The reductionist/anti-reductionist debate about testimonial justification (and knowledge) can be taken to collapse into a controversy about two kinds of underlying monitoring mechanism. The nature and structure of this mechanism remains an enigma in the debate. We suggest that the underlying monitoring mechanism amounts to emotion-based stereotyping. Our main argument in favor of the stereotype hypothesis about testimonial monitoring is that the underlying psychological mechanism responsible for testimonial monitoring has several conditions to satisfy. Each of these conditions is satisfied by (...) our “hot” stereotypical capacities. Intergroup emotions play a key role here. Intergroup emotions inform the agent about which candidate stereotype is better suited to the current situation. Emotions serve as evidence that makes a certain stereotype and its particular profile of features more or less expected. (shrink)

Given its simplicity and enormous unifying and explanatory power, the predictive mind approach to mental architecture (predictive processing) is becoming an increasingly attractive way of carrying out theoretical and experimental research in cognitive science. According to this view, the mind is constantly attempting to minimize the discrepancy between its expectations (or sensory predictions) and its actual incoming sensory signals. In the interoceptive inference view of emotion (IIE), the principles of the predictive mind have been extended to account for emotion. IIE (...) holds that, in direct analogy to visual perception, emotions arise from interoceptive predictions of the causes of current interoceptive afferents. In this paper, I argue that this view is problematic, as there are arguably no regularities pertaining to emotion in the physiological inner milieu, from which the relevant interoceptive expectations could be learned. Therefore, it is unlikely that our expectations relative to emotion involve interoceptive expectations in the way required by IIE. The latter view should then be amended. In this respect, I suggest that emotions might arise via external interoceptive active inference: by sampling and modifying the external environment in order to change a valenced feeling. Thus, if the predictive mind approach is on track, emotions are not to be understood in direct analogy to perception (e.g., vision). Rather, I suggest that the view of emotion that emerges from the predictive mind is in line with motivational approaches to emotion. In the suggested view, (almost) just as drives (or ‘homeostatic motivations’), emotions are suited for the active regulation of the inner milieu by sampling the environment in order to finesse our emotion expectations. In this view, emotions are individuated, and differ from drives, in virtue of the distinctive sampling policies (‘actions’) characteristic of the high levels of the predictive hierarchy. (shrink)

Valorising the biocultural heritage of common goods could enable peasant farmers to achieve socially and economically inclusive sustainability. Increasingly appreciated by consumers, peasant heritage products offer small farmers promising opportunities for economic, social and territorial development. Identifying the obstacles and levers of this complex, multi-scale and multi-stakeholder objective requires an integrative framework. We applied the panarchy conceptual framework to two cases of participatory research with small quinoa producers: a local fair in Chile and quinoa export production in Bolivia. In both (...) cases, the “commoning” process was crucial both to bring stakeholders together inside their communities and to gain outside recognition for their production and thus achieve social and economic inclusion. Despite the differences in scale, the local fair and the export market shared a similar marketing strategy based on short value chains promoting quality products with high identity value. In these dynamics of biocultural heritage valorisation, the panarchical approach revealed the central place as well as the vulnerability of the community territory. As a place of both anchoring and opening, the community territory is the privileged space where autonomous and consensual control over the governance of common biocultural resources can be exercised. (shrink)

Potencialidades y Límites de la Democracia DigitalAgradezco la oportunidad que me brinda la Universidad Bolivariana de comentar, a modo de bienvenida, este libro sobre democracia digital. La obra constituye una oportuna contribución al quehacer académico, que pone a disposición del público un material intelectual variado, bien escogido y no siempre accesible. José Ignacio Porras y Rubén Araya nos entregan un conjunto de bien seleccionados artículos que, por su variedad, deben resultar atracti..

