La sociedad contemporánea en su interés por el progreso y la tecnología, olvida la importancia fundamental del ser humano, y simplemente lo considera como una especie de pieza de engranaje en la dinámica económica, social y política de la sociedad. En la filosofía de Erich Fromm, es fundamental la reflexión acerca del significado del ser humano, y es necesario para Fromm, recuperar el humanismo como una filosofía global del hombre, que permitirá encontrar su sentido y lograr alcanzar un estado de (...) armonía y equilibrio. (shrink)

Postmodernity is a move ment that arose as a re sult of the cri sis of the dom i nant mo der nity, con front ing many of the great pro jects which ex - alted the do min ion and the power of man, and re - plac ing them with small ness, what is lo cal, and other al ter na tives. One of the most o..

Conditional logic is the deductive system , where is the set of propositional connectives {, ,} and is the structural finitary consequence relation on the absolutely free algebra that preserves degrees of truth over the structure of truth values C, . HereC is the non-commutative regular extension of the 2-element Boolean algebra to 3 truth values {t, u, f}, andfut. In this paper we give a Gentzen type axiomatization for conditional logic.

El jurista chileno Juan Egaña manifestó en sus acciones y en sus escritos una especial valoración por las expresiones artísticas. Para el autor las normas jurídicas y el arte deben articularse y apuntar a un mismo objetivo. El presente trabajo se orienta a mostrar los fundamentos que permiten afirmar que, en sintonía con las concepciones de Platón, Egaña concibió la pintura, la escultura, la música y la arquitectura al servicio de la organización de la sociedad. The chilean attorney Juan Egaña (...) showed in his actions and essays a special interest in artistic expressions. Art and the juridical norms must work together and point to a same objective. This article is oriented to show the essentials that confirm that following ideas of Plato, Egaña conceived painting, sculpture, music and architecture put to the service of the organization of the society. (shrink)

Nuestro objetivo es examinar por qué la confianza puede ser considerada como una emoción secundaria y cómo ésta se aborda de diferente manera en un contexto estético u ordinario, lo cual proporciona otro modo de investigar las emociones secundarias_. _Nuestra tesis se desarrolla en tres secciones y una conclusión. En la primera sección, hemos desarrollado ejemplos y hecho observaciones a modo de análisis para probar por qué las narrativas son importantes para nuestras emociones secundarias. En la segunda sección, hemos examinado (...) por qué la confianza puede ser considerara como una emoción secundaria así como establecer un criterio para identificarla como tal_. _En la tercera sección, presentamos una de las funciones de la confianza, el intercambio de conocimiento entre agentes, cuando se comparte conocimiento en un proceso epistémico con otros. Hemos comprobado que la construcción de la relación entre sujetos y objetos se produce mayoritariamente gracias a la confianza. Una emoción secundaria que representa lazos afectivos entre sujetos para acceder a una emoción primaria. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present trust as a meta-emotion, such that it is an emotion that precedes first-order emotions. It examines how trust can be considered a meta-emotion by establishing criteria for identifying trust as a meta-emotion. How trust plays out differently in aesthetic and ordinary contexts can provide another mode for investigating meta-emotions. The article illustrates how it is possible to recognize these meta-emotions in narratives. Finally, it presents one of the aims of trust, sharing knowledge (...) between agents, when someone who provides testimony shares knowledge in an epistemic trust process with others. It shows a relationship construction between subjects and objects thanks to the trust, a meta-emotion that represents emotional ties between subjects to achieve another emotion. (shrink)

This book offers an in-depth account of the most important moral debates surrounding human rights today. They are the basis of legitimacy for modern Western civilisation, yet there still exists differences between our common view on the importance of rights and our profound disagreement on their meaning and content.

In this note we develop a method for constructing finite totally-ordered m-zeroids and prove that there exists a categorical equivalence between the category of finite, totally-ordered m-zeroids and the category of pseudo Łukasiewicz-like implicators.

