We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to (...) doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non-skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives. (shrink)

Should learning we disagree about p lead you to reduce confidence in p? Some who think so want to except beliefs in which you are rationally highly confident. I argue that this is wrong; we should reject accounts that rely on this intuitive thought. I then show that quite the opposite holds: factors that justify low confidence in p also make disagreement about p less significant. I examine two such factors: your antecedent expectations about your peers’ opinions and the difficulty (...) of evaluating your evidence. I close by proposing a different way of thinking about disagreement. (shrink)

Zhuangzi purports to follow a particular method of viewing human emotion and suggests freeing oneself from worldly emotions—this is called “doctrine of non-emotion” (wuqing shuo 無情說). This article attempts to show that the idea of non-emotion in Zhuangzi does not in any way conflict with the expression of emotion in poetry, and moreover, it provides a foundation for the poet to express his emotions naturally and freely. We will use the Chinese poetry of the Wei-Jin Period—a period that is strongly (...) influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, yet at the same time emphasizes the expression of the poet's emotion in poetry—as an example to show how fruitful it indeed is when Zhuangzi's philosophy becomes applied to Chinese poetry. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments start with a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our evaluative beliefs, and conclude that we are not justified in those beliefs. The value realist holds that there are attitude-independent evaluative truths. But the debunker argues that we have no reason to think that the evolutionary forces that shaped human evaluative attitudes would track those truths. Worse yet, we seem to have a good reason to think that they wouldn’t: evolution selects for characteristics that increase (...) genetic fitness—not ones that correlate with the evaluative truth. Plausibly, the attitudes and judgments that increase a creature’s fitness come apart from the true evaluative beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that no plausible evolutionary debunking argument can both have force against the value realist and not collapse into a more general skeptical argument. I conclude that there is little hope for evolutionary debunking arguments. This is bad news for the debunker who hoped that the cold, hard scientific facts about our origins would debunk our evaluative beliefs. And it is good news for the realist. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs. My primary aim is to clarify this empirically grounded epistemological challenge. I begin by distinguishing among importantly different sorts of epistemological attacks. I then demonstrate that instances of each appear in the literature under the ‘evolutionary debunking’ title. Distinguishing them clears up some confusions and helps us better understand the structure and potential of evolutionary debunking arguments.

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

It’s intuitive to think that (a) the more sure you are of something, the harder it’ll be to change your mind about it, and (b) you can’t be open-minded about something if you’re very sure about it. If these thoughts are right, then, with minimal assumptions, it follows that you can’t be in a good position to both escape echo chambers and be rationally resistant to fake news: the former requires open-mindedness, but the latter is inimical to it. I argue (...) that neither thought is true and that believing them will get us all mixed up. I show that you can be open-minded and have confidently held beliefs, and that beliefs in which you are less sure are not, thereby, more fragile. I close with some reflections on the nature of rational belief change and open-mindedness and a brief sketch about what might actually help us in the fight against misinformation and belief polarization …. [please read below the rest of the article]. (shrink)

The fact of moral disagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significance disagreement, seems to entail moral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislike moral skepticism. Others, equally inclined against moral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

Based on the analysis of Zhuangzi, this paper attempts to illustrate the positive aspects of Zhuangzi’s idea concerning contented acceptance of fate, whi...

Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially (...) influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens. (shrink)

Human chromosome 11p15 comprises two imprinted domains important in the control of fetal and postnatal growth. Novel studies1-3 establish that imprinting at one of these, the IGF2-H19 domain, is epigenetically deregulated (with loss of DNA methylation) in Silver-Russell Syndrome (SRS), a congenital disease of growth retardation and asymmetry. Previously, the exact opposite epigenetic alteration (gain of DNA methylation) had been detected at the domain's ‘imprinting control region’ (ICR) in patients with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome (BWS), a complex disorder of fetal overgrowth. However, (...) more frequently, BWS is caused by loss of DNA methylation at the ICR that regulates the second imprinted domain at 11p15. Interestingly, a similar epigenetic alteration (with loss of methylation) at a putative ICR on human chromosome 6q24, is involved in transient neonatal diabetes mellitus (TNDM), a congenital disease with intrauterine growth retardation and a transient lack of insulin. Thus, fetal and postnatal growth is epigenetically controlled by different ICRs, at 11p15 and other chromosomal regions. BioEssays 28: 453–459, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate (...) that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk. (shrink)