This book explores the epistemic side of oppression, focusing on racial and sexual oppression and their interconnections. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from interacting epistemically in fruitful ways--from listening to each other, learning from each other, and mutually enriching each other's perspectives. Medina's epistemology of resistance offers a contextualist theory of our complicity with epistemic injustices and a social connection model of shared responsibility for improving epistemic conditions of participation in social practices. (...) Through the articulation of a new interactionism and polyphonic contextualism, the book develops a sustained argument about the role of the imagination in mediating social perceptions and interactions. It concludes that only through the cultivation of practices of resistance can we develop a social imagination that can help us become sensitive to the suffering of excluded and stigmatized subjects. Drawing on Feminist Standpoint Theory and Critical Race Theory, this book makes contributions to social epistemology and to recent discussions of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, epistemic responsibility, counter-performativity, and solidarity in the fight against racism and sexism. (shrink)

This article aims to review the standard objections to dualism and to argue that will either fail to convince someone committed to dualism or are flawed on independent grounds. I begin by presenting the taxonomy of metaphysical positions on concrete particulars as they relate to the dispute between materialists and dualists, and in particular substance dualism is defined. In the first section, several kinds of substance dualism are distinguished and the relevant varieties of this kind of dualism are selected. The (...) remaining sections are analyses of the standard objections to substance dualism : It is uninformative, has troubles accounting for soul individuation, causal pairing and interaction, violates laws of physics, is made implausible by the development of neuroscience and it postulates entities beyond necessity. I conclude that none of these objections is successful. (shrink)

In debating the ethics of immigration, philosophers have focused much of their attention on determining whether a political community ought to have the discretionary right to control immigration. They have not, however, given the same amount of consideration to determining whether there are any ethical limits on how a political community enforces its immigration policy. This article, therefore, offers a different approach to immigration justice. It presents a case against legitimate states having discretionary control over immigration by showing both how (...) ethical limits on enforcement circumscribe the options legitimate states have in determining their immigration policy and how all immigrants (including undocumented immigrants) are entitled to certain protections against a state’s enforcement apparatus. (shrink)

The epistemic status of Natural Selection has seemed intriguing to biologists and philosophers since the very beginning of the theory to our present times. One prominent contemporary example is Elliott Sober, who claims that NS, and some other theories in biology, and maybe in economics, are peculiar in including explanatory models/conditionals that are a priori in a sense in which explanatory models/conditionals in Classical Mechanics and most other standard theories are not. Sober’s argument focuses on some “would promote” sentences that (...) according to him, play a central role in NS explanations and are both causal and a priori. Lange and Rosenberg criticize Sober arguing that, though there may be some unspecific a priori causal claims, there are not a priori causal claims that specify particular causal factors. Although we basically agree with Lange and Rosenberg’s criticism, we think it remains silent about a second important element in Sober’s dialectics, namely his claim that, contrary to what happens in mechanics, in NS explanatory conditionals are a priori, and that this is so in quite specific explanatory models. In this paper we criticize this second element of Sober’s argument by analyzing what we take to be the four possible interpretations of Sober’s claim, and argue that, terminological preferences aside, the possible senses in which explanatory models in NS can qualify, or include elements that can qualify, as a priori, also apply to CM and other standard, highly unified theories. We conclude that this second claim is unsound, or at least that more needs to be said in order to sustain that NS explanatory models are a priori in a sense in which CM models are not. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce an alternative to Łukasiewicz’s 4-valued modal logic Ł. As it is known, Ł is afflicted by “Łukasiewicz type paradoxes”. The logic we define, PŁ4, is a strong paraconsistent and paracomplete 4-valued modal logic free from this type of paradoxes. PŁ4 is determined by the degree of truth-preserving consequence relation defined on the ordered set of values of a modification of the matrix MŁ characteristic for the logic Ł. On the other hand, PŁ4 (...) is a rich logic in which a number of connectives can be defined. It also has a simple bivalent semantics of the Belnap–Dunn type. (shrink)

A simple, bivalent semantics is defined for Łukasiewicz’s 4-valued modal logic Łm4. It is shown that according to this semantics, the essential presupposition underlying Łm4 is the following: A is a theorem iff A is true conforming to both the reductionist and possibilist theses defined as follows: rt: the value of modal formulas is equivalent to the value of their respective argument iff A is true, etc.); pt: everything is possible. This presupposition highlights and explains all oddities arising in Łm4.