Our aim is to examine why trust can be considered a second-order emotion and how the way in which trust plays out differently in aesthetic and ordinary contexts can provide another mode of investigating second-order emotions. Our thesis is developed in three sections and a conclusion.In the first section, we perform an example analysis to show why narratives are important for our emotions. In the second section, we examine how trust can be considered a second-order emotion and establish criteria for (...) identifying it as a second-order emotion. In the third section, we present one of the aims of trust, i.e. sharing knowledge between agents, when a testimony-giver shares knowledge in an epistemic trust process with others. We show how the relationship construction between persons thanks to trust, a second-order emotion that represents emotional ties between agents to achieve a first-order emotion. (shrink)

This book offers an in-depth account of the most important moral debates surrounding human rights today. They are the basis of legitimacy for modern Western civilisation, yet there still exists differences between our common view on the importance of rights and our profound disagreement on their meaning and content.

A partir de la pregunta por la vida buena y la existencia auténtica se explora aquí de qué manera la literatura, puesta al servicio de la individuación, puede facilitar los esfuerzos por encontrar sentidos y significado para la existencia. En el caso del escritor Fernando Vallejo se quiere observar el despliegue de lo titánico como una atmósfera -y un impulso en el proceso creativo. Se señalan de manera sucinta los pasos o tránsitos en el proceso de individualización.

This article offers a systematic treatment of Beauvoir's reading of biology in The Second Sex. Following Gatens 's suggestion that this chapter has not received the scholarly consideration it demands and deserves, it explains key aspects of Beauvoir's relationship to biological reason by re-telling the story of Beauvoir's early life from the perspective of her scientific education, rationally reconstructing her argument in the chapter on "Biological Data," and exploring the philosophical orientation of her argument using the Frankfurt School model of (...) 'immanent critique.' By illuminating Beauvoir's reading of biology, this article contributes to our understanding of her philosophy while also deflating the widespread assumption that existentialist philosophy is inherently 'anti-science.'. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide an overview about Simone Weil’s interpretation of the Good in Plato. The article has two parts. In the first one, we focus on her exegesis of the ancient Greek civilization and of the Pythagorean tradition. We also signalize that her interpretation cannot be confused with the one done in Neoplatonism. After that, we investigate her interpretation of Plato’s philosophy with special emphasis on two dialogues : Republic and Timaeus. In the second part (...) we research two main concepts of Simone Weil’s philosophy, i.e., the notions of value and of lecture and finalize our text with the question of how we should situate her appropriation of the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

O presente texto tem por finalidade mostrar a influência de Platão na obra da pensadora francesa Simone Weil. Procuramos esclarecer a exegese que ela faz de um passo do sexto livro da República, no qual ela identifica a contradição essencial que rege a existência humana, a saber, aquela que há entre o Bem, inacessível a nós mas a que todos aspiramos, e o necessário, que tiranicamente a todos acomete. Mostramos, por fim, de que modo é precisamenteessa dialética entre o Bem (...) e o necessário que permite a ela empreender, por um lado, uma critica veemente a Marx e, por outro, uma análise original e profunda acerca da amizade. (shrink)

This paper gives a close reading of a number of poems by Fernando Pessoa, in particular by his ‘heteronym’ Alberto Caeiro. On that basis, a poetic ontology focused on the concept of ‘surfaciality’ is sketched which is then made more concrete through a discussion of the concepts of understanding and interpretation in Heidegger’s Being and Time. As an elaboration of this ontology, the paper concludes with a close reading of important long poem by Wallace Stevens, ‘Description Without Place’.

