Resumo: A proposta do trabalho é analisar a história da separação dos campos conceituais de cunho epistemológico daqueles de cunho axiológico durante o final da idade moderna e sua recepção crítica na contemporaneidade. A extensão do tema implica cortes metodológicos para viabilizar a execução da pesquisa e estes resultam na escolha de dois filósofos relevantes e interligados: Immanuel Kant como representante do final da modernidade e cujo pensamento fundamenta a perspectiva contemporânea sobre a relação entre ciência e moralidade; e Martin (...) Heidegger, pensador contemporâneo, profundo leitor e crítico da obra kantiana bem como de sua recepção no início do século XX. A trajetória percorrida no texto explora os aspectos da epistemologia kantiana como articulação simétrica de sua moralidade, porém em um campo de decidibilidade sobre teorias. A moralidade por sua vez implica uma fundamentação prática que extrapola o paradigma de decidibilidade em favor de um pragmatismo de fundamentação metafisica. A leitura heideggeriana explora a construção desta simetria através da pretensa insuficiência do pilar conceitual dos dois campos: a subjetividade. A tentativa heideggeriana coloca a necessidade de pensar radicalmente o lugar do sujeito, tanto do conhecimento quanto da ação. A apresentação do problema de cisão entre epistemologia e axiologia em Kant e a proposta heideggeriana de re-união dos campos epistemológico e axiológico numa raiz originária de cunho ontológico é a trajetória que se busca explanar e analisar neste trabalho. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende esboçar um paralelo entre duas obras da filosofia política: o opúsculo inacabado “Do reino ou do governo dos príncipes ao Rei de Chipre” de São Tomás de Aquino, e o conhecido “O Príncipe” de Nicolau Maquiavel. O cotejo dos textos permite aproximações diretas entre dois momentos filosóficos distantes através da temática similar, pelo tratamento filosófico da tradição clássica, e pela sutileza do argumento que relaciona o bem comum com o privado, nas relações políticas. A análise divide-se (...) em duas partes temáticas: a definição de governante, e, as características de seu ofício. Em Tomás, articula-se a influência da política aristotélica com o modo como a finalidade privada do governante se estabelece numa hierarquia dos fins, justificadora do governo e direcionada ao bem comum. Em Maquiavel se observa uma recepção diferente do pensamento antigo, ligado à retórica romana, e uma hierarquia própria dos fins, que se direciona, de modo semelhante ao tomasiano, para o bem comum, mas com um tratamento diferente quanto a como esse bem público se relaciona com o bem privado, tanto do governante, quanto do povo que lhe é sujeito. Desta comparação conclui-se por uma necessidade de estabelecer a complexidade da filosofia política na passagem da idade média para o renascimento que afaste a ideia de uma ruptura total, e permita entender como a idade moderna partilha, em continuidade, elementos medievais e os desenvolve muito mais do que os abandona. (shrink)