Is a virtue approach in argumentation possible without committing the ad hominem fallacy? My answer is affirmative, provided that the object study of our theory is well delimited. My proposal is that a theory of argumentative virtue should not focus on argument appraisal, as has been assumed, but on those traits that make an individual achieve excellence in argumentative practices. An agent-based approach in argumentation should be developed, not in order to find better grounds for argument appraisal, but to gain (...) insight into argumentative habits and excellence. This way we can benefit from what a virtue argumentation theory really has to offer. (shrink)

Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio released the "Encyclical Laudato Si': on the care of common home" on June 18, 2015, the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has shown that the temperature of Earth continues increasing and that May of 2015 was Earth's warmest month, since 1880. By endorsing the scientific knowledge in relation to anthropogenic factors on global warming and by defending actions to confront the causes of climate change and ecosystem degradation, the Holy See has taken (...) a key step to put Catholics at the forefront of global ecological struggle and to encourage the signing of the global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the 21st Conference of the Parties, that will take place in December in Paris. But the encyclical of Pope Francis proposes a larger task that is to protect the poorest of the poor countries, addressing jointly the human environment and the natural environment from the perspective of an integral ecology. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the advances and limitations of the propositions of the encyclical Laudato Si ' and to expand the dialogue on gender relations and deep ecology. (shrink)

The existence of a Richter–Peleg multi-utility representation of a preorder by means of upper semicontinuous or continuous functions is discussed in connection with the existence of a Richter–Peleg utility representation. We give several applications that include the analysis of countable Richter–Peleg multi-utility representations.

In this essay, I argue that even when they appear to help, restrictions on migration are usually only an impediment, not an aid, to cosmopolitan justice. Even though some egalitarian cosmopolitans are well intentioned in their support of migration restrictions, I argue that migration restrictions are (i) not truly cosmopolitan and (ii) will not have the kinds of consequences they expect. My argument in defense of this claim begins, in section 1, by outlining a defense of migration restrictions based on (...) egalitarian cosmopolitan grounds. Then in sections two and three, I reply to the harms this position associates with open borders and provide some reasons as to why restrictions on migration are incompatible with cosmopolitan justice. (shrink)

In Bermúdez 2013 I argued against David Lewis’s well-known and widely accepted claim that Newcomb’s problem and the prisoner’s dilemma are really notational variants of a single problem. Mark Walker’s paper in this journal takes issue with my argument. In this note I show how Walker’s criticisms are misplaced. The problems with Walker’s argument point to more general and independently interesting conclusions about, first, the relation between deliberation and decision and, second, the differences between the prisoner’s dilemma, which is a (...) strategic choice problem, and Newcomb’s problem, which is a parametric choice problem. (shrink)

Under the influence of naturalistic approaches, contemporary philosophy of science tends to characterize scientific objectivity not by virtue of the individualistic following of rules or satisfying epistemic utilities, but as a property arising from the organisational features of groups. This paper presents a critical review of one such proposal, that of Helen Longino, probing some of its main features against the debate between Pasteur and Pouchet in mid-nineteenth-century France regarding the spontaneous generation of life. After considering some weaknesses and strengths, (...) it is argued that Longino’s social epistemology is only able to generate normativity by implicitly assuming a classic procedural notion of epistemic acceptability. The paper also aims to use this historical case to shed light on the complex, multidimensional nature of the dynamics of actual science, arguing both against purely epistemic and exclusively social approaches in a satisfactory meta-scientific explanation of controversies. (shrink)

José Ortega y Gasset publicó en 1939, en la colección Austral, este ensayo filosófico que obtuvo una gran repercusión internacional en su día y sigue siendo en la actualidad una de las obras clave del pensamiento orteguiano. Esta edición conmemora los setenta años transcurridos desde entonces y ofrece la única edición autorizada y revisada personalmente por el autor.