It is possible today to observe in hindsight the epistemological landscape of the twentieth century, and the work of Albert Lautman in mathematical philosophy appears as a profound turning point, opening to a true under- standing of creativity in mathematics and its relation with the real. Little understood in its time or even today, Lautman’s work explores the difficult but exciting intersection where modern mathematics, advanced mathe- matical invention, the structural or unitary relations of mathematical knowledge and, finally, the metaphysical (...) and dialectical tensions underly- ing mathematical activity converge. Well beyond other better-known names in philosophy of mathematics – who are focused above all on ques- tions concerning the logical problem of foundations, important but frag- mentary studies in the vast panorama of modern mathematics – Lautman broaches the emergence of inventiveness in the very broad spectrum of the development of the mathematical real. Group theory, differential geome- try, algebraic topology, differential equations, functional analysis, functions of complex variables and number fields are some of the domains of his preferred examples. He detects in them methods of construction, structu- ration and unification of modern mathematics that he connects to a precise Platonic interpretation in which powerful pairs of ideas serve to organize the edifice of effective mathematics. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * "… to sleep perchance to dream " 1 To dream: to be not quite asleep, yet not particularly awake. Or, rather: to be awake but not quite know it. For, it is only when we dream, when we are dreaming, that we know that we are not in that final sleep. But we can only know that we are dreaming, that we have dreamt, when we are awake, when we have awoken; after it is too late. When all we know is that the sleep beyond finitude, the sleep that is the step beyond, is not yet upon us, is only to come. To die to sleep … To dream: a sleep that refuses sleep. Perchance to dream: to drift—between sleep and sleep. Aye there's the rub For, can we even know if we have been sleeping? Or, if death has claimed us?—even if a little death. α Ω α Ω α Ω To drift: but from, to, what? For, to drift implies a certain direction that one was headed from, heading to, headed for; without these indications, markers, points in relation with each other, one would just be moving. Can one know—intend—one's drift? Certainly a stunt driver would say so. But even as (s)he is starting her slide, all that (s)he can know is that she is setting the car, herself, the car with herself in it, in motion: after which the drift itself takes over. After which, all (s)he can do is attend to it. At the point of the drift: both (s)he and the car are drifting—here, one might not even be able to separate the movement from those involved in it. Without either of them, there would not be a drift; there is no drifting without the drifter. Both the drifter and the drifting are in a relationality; in which, all that they can know is that they are in relation with each other. Hence, the drift itself is a relationality. A non-essence. But, it is not as if we cannot speak of it. Perhaps though: we can only speak of it as if we can speak of it. Always already an imaginary gesture; where what is being imagined is the relationality between the drift and the ones drifting. Thus, we have a situation where the drifter and drifting are in a relationality; where relationality itself is what is being imagined. Perhaps then, what are we drifting from, to? , is a moot question. As is, what is drifting? Perhaps then, all we can say is drift? To speak of drift is an attempt to speak of the unspeakable. Not that what is speakable and what is unspeakable are antonyms: if that were so, speaking the unspeakable would make no sense, be a contradiction. But that in every act of speaking, something unspeakable is potentially said: something that opens, ruptures, wounds even. And not just that—at the point where it punctures, speaking itself moves out of the way for the unspeakable; speaking itself disappears. "… the whole art is to know how to disappear before dying, and instead of dying. " 2 To disappear; or, to drift out of sight. Where the words themselves slip away. After all: "in the Beginning was the Word. It was only afterwards that Silence came." Perhaps the wish, the hope, is that "the end itself has disappeared …" (Baudrillard, 70) Remaining hidden from us. Perhaps only glimpsed when we dream. Secret. α Ω α Ω α Ω " Bury all your secrets in my skin " (Corey Taylor) Which is the problem: words cling. And they remain. Perhaps not ontologically; but they certainly remain to haunt us. And here, we should not forget Lucretius' lesson that communication occurs in the skin between the parties in communion with each other. Which is not to say that the encounter is determined by atoms—and more precisely atoms that move in straight lines until they collide with each other—that communication is pre-determined. For, one must not forget that will is found, discovered, enacted even, at the moment the atoms swerve. Clinamen . Drift. But even in their movement—drifting—they trace themselves into the skin between; a tangential touching. Perhaps only briefly. But even then, enough … "… there's always texture that betrays the place." (May Ee Wong) Here though, one must not forget that betrayal cannot happen in the absence of love. In fact, betrayal is the very excess of love: where one loves the other so much that one can no longer bear to see the other drift from what (s)he could have been. Whether that idealised other exists or is only in one's head is another question altogether. Perhaps, a fetishised other: keeping in mind that "fetishes are hinged around simulation." After all, "when one is supposed to show up as an oil rig diver no one is expecting actual crude oil" (Amanda Sordes); in fact, actualisation is the perfect way to destroy the fantasy. Perhaps then, the only way to maintain love for another is to maintain a proper distance, as it were, from love: allow the love to constantly alter, change. And here, one must not forget that if love is a relationality between one and another who remains wholly other (otherwise just a mere manifestation of the self), love is a relationality that knows nothing except for the fact that it is in a relation. For, to love one has to attend to—without subsuming another, some other, under oneself. Which means that to love, one has to be willing to risk, to open oneself, to allow oneself to be wounded, torn apart. In new ways, ways that we have yet to understand, come across, ways we do not yet have a name for. Thus, this movement in love is one that occurs in utter blindness; to not only the other, but to what love is. This is love as pure drifting. Perhaps always searching for love itself, without ever knowing what it is that it is looking for. Love: only at the very moment when the word love itself disappears. Perhaps all we can do is sit, and attend: watching the tides flowing away—as if they were having their "last swim of the summer." (Hendrik Speck) Like a butterfly. α Ω α Ω α Ω Isn't it quite amazing how the appearance of a butterfly can inject a stutter or pause into any conversation? Words and words pour out of the animals in assembly, before they are all of a sudden arrested by the passing flight. Heads turn to trace a lilting poetics, attempting to close the distance with this seemingly awkward beauty. There are no straight lines here, only a relative arrival and departure to bracket a brilliant and bewildering trajectory, surging and lurching in a vibrating and nomadic line avant la lettre. (Sean Smith, 'I Seek You: Countdown to Stereoscopic Tear') Before the letter. Before the possibility of naming. Before being sayable. Quite possibly also before language. And yet, a "surging and lurching," a movement with an effect—"vibrating and nomadic"—tracing itself before there is even anything to trace. Leaving something, even if that thing remains unknowable, for us to attend to. Drifting into us. I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee..." (Carly Simon) NOTES William Shakespeare, Hamlet , Act 3 Scene 1. Jean Baudrillard, Why hasn't everything already disappeared? , 25.  . (shrink)