« On tend à définir aujourd’hui la Théorie critique de l’École de Francfort comme une philosophie sociale proposant un “diagnostic” portant sur des “pathologies sociales”. Or ces termes recouvrent en réalité une pluralité de démarches. Le propos de l’article est d’en interroger la continuité, depuis la position de Horkheimer et Adorno pour lesquels le mal social est plutôt identifié à la barbarie ou à l’irrationalité, les maladies psychiques de l’individu étant l’indice d’un tout social malade, jusqu’à l’analyse par Honneth des (...) évolutions pathologiques ou manquées du social, qui font état d’obstacles à l’intégration sociale, en passant par l’analyse habermassienne des pathologies. L’article étudie plus précisément deux variantes très différentes de l’analyse du rapport entre le normal et le pathologique, selon que la pathologie est prise en un sens métaphorique ou plus littéral. Dans chaque cas, la question de la thérapeutique se pose différemment. ». (shrink)

Ce livre étudie comment la philosophe Hannah Arendt pense la cité, ou encore le politique, cette dimension essentielle de la vie des hommes. Cheminant dans la tradition, avec des penseurs politiques comme Machiavel, Montesquieu et Tocqueville, Arendt bouleverse les rapports entre philosophie et politique. La pensée politique telle qu'elle la définit, en opposition à la philosophie politique classique, doit recevoir ses normes de l'expérience : le discours est second et puise à l'événement. Née en 1906 en Allemagne où elle s'est (...) formée à la philosophie, juive, exilée en France puis aux États-Unis, Hannah Arendt a été projetée dans l'étude de la pensée politique par la force de l'histoire. Longtemps considérée comme une historienne, une journaliste ou une essayiste, Hannah Arendt est désormais reconnue comme penseur central du XXe siècle. Il s'agit de comprendre à la fois le travail théorique qu'elle a mené et sa revendication d'être, non pas une « philosophe », mais une théoricienne du politique. Sa volonté de pratiquer la philosophie en se situant hors champ n'est pas une simple critique de la tradition : elle inaugure une nouvelle manière de philosopher, où l'expérimentation conceptuelle ouvre de nouveaux champs pour la pensée. (shrink)

Freedom was, quite naturally, a dream cherished by every Brazilian slave. The desire for manumission - a more reliable route to freedom than the path of flight or revolt - was based on the experiences of other slaves in Brazil, a country open to all sorts of social adaptation practices. Consequently, the charters of liberty granted by masters and registered in notarial records have proved a rich source for the study of certain aspects of slavery itself. The similarity between the (...) title of the present article and that of the 1979 work To Be a Slave in Brazil reflects the fact that since the publication of that book, other authors have added to the bibliography on the subject of manumitted Brazilians, thus confirming the important role of this social group whose close connections with the slaves themselves were described in my previous study. In their experience of life, the manumitted slaves regularly encountered pitfalls that served as constant reminders of their skin color. Moreover, the daily lives of African blacks on the market, who at the time were merely African captives shipped to Brazil in various stages of youth and various degrees of adaptation to their slave status - along with the experiences of creole slaves (that is, those born in Brazil), of free-able slaves in the process of attaining freedom, of freed slaves, of children and grandchildren of manumitted slaves (who were therefore born free) - must all be understood not only in the context of their legal status but also and especially in the light of their subtly nuanced lives. (shrink)

This article explores Futurist technophilia and some more or less latent technophobia, in the period after 1918. Fuelled by the economic and industrial advancements of the so-called “Giolittian age,” as well as an extensive employment of war technology in the First World War, the Futurist technological imagination remains both robust and wide-ranging in the postwar period. Resonant of nineteenth-century French and Italian literary traditions, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's official position clusters round the powerful, if hackneyed, images of the steam train and (...) the motorcar. A number of fellow Futurists, however, explore technology in more original and, in some cases, more persuasive fashions. From the technology of flying employed first-hand by Fedele Azari to Enrico Prampolini's mechanical applications on the European stage, from Anton Giulio Bragaglia's experimental cinema to Ivo Pannaggi's and Vinicio Paladini's technological rebirth in marxian key, the Futurists' approach to technology is characterised throughout by a problematic counterpoint of modernity and tradition. If the Futurist officialdom ultimately relies on the latter, numerous alternative experiences testify to their vibrant strife towards the former. (shrink)

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate (...) that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk. (shrink)