Se ha sostenido tradicionalmente que los predicados atribuidos a Dios y a las criaturas son análogos. Pero, ¿qué es la analogía? Varios filósofos han pensado que la analogía debe ser considerada como una forma de ambigüedad. Argumentamos aquí que los predicados atribuidos a Dios y a las criaturas no son ambiguos o vagos. Siguiendo algunas sugerencias de McDaniel, proponemos una concepción de la analogía donde el fenómeno semántico está asociado con el carácter más o menos natural de la propiedad o (...) propiedades que instancian las entidades que satisfacen el predicado análogo. Un predicado "θ" es análogo si y sólo si, la propiedad Θ, que algo instancia, si y sólo si es θ, es menos natural que cualquier propiedad Ξ tal que todo lo que instancie Ξ, instancia Θ. Además, se requiere que las entidades de las cuales el término análogo es predicado deban ser ontológica o epistémicamente dependientes unas de otras. || It has been traditionally sustained that predicates attributed to God and to the creatures are analogical predicates. But, what is analogy? Several philosophers have thought that analogy should be taken as a form of ambiguity. Here we argue that predicates attributed to God and to creatures are neither ambiguous nor vague. Following some suggestions given by McDaniel, we propose a view of analogy in which the semantic phenomenon is associated with the more or less natural character of the property or properties that the entities that satisfy the analogous predicate instantiate. A predicate "θ" is analogous if and only if the property Θ, which something instantiates, if and only if it is θ, is less natural that any property Ξ so that anything that instantiates Ξ, instantiates Θ. Furthermore, it is required that the entities of which the analogous term is predicated should be either ontologically or epistemically dependent on each other. (shrink)

The development of X-ray diffraction photography was central to the discovery of the helical structure of DNA in 1953. Unfortunately the story of how this technique was developed receded into the background as subsequent attention focused on the moment of discovery by Watson and Crick. As a result the importance of photography as ‘data’ and the role it plays in scientific discovery is underplayed. We seek to rectify this situation by presenting this story and by drawing conclusions about the importance (...) of this form of photography in scientific investigation as well as for the insights it gives us regarding the process of discovery. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 170 - 193 Boethius identifies beings that _are in_ a subject with what the Scholastics called predicamental accident, and predication by accident with the predication of what _is in_ a subject. The first of these questionable assimilations went on to become terminology commonly accepted by Scholastics of all eras. On the other hand, the second, which seems quite consistent with the thinking of Aristotle, was only admitted with many reservations, probably because of the (...) bewildering claims of Aristotle in _Cat._ 5, 2a27-34 about the predication of what _is in_ the subject. In what follows I will try to show how these phrases, properly understood, are consistent with the idea that what _is in_ the subject is said by accident of the substance, although they implicate a difficulty poorly resolved by Boethius himself and those who followed him on this point, of whom I will only mention by way of example some Scholastics from the 16th century. (shrink)

Presentación Tercer Seminario Internacional Estudios Utilitaristas "Nuevas Tendencias en la Investigación Sobre John Stuart Mill", Santiago de Compostela, 26-27 junio de 2014.

Dossier: Post-religional Paradigm Editorial - Vol. 13, no. 37, Jan./Mar. 2015.

The purpose of this paper is to defend, contra Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (F&PP), that the theory of natural selection (NS) is a perfectly bona fide empirical unified explanatory theory. F&PP claim there is nothing non-truistic, counterfactual-supporting, of an “adaptive” character and common to different explanations of trait evolution. In his debate with Fodor, and in other works, Sober defends NS but claims that, compared with classical mechanics (CM) and other standard theories, NS is peculiar in that its explanatory models are (...) a priori (a trait shared with few other theories). We argue that NS provides perfectly bona fide adaptive explanations of phenotype evolution, unified by a common natural-selection guiding principle. First, we introduce the debate and reply to F&PP’s main argument against NS. Then, by reviewing different examples and analyzing Fisher’s model in detail, we show that NS explanations of phenotypic evolution share a General Natural Selection Principle. Third, by elaborating an analogy with CM, we argue against F&PP’s claim that such a principle would be a mere truism and thus explanatorily useless, and against Sober’s thesis that NS models/explanations have a priori components that are not present in CM and other common empirical theories. Irrespective of differences in other respects, the NS guiding principle has the same epistemic status as other guiding principles in other highly unified theories such as CM. We argue that only by pointing to the guiding principle-driven nature that it shares with CM and other highly unified theories, something no-one has done yet in this debate, one can definitively show that NS is not defective in F&PP’s sense: in the respects relevant to the debate, Natural Selection is as defective and as epistemically peculiar as Classical Mechanics and other never questioned theories. (shrink)