Resenha de: Fernandes, Simone. Subjetividade e dominação. A filosofia de Nietzsche na teoria crítica de Horkheimer nos anos 1930 e 1940. Santo André: EdUFABC, 2022.

This chapter contains sections titled: Acosta, José de (1539–1600) Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1810–84) Bello, Andrés (1781–1865) Bilbao, Francisco (1823–65) Bolkvar, Simón (1783–1830) Casas, Bartolomé de las (1484–1566) Caso, Antonio (1883–1946) Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la (1651–95) da Costa, Newton Carneiro Affonso (b. 1929) Dussel, Enrique (b. 1934) Frondizi, Risieri (1910–83) Gaos, José (1900–69) González Prada, Manuel (1848–1918) Gracia, Jorge J. E. (b. 1942) Haya de la Torre, Victor Raúl (1895–1979) Hostos, Eugenio Marka de (1839–1903) Ingenieros, José (1877–1925) Korn, Alejandro (...) (1860–1936) Lastarria, José Victorino (1817–88) Lemos, Miguel (1854–1917) Mariátegui, José Carlos (1895–1930) Martk, José (1853–95) Méndez Sierra, Justo (1848–1912) Mora, José Maria Luis (1794–1850) Miró Quesada, Francisco (b. 1918) Rabossi, Eduardo (1930–2005) Ramos, Samuel (1897–1959) Rodó, José Enrique (1872–1917) Romero, Francisco (1891–1962) Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1499–1590) Salazar Bondy, Augusto (1925–74) Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1811–88) Ofelia Schutte (b. 1945) Sepslveda, Juan Ginés de (ca. 1494–1573) Torretti, Roberto (b. 1930) Vasconcelos, José (1882–1959) Vaz Ferreira, Carlos (1872–1958) Villoro, Luis (b. 1922) Vitoria, Francisco de (ca. 1483–1546) Zea Aguilar, Leopoldo (1912–2004) Acknowledgment Further Reading. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone examinar algunas características de la máscara del coquus en el corpus plautino. En primer término, se estudia el modo en que este personaje, a partir de las referencias al castigo físico y a la pasividad sexual, es construido como un cuerpo subordinado al servicio de otros. Luego, se consideran sus apariciones como ladrón y como proveedor de placeres corporales. Proponemos que la forma en que los cocineros son representados en la palliata de Plauto pone en evidencia (...) el vínculo que la axiología republicana establece entre actores sociales subalternos, corporalidad y amenaza a los mores maiorum. This paper examines some characteristics of the coquus mask in the plautine corpus. First, we study how this character, from references to physical punishment and sexual passivity, is built as a subordinate body to the service of others. Then, we consider his appearances as a thief and a provider of bodily pleasures. We propose that the way cooks are represented in Plautus' palliata shows us the link established by Republican axiology between subaltern social actors, body and threat to mores maiorum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Theory?Oscar Martín (bio) and Simone Pinet (bio)Theory is, of course, a medieval word, brought from Greek into Latin from a common root (theastai) that also gives us theater, linked through shared meanings related to speculation, contemplation, and so forth. It is used in the Bible, and its English modern use, according to the Oxford english dictionary, probably comes from a medieval Latin translation of Aristotle. The dictionary does (...) not direct us to any specific translation, but prompts us to compare with Italian and, of course, French usage. In French, however, the word théorie was not used until quite late. In fact, it appeared for the first time in French in a 1584 translation of Antonio de Guevara, the famous Spanish court preacher and man of letters whose oeuvre was translated, imitated, and plagiarized in France, Italy, Germany, and England during the sixteenth century. In Spanish, the word theoria had begun its vernacular life a few years before in the writings of Fernando de Herrera.Theoria is already documented by Antonio de Nebrija’s Vocabulario español-latino of 1495, listed between “speculation” and “species” and designating the contemplative and the art of speculation, from theory to the perception of its quality. It is appropriate