The investigation of how humans perceive and respond to emotional signals conveyed by the human body has been for a long time secondary compared with the investigation of facial expressions and emotional scenes recognition. The aims of this behavioral study were to assess the ability to process emotional body postures and to test whether motor response is mainly driven by the emotional content of the picture or if it is influenced by motor resonance. Emotional body postures and scenes (IAPS) divided (...) into three clusters (fear, happiness, and neutral) were shown to 25 healthy subjects (13 males, mean age ± SD: 22.3 ± 1.8 years) in a three-alternative forced choice task. Subjects were asked to recognize the emotional content of the pictures by pressing one of three keys as fast as possible in order to estimate response times (RTs). The rating of valence and arousal was also performed. We found shorter RTs for fearful body postures as compared with happy and neutral postures. In contrast, no differences across emotional categories were found for the IAPS stimuli. Analysis on valence and arousal and the subsequent item analysis showed an excellent reliability of the two sets of images used in the experiment. Our results show that fearful body postures are rapidly recognized and processed, probably thanks to the automatic activation of a series of central nervous system structures orchestrating the defensive threat reactions, strengthening and supporting previous neurophysiological and behavioral findings in body language processing. (shrink)

In Psychology, the issue of language usage as a means of action in psychological life requires that we question the relations between the forms of language expression and their psychological functions. The current paper contributes to an understanding of this question. The relation between form and function is examined here, with particular focus on a discursive and dialogic method employed in the Activity Clinic approach to elicit controversy as a means of developing dialogical thinking. We argue that the interfunctionality of (...) levels of dialogue serves developmental processes, promoting thought and the possibilities for its elaboration. We describe these developmental processes on the basis of an empirical analysis of a sequence from an intervention conducted with Roman Catholic Priests on preaching in homily. Our methodological frameworks have the function of vivifying dialogical thinking about work, by making use of the interfunctionality of levels of dialogue and the vital function of social relations in the psychological life of the subjects. (shrink)

O foco de interesse neste artigo se coloca na relevância da noção de agência para análises de conhecimento em termos de virtude epistêmica, destacando a estratégia assumida por epistemólogos da virtude na defesa da tese de que podemos ser agentes responsáveis pelo que constitui nossa vida epistêmica, apesar de nossas crenças serem estados involuntários. Enquanto L. Zagzebski, invocando casos epistêmicos do tipo Frankfurt, alega que considerar agência epistêmica como condição necessária para o conhecimento permite oferecer uma análise que escapa à (...) famosa objeção de Gettier, E. Sosa refina sua teoria, oferecendo nova argumentação em favor da ideia de que há uma esfera epistêmica na qual podemos ser agentes e responsáveis pela aquisição de crenças verdadeiras devido à importância de nosso caráter cognitivo para a atribuição de conhecimento. Meu objetivo ao expor e comparar as posições de Zagzebski e de Sosa é colocar em relevo aspectos do atual estado da arte em epistemologia da virtude que favorecem explicações de conhecimento em termos de crédito. (shrink)

A adolescência é um período do desenvolvimento acompanhado de importantes mudanças na esfera física, psicológica e social, caracterizando-se como um momento de transição para a vida adulta. A presente pesquisa investigou algumas repercussões que uma doença crônica como a fibrose cística possui dentr..

After some general remarks about the contemporary debate on concepts and about the justification of the so-called definition question, I try to participate in this debate by criticizing what I take to be an instructive approach to concepts and concept possession, viz. Hans-Johann Glock's proposal to view concepts as rules or principles rather than abilities. I address his attempt to distinguish between sorting and classifying, his objections to the idea that concepts are abilities and his contention that thoughts and concepts (...) are to be regarded as the content of thinking. I advocate a deflationary approach to concepts and try to raise doubts about the claim that thoughts have a language-independent structure. (shrink)

SummaryThe essay intends to find out why although many studies have focused on the three-year revolutionary period in Italy from 1796–1799, the Cisalpine Republic has never been studied in the same detail as the Neapolitan Republic. In reconstructing these events, the two republics are regularly presented in opposing terms. The Cisalpine Republic is portrayed as exemplifying subordination to the military protectorate and politics of France, while the Neapolitan Republic is put forward as the shining example of revolutionary resistance within Italy (...) at the time. The essay intends to underline why the nineteenth and the twentieth century historiography has negatively and prejudicially judged the political experience of the Cisalpine Republic. (shrink)

In 1977, the first computer-assisted proof of a mathematical theorem was presented by K. Appel and W. Haken. The proof was met with a lot of criticism from both mathematicians and philosophers. In this paper, I present some examples of computer-assisted proofs, including Appel and Haken’s work. Then, I analyze the most famous arguments against the equal acceptance of computer-based and human-based proofs in mathematics and examine the philosophical assumptions behind the presented criticism. In the conclusion, I talk about whether (...) the philosophical assumptions are justified as they are, or one needs to take a specific philosophical position to accept them. (shrink)

The author analyzes the complex intimate relations between human rights and globalization, and the consequences of this debate in the reconfiguration of public space and in the composition of virtual space. Globalization is explained through a critical reading of the political phenomenon of the pri..

