« Et si la nature finissait par livrer ses mystères? » Et d’ailleurs, à qui les livrerait-elle? Si tant est que nous en soyons les dépositaires, que pourrions-nous faire de ces mystères délivrés, nous qui cherchons la lumière de la connaissance et la clarté de l’évidence? Ce que Goethe ne dit pas dans cette interrogation placée par Schopenhauer en exergue du Monde comme volonté et représentation, c’est justement qu’il n’y a de mystère que pour un sujet qui fait face à (...) la nature et qui y ti... (shrink)

In their reviews, Chater and Oaksford, Dutilh Novaes, and Sterelny are critical of our modularist approach to reason. In this response, we clarify our claim that reason is one of many cognitive modules that produce intuitive inferences each in its domain; the reason module producing intuitions about reasons. We argue that in‐principle objections to the idea of massive modularity based on Fodor's peculiar approach are not effective against other interpretations that have led to insightful uses of the notion in psychology (...) and biology. We explain how the reason module evaluates reasons on the basis of their metacognitive properties. We show how the module fulfils a social function, that of producing reasons to justify oneself and convince others and of evaluating the reasons others produce to convince us. (shrink)

My purpose in this article is to provide a reconstruction of the mechanics of philosophical analysis that Wittgenstein carried out in “On Certainty”. I will show that this analysis is based, specifically, on an appeal to a wide propositional typology that serves to evaluate and diagnose Moore’s propositions. To this end, I shall first explain how common readings of the methodological issues in “On Certainty” fail. Secondly, I focus on the mechanics of analysis found in paragraphs 1-65, specifically the analysis (...) of three sentences: “There are physical objects”, “I know that there is a hand here” and “here the mistake is impossible”. Thirdly, I proceed to identify different stages of the method and justify in what sense the strategic core of such research is the table of propositional typologies. (shrink)

From its very inception philosophy has been preoccupied with death, so much so that many philosophers have received the reputation of being somber, melancholic, and morbid in nature. By continuously reflecting on the meaning and nature of death, philosophers have seemingly been shrouded in darkness to such an extent that their contemporaries considered them to be dead long before they met their own demise. While this image of the moribund philosopher can certainly be questioned, the fact remains that many philosophers, (...) and then especially the ancient ones, have insisted that there is an essential relation between philosophical thought and death. A life dedicated to philosophy would, it seems, at the same time imply a life lived in the shadow of death. (shrink)

The Pigeonhole Principle states that if n items are sorted into m categories and if n > m, then at least one category must contain more than one item. For instance, if 22 pigeons are put into 17 pigeonholes, at least one pigeonhole must contain more than one pigeon. This principle seems intuitive, yet when told about a city with 220,000 inhabitants none of whom has more than 170,000 hairs on their head, many people think that it is merely likely (...) that two inhabitants have the exact same number of hair. This failure to apply the Pigeonhole Principle might be due to the large numbers used, or to the cardinal rather than nominal presentation of these numbers. We show that performance improved both when the numbers are presented nominally, and when they are small, albeit less so. We discuss potential interpretations of these results in terms of intuition and reasoning. (shrink)

En el texto se hace hincapié en los tenebrosos elementos sacrificiales que le ha acarreado al movimiento estudiantil perteneciente a la combativa Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, situada en el Estado mexicano de Guerrero, dominado por el narcotráfico y un gobierno municipal que actúa en complicidad con este último. Se trata de un establecimiento que, además de formar maestros populares, se halla enrolado en las luchas sociales y políticas. A fines de 2014 fueron reprimidos brutalmente y objeto de desaparición forzosa (...) unos 43 alumnos de esa Escuela, lo cual dio lugar a una ininterrumpida protesta civil con muy diversos ribetes internos y mundiales cuyas múltiples expresiones procuran explicitarse en el trabajo. Por otra parte, se incursiona en el trasfondo ideológico que viene acompañando el devenir institucional mexicano bajo el manto del neoliberalismo -al cual el autor ha optado por reconceptuar como neuroliberalismo en distintos ensayos suyos y en colaboración. Conjuntamente, se enfoca la problemática en cuestión desde un ángulo doctrinario y existencial específico: el del necropoder y el pensamiento crítico. Entre los referentes bibliográficos principales pueden citarse desde Foucault y Mbembe a Holloway y González Casanova. The paper deals with the engagement of mexican student movement in Ayotzinapa Rural College and the repressive way that the local goverment and the narco-maffia fought against those students, with the disappearance and destruction of their bodies and cadavers, around september 2014. The case has an enormous influence in world and local public opinion, with different movilizations and artistic expressions that have a very critical reading of Mexican treatment in the field of Human Rights. Mexican and international neoliberalism, as well as bio and necropolitics, has been specially analyzed with the auxiliary tool of critical thinking. Between the theoretical authors that are close involved in these approaches, we can find Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, John Holloway and Pablo González Casanova. (shrink)