that Spanish would give theory to the West, sharing with it a point of view or, better, a series of perspectives or miradores, as María Rosa Menocal would call them, from which to look back into or beyond cultural and literary practices [“Visions of al-Andalus”]. For Medieval Iberia was, as this collection of essays purports to be, not a space or a history but a shifting and fluid gaze on the conflicting world surrounding the different literary and cultural works dealt with in this issue.Reluctant at best, and most of the time resentful of theoretical approaches to the study of literature and culture, medievalism found in Hispanism a surprising and most loyal ally. If in most Spanish departments critical theory pushed its way into the study of later periods, to the point that today even the mourning itself (or celebration) of the agony of theory is done from a theoretical standpoint, Hispanomedievalism remained suspicious longer, and sharpened its words on statistics and “scientific” claims to authority. Its close relationship to historical research, however, also made this philology vulnerable to the practices of interpretation. And it is as a will to interpretation that theory has managed to place itself within and outside the criticism of medieval Iberian literature and culture in insightful and renewing ways—including collective projects similar to the present one. Marina Brownlee’s contribution to this volume in this sense offers a most telling guiding thread of this continued approach to the discipline, which she helped revitalize through her participation in the project the new Medievalism. More recently, Josiah Blackmore and Gregory Hutcheson, also contributing to the present volume, sparked a lively debate, as showcased in a forum published by La corónica, with their project Queer iberia: sexualities, cultures, and crossing from the Middle ages to the renaissance. But a host of monographs and single-authored books in recent years have come to inhabit and enliven medieval studies as Hispanism has grown into the most important area of foreign language studies. [End Page 3]Theories find themselves in the articles for this special issue by way of a development from within. There is no application, no rigid use of conceptual frameworks to revisit texts, but an interior process of thought on and through the texts and cultural practices analyzed that produces theoretical insights. While a variety of methodologies and theoretical positionings can be identified, both explicitly and not, from speech-act theory to deconstruction, from Žižek to Badiou, postcolonialism to politics, these seem to emerge from within, as if the obvious result of the need to think questions posed from slightly different standpoints than they have been up until now. All of the articles reflect on very well-known texts and periods, pondering about a discipline, its methodologies, even the nature of its object of study. These articles do not dismiss previous work, but they do bring it under a new light.At a... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines how Robert Owen’s ideas, and the example of his New Lanark Mill, were understood and received in Spain in the nineteenth century. It follows recent historiographic trends in the history of early Spanish socialism to show that although Owen’s ideas could not have a decisive impact in a largely agricultural economy and society, his ideas did draw more significant attention that has been thought. The article examines how Owen’s ideas, like those of Fourier and Saint-Simon, were (...) transmitted in Spain through different channels, in particular in education through the work of Pablo Montesino, and in the 1850s and 60s how they proved important to the creation of workers’ co-operatives in Valencia and Madrid. The article also explores how Owen’s ideas were important to the influential Spanish author Ramón de Sagra, and shows that the epistolary relationship between the two suggests that de Sagra might have been a more important voice for Owen’s ideas in Spain than has been appreciated. (shrink)