Between Thought, Religion, and Contemporaneity: the hyperboles of being and the equivocal communication of the sacred (Entre o Pensamento, a Religião e a Contemporaneidade: as hipérboles do ser e a comunicação equívoca do sagrado).The contemporary philosophical thought regards itself as postmetaphysical, post-religious, postmodern, and post-philosophical. It advocates for metaphysics without metaphysics, ethics without ethics, and religion without religion. This paper aims at exploring the possibilities of thinking through the place and role of God, religion, and mystique in the philosophical discourse (...) of contemporaneity, having William Desmond’s thought as a reference. According to Desmond’s thought, there’s an intimate, idiotic, porosity in the call to truth. Thought is communication openness for its own originating source. This means that thought is situated at the knowledge threshold, and it may open up to a reverence attitude in the face of the mystery of being. Through metaphysical metaphors, intermediate names going beyond the univocal determination of metaphysical constructs from the past, Desmond aims at thinking through something which is present amidst finitude, indicating a foremost transcendence going beyond our experience: an upper transcendence essentially asymmetrical to our own transcendence. Such metaphors or hyperboles safeguard the enigma involved in the issue of God and the religious being. This enigma or mystery isn’t something negative, but openness for a fuller and overdetermined agapic origin. Keywords: Metaxology. Religion. Postmodern. Agape. Mystique. Resumo O pensamento filosófico contemporâneo se compreende como pós-metafisico, pós-religioso, pós-moderno e pós-filosófico. Ele advoga uma metafisica sem metafisica, uma ética sem ética e uma religião sem religião. O objetivo deste artigo é explorar as possibilidades de refletir sobre o lugar e o papel de Deus, da religião e da mística no discurso filosófico da contemporaneidade, tendo como referência o pensamento de William Desmond. Para o pensamento desmondiano, existe uma porosidade íntima, idiótica, no chamado à verdade. O pensamento é uma abertura comunicativa para a sua própria fonte originadora. Isso significa que o pensamento se encontra no limiar do saber, podendo abrir-se para uma posição de reverência diante do mistério do ser. Através de metáforas metafisicas, nomes intermediários para além da determinação unívoca das construções metafisicas do passado, Desmond busca refletir sobre algo presente em meio à finitude, que indica uma transcendência primeira que vai além da nossa experiência: uma transcendência superior essencialmente assimétrica à nossa própria transcendência. Tais metáforas ou hipérboles asseguram o enigma envolvido na questão de Deus e do ser religioso. Tal enigma ou mistério não é algo negativo, mas uma abertura para uma origem agápica mais plena e supradeterminada. Palavras-chave: Metaxologia. Religião. Pós-moderno. Ágape. Mística. (shrink)

This paper intends to expose and analyze the arguments of philosopher Julián Marías regarding the problem of ethics of the human person, from the approach of human life and the metaphysical anthropology. A member of the “School of Madrid”, his thinking has been inspired by the philosophy of Ortega y Gasset. This paper seeks to recover that influence’s context, to introduce the main concepts of its theoretical model, and to present their considerations about life as a projective, biographical argument, an (...) installation of the circumstances and mundane situations, as ways of constructing the person. (shrink)

Se trata de exponer y examinar los argumentos del filósofo Julián Marías en relación con el problema de la ética de la persona humana, desde la perspectiva de la vida humana y de la Antropología metafísica. Integrante de la "Escuela de Madrid", su pensamiento ha sido inspirado por la filosofía rac..

We study the SIS and SIRI epidemic models discussing different approaches to compute the thresholds that determine the appearance of an epidemic disease. The stochastic SIS model is a well known mathematical model, studied in several contexts. Here, we present recursively derivations of the dynamic equations for all the moments and we derive the stationary states of the state variables using the moment closure method. We observe that the steady states give a good approximation of the quasi-stationary states of the (...) SIS model. We present the relation between the SIS stochastic model and the contact process introducing creation and annihilation operators. For the spatial stochastic epidemic reinfection model SIRI, where susceptibles S can become infected I, then recover and remain only partial immune against reinfection R, we present the phase transition lines using the mean field and the pair approximation for the moments. We use a scaling argument that allow us to determine analytically an explicit formula for the phase transition lines in pair approximation. (shrink)

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

Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts. The goal of this book is to assess the main arguments against the possibility of knowledge, and its conclusions challenge this consensus. The book articulates and defends a theory of knowledge that belongs firmly in the truth-tracking tradition, and argues that although the theory has the (...) resources for blocking the main standard lines of sceptical reasoning, there is a sceptical argument against which the theory offers no defence, as it doesn’t rely on any assumptions that the theory would render illegitimate. The book ends with the suggestion that the problem might have a metaphysical solution—that although the sceptical argument may make no illegitimate epistemological assumptions, it does rest on a questionable account of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke rejects some of the most popular accounts of what meaning facts consist in on the grounds that they fail to accommodate the normative character of meaning. I argue that a widespread interpretation of Kripke's argument is incorrect. I contend that the argument does not rest on the contrast between descriptive and normative facts, but on the thought that speakers' uses of linguistic expressions have to be justified. I suggest that the line (...) of reasoning that I attribute to Kripke can be seen as putting pressure on the idea that predicate satisfaction is to be explained in terms of a relation between predicates and properties. (shrink)

