The data were sent to the email addresses of the members via Google Survey. Research data were collected with the Nurse Information Form, Compassion Fatigue Scale, Life Satisfaction Scale and Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale. Ethical considerations After obtaining the approval of the University’s ethics committee, the study was carried out after obtaining participants’ informed written and verbal consent. Results There was a difference between the level of compassion fatigue according to the paediatric surgery unit that worked the longest and the thought of changing their profession. Burn unit nurses and nurses who were considering changing professions have higher compassion fatigue scores. When the predictors of compassion fatigue were examined, the thought of changing the nursing profession and life satisfaction were significant predictors of compassion fatigue. The thought of changing the nursing profession and life satisfaction explained 22% of compassion fatigue. The same variables and the longest working period of the paediatric surgery unit were the estimators of the level of occupational burnout; explaining 29% of occupational burnout. Conclusions Compassion fatigue, life satisfaction and perceived social support of paediatric surgery nurses are moderate. Compassion fatigue is affected by working time, the thought of changing the profession, life satisfaction and perceived social support. (shrink)

El presente trabajo intentará aproximarse críticamente a la revisión del concepto del “poder” en relación a los valores del hombre, a partir de las teorías desarrolladas por tres maestros universales clásicos de las ciencias sociales y psicoanalíticas como fueron Max Weber, Sigmund Freud y Hans Kelsen. Nuestra hipótesis consiste en afirmar que los aportes teóricos de estos tres autores conservan su validez hasta la actualidad y enriquecen las tesis derivadas del “nuevo paradigma científico” con respecto a las actuales formas de (...) organización del “poder” en redes. Sobre todo en lo que respecta a su doble abordaje acerca del “poder”: el análisis de sus estructuras y el origen de los valores que lo sustentan desde sus bases antropológicas. Al concluir se reflexiona acerca de la validez de este pensamiento para la historia moderna de América Latina. (shrink)

In this publication, the author attempts to develop an aesthetic theory from Heidegger's phenomenological concepts. She analyzes Heidegger`s concepts of truth, world, space, and related concepts and establishes a formal, contextual and material method of analysis for the purpose of examining works of art. This new method of analysis is applied to three pieces by the artist Joseph Beuys as a case study.

For a tree T of its height equal to or less than ω1, we construct a space XT by attaching a circle to each node and connecting each node to its successors by intervals. is the Hawaiian earring and H1T denotes a canonical factor of the first integral singular homology group. The following equivalences hold for an ω1-tree T: π1 is embeddable into π1, if and only if is embeddable into H1T, if and only if T is not an Aronzajn (...) tree. π1 is embeddable into if and only if H1T is embeddable into if and only if T is a special Aronzajn tree. π1 has a retract isomorphic to an uncountable free group, if and only if H1T has a summand isomorphic to an uncountable free abelian group, if and only if T has an uncountable anti-chain. (shrink)