En este artículo expongo las tres etapas del pensamiento de Vicent Martínez Guzmán: 1) la fenomenología lingüística, primero en estrecha conexión con Fernando Montero y John L. Austin, y luego transformada por la pragmática trascendental y la teoría de la acción comunicativa ; 2) la teoría filosófica de Europa, basada en Kant, Husserl, Ortega y Gasset y la Ética comunicativa o discursiva; y 3) la filosofía de la paz, que se convierte en una filosofía para hacer las paces, superando (...) la violencia, la guerra y las injusticia: una investigación interdisciplinar basada en la intersubjetividad con sentido ético y político.In this paper I set forth the three stages of Vicent Martínez Guzmán’s thought: 1) the Linguistic Phenomenology, first closely connected with Fernando Montero and John L. Austin, but later transformed by the Transcendental Pragmatics and the Theory of Communicative Action ; 2) the philosophical theory of Europe, based on Kant, Husserl, Ortega y Gasset and the communicative or discursive ethics; and 3) Philosophy of Peace that becomes in philosophy for making peace, overcoming violence, war and injustice: an interdisciplinary research based on intersubjectivity with ethical and political sense. (shrink)

It is shown that the Hilbert-Bernays-Quine principle of identity of indiscernibles applies uniformly to all the contentious cases of symmetries in physics, including permutation symmetry in classical and quantum mechanics. It follows that there is no special problem with the notion of objecthood in physics. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason is considered as well; this too applies uniformly. But given the new principle of identity, it no longer implies that space, or atoms, are unreal.

A variety of ideas arising in decoherence theory, and in the ongoing debate over Everett's relative-state theory, can be linked to issues in relativity theory and the philosophy of time, specifically the relational theory of tense and of identity over time. These have been systematically presented in companion papers (Saunders 1995; 1996a); in what follows we shall consider the same circle of ideas, but specifically in relation to the interpretation of probability, and its identification with relations in the Hilbert Space (...) norm. The familiar objection that Everett's approach yields probabilities different from quantum mechanics is easily dealt with. The more fundamental question is how to interpret these probabilities consistent with the relational theory of change, and the relational theory of identity over time. I shall show that the relational theory needs nothing more than the physical, minimal criterion of identity as defined by Everett's theory, and that this can be transparently interpreted in terms of the ordinary notion of the chance occurrence of an event, as witnessed in the present. It is in this sense that the theory has empirical content. (shrink)

I argue that it is rational for a person to believe the conjunction of her beliefs. This involves responding to the Lottery and Preface Paradoxes. In addition, I suggest that in normal circumstances, what it is to believe a conjunction just is to believe its conjuncts.