Education is essential to life, and the epidemic affected everything. Parents want to get their kids the most important teaching. However, since COVID-19 has affected schools and other institutions, providing education has become the most significant issue. Online learning pedagogy uses technology to provide high-quality learning environments for student-centered learning. Further, this study explores the experiences and challenges faced by Filipino tertiary students regarding the lack of gadgets amidst online learning. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study (...) were: Some college students still have difficulty with online learning. Attending online classes is difficult, especially for students with limited resources. Smartphones, other gadgets, and internet connections play a significant role in online classrooms because they are the ones that students utilize while learning online, which is essential for successful participation in online higher education as well as for solving a variety of other difficulties in the new normal. Further, College students face similar health challenges. Having an online learning setup is not just about students' struggles with learning resources but also about their health issues. When our respondents used their smartphones for an extended period, they reported eye aches and blurred vision. They also said that some of their body parts, such as their legs and back, are aching, and feel pressured because they tend to overthink things in their surroundings, which causes them incredible difficulty in performing their best in attending online classes. Even though college students continue to suffer from a lack of learning resources during online sessions, they do their best to manage their needs and the scarcity of learning resources. Students have unique coping methods for dealing with difficulties in online classes. (shrink)

The subject matter of this paper is the view that it is correct, in an absolute sense, to believe a proposition just in case the proposition is true. I take issue with arguments in support of this view put forward by Nishi Shah and David Velleman.

The paper argues against Sosa’s claim that sensitivity cannot be differentially supported over safety as the right requirement for knowledge. Its main contention is that, although all sensitive beliefs that should be counted as knowledge are also safe, some insensitive true beliefs that shouldn’t be counted as knowledge are nevertheless safe.

In the recent literature on confirmation there are two leading approaches to the provision of a probabilistic measure of the degree to which a hypothesis is confirmed by evidence. The first is to construe the degree to which evidence E confirms hypothesis H as a function that is directly proportional to p and inversely proportional to p . I shall refer to this as the probability approach. The second approach construes the notion as a function that is directly proportional to (...) the true-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is true, p – and inversely proportional to the false-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is false, p . These reverse conditional probabilities – of the evidence on the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis – are sometimes known as likelihoods. I shall refer to the approach to confirmation that uses them as the likelihood approach.For each of these approaches, there are two obvious options as to how to define the confirmation function. The first is to define it as the difference between the magnitude that is treated as increasing confirmation or p ) and the magnitude that is treated as decreasing confirmation or p ). The second is to define confirmation as the quotient of these two magnitudes.This yields four different measures of confirmation, represented in the following table: Differences RatiosProbabilities PD = p – p1 PR = Graphic2Likelihoods LD = p – p3 LR = Graphic4All these measures agree on whether or not E provides some support for H. Intuitively, we want to say that E provides some support for H just in case learning that E is true would make us assign a higher probability to H, i.e. when p(H …. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing (...) free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. (shrink)

The paper deals with a version of the principle that a belief source can be a knowledge source only if the subject knows that it is reliable. I argue that the principle can be saved from the main objections that motivate its widespread rejection: the claim that it leads to skepticism, the claim that it forces us to accept counterintuitive knowledge ascriptions and the claim that it is incompatible with reliabilist accounts of knowledge. I argue that naturalist epistemologists should reject (...) these claims. I introduce my treatment of the principle by considering the analogous situation posed by the closure principle. (shrink)

Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top management support to (...) the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