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.

In this paper we expand previous results obtained in [2] about the study of categorical equivalence between the category IRL 0 of integral residuated lattices with bottom, which generalize MV-algebras and a category whose objects are called c-differential residuated lattices. The equivalence is given by a functor ${{\mathsf{K}^\bullet}}$ , motivated by an old construction due to J. Kalman, which was studied by Cignoli in [3] in the context of Heyting and Nelson algebras. These results are then specialized to the case (...) of MV-algebras and the corresponding category ${MV^{\bullet}}$ of monadic MV-algebras induced by “Kalman’s functor” ${\mathsf{K}^\bullet}$ . Moreover, we extend the construction to ℓ-groups introducing the new category of monadic ℓ-groups together with a functor ${\Gamma ^\sharp}$ , that is “parallel” to the well known functor ${\Gamma}$ between ℓ and MV-algebras. (shrink)

José A. Díez examines the reasons for claiming that models involve fictions. He opposes the claim that, in order to account for some key features of the practice of modeling in science, such as the existence of unsuccessful representations and also of successful yet inaccurate or idealized ones, it is necessary to accept fictional entities. In resisting such a view, he sketches an account of scientific modeling and argue that according to such account there is no need for strong (...) factionalism, only a weak, unproblematic fictionalist component is needed. (shrink)

The apparently obviously true doctrine of opacity has been thought to be inconsistent with two others, to which many philosophers of language are also attracted: the referentialist account of the semantics of proper names and indexicals, on the one hand, and the principle of semantic innocence, on the other. I discuss here one of the most popular strategies for resolving the apparent inconsistency, namely Mark Richard’s theory of belief ascriptions, and raise three problems for it. Finally, I propose an alternative (...) theory of the semantics of belief-ascribing sentences that clearly avoids the three problems that trouble Richard’s theory, and advocate it as the best available strategy for resolving the apparent inconsistency between the doctrine of opacity, referentialism, and the principle of semantic innocence. (shrink)

This article analyses the nature of mental imagery in metaphoric thought as envisaged by the contemporary theory of metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics (Lakoff, Cambridge University Press, 1993). Our study of metaphor in the field of marine biology draws on two crucial aspects of mental imagery, namely dynamicity and pervasiveness. Image metaphors and behaviour-based metaphors have generally been regarded as two different types of resemblance metaphor. In our view, the dynamicity of certain mental images highlights inherent similarities between these two types (...) of metaphor, and makes the differences between them more apparent than real. For this reason, we propose a more refined description of resemblance metaphors in terms of the static or dynamic nature of the mental images underlying them. Our study also underlines the fact that mental images permeate all classes of metaphor, and that the pervasiveness and dynamicity of mental images affords insights into both resemblance metaphors and non-resemblance metaphors. (shrink)

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of so-called covert dogwhistles. I discuss whether a covert dogwhistle is a specific sort of mechanism of manipulation or whether, on the contrary, it draws on other already familiar linguistic mechanisms such as implicatures or presuppositions. I put forward a series of arguments aimed at illustrating that implicatures and presuppositions, on the one hand, and covert dogwhistles, on the other, differ in their linguistic behaviour concerning plausible deniability, cancellability, calculability and mutual acceptance. I (...) concluded this paper by outlining a simple theory for covert dogwhistles according to which they are attitude-foregrounders. (shrink)

A violência é um dos conceitos mais importante do pensamento político de Arendt. No entanto, ela observa a falta de um estudo sistemática, bem como a banalização desse conceito, escondendo assim o seu caráter instrumental. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a compreensão de Arendt desse conceito no campo da política, como aparece em sua obra sobre a violência.