To begin with -- Genealogy of the cerebral subject -- Disciplines of the neuro -- Cerebralizing distress -- Brains on screen and paper -- Up for grabs.

Morgan’s Canon is a very widely endorsed methodological principle in animal psychology, believed to be vital for a rigorous, scientific approach to the study of animal cognition. In contrast I argue that Morgan’s Canon is unjustified, pernicious and unnecessary. I identify two main versions of the Canon and show that they both suffer from very serious problems. I then suggest an alternative methodological principle that captures all of the genuine methodological benefits that Morgan’s Canon can bring but suffers from none (...) of its problems. (shrink)

: I offer a new approach to the increasingly convoluted debate between the A- and B-theories of time, the ‘tensed’ and ‘tenseless’ theories. It is often assumed that the B-theory faces more difficulties than the A-theory in explaining the apparently tensed features of temporal experience. I argue that the A-theory cannot explain these features at all, because on any physicalist or supervenience theory of the mind, in which the nature of experience is fixed by the physical state of the world, (...) the tensed properties of time posited by the A-theory could play no role in shaping temporal experience. It follows that the A-theory is false; even a priori arguments for it fail, because they still require the tensed vocabulary which is used to describe temporal experience. (shrink)

It is often claimed that there can be no such thing as a logic of scientific discovery, but only a logic of verification. By 'logic of discovery' is usually meant a normative theory of discovery processes. The claim that such a normative theory is impossible is shown to be incorrect; and two examples are provided of domains where formal processes of varying efficacy for discovering lawfulness can be constructed and compared. The analysis shows how one can treat operationally and formally (...) phenomena that have usually been dismissed with fuzzy labels like 'intuition' and 'creativity'. (shrink)

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation with (...) one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface. (shrink)

Frege held that indexical thoughts could be retained through changes of context that required a change of indexical term. I argue that Frege was partially right in that a singular mode of presentation can be retained through changes of indexical. There must, however, be a further mode of presentation that changes when the indexical term changes. This suggests that indexicals should be regarded as complex demonstratives; a change of indexical term is like a change between 'that φ' and 'that ψ', (...) where 'φ' and 'ψ' pick out relational properties that may nonetheless be conceived of by the thinker as intrinsic. (shrink)

Probabilities may be subjective or objective; we are concerned with both kinds of probability, and the relationship between them. The fundamental theory of objective probability is quantum mechanics: it is argued that neither Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, nor the pilot-wave theory, nor stochastic state-reduction theories, give a satisfactory answer to the question of what objective probabilities are in quantum mechanics, or why they should satisfy the Born rule; nor do they give any reason why subjective probabilities should track objective ones. But (...) it is shown that if probability only arises with decoherence, then they must be given by the Born rule. That further, on the Everett interpretation, we have a clear statement of what probabilities are, in terms of purely categorical physical properties; and finally, along lines laid out by Deutsch and Wallace, that there is a clear basis in the axioms of decision theory as to why subjective probabilities should track these objective ones. These results hinge critically on the absence of hidden-variables or any other mechanism (such as state-reduction) from the physical interpretation of the theory. The account of probability has traditionally been considered the principal weakness of the Everett interpretation; on the contrary it emerges as one of its principal strengths. (shrink)

John Perry has argued that language, thought and experience often contain unarticulated constituents. I argue that this idea holds the key to explaining away the intuitive appeal of the A-theory of time and the endurance theory of persistence. The A-theory has seemed intuitively appealing because the nature of temporal experience makes it natural for us to use one-place predicates like past to deal with what are really two-place relations, one of whose constituents is unarticulated. The endurance view can be treated (...) in a similar way; the temporal boundaries of temporal parts of objects are unarticulated in experience and this makes it seem that the very same entity exists at different times. (shrink)