O impacto para a saúde mental dos filhos da gravidade da depressão materna (DM), em comorbidade com outros transtornos, carece de estudos. Objetivou-se comparar indicadores de saúde mental de escolares, considerando grupos diferenciados pela gravidade da DM com e sem comorbidade com Transtorno de Personalidade Borderline (TPB). Foram avaliadas 90 díades mães-crianças, distribuídas em três grupos, sistematicamente avaliados: Grupo Depressão (GD) - mães com indicadores de sintomas atuais de depressão e histórico de episódios anteriores, sem indicadores de TPB, Grupo Depressão (...) em Comorbidade com TPB (GD-TPB) - mães com sintomas depressivos atuais e histórico de episódios anteriores com comorbidade com indicadores de TPB, e Grupo de Comparação (GC) - mães sem histórico de sintomas depressivos nem indicadores de TPB. As crianças, de ambos os sexos, tinham idade entre seis e 10 anos. Procedeu-se às avaliações em sessões individuais: a) com as mães - Questionário Geral e Questionário Sobre a Saúde do Paciente, Entrevista Clínica TPB e Questionário de Capacidades e Dificuldades (SDQ); e b) com as crianças - Teste das Matrizes Progressivas Coloridas de Raven. Tratou-se os dados por procedimentos estatísticos (p ≤0,05). As crianças do GD-TPB apresentaram, com significância estatística, média maior que GD e GC quanto ao escore de problemas total, conduta, hiperatividade e problemas de relacionamento. Verificou-se associação da gravidade da DM com TPB com mais problemas de saúde mental infantil, caracterizando um grupo clínico preferencial para intervenções em saúde mental. (shrink)

The author challenges the view that birth cannot be a morally relevant fact in the process of development from zygote to child. He reviews specific arguments against giving any moral significance to the fact of birth. Drawing on recent work in developmental psychology, he contends that the lives of neonates can have a level of self-consciousness that confers moral significance but can only be possessed after birth. He shows that the position he has argued for provides a framework within which (...) the move from the moral validity of aborting sentient fetuses to the moral validity of infanticide might be resisted. He concludes that arguments suggesting that birth can be morally significant support the view that the acquisition of moral significance is a gradual and multilayered phenomenon. (shrink)

I argue that Epistemic Disjunctivism doesn’t sustain a successful anti-sceptical strategy. I contend, in particular, that the treatment of scepticism that Duncan Pritchard puts forward on behalf of Epistemic Disjunctivism is unsatisfactory.

This study examines the effects of transformational, transactional, and non-transactional leadership on hotel employees’ outcomes including extra effort, perceived efficiency, and satisfaction with managers. Employees from eleven 4-star hotels in Spain provided the collected data. A series of statistical analyses identify the elements of three leadership styles using a multi-factor leadership questionnaire ; examine the effect of leadership styles on employees’ outcomes. The results of this study indicate that “idealized attributes” of transformational leadership and “contingent reward” from transactional leadership are (...) the most important factors that positively affect all three outcomes ; and to assess the moderating effect of different types of ownership of hotel properties on the relationship between styles of leadership and outcomes of employees’ activities other than these two elements, the significant factors indicating positive or negative relationships vary depending on the types of individual outcomes as well as ownership of hotel properties. The discussion sections indicate theoretical and practical implications of the findings. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that some of the central doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be seen as addressing the twin problems of semantic unity and...

James Shaw has written an excellent book on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. It manages to provide fresh perspectives on a topic on which it seemed.

The publication of scientific papers has become increasingly problematic in the last decades. Even if we agree that a renewed model is needed for peer-reviewed scientific publication, we think the problem does not essentially lie in professional publishing—with economic incentives—but in the publish-or-perish culture that dominates the lives of researchers and academics.

Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research presents a compilation of six decades of Basic Income literature. It includes the most influential empirical research and theoretical arguments on all aspects of the Basic Income proposal. -/- Includes six decades of the most influential literature on Basic Income Includes unpublished and hard-to-find articles The first major compendium on one of the most innovative political reform proposals of our age Explores multidisciplinary views of Basic Income, with philosophical, economic, political, and sociological views (...) Features contributions from key and well-known philosophers and economists, including Atkinson, Simon, Friedman, Fromm, Gorz, Offe, Rawls, Pettit, Van Parijs, and more Presents the best theoretical and empirical arguments for and against Basic Income -/- . (shrink)

I discuss the account of logical consequence advanced in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I argue that the role that elementary propositions are meant to play in this account can be used to explain two remarkable features that Wittgenstein ascribes to them: that they are logically independent from one another and that their components refer to simple objects. I end with a proposal as to how to understand Wittgenstein's claim that all propositions can be analysed as truth functions of elementary propositions.