A partir da obra Origens do totalitarismo de Arendt, este estudo apresenta a ideia totalitária do “tudo é possível” e a sua colocação em prática no século XX, em nome de um projeto político de dominação total que considerou o homem como um ser supérfluo com o qual se poderia fazer qualquer coisa, inclusive transformá-lo em um indivíduo capaz de obedecer cegamente os princípios ideológicos do governo totalitário encarnados na pessoa do “chefe”. Mas, por outro lado também, este estudo apresenta (...) o posicionamento de Arendt que inverte a ideia totalitária do “tudo é possível” para pensar uma nova política que seja o inverso radical do totalitarismo, uma política na qual todos possam manifestar a sua liberdade através de ação e do discurso na presença de seus pares; para isso, a nossa autora aposta na capacidade humana de “começar algo novo” com seus próprios recursos. (shrink)

The apparently obviously true doctrine of opacity has been thought to be inconsistent with two others, to which many philosophers of language are also attracted: the referentialist account of the semantics of proper names and indexicals, on the one hand, and the principle of semantic innocence, on the other. I discuss here one of the most popular strategies for resolving the apparent inconsistency, namely Mark Richard’s theory of belief ascriptions, and raise three problems for it. Finally, I propose an alternative (...) theory of the semantics of belief-ascribing sentences that clearly avoids the three problems that trouble Richard’s theory, and advocate it as the best available strategy for resolving the apparent inconsistency between the doctrine of opacity, referentialism, and the principle of semantic innocence. (shrink)

El llamado «nuevo paradigma arqueológico bíblico» verá consolidado el aprecio que le tengan la teología y las ciencias de la religión en la medida en que sus descubrimientos se vayan aplicando a los principales temas bíblicos, histórico-religiosos y teológicos. Una de estas aplicaciones es la que acaba de darse en un modo significativo con la publicación del libro de Thomas Römer, L’invention de Dieu, que viene a ser en este momento el mejor resumen de los hallazgos –y cuestionamientos– que la (...) nueva arqueología puede aportarnos hoy acerca del Dios bíblico.En un primer momento, este artículo resume las novedades más destacadas de la nueva visión sobre el Dios bíblico desde la perspectiva de la nueva arqueología, tal como aparecen en el libro de Römer, y en un segundo momento trata de poner de relieve algunas consecuencias y sugerencias, tanto en el plano teórico cuanto en el práctico-pedagógico. (shrink)

Es gibt also einen Neu-Fichteanismus. Nun, worin besteht er? Denn die deutliche Zunahme der Anwesenheit Fichtes in der Literatur, so beträchtlich sie auch sein mag, reicht nicht, um einen Begriff zu prägen. Lübbe stellt fest: »Zwischen 1890 und 1900 gibt es zu Fichtes Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie kaum mehr als 10 bemerkenswerte Titel. Zwischen 1900 und 1920 sind es gegen 200«. Das ist zwar viel, aber nicht sehr bedeutsam. Wenn wir die Rolle unserer wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen im Leben einer Kulturgesellschaft relativieren, dann (...) entdecken wir, daß die Angaben, die Klaus Christian Köhnke in seiner Arbeit »Philosophische Begriffe in wissenschaftsinterner und -externer Kommunikation. Am Beispiel der Fichte-Festreden des Jahres 1862« vorstellt, viel entscheidender sind. Dort lesen wir nämlich, daß obwohl 1862 keine Monographie über Fichte verfaßt wurde, doch etwas viel Wichtigeres geschah: jenes Jahr stellte einen Wandel in den Beziehungen zwischen Philosophie, Universität und Gesellschaft dar. Diese Veränderungen bringen uns auf die Spur, um begriffliche Transformationen einschätzen zu können. Köhnke faßt wie folgt zusammen. (shrink)