Sociolinguistics is a young and vigorous branch of linguistics. Brought to life in the late 1960s through the pioneering work on urban dialects by William Labov and his students, it developed rapidly. From the end of the 1970s, it expanded to include a vast range of studies focusing on various relations between language and society. From sociolinguistics in the narrow sense—the study of correlations between linguistic and nonlinguistic variables—it came to be used as an umbrella term of loosely connected research (...) into the interdependence and mutual influence of language and social life. Nowadays, sociolinguistics is an interdisciplinary field, focusing on such issues as social dialects, multilingualism, language planning, and language reform and change. (shrink)

O objetivo central neste artigo é o de explicar o que é testemunho e como ele produz conhecimento e justificação. Conforme essa concepção, o testemunho é uma importante e habitual fonte de conhecimento e de justificação, bem como um conceito relevante em epistemologia social, comunicação e psicologia da aquisição de crença. Apesar de o testemunho, nessa concepção, não ser considerado uma fonte básica de conhecimento e justificação, é alegado que ele é uma fonte de conhecimento básico pois crenças básicas não (...) precisariam derivar de uma fonte básica. Assim, novas crenças podem ser geradas a partir do testemunho, mas novo conhecimento não pode ser produzido a não ser a partir de conhecimento anterior. Apesar disso, a posição defendida neste artigo considera que, mesmo que a justificação com base no testemunho seja, em última instância, dependente de outras fontes de justificação, o testemunho constitui uma fonte essencial tanto de conhecimento como de justificação. (shrink)

RESUMO: A música ocupa um lugar de destaque como um dos principais meios de imitação. A utilização da música como ferramenta para suscitar e representar afetos, preconizada desde os antigos, chega integralmente ao século XVIII, podendo ser observada claramente nas obras dos compositores alemães ligados à doutrina composicional da Musica Poetica3 e, sobretudo, na obra de Johann Sebastian Bach. Porém, diversas são as espécies de imitação musical, de forma que o intuito deste trabalho foi categorizar e definir a função das (...) espécies imitativas, com base na concepção aristotélica de imitação e nas categorias de imitação propostas por Johann Mattheson, um dos principais teóricos da Musica Poetica, tentando demonstrar que, desde a concepção musical da antiguidade, música e poética são inseparáveis. ABSTRACT: Music occupies a prominent place as a means of imitation. The use of music as a tool to inspire and represent affections, which has occurred since ancient times, was integral to eighteenth century music. This can be clearly seen in the works of German composers linked to the compositional doctrine of musica poetica, and especially in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, there are several kinds of musical imitation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to categorize and define the function of imitation, based on the Aristotelian concept of imitation and on the categories of imitation proposed by Johann Mattheson, one of the main theoreticians of musica poetica. We try to show that ever since the musical conceptions of antiquity, music and poetics have been inseparable. (shrink)

Aesthetic experience is that in which the participation of our senses is elevated to the highest possible position; thus, the aesthetic experience offers us a chance to better recognize the fact that the human being is a composite yet unitary substance integrating matter and spirit. Aesthetic experience is also that in which not only the senses but other human powers—imagination, emotion, and intellect—are involved in aesthetic perception; thus, this helps us better realize the organic interplay of our powers as a (...) whole. In this paper, I employ a Thomistic approach to illustrate aesthetic experience, because the truth that the human being is an undividable unity of matter and spirit.. (shrink)

How can the visual and textual data about an image – the image of a work of art – on recto and verso of a picture be interpreted? An analogical-art-documentary photograph represents a palimpsest to be considered layer by layer. The examples discussed in this article, which refer to both Aby Warburg himself and the first nucleus of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, contribute to effectively outline elements of the debate around the question of the photographic reproduction of the work (...) of art as well as of the position of photography in relation to the perception of the work of art. (shrink)

Este artigo discute a relação entre a mentira, a verdade factual e a tecnologia. O processo da chamada “mentira organizada”, iniciado no século XX, atualmente assume hoje proporções apocalípticas e foi abordado por Gunther Anders, Paul Virilio e Hannah Arendt, autores cujas reflexões sobre o tema são aqui retomadas e atualizadas em relação ao cenário contemporâneo. São discutidos a relação entre verdade factual e mentira e os efeitos que sobre ela têm a velocidade e o excesso de informações, de imagens (...) e de dados, assim como a visão apocalíptica que Anders, Arendt e Virilio construíram acerca desse processo. (shrink)