I take issue with Robert Brandom’s claim that on an analysis of knowledge based on objective probabilities it is not possible to provide a stable answer to the question whether a belief has the status of knowledge. I argue that the version of the problem of generality developed by Brandom doesn’t undermine a truth-tracking account of noninferential knowledge that construes truth-tacking in terms of conditional probabilities. I then consider Sherrilyn Roush’s claim that an account of knowledge based on probabilistic tracking (...) faces a version of the problem of generality. I argue that the problems she raises are specific to her account, and do not affect the version of the view that I have advanced. I then consider Brandom’s argument that the cases that motivate reliabilist epistemologies are in principle exceptional. I argue that he has failed to make a cogent case for this claim. I close with the suggestion that the representationalist approach to knowledge that I endorse and Brandom rejects is in principle compatible with the kind of pragmatist approach to belief and truth that both Brandom and I endorse. (shrink)

Menas is a term that has attracted a great deal of attention on the political scene in Spain at present. Although the term had a neutral usage originally, being an acronym for unaccompanied foreign minors, it has recently evolved into a term with clear negative connotations. This article explores what kind of term menas is today. Specifically, we will examine whether menas is a slur or an ESTI, an ethnic/social term used as an insult. First, we point out the most (...) defining characteristics of both types of terms. Then, using analyses on linguistic corpora, we show that menas exhibits the most defining characteristics of ESTIs. We end by discussing the possible evolution of the term, pointing out that, although the term presents the features related to ESTIs, there are two possible scenarios. On the one hand, the term may retain its neutral uses and thus remain an ESTI. On the other hand, the neutral uses may disappear, and thus the term may become a slur. (shrink)

Con el movimiento de la Ilustración, Kant llamaba a hacer uso público de una razón mayor de edad para desmontar el pensamiento dogmático de los tutores y abrirse a formas de argumentación libres y emancipadoras. Por otro lado, es sabido cómo el romanticismo surge como reacción frente al pensamiento ilustrado. El espíritu de la época busca refugio en el sentimiento después de la pérdida del contenido absoluto. Esta nueva figura -el sentimiento- va a ser a los ojos de Hegel la (...) conclusión lógica a que ha conducido la Ilustración. Aquí va a residir el motivo fundamental del enfrentamiento entre la Ilustración y el Romanticismo, donde las figuras de Kant y Schleiermacher se encuentran o quizás se separan en cuanto al ámbito que debe corresponder a la filosofía, a la religión y si hay un punto de encuentro en las dos. (shrink)

Scholars have long debated whether leader's integrity affects managerial decision making with respect to social responsibility. In this paper, we propose a model in which transformational leadership mediates integrity and corporate social responsibility and examine the relationship between these concepts. A survey of 170 senior managers from 50 organizations was conducted. Results indicate that integrity is a predictor of transformational leadership behavior and that transformational leaders’ behaviors are linked to CSR practices. It was also found that leaders rated with higher (...) integrity are engaged in CSR because they exhibit more transformational leadership behaviors. These findings add to the extant literature by demonstrating that integrity is important as transformational leaders engage more actively on ‘responsible’ behaviors. Practical implications call for an understanding among corporate leaders of the benefits of integrity and how it relates to transformational leadership. Organizations can improve their selection and leadership development processes by focusing on these two dimensions. (shrink)

To the sceptic's contention that I don't know that I have hands because I don't know that there is an external world, the Moorean replies that I know that there is an external world because I know that I have hands. Crispin Wright has argued that the Moorean move is illegitimate, and has tried to block it by limiting the applicability of the principle of the transmission of knowledge by inference—the principle that recognising the validity of an inference from known (...) premises generates knowledge of the conclusion. I argue that, in the presence of some plausible assumptions, blocking the Moorean move does not require limiting the applicability of the transmission principle. Then I argue against Jim Pryor's contention that the Moorean argument transmits evidential support from its premises to its conclusion. (shrink)

Each science has its own domain of investigation, but one and the same science can be formalized in different languages with different universes of discourse. The concept of the domain of a science and the concept of the universe of discourse of a formalization of a science are distinct, although they often coincide in extension. In order to analyse the presuppositions and implications of choices of domain and universe, this article discusses the treatment of omega arguments in three very different (...) formalizations of arithmetic. In Peano's formalization the domain is a restricted class of individuals, while the universe of discourse is the unrestricted class of all individuals. In Gödel's formalization the domain is a restricted class of individuals as in Peano's formalization, but the universe of discourse coincides with the domain. In Whitehead-Russell's formalization the domain is a class of logical notions in Tarski's sense, that are necessarily not individuals, whereas the universe of discourse is the unrestricted class of individuals as in Peano's formalization. The present approach emphasizes the viewpoint that the universe of discourse of a given discourse is important in determining which propositions are expressed by which sentences. (shrink)

The paper deals with the interpretation of Wittgenstein's views on the power of occurrent mental states to sort objects or states of affairs as in accord or in conflict with them, as presented in the rule-following passages of the Philosophical Investigations. I shall argue first that the readings advanced by Saul Kripke and John McDowell fail to provide a satisfactory construal of Wittgenstein's treatment of a platonist account of this phenomenon, according to which the sorting power of occurrent mental states (...) is to be explained by reference to the mind's ability to grasp universals. I contend that the argument that Kripke extracts from Wittgenstein's discussion doesn't succeed in undermining the platonist position. Then I argue that McDowell's reading exhibits a more serious shortcoming: the position that he ascribes to Wittgenstein is indistinguishable from the platonist account. Then I put forward a proposal as to how to articulate the relationship between Wittgenstein's views and the platonist position. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é explorar as conexões entre o problema da morte, o conceito de ideia e a tese da indestrutibilidade do nosso ser com a morte, em Schopenhauer. Como ponto de partida, é apresentada a crítica de Schopenhauer à compreensão empírica da morte como passagem ao não-ser. Passa-se, então às considerações do filósofo sobre a indestrutibilidade do nosso ser com a morte, por meio do destaque às suas considerações sobre o caráter de coisa, vinculado à sua intepretação das (...) ideias como formas eternas. Após discorrer pontualmente a respeito do sentido desta noção na filosofia platônica, são apresentados os principais elementos que configuram a apropriação schopenhaueriana da teoria platônica das ideias tendo em vista exclusivamente o problema elegido, qual seja, a morte e a indestrutibilidade do nosso ser. (shrink)

I provide a construal of the epistemic regress problem and I take issue with the contention that a foundationalist solution is incompatible with an internalist account of warrant. I sketch a foundationalist solution to the regress problem that respects a plausible version of internalism. I end with the suggestion that the strategy that I have presented is not available only to the traditional versions of foundationalism that ascribe foundational status to experiential beliefs. It can also be used to generate a (...) version of internalist foundationalism based on reliabilist principles. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the two central ingredients of Laurence BonJour’s position on empirical knowledge that have survived the transition from his earlier coherentist views to his current endorsement of the doctrine of the given: his construal of the problem of the epistemic regress and his rejection of an internalist solution to the problem. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a critical assessment of BonJour’s arguments against externalism. I argue that they fail to put real pressure on (...) externalism, as they rely on a highly questionable conception of epistemic rationality and responsibility. Then, more briefly, I take issue with BonJour’s endorsement of the irrelevance thesis—the claim that even if externalism were true it would not offer a satisfactory solution to the epistemic regress problem. I contend that he is not entitled to subscribe this thesis unless he is prepared to abandon his construal of the problem. (shrink)

An introduction to the basic concepts and results of contemporary logic, including a discussion of the basic mathematical tools needed to master the technical aspects of the subject.